Why So Few Violent Games? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why So Few Violent Games?

#71

Post by saraid216 » Thu, Jul 03, 2014, 2:31 AM UTC

oldmanjay wrote: post #49

morsch wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's begging the question. Why is it fun?

Asking people why they like what they like is a pointless exercise. And generally, in my experience, it comes from a place of arrogance on the part of the person doing the asking, because the next phase is talking down about how the "reasons" aren't valid.

Game designers can answer the question.

http://www.theoryoffun.com/

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/129948/the_chemistry_o...

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131802/glory_and_shame...

Off the top of my head.

Re: Why So Few Violent Games?

#72

Post by saraid216 » Thu, Jul 03, 2014, 2:42 AM UTC

Chattered wrote: post #48

I have to imagine the arguments or excuses that the author is parodying. I guess they are excuses that there are more violent games because violent interactions are easier to simulate than non-violent interactions. Rather than do a parody, I'd just point out that excuses about simulation are crappy because games hardly simulate anything. Outside of rigid-body physics, game logic is just a nonsense of magical rules. W…

> But I'd rather have a history of how games got where they got.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_video_games ?

Re: Why So Few Violent Games?

#73

Post by Qworg » Thu, Jul 03, 2014, 3:39 AM UTC

loup-vaillant wrote: post #17

mark_l_watson wrote: post #5

When I worked at Angel Studios about 15 years ago (doing projects for Nintendo and Disney), one of the many things that I liked about the company was a conscious decision by the four owners of the company to not create violent content. They were a class act. Not too far off topic: my brother and my grandson absolutely love violent games. I don't understand the appeal. What I do like are driving games and strategy gam…

Interestingly, even extremely graphically violent games on the surface can be felt as non-violent in a competitive setting. I recall this "playing to win" essay, talking about Street Fighter. (If characters punching each other to unconsciousness is not violent, I don't know what is.) In fighting games, competitive players tend to concentrate on the structure behind punches and suffering. They see a game of anticipati…

Divekick is a game that doesn't necessarily take out the violence, but does pare the fighting game down to its barest essentials.

You only have two moves - jump and divekick.

Re: Why So Few Violent Games?

#74

Post by saraid216 » Thu, Jul 03, 2014, 5:38 AM UTC

SAI_Peregrinus wrote: post #68

cwyers wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"That modeling a gunshot or a sword stroke is much easier than trying to capture the nuance of a conversation." I think that's really kind of true, though. If you look at the kinds of movies we export successfully, spectacle sells overseas a lot better than movies about conversation. Is it because mass audiences are dumb? I don't think so. Are the Chinese less sophisticated than us? No. So why is "Transformers Age of…

Some games manage to do both, and do it well. The Borderlands 2 Tiny Tina DLC is a perfect example. It's a gung-ho adventure with explosions and dragons and guns and blood and death! It's also the touching story of a mentally-ill thirteen year old girl dealing with the murder of her adoptive father, after having had to deal with the deaths of her natural parents in a Goebbels-like experiment. It's about the rules of…

What kind of gameplay covers the "touching story"? Who do you play? How do you interact with others, mechanically? Do you have any real say in the outcome of the story?

I mean, if you had cited Deus Ex or Witcher, you might have something, but... what you described doesn't sound like anything more than a slightly non-linear book to read.

Re: Why So Few Violent Games?

#75

Post by omgtehblackbloc » Thu, Jul 03, 2014, 3:48 PM UTC

Violence simulations are easier to /fake/ than social simulations because few of us have routine experience with violence in our daily lives. We have little to compare the simulation against, so even though it's clunky, the violence seems plausible enough.

But since we have social interactions every day, we have sophisticated intuitive expectations about what's a reasonable reaction in a given situation. So social simulations are judged very harshly, because they have a lot more to live up to.