I don't really understand your point. *looks around collection* you're just playing the wrong games.

I could make you a list of endless amounts of games that have nothing to do with killing. It just seems like your interest goes towards them. If you looked around your collection and saw a lot of games where you kill, then you can blame yourself for developers choosing to make games like it - you're funding them.

In another aspect completely, you could make it psychological or philiosophical. Our brain functions between local and global appraisals (I'll explain it for those who don't know what I mean). Local appraisals can be taken as "initial reactions". For example, when you get immersed in a game it's not because you believe it's real. With local appraisals you might tell yourself what you are experiencing feels real, but globally your mind knows better, so the actions don't switch over to real life. You can get attached to characters and stories just fine, locally you accept this, because more often than not, something about the story or character relates to your real life. However, you understand it as not real on a global scale.

Relating this to violence is simple. We all take it with a grain of salt, because we understand that the people on screen are puppets. No life is at stake at all.

I understand that you're asking for video games to be more responsible in its handling of death, enough so that it feels impactful on our world. That's asking video games to not be what they are at heart: fun. Video games are supposed to be fun above all else, it's why we play them. The real world is a cold, harsh place, and many of us play games to escape from the realities of every day life. Why would I want to feel sorrow and pain when I watch someone die in a game? Death is one of our most harsh realities as human beings.

Thank you video games for allowing me to respawn and for taking power away from death. I won't ever really be able to bring myself back to life, so having a place to constantly feel like I never end is a blessing.

Hopefully you understand my disagreement.

I don't want you to confuse my editor's note with Bruno's article, so I'll just say that the italicized text at the top is about my general observation that -- comparatively speaking -- we have way more games that utilize violence in some form or another than games that are decidedly non-violent. Even Super Mario Bros. is violent.

I actually thought that was the beginning of the article! Whoops. Oh well, I think it's still a valid point that he buys/plays them if he's able to accurately talk about them. If not, he can just skip to paragraph two! Sorry!

I disagree with two things you said.

1) I know that there are quite a lot of games that have nothing to do with killing, and I personally have no interest in all those shooters I named at the start of my article. But you can't deny that with around 26 shooters (first or third person) annonced at E3 this year that there is a certain interest from the gaming community for that kind of game.

2) I don't think video games should ONLY be fun, they should try to do more. Of course, I'm not asking for all of them to do this. Some pieces of work in other medium will also be about fun more than anything else and they may handle death more lightly than, like I said in my article, Elephant. There's nothing wrong about that. My issue is that the video game medium is either not talking about death or violence (puzzle games, mario, etc...) or they are treating it very lightly (Modern Warfare 2, Killzone, etc...). There's almost no game that will try do to something more impactful with those experience. I'm just asking for diversity.

1) At no point did I say people weren't interested in this. They clearly are, which is why they are so popular.

2) A video game is not playable if it is not fun to play. While they should try to achieve greater storytelling and things like it, the formula to make it work will always boil down to it being fun. Video games are not movies, nor will they ever be movies. Being that they are interactive, it has potential to be stronger, so I understand where you are coming from in that aspect. However, death is treated lightly in games for a reason. Death surrounds us all in every day life - war is real, losing loved ones is very real. Video games do not desensatize players to violence. It gives us a means to see it in a way that doesn't haunt us, or follow us every where we go. A place to fight the wars we are too coward to fight in our own lives, and a place that makes death not feel like an end.

Many of us have a true fear of death. Any way to avoid feeling that fear shouldn't be looked down upon. Your argument seems to be coming from someone who hates the idea of violence/death in general, which doesn't make for the best opinions on the matter. The most impactful deaths in video games normally come via cutscene, where the player has no control, and it's normally to a character we have emotional attachment to. Like I said before, this still only has a local impact on us mentally, and the sorrow we feel becomes global because we relate it to a real life situation. 

Violent games/games where you kill aren't fun because you're killing something. It's fun because your gun shoots when you pull the trigger, and there is an immediate response. The whole purpose of "fun" and "entertainment" is instantaneous gratification. This is no different than the popularity of rhythm games, or any of the games that people play. Shooting just happens to be the most immediate it seems.

it'll eventually happen, the writing and character development in games is already heading toward that direction and you can look to heavy rain and uncharted 2 to see what i'm talking about. you'll eventually see a developer tackling deeper issues of war like PTSD and unit oriented stories,  look at modern warfare 2, you had to shoot a crowd of people, i think the seed have already been planted for those kinds of stories and the games you're talking about are only a few cycles away. 

When Mario squashes a goomba, is that violence?  When I tried to write about games being too violent, questions like that are what I started to think about.   

Ryan, I definitely think that squashing a Goomba is violence. What else could it be?

@ Rob:  Well, I suppose it is obviously violence.  But when you write an article like this, Mario games aren't usually what you're thinking about.  The video game violence issue is incredibly complex precisely because Mario games are violent.  And most of the time, you find out articles like this are about something more specific than violence.  I don't really think this article is about video game violence, for instance; I think it is about first person shooters.  I think Bruno started off writing an article about violence, then zeroed in on the real thing that was bothering him.  The title should read: "First Person Shooters Should Effect the Player."