When Does Gore Get In the Way of Gameplay?

Wired is running a story inspired by the level of gore in the recent Wolverine game that wonders: how much is too much? It mentions a study we discussed in February which indicated that violence tended to interest gamers less than other characteristics. "... the longer you play a 'twitch' action game, the less you notice the cultural content — the gushing blood, the shrieks of agony. You're too busy focusing on the gameplay. I noticed this with Wolverine. For the first hour, I found the deranged bloodshed both shocking and exciting; it made me feel like I 'was' Logan, the grunting, killing-machine character from Marvel Comics' X-Men universe. But as I became more expert, the cultural shell of the game boiled away. In a sort of staring-into-the-cascading-numbers-of-the-Matrix way, I found myself looking past the visible aspects of the game and savoring the underlying, invisible mechanics of play. ... The game became pure physics and algorithms: Vectors, speed and collision detection. The gore had become mostly irrelevant."

Comments

lonesome al interfering with corepirate nazi games

[Anonymous Coward]

had to happen some day? speaking of dicks; instead of being caged & put on display for crimes against US/humanity, our big dick is clogging the media(hhaha) with the same old 'nuke 'em 'till it hurts' 'defense policy'.

most of it is losing relevance as we continue to fail to care for each other, which is our only purpose here. the illusions of man'kind' are dissolving as we continue to pretend.

Re:When you stop noticing it, it's too much.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you really want to shock somebody, put a scotch bonnet in their chocolate cake.

Just curious, but is the chocolate cake a new fangled term for the stink?

*ducks*

Hitchcock knew this perfectly well. A whole movie of rising tension, and then suddenly, WHAM, a shocker image.

Yeah, I never understood why he always had someone throw up three fingers at the climax of his movies...