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Non-violent video games

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Snader polycounter lvl 15
A comment by Zwebbie, the current slew of E3 games, and some other assorted things got me thinking. What good nonviolent games are there, and what can be considered a nonviolent game?

I mean there's the obvious stuff like racing games, but in Burnout you crash other cars on purpose. Dishonored allows you to go stealth but there's still some strangulation and of course people trying to kill you. Is Portal violent? What about good old Mario Bros, where you jump on heads? Should a game where you kill one or two persons during the entire game be considered violent? Is a game only violent if you're the one performing the violence?

I think it's interesting to ponder a bit about (non)violence in games, where it is and where it can be avoided, and so forth, for several reasons. For one, I'm kind of tired of all the shooty shooty myself, two, I think there's a lot of missed opportunities in games, three, it would be good to have instant arguments the next time there's another games/guns/mental health debate, and four, we can even use non-violent elements to enhance violent games such as adding Mirror's Edge parkour to CoD and get Brink.

So...

What do you guys consider to be good categories for (non)violence?

Which games do you guys recommend?

What elements should be played up more in videogames?

Replies

  • ZacD
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    ZacD ngon master
    I'm just going to reply with the same comment I made to his post,

    There seems to be a lot of good games recently that depict violence and war as something disturbing. Such as Last of Us, Metal Gear Solid 5, Spec Ops: The Line, they do not take violence lightly like most other games that glamorize war and killing.
  • aivanov
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    aivanov polycounter lvl 5
    Well, I'm pretty sure the Sims is non-violent, and one of - if not THE - bestselling series ever.
  • Mstankow
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    Mstankow polycounter lvl 11
    In The Sims you can torture people in horrible ways so I wouldn't call it non-violent.
  • Muzzoid
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    Muzzoid polycounter lvl 10
    I would define non violent in the intent of the game.

    But that being said i think a good distinction is cartoon violence and normal violence. I would consider mario cartoon violence, but team fortress 2 with it's blood, and sunset overdrive with it's zombies to be graphically violent for example.
  • Meteora
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    Meteora polycounter lvl 8
    Mstankow wrote: »
    In The Sims you can torture people in horrible ways so I wouldn't call it non-violent.

    Violence is not actively encouraged in The Sims. Its doable and its there, but you're not told to horribly torture Sims.
  • JordanN
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    JordanN interpolator
    Violence:Behavior involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something.

    So yeah, Mario could be considered "violent" but I imagine it's the depiction of it that makes it stray away from something like Call of Duty.

    For example, when Mario jumps on a Goomba's head, you're not witnessing the slow and gruesome death as his shoes smash through its brain. Instead, it's a quick and painless death where the goomba just disappears.

    Cartoon violence is what it's called.
  • RyRyB
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    RyRyB polycounter lvl 18
    Solitaire, Hearts, Minesweeper (arguable?!)...

    Just kidding!

    I would consider city/empire building games non-violent: Civilization, SimCity series, etc. Although Civ has some fighting in it, it's certainly not violent like the current crop of games.
  • Eric Chadwick
    JordanN wrote: »
    you're not witnessing the slow and gruesome death as his shoes smash through its brain.

    tumblr_m4ptph8jEs1qzpztbo1_500.gif
  • Zwebbie
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    Zwebbie polycounter lvl 18
    ZacD wrote: »
    There seems to be a lot of good games recently that depict violence and war as something disturbing. Such as Last of Us, Metal Gear Solid 5, Spec Ops: The Line, they do not take violence lightly like most other games that glamorize war and killing.
    You'll have to forgive me here if I'm making uninformed comments, but from what I have seen and read of Spec Ops, its message is that you're a bit of a horrible person if you play that sort of game. If that's so, then I've already taken its message to heart before even having played it, and if I'd play it now it would force me to act violently in order to experience a good story — which is not a trade-off I'm willing to make.
    MGS5 and The Last of Us are from the creators of MGS and, of all things, Uncharted, so you'll have to forgive me if I don't exactly believe these people have a pacifist agenda. You can say that violence is bad all over the writing and textures, but if your gameplay is based on interesting ways to commit violence, then you're promoting violence.

    There's a piece on Rock Paper Shotgun in which one of the designers of Dishonored gives his opinion; basically, he says that Dishonored is better than a purely non-violent game because it gives the player the choice of being a pacifist. I found that to be a bizarre read, as if it was an accident that the game had tons of fun ways to murder people and it totally wasn't the designer's fault that people played it violently.

    It's not that I actually think people will become violent through video games, but I do think that creating a game which links violence to fun is a highly unethical enterprise. I've also been trying not to make 3D models of fighters myself, little as that happens to be these days.


    On a better note then, I was really impressed that the developers of Frozen Synapse, an excellent, but rather shooty strategy game, decided to theme their sequel Frozen Endzone around sports instead.
  • pior
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    pior grand marshal polycounter
    So yeah, Mario could be considered "violent" but I imagine it's the depiction of it that makes it stray away from something like Call of Duty.

    It's very interesting stuff to think about. For instance, TF2 could be classified as "cartoon violence" : the characters ar stylized and cartoony, and the violence is goofy. Yet it's sometimes easy to forget that in TF2 heads and gibs roll all over the place, blood flies everywhere and the characters scream in agony and catch fire.

    A little while ago I had the opportunity to show both TF2 and Modern Warfare 3 to a (female) friend who wasn't familiar with either (yet she knew of Counter Strike). She found TF2 to be quite disturbing, yet MW3 look impressive and immersive to her (in a good sense.)

    I tend to agree with that. A game like CoD multiplayer that is often considered as "gritty, realistic, and violent" is actually visually quite close to non-lethal BB gun games and lasertag. And just claiming that a game is "cartoony" or non-realistic is not enough to make it non-violent to me.
  • pior
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    pior grand marshal polycounter
    Zwebbie : Uncharted is a very strange case. Having played only Uncharted 2 I have to say that I have no interest in the franchise at all, as I didn't see the point of the hero shooting his way through the adventure. I did hear that Uncharted 1 is much more platform oriented tho.

    As for Metal Gear, I am not quite sure to understand what you mean. All the MGS games always offered the player a way to sneak all the way through the game, and hardcore MGS players all try to beat the game that way. Also the first gun being given to the player is always a non-lethal tranquilizer gun, and if I am not mistaken almost all the MGS games can be completed by using this kind of weapon alone. That's actually one of the coolest thing about the series !

    Regarding violence and fun. It being unethical is only an opinion ; depicted violence can be very fun indeed, it is a matter of taste. However I do agree that it would be great if more games made the distinction between the fun of *pointing, aiming and shooting* and the so-called fun of *killing something or someone*. These are two different things, and I do have a big problem with all the games blending these two concepts together way too often.

    That's another reason why I like CoD more than TF2 : I do not need exploding heads and burning corpses to enjoy the satisfaction of feeling like a decent virtual shot.
  • GarageBay9
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    GarageBay9 polycounter lvl 13
    Actually, my favorite non-violent game is Endless Ocean. It's also beautiful, especially for a Wii title. They added some kind of hokey "calming ray gun" stuff in the second one; I kind of liked the purity of the entirely peaceful, exploration-focused first game more (still loved both).

    I REALLY hope they bring out a third one for Wii U.
  • Bigjohn
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    Bigjohn polycounter lvl 11
    Funny thing, I always wonder the same thing, what happened to non-violent games? I know I'm not normal in that sense, but when I was a kid pretty much all video-games I played were non-violent. I think the first violent one I've seen was Duke Nukem.

    Anyways, for the best non-violent ones I think you'd have to go back to the old games. My favorites have been stuff like Simon the Sorcerer, Full Throttle, Sam&Max, Goblins series (including Woodruff), basically all those point and click adventures. And also Lost Vikings (maybe?), Lemmings, those types of games.

    Seems to me like the adventure genre died miserably with the PS1-era games. At best you get now Action-Adventure, extra emphasis on the action.


    211715-simon_2__4_.jpg

    Best shit ever.
  • pior
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    pior grand marshal polycounter
    Did you get the number of that donkey cart ?
    (yeah I know, its from DW, but still :) )
  • Nizza_waaarg
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    Nizza_waaarg polycounter lvl 15
    [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSBn77_h_6Q"]Errant Signal - Violence In Games - YouTube[/ame]

    Really good errant signal vid (but i love all his vids).
    But i'm not sure what your (zwebbie's) concern with "violent" video games is specifically. It's not real life violence and as far as i can tell doesn't promote real life violence, Its video games. And violence does exist in real life, are you saying noone should comment on that at all, in any context?

    Also (as pior said) the mgs series has had a massive anti-war/anti-violence message from the beginning (the ultimate goal of every game being to do a no alerts and no kills playthrough).


    As for non-violent stuff (looks around apartment):
    Journey, proteus, catherine, kentucky route zero, dustforce (depending on your view of cleaning forest animals and scientists), anti-chamber, portal (might be a gray area again), kerbal space program (they can die tho), super hexagon, too many to list but you get the idea.
  • praetus
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    praetus interpolator
    Naaaaaaanaaaaaaaaa- nananananana~ Katamarcy Damarcy~
  • JacqueChoi
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    JacqueChoi polycounter
    Takes too much creativity to make a non-violent game.

    ^_^


    I've straight up worked with designers that have said 'It's impossible to make a game without violence', when given complete Carte Blanche.

    I love Braid


    Rhythm games: Notably Elite Beat Agents, and Parappa the Rappa

    Sports games: Skate / Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3/ NHL/FIFA/Wii Sports

    A few story games, like Longest Journey, or Hotel Dusk weren't bad.
  • Count Vertsalot
    Pong was pretty nonviolent. Everything after that was the work of Satan obviously.
  • ZacD
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    ZacD ngon master

    Great video, makes a lot of sense.

    You are very limited what you can do with a 3d place if you are limited to a controller or mouse/keyboard. As a character interacting with the world in real time you can jump, climb, duck, run, roll, point, attack, pick up, examine, or hide. There's a few other minor things you can add, but you still cannot interact with characters more than a text box with different conversation options. So the potential depth in interaction is very shallow, and really hasn't changed since text based games. Multiplayer games is where the options for deeper levels of interaction comes into play, which is why we are seeing MMO's.

    But we are no where near getting that level of interaction with AI characters. But again, a lot of games are simulated violence. Most sports are, at some level, chasing a ball is like hunting, obviously boxing and wrestling, chess is simulated war, almost like an RTS. D&D involves combat, in checkers you destroy other people's units, competition is fighting, and part of violence and our nature.
  • Skamberin
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    Skamberin polycounter lvl 13
    Maybe I've been playing the wrong games (from Mario to Dark Souls) but their focus on avoidance and defeating an adversary through the use of violence makes the game challenging and fun for me.
    I've yet to play a game without violence of any kind that didn't either come off as pretentious, really boring and artificially lengthened or incredibly easy.

    Keep in mind that I define violence in videogames as the use of force to defeat "sentient" or "non-sentient" adversary (killing a robot or person is still violent, destroying cars and buildings is violent, etc).

    So to me, sports games that have tackles and car games with crashing are violent games.
  • xvampire
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    xvampire polycounter lvl 14
    non violent games in what genre?

    there are majority non violent games out there if we dont count action games ...
  • ZacD
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    ZacD ngon master
    Any game that the player can die in can be seen as violent. But of course even kids cartoons and movies depict possible death and danger.
  • R3D
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    R3D interpolator
    ZacD wrote: »
    Any game that the player can die in can be seen as violent

    there are non-violent ways to die though?
  • artstream
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    artstream polycounter lvl 11
    In response to the OP

    Categories for non-violence: easy answer is puzzle games. You may have an opponent (the system itself, or a nefarious villain), but you usually aren't trying to kill/harm them.

    Games I recommend: Some may be a bit dated, but
    -- Lemmings
    -- Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine
    -- World of Goo
    -- Tetris
    -- Robot Unicorn Attack (technically, if you die there's an explosion, but there's no intent of killing anything).

    Elements I'd like to see explored in games:
    More interesting platformer experiences, where you can shape your path based how you place/move/interact with your environment around you.
  • Overlord
    A lot of games are violent because the human mind is drawn to conflict and the easiest conflict there is to portray is violent conflict because we take pleasure in seeing it resolved. It doesn't require much of the viewer to fully grasp what the conflict is because the conflict is very literal. Other forms of conflict, such as man vs self, is more subtle and asks the viewer to analyze the conflict to fully realize what is happening. When the protagonist is struggling with moral or ethical conflict the viewer must put their selves in the scenario and make judgements about the character and his behavior that often ties into the viewer's own moral compass. That isn't to say that violent conflict doesn't have subtleties of its own, just that the raw product is a more obvious conflict. So violence becomes caps lock for awesome.

    A lot of games deal with binary choices and violent conflict fits well into that. Kill or be killed. Tank or kite. Evil vs Good. Hero or villain. Game design gets murky when you start getting into morally ambiguous territory. It doesn't know what you believe or if you believe something; it just is or it isn't. It's hard to account for all the possible outcomes that the players may pursue if allowed use their own imagination or stray from the path the designer has set before them; it's difficult to design a game that allows for infinite choice and could result in confusion for the player. Violent games set out simple expectations for the player: shoot the enemy and watch the score go up. It rarely asks if the player wants to shoot people or if they want to try another approach. That's too unpredictable and imposes too many variables.

    I don't think we should focus so much on how much violence is possible in a game, rather we should ask if, and by how much, the game allows the player to take a non-violent option to resolve conflict. Games that can account for a range of moral choices (lawful good to chaotic evil) should be commended rather than vilified for having the option to decapitate babies when you also have the option to ignore or even protect and possibly rescue them in dereliction of the primary conflict. That gets into action and consequence, which can get complicated fast. What can the player do? What will happen with the player does it? How many ways can the conflict be resolved?

    I'd say that most racing sims are non violent. They certainly don't encourage violence, but they don't go out of their way to prevent you from being violent. Flight sims too. I think the Myst series was non violent. Sports games are generally non violent.

    Animal crossing
    Mario
    Jet Set Radio
    Sonic
    Megaman (robot vs robot)
    DDR
    Rock Band/Guitar Hero
    Rocksmith
    Kingdom Hearts
    Minecraft
    Spore
    Pokemon (Squirtle Fainted!)
  • DeeKei
    There need to be more guitar heroes. I'm sick of playing my DJ hero and its shitty selection of music.
  • valuemeal
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    valuemeal polycounter lvl 6
    This seems to be a meat vs. non-meat issue.

    There is a huge difference between "slaughter" and "battle"

    "Meat games" always portray combat as slaughter,

    Violence for the sake of being violent. while trying to convey that they are only for super "mature" folks. Often wanton bloodshed, decapitation occur without warrant or reason.
    (Mortal Combat, almost every shooter, those realistic rpgs that people like to play, and manhunt qualify )


    Battle is almost interesting or odd techniques in combat settings that are more then often displayed without consequence and/or minimal physical injury.
    (I.e. Mario's attacks, the street fighter moves, rayman's techniques,and most monster battle scenarios apply)
  • Snader
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    Snader polycounter lvl 15
    Valuemeal. I can't take you seriously because you keep referencing meat. What the heck is with that?

    Anyway, thanks for all the feedback guys, I'll give it a thorough read and think some more. Of course, keep throwimg more thoughts and ideas around!
  • Vailias
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    Vailias polycounter lvl 18
    [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhvx05RCSHc"]Extra Credits, Season 1, Episode 25 - Non Combat Gaming - YouTube[/ame]

    There's a good discussion on the topic.
  • Justin Meisse
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    Justin Meisse polycounter lvl 18
    It's interesting when you see people who are overly concerned about violent games draw a line "these games I don't play are violent but these ones over here that I enjoy aren't". So a game about fighting in the street isn't violent? I noticed all of Valuemeal's nonviolent games would still have a sticker warning of "cartoon violence" on them.
  • skylebones
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    skylebones polycounter lvl 10
    I've been feeling the same way. Not that I'm really opposed to violent video games. But I'm starting to feel every game is A kill B with a different wrapper. And I know we can create more than that.
  • SnowInChina
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    SnowInChina interpolator
    well, there are alot of sport simulations out there (+ dancing games and all that stuff)
    you could say that fouls are violent, but i wouldnt put them in that category
    please dont try to argue with nhl..

    there are also the puzzle genre and point and click genre which are mostly not violent
    i wouldnt count jump'n runs like mario or, whatever genre that is, mario kart to the violent games
    and at last there are simulator like football manager, oil tycoon and all that games
  • ironbelly
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    ironbelly polycounter lvl 9
    Over the second half of last and definitely this year our business has really diversified from primarily PC/console to include a lot of mobile development to the point that we are now at about 1/2 and 1/2. If you want to find awesome fun non-violent ways of engaging users just go to the itunes or google stores and grab games. The experiences are a lot less in depth for a lot of titles but mobile is easily the most innovative arena right now when it comes to gameplay, finding new ways to engage the user. The indie PC scene is also an amazing area for this as well but it's just dwarfed by the amount of indie dev going on on mobile right now. So I'd look there to find some new interesting ways of gaming without violence and if you are looking to create a little more immersive and in-depth experience like a PC game perhaps you can use some of those mobile games as inspiration and built on them for a PC experience.
  • Zwebbie
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    Zwebbie polycounter lvl 18
    But i'm not sure what your (zwebbie's) concern with "violent" video games is specifically. It's not real life violence and as far as i can tell doesn't promote real life violence, Its video games. And violence does exist in real life, are you saying noone should comment on that at all, in any context?
    Surely it's silly to consider everything good until it has been proven to turn people into murderers. I'd argue that it is, in fact, counter-productive to commenting on real world violence, because we're all becoming so desensitised to media violence that it is losing its power to shock us when it really has something meaningful to say.

    But even if there's no 'empirical' downside, ethics is more than that. Just a thought experiment. Let's say there a game that is really fun. In it, you play a Nazi party member who has decided to work as a doctor in a concentration camp so that he can rape people in secret, without traumatising any good, Arian people. And you have to make sure that whomever you abuse gets her tongue pulled out, mouth stitched shut, shot, gassed, or otherwise executed ASAP so that your escapades won't see the light of day. Did I mention the gameplay is really fun? Ok, now imagine that a study has shown that this game does not turn people either into Nazis, rapists or murderers. No harmful effects! Would you feel completely comfortable with people gushing over how great it is and with advertisements telling you how badly you want to pay the company money to play as a Nazi rapist? Or would you feel, perhaps, a tiny bit queasy? And if the latter, why is this wrong and why is shooting people not?

    (Apologies if I'm going off-topic with my theoretic thinking here.)
  • Lamont
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    Lamont polycounter lvl 15
    Honestly Zwebbie, if it was a good game in a certain style, I would play it. I would imagine it to be something like a Tell Tale game... branching story-lines and such. Like a messed up novel about some crazy scientist, just interactive.

    Will a game like that find an audience? I am sure it would.

    EDIT: If the developer was pushing an agenda... no I would not play it.
  • NegevPro
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    NegevPro polycounter lvl 4
    Violence is a very subjective term.

    A good example of a non-violent game in my book is "Papo and Yo." It shows that games can talk about dark themes but still be presented in a "non-violent" way. There's no blood and I'm pretty sure you can't die, but you can still get thrown around by Monster and even though nobody is physically hurt, the player knows what this symbolizes and it is painful to watch every time.

    Great game to try if you haven't already played it. The gameplay mechanics could have used some work, it is still one of the most enjoyable games I've played in a long time.
  • eld
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    eld polycounter lvl 18
    Zwebbie wrote: »
    There's a piece on Rock Paper Shotgun in which one of the designers of Dishonored gives his opinion; basically, he says that Dishonored is better than a purely non-violent game because it gives the player the choice of being a pacifist. I found that to be a bizarre read, as if it was an accident that the game had tons of fun ways to murder people and it totally wasn't the designer's fault that people played it violently.

    "Being better" in the perspective of "violence is better! and "non-violence is better", giving the player the choice puts him in the morale dilemma, it makes it a more important game.

    Mario for example teaches no lesson in that aspect, it distance yourself from the graphical gore and tells you to destroy everything in your path and NO ONE would even think of mario as anything other than non-violent.

    I see violence in graphical violent games as acting as a realistic combat-reward method where the enemy exploding in confetti probably wouldn't work thematically, it's the gears of war chainsaw method.
    Zwebbie wrote: »
    It's not that I actually think people will become violent through video games, but I do think that creating a game which links violence to fun is a highly unethical enterprise. I've also been trying not to make 3D models of fighters myself, little as that happens to be these days

    One starts to enter weird reasoning with that kind of thinking, sort of like "we should not masturbate as it might promote our sexual urges to rape", we're a highly violent race, making experiences around conflict such as in sports or games and being able to remain civil in real-life is a fantastic feat, I think we should celebrate it!
  • Bigjohn
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    Bigjohn polycounter lvl 11
    Vailias wrote: »

    Can someone explain what he meant with the Suikoden example? Those dots don't really connect for me. But I've never heard of that game before, so that's probably why. Is it just like any other JRPG?
  • nick2730
    Golf, tiger woods 2013
  • Skamberin
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    Skamberin polycounter lvl 13
    eld wrote: »
    One starts to enter weird reasoning with that kind of thinking, sort of like "we should not masturbate as it might promote our sexual urges to rape", we're a highly violent race, making experiences around conflict such as in sports or games and being able to remain civil in real-life is a fantastic feat, I think we should celebrate it!
    This.
    It's like saying you shouldn't indulge yourself with pornography because it's an adultery simulator and doing so is unethical, which is just ludicrously stupid and purist on a level of right-wing conservative zealotry.

    Both are vices in a way, they take off the edge and unless you're already at risk there is no harm in it.

    And for the record: Even non violent games lead to violence, ever seen a football riot? Football isn't exactly a violent sport/game...
    It's not the violence in the game that's unethical, it's how people choose to treat it afterwards, as intelligent adults.
  • Ged
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    Ged interpolator
    Ken levine has some interesting things to say on this topic

    http://www.gamefront.com/ken-levine-on-bioshock-infinite-violence-is-essential-to-narrative/

    I think it was him who was basically explaining that computers are good at physics simulations so most of our games involve that, driving, flying, shooting etc etc. We dont even have games capable of intricate conversation similation yet and AI psychological analysis - so that what you say actually is the gameplay rather than just a narrative tree. As a result in most games conflict is resolved through action rather than other means simply because computers are good at that and people know how to program that kind of stuff.

    its an interesting topic and I love how games come out that challenge the norm like the sims and spore and minecraft that add human creativity and ingenuinty and psychology to the mix :)
  • Zwebbie
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    Zwebbie polycounter lvl 18
    eld wrote: »
    ...we're a highly violent race, making experiences around conflict such as in sports or games and being able to remain civil in real-life is a fantastic feat, I think we should celebrate it!
    Aren't we also a sexist, racist, homophobic race, Eld?
  • ZacD
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    ZacD ngon master
    Zwebbie wrote: »
    Aren't we also a sexist, racist, homophobic race, Eld?

    Those issues are part of cultures, and not completely natural or universal among all cultures.
  • Lephenix
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    Lephenix polycounter lvl 6
    LEGO videogames are good ones, even if there's cartoon violence.
  • Fwap
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    Fwap polycounter lvl 13
    I heard Dark souls is pretty tame, great for kids too.
  • levin
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    levin polycounter lvl 16
    journey. tycoon games. machinarium. bejeweled. candy crush. dunno if PvZ is considered violent. madden.... oh wait scratch that. ask a casual gamer like your mom or your sister's friend.
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