Why the Violence?

I’m still around. It’s been three years since I started this blog, and I’ve found myself playing computer games less and less. It’s not at all that I have any personal vendetta against these pixels on a screen that can transport us to wondrous, magical worlds. But somehow the world that one enters, at least for me, has become less wondrous, and more unsettling.

Within this world of magic and fantasy there is a seeming contradiction. How does wonder coincide with violence and the worst of mankind so simply and easily? Even more at the core: why does violence play such a prominent role in video games?

I don’t think I’m any more prepared to give an answer than anyone else, but I do have ideas. One sees in rock music, many movies, and certainly video games a primal tendency. In rock music, animalistic rhythms replace any important human utterings. In movies, the message is trumped by a hulking beast of violence. And in video games, violence is merely an abused slave to those looking to waste an hour, a day, or maybe a significant portion of their life. It is like booze to soothe the soul. It is the postponement of a terrible conclusion.

Of course, I don’t think anyone is looking to waste their time. It’s all so useful, controlling these pixellated personas. A headshot here, a grenade thrown there, and one never sees the reality of what is happening. Yet there is a reality present; it’s the degradation of a segment of the population.

Perhaps I expect too much. Maybe video games are just there to excite and entertain, and violence is the perfect tool for that end. But some music and a few movies once carried a message and a purpose. And I’m not about to say that video games ever did. But maybe, just maybe, video games could. But with a great many people too ready to indulge in the same, tired violence and pointlessness, and with companies even more ready to profit from such people, change is nowhere to be found.

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~ by backle on May 29, 2010.