Slashdot Mirror
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."
I hated an inconvenient truth. all i want him to do is shut up.
but really in most violent video games can't you turn the blood and gore off?
Its not my fault, someone put a wall in my way.
For me, gore doesn't add anything at all, save for when it's used sparingly, to the point where it is so unexpected that it shocks. However, if ever there was an example of a game which didn't need gore to shock and terrify then, for me, nothing can beat Silent Hill 2. Such were the psychological shocks that there were points when I would be playing this alone, at night, and decide I'm better off playing something a little more fluffy to wipe the images from my mind. Sure, it had gore, but it was delivered to compliment the terror I was already experiencing from the suggests the game was making.
THE HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS - CC Licensed Sci-Fi Novel
I thought Tipper got over this during the PMRC fiasco.
If you're properly focused on a game you don't really notice the extras. For example when playing guitar hero my friends occasionally point out something that's happening with the band in the background (even when they're playing), but I don't notice anything but the notes (even when I'm not playing). Those that focus on stuff like blood flying around probably aren't actually focused on beating the game. Still, it's better to have some gore than none at all otherwise how will you know that you've scored a hit? Likewise for realistic graphics, it does add to the immersion to have realistic lighting even if you're not paying much attention to it, and sometimes it is nice just to kick back and admire the scenery (the sunrise and sunsets in GTA IV were pretty awesome).
which is totally what she said
When he shows up at my house and makes me turn off my Xbox because it's carbon footprint is too large.
the developers decide to write a "screenwiper" package that wipes the blood and guts off of the user's screen so they can see well enough to shoot?
God, schmod. I want my monkey man!
You eat vindaloo, you know it's going to be hot. You expect it, you get used to it.
If you really want to shock somebody, put a scotch bonnet in their chocolate cake.
Hitchcock knew this perfectly well. A whole movie of rising tension, and then suddenly, WHAM, a shocker image.
Same for gore in video games.
I piss off bigots.
Gore is pretty much irrelevent however I do think it has a place. For example I like the Hitman series. In the 1st one there was bullet holes/decals on the bodies I liked this as it allowed me to see where I hit as opposed to yes i hit or no i missed. I was rather annoyed at the future hitman installments removing this, for me it was all about the perfect head shot in the 1st one, right between the eyes.
I did think the manhunt series was boring mainly due to the limited number of death animations and the excessive gore.
I do prefer games that have some gore over those that have none, for example when a rpg shell blows someone to pieces it is more realistic than them just falling over. It's all about the realism the game creates the more realistic the more I enjoy the game (assuming the gameplay is there).
It's also sort of similar to something I call the Zen of gaming difficulty - The hardest setting to learn on any game is "easy", while "impossible" is the simplest to master. While playing through Easy mode for the first time, you have no ide what you're up against, you face bosses for the first time, get surprised by twists and turns and keep having to look at your manual because you forget how to do your special moves. As you get better and tackle the hardest setting, you only have the tiny variations and subtle nuances to overcome, at which point you are pretty much a master of this game.
Without it, a game comes off as a cartoon. I don't notice it so much when it's there and have never found it a bother, but when it's not there, it's noticeable. If you shoot somebody in the head with a shotgun and they just fall down without a drop of blood, something is wrong. It's just plain not realistic.
"The game became pure physics and algorithms: Vectors, speed and collision detection."
This is just how I feel about Hunt The Wumpus!
Or perhaps "Rogue" would have been a better example?
that is used in food. Enough to accentuate the flavour, but too much and you overwhelm what you are trying to improve.
All of which overshadows the basic premise: If your game sucks, then no amount of T&A, or gore, will help improve that.
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
that's the thing about inconvenient truths, they're inconvenient, you can't turn them off, even of you ignore them they don't go away ....
All those violent games are full of explosions!! Explosions that emit tons of greenhouses gases. Do the frakkin math! If there are 700,000,000 explosions in video games today (a conservative number) and each explosion emits 300 tons of CO2 . . . JESUS H CHRIST!!! We're all dead. Now. By 2 pm if we don't stop it. NOW!!
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
...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 interesting experiment would be to remove the gory skin from those underlying, invisible mechanics and replace it with some sweetness-light-and-OMG!-ponies!! skin. I'm talking about the exact same mechanics with different art.
Would we still enjoy the game as much? I'd like to find out.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
If you're playing a shooter, gore might make sense. If you're playing Tetris, not so much.
Violence, like anything, loses its effect when it's overused. If the blood is repetitive and gratuitous, the brain is ultimately just going to edit it out, and for entertainment purposes the player is left to deal with whatever underlying gameplay mechanics or story remains. I think gore tends to be used to try to compensate for a lack of these bedrock elements, which is unfortunate.
Horror is a genre where gore is almost criminally overused. Gore in horror is like sex in comedy--it's what you tend fall back on when you run out of real material.
I believe many, if not most, gamers are desensitized to violence. So there's already an exaggerated expectation of how violence should be depicted, mainly that there should be gushes of blood everywhere and bodies torn apart. Even, myself, who is not keen on gore finds any game with bloodless violence to be quite tame.
Your average non-gamer, however, is likely to have a very different reaction. The simple act of pointing a gun at a character and shooting them is troubling to a lot of people. I'm not suggesting that gamers are going to resort to real life violence or anything as absurd as that. But certainly there is a thrill they get out excessive violence.
I personally have no problem with gore in a game if it's an integral part of the story. The problem I have is when developers get gratuitous with it for no clear reason other than, I suppose, to sell more games. It's not all that dissimilar to developers constantly objectifying and over-sexualizing women. I like watching hot girls as much as the next guy, but when it becomes the rule, not the exception I think there's a problem. In some ways I see all this as appealing to the more immature attitudes although I'm sure some people will disagree.
Just like when he forgot to give air to Laurie when he teleported her to Mars, it emphasizes the fact that he is nearly totally disconnected from most aspects of humanity.
He blew his enemies up in showers of gore presumably because it happened to be slightly easier than the alternative, even if it spattered a roomful of traumatized bystanders. He knew enough to stop the "bad guy", but beyond that he just didn't care either way. Now that's chilling.
For that reason I was very glad that they left the gore in, even though in the movie it looks worse than the equivalent scene in the comic.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky