Iron Sunset and Killing in Games

24th August, 0 replies

Though they peddle so much of it, games get a lot wrong when it comes to death. Not that the act of killing is unique to games. Humans have been depicting scenes of violence ever since hunters decided to recount great hunts on their cave walls. Yet for a medium that concerns itself so deeply with the importance of the player - the individual self that ultimately guides the experience - any moralising about taking a life falls and dissipates like many a digital corpse in a low budget action title.

One might be tempted to blame the sheer amount of killing that takes place on our virtual battlefronts. When we take a life we do not exclaim “Alas, poor Grunt #395! I knew him, Master Chief, a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy.” Perhaps by the time we get through the latest blockbuster we've just grown accustomed to the slaughter. A slaughter which games assure us is completely justified. Mostly.

Yet that is not to say that a game in which you kill just one person is automatically a more meaningful experience. That, at the end of the day, it is simply a case of scale. We may just be in the habit of mistaking breadth for depth, because after all of these years the big PR machines have convinced us that that is what the technology at our fingertips is good at, and if games are not beholden to technology, then what is the point?

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