What Game Violence Can Teach

An anonymous reader writes "Julian Murdoch from GamersWithJobs asks the question 'Can game violence be good?' in a provocative article entitled The Red Suit. After a week playing Introversion Software's Wargames-inspired nuke game Defcon, his answer is that it can be, if not good, then at least informative. 'I admit that in a rousing teamspeak game of Defcon I am not drawn into bouts of real-time reflection. But on closing down the game for the night, I find myself oddly thoughtful: sad, reflective, a bit fragile. But not upset, and not wanting to wipe the game off my hard drive. Violence in games can teach us things. It can reach us in ways beyond mere titillation. It's all about context.'"

Comments

Of course violence CAN be good

[thebaron2]

Of course it can be good.
War sims, like America's Army, can obviously be put to good use in training and preparing soldiers for urban settings, teaching them to think critically in a "big picture" sense and visualize the entire battlefield, etc...
The more important question is does violence "teach" gamers anything in a real world sense of the issue, and I'd say the answer is a resounding no.
Not that they're incapable of it, but rather that games today aren't developed to teach us life-long moral lessons. For the stickler that's going to point me towards a lonely moral-laden game, suffice it to say that popular games aren't made with this intention, or, conversely, games with a moral intention don't become popular.
Until there's an audience of a reasonable size that is demanding this sort of moral game that induces self-reflection, it shouldn't surprise anyone that those types of games don't get supplied, at least not in any significant quantity.

Violent games teach that in war you get VERY DEAD

[Drake42]

Who in their right mind would enter a real war scenariou after playing a few rounds of counter-strike?
I used to be very good, top of the server for ten games streaks. Almost never did I survive every single round. If I can't survive after extensive in-game training with nerfed weapons what makes me think I'd survive a real war where people are really honest trying to make my life stop.

GTA is a tonne of fun, but how much would I pay it if every wrecked car involved watching my character sit in the hospital for two weeks? Only a moron doesn't make that connection.

Killing thousands of zombies in Dead Rising doesn't make me think, 'hey killing people is easy' except to the extent that I think 'hey, if it's this easy for me to kill somebody, then it's that easy for someone to kill me. Shit.'

Personally I'd like violent games to come with the insane warning stickers you see on appliances:

WARNING: If you try this in Real Life you will LOSE LIMBS, ENTER A VEGATIVE STATE or DIE PAINFULLLY.
WARNING: Save game technology DOES NOT EXIST in Real LIfe
WARNING: Acceptable in-game behavior may result in getting A KNEE SLAMMED INTO YOUR CROTCH in Real Life

Are you kidding me?

[bashibazouk]

GTA teaches two really important lessens:

No matter how good a driver you think you are, if you drive recklessly fast your car is going to get banged up and will probably end in a fiery crash.

If you push the law, you can run but in the end the police are going to bust you and usually in a particularly violent manner.