by Sol Rayos

Created on: April 18, 2009

Violence in video games is a big problem today. I, for instance, can not get enough of it and to me that constitutes A BIG PROBLEM! The reason that I can't get enough violence in my video games is that I'm a violent person in my regular life. I pick fights, steal and then crash cars, shoot aliens, hit zombies with baseball bats, and do most of the other stuff that video games try to recreate. The problem is that the technology that they use to create video games is not up to speed yet. They haven't captured the full effect of chainsaw wounds or some of the other really gory stuff that I've experienced first hand that everyone is dying to see in video games.

The three games that people are most upset with are Grand Theft Auto, Halo, and Hitman and I agree. It's an outrage that these games could be as successful as they are and still miss the point that violence begets less intense violence. I mean if it's happening on the streets you think that they could capture it with a camera or something and do that whole CGI breakdown to put it in a video game. But they don't and real violence only contributes to more lame video game violence, what a waste.

The real problem though is the kids. How are they gonna know what to do in a violent situation if they don't have some sort of experience dealing with realistic violence? Serioulsy though, my six year old is playing Call to Duty or one of those war based first person shooters and his fellow devil dog has fallen. What does he do? He freaks! He's never seen someone so obviously uninjured before. I mean he's playing as the medic and we've been training him to recognize battle wounds but he can't do that because these battle wounds aren't realistic enough. They're just ketchup stains and things like that. It's battle trauma, it's supposed to be traumatic.

The only way this situation is going to get better though is if we petition congress or begin grass roots campaigns to improve the state of video game art to the point that we can see someone's last breath leaving them as they lay on a virtual beach that's supposed to be like Normandy or on the virtual streets of San Andres or the virtual plant/spaceship thing that you fight on in Halo 2 where the duck faced aliens stick you with plasma grenades. It's all too much for me though so I do my best to stay away. If something good does come out though I'll hear about it on the news when they blame a bunch of senseless violence on it.

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