The Phillips Files #23 Violent Gaming by R.P. Phillips

I just took several new game demos for some test runs and was shocked and appalled by the excessively graphic violence. Granted, I am not a gamer, but I am somewhat concerned over how graphically violent some of these games are becoming. I own, use and enjoy the Marathon Trilogy and Ultimate Doom, and I found these games a bit violent. But they don't come close to comparison to the ones I just got demos of (downloads and magazine demos for the last couple months).

First and foremost, the Gaming industry isn't going to stop making these types of games. And while there are a variety of other games out there, these graphically violent ones seem to get the majority of attention. The more attention that is paid to a game, the greater the sales and the greater the profit.

So what can be done? Let the gamers make their games. But I would like to see a consequence factor put into the games; especially the multi-player, on line games.

A consequence factor would be a "build in" part of these programs that would suspend or cancel play. Imagine the game being automatically being shut down for 1 to 5 days when your player gets injured and 10 days when your player is killed. Of course each game would have a limit on the number of players with access to the game; a family with a couple teens might need character names and passwords for a maximum of 12 people. This would make each person "sign in" to gain access to the game, and as the individual characters are injured or killed, their play would be suspended.

What would be even better would be the character being eliminated from play, permanently, when their characters are killed. Something tricky that would even prevent, or make it very difficult, people from trying to delete and reinstall the game. Imagine a dialog box like:

This idea just might teach some the consequences of excessive violence and it might even promote sales of computers. With people being unable to continue the game on their present system, they would have to purchase another. Can you imagine a teen with a half dozen computer systems; they wouldn't be able to afford real weapons to carry forth their violence tendencies on society.

Anyway, graphically violent games appear to be here to stay. I predict they will only be getting more graphic and more violent and this is just "an idea" to add a little bit of educational value in the way of teaching some the consequences of violence.

Thanks-
R.P. Phillips -- Homepage
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