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> I watch a lot of game trailers, reviews, and gameplay, and very close to 100% of the games being made seem to be about murdering other creatures.

I think you're looking at a very narrow subset of available games. The nine "Popular New Releases" on the Steam front page right now are:

  * A point-and-click adventure about an empathic healer (Resette's Prescription)
  * A 4X strategy game where violence, diplomacy, and economics are all useful tools (Planar Conquest)
  * A violent, profane combat game (Apocalypse: Party's Over)
  * A game of bloodless slapstick violence where no one ever dies (Goat Simulator: Waste of Space)
  * A racing game (Table Top Racing: World Tour)
  * An idle game where abstracted combat happens offscreen (Idling to Rule the Gods)
  * A political simulator where violence is one option among several (Power & Revolution)
  * A shooting game (The Big Elk)
  * A transportation simulator (Simutrans)

So that's two games out of nine that are mainly about killing, and another two out of nine that are completely peaceful. The AAA chart-toppers tend towards combat or sports, but there are literally thousands of games released every year that are either completely non-violent or not focused on violence.

And, for the record, it's pretty damn insulting to imply that liking violent games makes me a violent person. And there isn't any land on earth that wasn't "taken via murder" at some point. You don't get to be smug because your birthplace was last conquered 500 years ago instead of 200.

Wait, Simutrans on the Steam frontpage? ... wow. (It's a formerly one-man freeware, now open-source game that has been around for ages (15 years or so?)) But well-deserved IMHO, it is a neat game.

"Princess Remedy in a World of Hurt" is also on Steam, and it's free.

> And, for the record, it's pretty damn insulting to imply that liking violent games makes me a violent person.

Nobody said that. Being someone who can sit still while war criminals dine is what makes us violent people, I'd say, and maybe that's what OP meant, too: "how violent we actually are, through our government and corporate intermediaries" = that is the violence (or accommodation of violence if you will) we are being charged with, and I for one am pleading guilty. We're at best super peaceful people that live on and operate a machine that kills day in and day out.

I agree with the sentiment, but if you peruse the steam catalog you can find many excellent (and successful and popular) games that are completely non-violent. It's a valid complaint, but much in that same way that complaining about there being too many superhero films is a valid complaint: it's true that there are many high profile superhero films, but there are heaps of good films coming out every month which don't involve superheroes.

> Part of me thinks we should drop the pretext of a "Gaming Industry" and just start calling it the "Murder Simulation Industry".

You might as well call the film industry the "Murder Voyeur Industry". Any complaint you have about the games industry can largely be applied towards the film industry, and the same arguments you can use in defense of the film industry apply as well.

The market for people with free time to spend utilizing these forms of popular entertainment is heavily skewed to the younger end of the spectrum. Video games have the additional problem that they were traditionally marketed towards males, but that's changing, as well as the overall demographic numbers, as gamers age and the industry finds the additional consumers that are under served.

In both cases, the independent studios are where you go to find the interesting, less derivative content. I would even go out on a limb and say that the video game industry has a more lively and robust independent segment, as the cost to both build and distribute video games can often be less than for film (or, at least the cheap development of video games serves more niches, very cheap filming is fairly limited by reality in many cases).

> Of course of the same people who enjoy murder games, many like to eat food from murder, and live on land that was taken via murder. I start to feel like we have to make murder a super normal, everyday thing like this otherwise we'd have to face how violent we actually are, through our government and corporate intermediaries.

Well, murder is a super normal, every day thing, and always has been. Almost every animal is either on the lookout for things to murder to eat, or to guard against things trying to murder it to eat, or both. That we find ourselves fascinated with our violent history and our own suppressed and refocused urges and emotions should come as no surprise.

The percentage of AAA games about murder is close to 100%. The same is not true about AAA movies, I doubt it's even 50%.

How close exactly? Many big AAA games are sports: Madden, The Show, PES, NBA, Gran Tourismo, Formula 1 etc. etc. Nintendo first party games are also AAA - is Mario Galaxy also about murder? Pokemon, perhaps? Splatoon?

Hm. I had forgotten about sports games. Sports, murder, and cars.

I think I'm just not a very manly man, so I don't like games.

Either way, you convinced me. I spoke too broadly and too casually. I won't bring up the murder thing again unless I can think of a more specific thesis.

>I think I'm just not a very manly man,

Not liking violence and sports does not make you less manly. That being said, there are thousands of completely nonviolent game that even a "wuss" (:p) can appreciate: from tetris to stardew valley.

There is so much beyond AAA these days, probably more people associate playing games with candy crush or minecraft than the latest generic military FPS or racing game.

I would argue that the purpose of tetris is to kill as many tetrominos as you can.

> I love that none of these involve shooting people.

If you like RPGs at all, and you can have at least some ability to do some minor shooter-style dodging, I recommend playing Undertale. More than any other game, do not lookup any spoilers! Undertale is a game that you really need to play blind.

> the "Murder Simulation Industry"

One of the better discussions related to that topic is Innuendo Studios' essay "Blood Is Compulsory".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbEiVrnhwlU

So? I have absolutely zero ethical qualms about eating meat, much less about "killing" virtual characters. In the case of the latter, it's absurd to compare playing a videogame where nobody is hurt in any way, shape, or form, to actual murder.

I would like to respond as a long-time gamer and game-designer + someone very conscious of the emotional aspect of murdering animals to eat them (and still does it) from growing up with animals we later ate, + someone who believes strongly in non-violence at personal and global scales. I am an anecdotal entity of course, but here goes.

A big big factor of why games are amazing is because they are a form of interactive escapism. You get to explore and experience extremely viscerally fun actions that you cannot reasonably do in real life. Driving a car recklessly is fun not because one likes to destroy property and endanger life, but because it comes with a sense of freedom and power. Similarly, tracking an erratically moving object and trying to tag it with a projectile is a challenging act that rewards mastery (archery contests are fun not because they encourage murdering people). These are all important aspects of game design. The visceral satisfaction of acts and contexts that we cannot easily partake of in real life are why video games are as popular as they are.

It involves crushing of virtual skulls not so much to blow of steam or to allow us to pretend to be kind IRL, but because this is the simplest, no-frills context that's easy to communicate to a human living in our present world that has been raised on "action = violence" from movies and stories and wars. Yes, games have long been perpetrating this message too, but like say, the patriarchy, it didn't start here and probably wouldn't be here if the context it was born into was different.

This is why as another commenter mentioned, there are large amounts of indie games now that depart from this recipe -- between a more peaceful society, greater acceptance of gaming, higher level of maturity of the professionals working in it, and better technology to provide richer storytelling -- to make non-violent games that explore other viscerally satisfying mechanics, interactive storytelling, neat mechanics, etc. Yet the violent games understandably will remain fun for all its original reasons, and until violence truly becomes a truly abhorrible aspect of mankind (not in our foreseeable future).

You have inspired me to write a bit of a more in-depth blog post exploring violence and games, but I hope this colors the game industry as something better than merely a Murder Simulation Industry.

Instead, we just crush virtual skulls and eat anonymous packaged food in our safe little boxes and pretend we're kind, gentle people.

I think that for many, it's more that the "virtual murder" is a way to "blow off some... Steam", so that we can be "kind, gentle people" in reality. It's a way to vent all the anger, the stress, and the frustration of the real world in the virtual world, where there are no real consequences.

There's a side to the "catharsis" argument that someone is just practicing being angry: "There has been much debate about the use of catharsis in the reduction of anger. Some scholars believe that 'blowing off steam' may reduce physiological stress in the short term, but this reduction may act as a reward mechanism, reinforcing the behavior and promoting future outbursts."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catharsis#Therapeutic_uses

I play video games that involve murder, and I wish I could disagree with you, but damn it...I can't. I happen to agree with everything you said.

I like to play a top-down 2D space RPG, which has lasers, missiles, and all of that. I want to find a way to justify that playing that game does not make a bad person. Is this possible?

Also, how would one make sense of enjoying movies like Star Wars?

Yes, of course it's possible. Something like FTL is a fun, engaging game which makes use of conflict as a game mechanic and driving force. The game wouldn't make sense without it.

You might as well bemoan the 'violence' of chess with its military units and combat. Video games can be enhanced through the use of violence just as books, film, and board games can. You're not a bad person for enjoying it. You're just a person.

But why bother using conflict as a driving force? Is it simply because we are used to conflict being a driving force in our entertainment for millennia (e.g. chess being set in a military environment, even though it could be completely abstracted away from it)?

Why do I love the aesthetic of a Tarantino film? Because it's fun. Violence and catharsis are powerful tools that can enhance a bit of media when used correctly. They can be critical and make you feel negative emotions a la Spec Ops: the line, they can switch off your critical faculties and let you have mindless fun like Saints Row, or they can exist in a more abstract and stylised form like in FTL.

Sure, all of these examples could be remade using other techniques to drive them forward but I can't imagine them being as good that way. It's not only because we're used to conflict being a driving force in entertainment. It's also because it's such an effective driving force for so many types of entertainment. For me, no other justification is needed for artist's to make an artistic choice. Video games with murder are not only fun.

I don't see how that makes you a bad person at all. It's natural to have an interest in violence, simply because of humankind's violent history, as well as other creatures as well. It is being honest, unlike most people who criticise games. I would say that someone who derides others for enjoying some media with violence in it is a much worse person. Why:

* People who criticise such things are generally do it because they don't like it, not because it is bad. Although they will say they don't like it because games are bad, or maybe another media they don't participate in. There is no evidence being presented by these people that the media they don't like is bad.

* They are being dishonest and hyperbolic. Let's take a couple of quotes from the grandparent post. "very close to 100% of the games being made seem to be about murdering other creatures", and "Part of me thinks we should drop the pretext of a "Gaming Industry" and just start calling it the "Murder Simulation Industry"."". Obviously these are nowhere near honest. 'Murder Simulation Industry', I mean come on, could you make a more negative slant against games than that.

* They often say it to belittle other people so they can elevate themselves, at least in their mind. It is like people who say they don't play 'cliche' games and say that people who play mainstream games are retards. Same sort of belittling there as well. I wouldn't trust either of these people. Why would you care about what entertainment someone enjoys? Even if it is violent, it is not like they are actually being violent by enjoying some type of media.

I think the idea that you can be a "good person" is a destructive fairy tale. The sorting of individuals into naughty and nice is not a good model of how harm happens.

I wish more people could just accept that we all do evil things, often unknowingly. Much evil happens through no ill will. Part of being human is doing terrible things. It's not a reason to panic, but it's also not something that should be swept under the rug.

All of the commenters saying "I think you are a good person" are like drug addicts. We can't handle the idea that we might be partly destructive, so we invent new moralities that are like drugs... they work in any situation to wash away the emotions of guilt. Stuff like "you tried your best" or "you did't know".

But, like addiction, the real solution is that we accept that not every day is going to be awesome sunshine rainbows and sometimes it's good to spend time thinking about the ways you are bad, and the harm that you do.

Most people are able to tell the difference between fake murder in a video game and real life.

You should probably play Undertale, an indie RPG that allows you to utilize mercy on your enemies to the point of completion without killing anybody.

The main problem I have about games that involve shooting people is just that it gets kind of boring after a while.

Found the vegan

Lol name one game that is a "Murder Simulator". Even Hitman has a plot. Don't act like we've never heard these stupid attacks before.