I'm kind of over it.

I mean pretty much every game outside of the puzzle, sim, dating, rythym or walking genre (ie., all the genres that matter) have some degree of violence.

Even in Breath of the Wild, I've been severely penalized by not killing animals.

I dunno. I guess I'm just looking for something that materally translates into a meaningful interactive form other than conflict.

Of course conflict and violence can lead to worhtwhile entertainment, look at most TV nad movies, comics and books for that matter.

Maybe I am holding games to a higher level, or perhaps since I interact with them the most they are drawing my ire, but I just feel like it's the most played out aspect of gaming.

--

Time out.

--

I of course understand that the whole principle of life, and it's meaning, is a constant conflict, and perhaps our forms of literature, whatever form they take are the distillation of that.

So perhaps the larger question comes down to how much one may be sick of conflict in general, from time to time, and perhaps gaming, with all it's power fantasy's turned up to "eleven" is the cure for that.

I don't have much to say on the subject. I felt that most games, well, AAA games were getting samey a long time ago. And now since I played Wii U and Switch and not much else for the past few years, violence hasn't been a problem for me as it's the exception, not the rule.

Only matters if the violence is thematic. Spec ops, lol please. If Inglourious Basterds isn't terrible, then it's Spec Ops: The Line handled well (minus the pathetic, hypocritical conclusion the Spec Ops devs reach). But Soldier of Fortune? Uninhibited sadism <3.

But it applies to all mediums. Django Unchained, pathetic film; a terrible first draft for The Hateful Eight, where the violence's only purpose is the fantasy of vengeance, based on the assumption that slavery automatically justifies it. The Hateful Eight, on the other hand, presents the shitty soul of America (all countries have shitty souls, calm down, Americans), and its expression of violence, including vengeance. But it's not self-justifying vengeance; the people being killed aren't lame cartoon slavemasters, and the violence is the characters' fantasy, not solely Tarantino's and his presumption of the audience (beyond expecting the audience to have a decent sense of humour).

I dunno why I thought of Tarantino, but ultimately Inglourious Basterds is probably just a shit revenge fantasy, and Tarantino really is so ignorant of Nazis that the American projection of the black hatred victim character was Tarantino himself, and not based on his lame film nerd production style and commentary on the irony of American idiots sticking the plight of the blacks under Hitler in a lot of their Nazi commentary lol. Also, unlike Django it has a fucking amazing ensemble cast, rather than Jamie motherfucking Foxxx IN THE LEAD ROLE. Jesus.

Other mediums are generally worse in this regard because they use thematic violence more often, which has an exceptionally high failure rate anywhere. And they're a lot better at disguising their bullshit, so people fall for it more than they do in games. But that's changing. Undertale is a thematic turd, as is Braid, and people think they're two examples that stand up to other mediums lol; yeah, cause they disguise their thematic cowardice well, like other mediums do.

In short: the vast majority of works of art on the subject of violence are trash. The vast majority of videogames on the subject of violence, are at least somewhat fun.

P.S.

To be clear, I'm not suggesting blacks in Germany and its territories were not persecuted, just that their persecution is usually Americanised in American films. Interestingly, the actual similarities of their persecution styles (such as medical experimentation and miscegenation), are not usually a part of American films.

It's the reverse in Undertale (just because pacifism makes the story slightly better).

SupremeAC said:

Without having the time at hand to create a coherent write up, I'll just say that I think that we have reached a new stage in the gaming industry, a sort of 'maturing', where gaming is sufficiently commonplace that it will be able to sustain a wider gamut of genres, and that we'll see a lot more 'non-violent' games appear of increasing quality over the years to come.

I agree Sup. The "B" game has been largely replaced by smaller, more creative games that don;t always rely on violence.  There was a time during the gameunder podcast ealry shows where we played "gun-no-gun" where I would name a game and Tom would guess if the cover had a gun on it or not (and the joke was, they all had guns on the front cover).

Now, I just made that up... but it seems credible!

Gagan said:

No, I'm over samey games. But the context of games means little to me. Beyond the fact, that unless you just have shit taste and refuse to accept this, video game stories are mostly shit. Games work best when they are a series of interesting decisions through mechanics, a fair challenge (do not be confused 99% of the things you find cheap in games aren't cheap, you just suck and are a sore loser), with tight n responsive controls, and a satisfying kineasthetic (game feel) to bring it all home. Violent mechanics made tons of sense to translate into games, but they didn't need to be the only ones.



The latter is the problem is how creatively inept the medium is. How violent they are is whatever. Those nonviolent games are boring as fuck. For starters they aren't much in the way of games. And triple A space side, from the west, is like the most mediocre game that is just a mish mash of all the same mechanics you play in other games. I can't wait till the most hyped game of 2018, Red Dead Redemption 2 is the same shitty Rockstar game its always been. Pretty as fuck, but the gunplay is unimpressive, the missions more or less play out the same, there is a shit ton of filler stuff, but bro you can hunt a bear for this stupid crafting system that isn't interesting or compelling, but is part of the rockstar checklist you gotta finish up because your inner aspie will be satisfied by that. But it's okay it has Dan Houser's shitastic writing behind it, so gaming dweebs will nut all over it because they never bothered to watch a good western before do Rockstar's stuff better than them.

Luckily there were plenty of games over the past few years that were interesting games that weren't dime a fucking dozen.

I agree with everything you said there.

I guess it's just, holy fuck, the sameyness of it all.  How many millions of pixel-based lifeforms have I layed waste to over the years?

Give me a game about vacuuming (Katarmari Damacy) or something, anything that doesn't have the same fucking bullshit over and over again.

I want to play, not get gamed by developers who think they are smarter than me and know what I can and cannot put up with.