Violent Games and Why I’m Not a Serial Killer

RadGalaxy says this article may contain material not suited for underage or squeamish readers.

Violence in video games has been a hot topic in the media recently as It seems like it’s something that happens every time there’s a violent tragedy. We hear about how the killer had spent hours playing Call of Duty, Gears of War, or Mass Effect. It seems like they want to name some game that’s relatively well known, even if it’s not related to the case at all. I guess it’s something I have an interesting perspective on since I can look at a number of different ways. Obviously, I can look at it as a gamer. Another way I can see it is as a retailer since I spent a number of years managing an independent video game store. Granted, I don’t do that anymore but there’s a lot I’ve gotten to take away from my years spent dealing with minors who wanted to buy games and their parents. I can also look at it from the perspective of a parent.

During my time spent working retail, I saw a number of AAA game releases for the PlayStation 2, Xbox, and GameCube. These include some of the more well known games that have come under fire. I had to deal with fourteen-year-olds begging me to sell them copies of State of Emergency, Grand Theft Auto III, and Manhunt. I never would have considered it, not even once. While there wasn’t any specific legislation preventing me from doing so, I didn’t want my store to be the one featured on the news for selling Kindergartner Billy a copy of The Suffering.

Eventually I made it a policy that we should educate parents, and explain what the M rating meant and what content a game had before they’d buy it, even if they seemed like they already made their decision. Sometimes they’d tell me “Oh, that’s not so bad” and appreciate the insight. What disturbed me is how many times I had a parent would tell me “How dare you tell me how to raise my kid.” This wasn’t always for video games, this was also for movies. I actually at one point washed my hands of a transaction as the parent was renting The Last House on the Left for their eight year old daughter who liked Scream and wanted to see some other Wes Craven films. I’m talking about the original film, not the remake. The original bordered on pornographic in combination with violence that seemed more real than the remake. I feel like it was the equivalent of sitting a child down in front of a snuff/rape film.

I’d also see people more concerned about nudity than violence. Once I had someone refuse their kid Mobile Light Force 2, which was the localization of Shikigami no Shiro with some profoundly bad box art. The parent objected because the women on the cover were showing too much cleavage. What game did they buy for their kid as an alternative? Manhunt! It blew my mind, especially after the kid was excited about how good I made the first game sound.

My daughter hasn’t wanted to play a violent game yet. She’s working on the basics still and we haven’t quite made the jump to 16-bit. If it’s not Pac-man, Phantasy Star, or a kart racer then she doesn’t want anything to do with it. I know it won’t last. There’s a number of games in the house I wouldn’t want her playing. Most of those are the games I won’t play in front of her. I’m not quite sure how I’d react if she handed me Duke Nukem Forever and asked to play it. I wouldn’t let her but I’d be less opposed to it compared to something like Heavy Rain. Even though Duke Nukem might be bloodier than Heavy Rain I’d probably be more likely to cave for it. Heavy Rain was just a bit too real.

As a child, I remember video game violence being the hot button around 1993. I got Mortal Kombat for Genesis for Christmas and my Dad wanted to see it before he’d let me keep it. I knew the blood codes, I turned it all on and showed off all the gore, fatalities and blood spatter. While he thought the game was gross, I don’t think he felt it was too realistic. In fact, I think he found it dumb more than anything. We had a brief talk about the violence and why I was playing it. Since I was more interested in the game itself than the fatalities and the blood, the subject never came up again. I never fantasized about ripping heads off of bodies or uppercutting people down into spiked pits. I’m not a serial killer. I came out fine.

Many of the earlier first person shooters have been cited as being overly violent and often the cause of people going on rampages. I honestly really enjoyed Wolfenstein 3D. If you were to husk the game of the Nazi themes and all of the blood, it was still a good game. In fact, it’s one of the few FPS games I still go back and play. When I was younger I’d sit with headphones on and stare at the monitor of my 286. It would make me jump right out of my chair when I’d get shot in the back of the head after entering the room I thought I cleared of soldiers. It was an intense experience and that was why I played it. Again, I’ve never murdered anyone. Doom pushed the envelope a bit further by being more violent and throwing in satanic imagery causing it to be more in the forefront of the media scare than Wolfenstein 3D. The thing I liked the most about Doom was the customization, which I think I spent more time doing than playing the game.

Another notorious game I remember from way back was Night Trap. My Dad actually bought it because he was curious about all of the media hype about how awful it was. It was supposed to be raunchy, sick, twisted, and bloody as hell. I always wondered what game the people who said those things had played. It certainly wasn’t Night Trap. It was more campy than anything, there was no nudity unless you count 30 year old women running around in sports bras pretending to be teenagers as nudity. I’ve seen some tame 80’s horror movies that were much worse. I think Gremlins might have been worse.

Those were the big ones that I remember. There were some older games too, specifically for the Genesis. While Nintendo was pretty strict about keeping their game content family friendly, SEGA on the other hand was a lot more lax. The first game I remember not being allowed to play was Technocop. In retrospect, my parents did me a favor, I was always curious about why I wasn’t allowed to play it. I snuck out of bed early one morning and popped it into my Genesis. It was actually the first time I had seen violence in a video game so it was a bit of a shock to me. I didn’t like it. I wish my Dad had told me “Oh, It’s kind of bloody. Kind of like Robocop. Get it, Technocop, Robocop? You don’t want to play this.” instead of telling me nothing. I guess it’s the whole forbidden fruit concept. This is why I’m glad that a few years later he sat down with me and talked about it instead of beating around the bush and flat out telling me no. I’m also glad he had paid attention to not only what I was playing, but why I was playing it.

At some point there’s a major difference between wanting to play a good game that happens to be violent as opposed to wanting to play a game simply because it’s violent. I knew someone in high school who was sort of the opposite. I liked Doom because it was fun and I enjoyed playing around with the game to see what I could make it do with all of the mods. He liked it because he could shoot people and put football players and his teachers in it. He played Mortal Kombat because he wanted to see all the blood and kill people in as many gruesome ways as possible.

Did video games give him his bloodlust? No. He was drawing pictures of his classmates being murdered long before he got his SNES. He was a violent person who needed help. Blaming Doom makes as much sense as blaming Crayola for making the art supplies he used. Playing video games didn’t make him more violent. In the case of myself, I’ve played violent video games and I’m a loving parent and a pacifist. I’ll always make sure I know what my kid is playing and why she’s playing it. If there’s a game I don’t think she should play because it’s too violent, my solution is to not buy it and explain why instead of getting angry at a retailer or writing my congressman.

That’s not to say liking violent things isn’t okay. I enjoy horror movies, specifically the ones in the 80’s like Evil Dead 2, The Toxic Avenger, and Friday the 13th. Lots of people do, and there’s nothing wrong with wanting to see something edgy and exciting. It comes down to the reason why you enjoy these kinds of things. They’re fun because they’re scary or campy not because it’s fun to watch people die. Sometimes it’s so over the top it becomes unrealistic and there’s some fun in that as well. Other times it’s fun because you know it’s not real.

Sorry if that was heavier stuff than my normal writings. Also, this wouldn’t be “Blowing Dust” without looking at some games, so let’s have a peek at some of the games that were the subject of controversy.

There were a number of games around the early to mid 90’s to capture the media’s attention. The most notorious is Mortal Kombat, which I don’t think needs any introduction. It’s right up there with Super Mario Bros, The Legend of Zelda, and Pac-Man in the list of “Games Everyone’s Heard Of”. I want to take a look at a few obscure games that people may not have heard of, or may have, and never played.

Technocop – Technocop came out in 1988 for the Amiga, Commodore 64, Atari ST, Apple II, a few other home computers during that era. In 1990 it was ported to the Genesis and was the first game I remember seeing with a label on it for content. It’s supposed to be a futuristic setting and you’re a cop who’s going to bust some criminal scumbags. There’s two different types of stages, driving and side-scrolling. The driving stages look a lot like Outrun. The idea is that you’re driving to the next target, and there’s a time limit. You have to do everything in your power to get there before the time limit, including blasting other cars away.

The side-scrolling parts give you two weapons, a gun, and a net. The net is in case you have to bring someone in alive. When you shoot someone, they don’t just die, they turn into a bloody mess. It makes me wonder what caliber handgun you’re using. There’s pits and obstacles you need to jump over, but it’s all really standard stuff. There isn’t any background music in the game and the control is clunky at best. It’s worth seeing for curiosity’s sake, but it was panned by critics when it came out for good reason.

Night Trap – I know a lot of people talked about Night Trap, but I don’t think many people have played it. The media went nuts over it in 1993 when it came out for SEGA CD, and honestly, I don’t really see why. Most of the violence is merely implied, which can make your mind go to some dark places. The idea here is that there’s a family of Vampires who have a large house. They subdue their victims with a series of elaborate traps. However, you don’t play as the vampires. You play as part of the Sega Control Attack Team, or Special Control Attack Team depending on the version. You’ve hijacked the control of the traps and cameras. Kelly, an under cover SCAT agent played by the late Dana Plato, is attending a slumber party with a group of unsuspecting girls.

The way you play the game is fairly simple. You switch cameras throughout the house to trap any “Augers” invading the house. There’s also a story going on which you will watch. The problem is, it’s easy to miss what’s going on if you’re too busy moving your view from room to room. This only matters when the vampires announce what code they’re changing the security system to, or if you care about the storyline. If they change the code and you don’t use the right color, the traps won’t work and the girls in the house you’re protecting will get captured. If they get captured, the game is over.

Night Trap was kind of fun the first time through but after that it loses it’s edge. Once you know when and where you have to be, it’s fairly easy. You can see all of the cinematic on YouTube, it’s actually really fun to watch. I think people should play it once just to see what the fuss was about. I only think it’s worth owning to collectors. The Sega CD version looks like a typical early FMV game, and most of the later versions have significantly nicer video quality.

Harvester – Harvester was a 1996 PC game that is often credited for being one of the goriest games ever made. To be honest, I haven’t played much that can top it. It’s doesn’t just try to be gory, but offensive as well. The game has a distorted 1950’s setting and takes a lot of the social tropes of that era, but does them completely over the top. NPCs will spout blatantly racist and homophobic comments or do things that are just plain wrong. For example, there’s a teacher that mauls students with a baseball bat for “acting out”. There’s some dark humor thrown in there, as well.

It plays like an ordinary point and click adventure game. Most of what you need to do hinges on exploring and there isn’t a whole lot of direction. It’s not for everyone. The story has a very dreamlike feel and reminds me of a David Lynch film. It’s honestly quite clever, and I can tell the creators had a lot of fun with it. The idea is that you’ve woken up with amnesia and everything seems wrong. You’re marrying the girl next store, which you don’t recall agreeing to, but she also has amnesia. Nobody believes you because “you always were a kidder”. You explore the disturbingly unsettling town of Harvest to find out what’s going on.

As you play though the gore gets more intense. None of it looks real though. It’s all very over the top and just there for the gross out factor. Everything’s done with real actors with the effects drawn in over top of them, adding to the surreal nature of the game. I can’t say it takes itself seriously, though. Harvester was considered a commercial failure, but it’s remained a cult classic through the years. Don’t expect to see an HD release anytime soon, though.

There are plenty of others particularly during the 90’s where some developers, like the creators of Harvester, were trying to push the envelope. These games were just a few that stood out to me. Violence in video games isn’t something that’s going to go away anytime soon, and it’s certainly not a new concept. It’s existed since games consisted of just a few pixels, and it will continue to. I see people saying there should be a ban violent games, I don’t think it’s something that’s necessary. I don’t believe it’s something that would ever happen either. Stating that playing a game will turn you into a killer is nonsense.

Remember them? Weren’t allowed to play them? Still trying to find Ermac in MK1? Comment below or hit me up on Facebook or Twitter.