I feel that games are a great tool to stretch the mind. so games in general I think are ok.
however...(holy crap im sounding like the "grown ups" when i was a kid)
I believe that ultra violence should be restricted to older audiences.(just to allow kids to grow up a bit before they expose themselves to these themes)
This is not mindless study following on my part, but more due to my own progression as a young gamer.
for a while my whole basis for buying or playing a game was how good the gore was.
I'm not a particularly violent person and I definitly didn't bring the game behavior into the real world,
however the fact that the blood and violence was very really a big part of the fun of a computer game is a bit concerning in hindsight.
I got into gaming on the super nintendo and loved donkey kong and mario and the other games like them.
I got a computer and started playing doom and it was really cool, - however i was always more into the building 3d worlds side of doom than the violence.
Quake blew me away with its amazing graphics, and lets admit it, it was really cool the way the bodies blew apart when you shot them with the rocket launcher.
halflife with the blood spatter and body dismemberment had a real whoa factor. -I guess it was just that we'd never really seen it in a game before and the excessive
nature of it made me laugh.
soldier of fortune was just brutal with it's insane gore detail and models that you can fillet any way you want. It was a new gaming feature and It was interesting seeing just how far
you could take the dismemberment(it was always too far).
postal 1 and 2 - not so gorey as SOF, but the mindset behind the game makes appalling violence funny.
(btw I am a fan of the postal game and have spent many deranged hours playing it.)
I guess it was a key area of developement for a while there in the game industry, to have the best gore as a selling point.
constant exposure to that kind of thought and imagery, can lead to obsession with violence.
It doesn't neccisarily mean that kids will go out and be violent in the real world(most people are decent citizens), but in their mind the detachment between real world and violence and the focus
on blood and gore can lead to unhealthy mental constructs.
to see kids playing a game and yelling out...
"he's running away, blow his brains out!"
"whoa, right in the back, nice shot"
"now cut his head off!"
"kick it to me! kick it to me!"
It really cant be healthy.
but in saying that, I turned out ok. though these days gore and violence don't really interest me at all.
though martial arts fighting games with good combat I still find interesting. (I practice Karate myself)
I personally think that someones first exposure to killing should be through real world hunting, with a real hunter.
that way they see the real connection between guns and death, they see that killing isn't a game.
that you cant be cruel in taking a life.
get them to help clean and skin the carcass so they see all the way from living animal, dying animal,dead animal, carcass, meat, dinner.
It gives you a respectful perspective on killing.
something that is completely lacking in a computer game.
so to end my long winded speech, realistic graphics are ok, games are ok, gore and violence can make entertaining fps's, but I personally don't think it's ok for a childs mind.
what's wronge with playing monkey island?
kezzla
Sometimes I like to use words out of contents
