George Browning has started a discussion here about a particular case of video game violence.  I wrote a few remarks in response, but since the question he raised is rather specific, I thought perhaps it would be a good idea to begin a general discussion of video game violence.

It seems to me that some important aspects of this subject include

(a) The history of video game violence, which would involve a bit of the history of gaming and electronic media.

(b) The nature of violence in video games, from the standpoint of the player's experience.  A psychological phenomenology of video games would help.

(c) The nature of violence in video games, from the standpoint of game production.  This might be quite similar to the question of players' experience, since the game industry is all about producing a certain experience; but it would also mean considering economics and the political environment, as well as rating systems.

(d) Violence in other media and their relation to its representation in video games.

(e) The public discourse about video games and violence.

(f) The politics of video game regulation and bans.

I'd be happy to see comments about any of these topics, or others that people think are relevant.  I think it will be useful to have specific discussion of games, but non-gamers might have good ideas or a less involved perspective and shouldn't shrink from writing.  (Beware, though, that video game players tend to respond with a lot of skepticism, often justified; but if there is a significant division between the two demographics then that itself might be interesting.)

***

It would be impossible to introduce a discussion like this without rehearsing the standard argument against violent video games: the claim that they normalize violence and can cause "real-world" violence.  This is a difficult starting-point for discussing the question, and it usually leads to no better understanding of the matter or political consensus.  It can take the form of a general claim like the one I've stated or a particular inference about how a game inspired a crime.  The latter form is usually easier to dismiss, and, in its similarity to claims about how a particular musical recording found at a murderer's home inspired a crime, it suggests that video games are sometimes a focus for moral panic.  (On the subject of "mass hysteria" or moral panic, an interesting study is Elaine Showalter's book Hystories: Hysterical Epidemics and Modern Media.  Defenders of video games often note the way that this moral panic is sometimes incited to satisfy political needs, as is sometimes said to be the case with Hillary Clinton's 2005 remarks about Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and her unsuccessful introduction of the Family Entertainment Protection Act.)  In spite of possible misuse and exaggeration of this claim, there remains the sense that habitual exposure to certain kinds of representation can have a moral or behavioral effect on people.

Beside its political aspects, we could approach this claim from a psychological or sociological angle.  There are cognitive studies that attempt to evaluate the effect of video games on measurable behavior like aggression, and there are also statistical studies of the putative causal relation between video games and crime.  Based on reviews I've read, my sense is that the statistical studies have tended to discount the connection between video games and violence (and have sometimes shown a greater correlation with violent movies), while at least some cognitive studies have shown an increase in aggressiveness.  (I wonder what sort of video games were used in the latter studies; can Pac-Man produce a similar aggression?  Part of the experience of many games is the aggressiveness they engender: I'm a different person when I play Monopoly with my family.)  Perhaps somebody could try to summarize these studies for us.

A customary denial of the causal claim invokes the Aristotelian notion of catharsis: the audience or player is said to experience certain emotions in order to purge them.  Defenders of video games sometimes argue that they are a release valve rather than an incitement to violence.

To counter this, it is often asserted that video games are specially suited to inspire violent behaviors because, unlike film or television, they let the player take an active role and sometimes give the player a first-person perspective.  I have elsewhere suggested that this rests on a misunderstanding of the spectatorial relation in cinema--I am rather more concerned about violence in mass-market movies than in games--but I would be interested in other people's remarks on the experience of playing games.

Finally, it's worth noting that this claim about video games, habits of representation, and violence is echoed almost exactly in the political discourse about pornography.  Some other turns in that debate are relevant to video games as well.

***

It therefore seems essential to me, if we are to understand the nature of video game violence, to relate it to other representations of violence, particularly in mass media.  At the same time, I think it would be useful to find a typology of violence that adequately captures players' experience.  Such a typology might need to touch on other media (such as "torture porn" in film and television), since players may relate video game violence to other representations like those made possible by computer graphics in movies, which increasingly share a technological basis with video games.

As a starting-point, I'm tempted to distinguish three kinds of representation of violence in video games.  This division is by no means strict; we don't need to engage in the kind of obsessive classifying that happens inside video games.

(a) Gameplay violence.

Sorry, I can't think of a better name at the moment.  By this I mean violence between game characters that occurs as a result of the basic mechanic of the game, but that isn't an end in itself.  As George Browning mentioned, we can think of even games like Space Invaders or Super Mario Bros. as violent in some sense: in the one you're shooting spaceships to kill invading aliens, in the other you're making Mario stomp on enemies to "kill" them or make them disappear.  Only a few game genres, like sports games and many puzzle games, avoid the necessity of enemies who must be destroyed.

Someone has created a series of "8-Bit Fatality" images showing what's "really" happening in some classic video games.  Here's Kirby:



(According to flickr, the author, TastyPaints.com, holds the image copyright.  The author is probably Steven Lefcourt, who runs the website at that address.  This image has been widely disseminated on blogs, so I'm guessing he doesn't mind; but of course I'll remove the image if he does.  There is a whole series of these images, including one with Mario; they can be found at http://www.flickr.com/photos/49017345@N00/sets/72157602219725591/.)

It's not just the 8- or 16-bit limitation of classic games that prevented graphic depictions of violence.  Mortal Kombat was a 16-bit game, while today Mario continues to stomp on goombas without bloodshed.  My point is that there is a certain category of violence that is probably exempt from the usual claims about the effect of game violence on players, though at the same time the basic structure of the game may involve aggression.

Where Mario's jumping remains relatively nonviolent, some other gameplay mechanics are harder to update without showing some violence.  An obvious example is shooters: the first major first-person shooter (FPS) was Wolfenstein 3D, which brought a marginally greater realism to the pixelated 2-dimensional gameplay of its Apple II predecessors.  On the other hand, Nintendo and its second-party developers have brought Metroid into the 3D era relatively nonviolently.

In some games, the moral problem with representing an intrinsic violence is skirted by using nonhuman or quasi-human enemies.  This is the main function of the zombie in video games: it's the person you can kill as violently as you want since it's already dead and decaying.

(b) Spectacular violence.

This is the violence of the sudden splatter of blood, the headshot, the chainsaw.  It's seldom the main draw, though it was the distinguishing feature of Mortal Kombat, an early example, whose publisher wanted to compete with the similar gameplay of the Street Fighter series.  It gives the player an extra ping of pleasure when, instead of just falling over or disappearing, the enemy explodes spectacularly.

Very often, this kind of graphic flourish is added to a game whose basic mechanic still requires violent actions.  For instance, the bloodshed of Resident Evil 4 is probably not the main attraction for most players, but the game's adrenaline-inducing shocks would be impossible without its basic zombie-shooting mechanic.

I imagine that function of this type of violence is closely associated with the appeal of slasher films.

(c) Sadistic violence.

At the moment I associate this with movies like Hostel and Saw.  These differ from slasher films in that they aim to represent the body in extreme pain (whereas slasher films aim to represent the body as something penetrable and destructible).  I haven't played any games that share this mode of representation, but I mention it because it seems like a possible trajectory for video games, and there may already be games of this sort.  It's often computer graphics that make the movies' images possible, so a more general investigation of digital imagery and violence would be possible.

Other typologies would be possible, and one place to look might be in psychoanalytically-oriented studies of cinema.  Carol Clover's work on horror films seems to offer a typology of audience experience.

***

Here are three disconnected notes about video games and violence.  Perhaps one of them will seem fruitful to somebody.

- The U.S. military video games not only as training tools but also as recruiting devices.  In 2002 the U.S. Army released America's Army, a video game with online multiplayer features that is "an accurate portrayal of Soldier experiences" according to its official website FAQ.  (Development of the game began in 2000, though its developer has remarked that 9/11 "sort of ensured the success of the game.")  In addition to distributing the game, the army uses it at the Army Experience Center, a recruitment center in the Franklin Mills Mall in Philadelphia.  The game and its sequels have a "T for Teen" ratings, show blood without much gore, and are said to encourage teamwork and honorable behavior.  From the FAQ on the game's website: "In elementary school kids learn about the actions of the Continental Army that won our freedoms under George Washington and the Army's role in ending Hitler's oppression. Today they need to know that the Army is engaged around the world to defeat terrorist forces bent on the destruction of America and our freedoms."

- There is a phenomenon commonly called "becoming desensitized."  Is it true that one's visceral or moral reaction to violence becomes dulled through exposure?  I can attest to something like desensitization, but not just in regard to violence: a great many images have less effect on me than they once might have had, and in most cases I think this is simply because, through exposure, I have come to understand them and can recognize what I'm seeing.  (For similar reasons, many action movies and romantic comedies seem to me terribly boring, precisely insofar as one can understand them very quickly and find nothing imaginative in them; the public seems to be feeling this now, especially in regard to action movies.)  But what about our moral and even physical reaction to representations?  Can it be dulled as sometimes claimed?  And does this extend to our reaction to real violence?

- George Browning asked why people play games, what sort of motivation or pleasure a game offers.  I plan to write a separate post about this sometime soon, but we shouldn't ignore the question of pleasure--or of what kind of activity a game is--when we think about video game violence.