How violent is too violent?

TSwitch · 2002-08-14T21:43:05

Myself and a friend of mine intend to make a game. Another FPS. (Stay with me, here...) After a few ideas, and actually spending some time on one of them before dropping it as too involved/difficult (a gunfighting game) we happened upon a touchy yet interesting plot/game idea. With all of the past and present mass violence, we were trying to decide if a "mad gunman sniper" game was too much, and if it were, how could we dilute it to make it more acceptable, if that were possible. We''re primarily looking to make this as real as possible, which obviously brings up a whole truckload of dilemmas about how the level of violence a game such as this would affect the player. But when we were brainstorming the game''s basics, it struck us as a novel idea, and sometimes we all feel like venting on something, better that it is a collection of triangles than something real. Yes, some people will say that this kind of activity only desensitizes us, and I don''t disagree with them, but I, like most people here (I hope) are still chilled when we see a body of some sort. (For example, when I saw U-571, when that guy was shot by the German prisoner, that bizarre look on his face absolutely screwed with my head.) Some of the things we came up with to dilute the violence were not outwardly killing your victims, merely wounding them to the point of incapacitation, as well as having the bad guy (you) never win, showing at the end of each level/round/game how bad violence is, say, with a slowly rising camera shot on the central open area that fades out to white/black. My friend insists that there should be a way for the player to pack up his sniper rifle and escape to maintain some continuity so you don''t think of your player as disposable. While I think the connection between a player and his character is important, I don''t think that making people think they can get away with murder is an acceptable way of obtaining it. We''ve pretty much racked our brains on the subject, or at least I have, and that''s why I''m here. Any constructive comments or ideas are more than welcome. The fact that the game idea is violent is nothing new to me, repeating it will have no gains for either of us. -TSwitch

Game Design and Theory Game Design

Started by TSwitch August 14, 2002 12:47 AM

19 comments, last by TSwitch 21 years, 8 months ago

necromancer_df

313

August 14, 2002 09:43 PM

i say let your players run amok with high powered rifles on general members of the public if they wish but then find some way of laying on the guilt. the thing with most games where you shoot people indiscrimately is that when one person is dead you just aim your gun at the next and forgot about them. after the mass murder there should be like a cutscene with a news report of your victims untimely deaths with sobbing relatives and the reporter telling you about theer lives with so much potential cut short cos they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. then unless your players truly are sick they will feel bad for what they have done etc.

How violent is too violent?

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How violent is too violent?

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