The future of gaming: What gun violence means to the industry

On one hand, I’m an indie horror-survival game developer. I want my players to experience that tingle of apprehension, the pay-off of a truly fearful thrill, the relief of escaping a tense situation, and the fight-or-flight response that adrenaline brings.

But on the other hand, back out here in the real world, I watched my mother shoot my father with a semi-automatic rifle. I grew up in a subculture of violent retribution where people have been killed with a circus tent peg for marital indiscretions or had their knees broken for nonpayment of a debt. I’ve had a pistol pointed in my face by a masked hoodlum, and I’ve stood face-to-face with my father as he put a shotgun in his mouth.  So I have some experiences that affect my perspective on violence, guns, and blood in gaming and in life.

The public spotlight is once again focused upon the validity of graphic violence as a form of entertainment.

It seems to take a tragedy such as Newtown to stir the debate and raise questions that we should, arguably, always be attempting to answer — not just for the government inquiries and finger-pointers or the 300-plus souls lost to school shootings within the U.S. alone, but for ourselves as producers and consumers of demonstrably and increasingly violent media. Is it really OK? Where does responsibility actually lie? Entertainment? The NRA? Parenting?

The entertainment industry’s general refusal to self-examine is not the correct response to the present accusations of culpability for gun violence.

The current “we are blameless — look elsewhere” approach doesn’t offer cogent discourse as to why gaming, movie, and TV violence is not the core problem, and it doesn’t inform or expand the inevitable and ongoing debate.

In fact, blocking discourse implies guilt or even worse, ignorance. It’s a blanket denial when what’s required is some self-analysis. Our entertainment industry needs to look inside itself at the worst excesses and curb them — same as in any other industry. And we also need to offer an ever-increasing range of innovative entertainment alternatives.

Straight-out denial just makes us look like we’re wrong, and 100 percent defensiveness is harming our industry. A little self-examination followed by a little innovation would go a long way to reconciliation and progress.

Gun violence is not only a “gun availability” and a “mental health” issue; it’s also a “cultural environment” issue.

Think of society as a child growing up in a home that glamorizes violence and that represents guns as a solution to problems — guns represented as a means of expression and release and guns as a way of righting perceived wrongs and injustices. What happens when, for some individuals within that society (our hypothetical “child”), the ability to reason as to what is a valid injustice worth another human’s life is compromised by mental and emotional health or stress?

Now instead picture a society that glamorizes strong leadership by people who value reason, strategy, acceptance, and negotiated outcomes in a country that disallows private ownership of firearms — one that sees guns actually being the problem. Oh, and this society has a real commitment (and an associated realistic budget) for dealing with social and mental health issues, thereby aiding the unfortunate and the infirm while protecting “normal” citizens from the extreme sociopathic outbursts of a few. There are some countries like that, and they score the highest on the lists of the most desirable places to live on the planet.

Games, movies, and TV are part of the overall cultural environment.

U.S. entertainment culture does contain elements that are predominately ultraviolent, and combined with a deeply entrenched precept of every citizen having the right — the responsibility, even — to bear arms, we have a recipe for tragedy.

It was put to me on this same day in which I write by an entertainment industry figure whose intelligence I greatly respect that when it comes to violence, “glorification and causation are two different issues.” This person continued by saying that if we were to get rid of the causes of societal violence, then the continued glorification of violence would be of no consequence. I disagree.

Glorification of any one aspect of human potential always matters; mass culture is the parenting influence of a nation. To place ultraviolence on a pedestal above all other behaviors sets a tone and sends a message that violence is a valid expression of personal angst, rage, frustration, or slight. You may argue that it is indeed a valid expression, but how far is too far?

As an example, I once stood in a New York toy store and witnessed a customer pull a gun on a sales clerk — over a toy train refund issue. “Tell me you’re f’n with my rights! Go on, say it! Say it!” he screamed.

Let’s look for causation everywhere rather than deflect any responsibility for the contribution of our entertainment industry’s messaging.

But that’s not the whole story — the future of entertainment could be on its way.

Right alongside the extreme cases of ultraviolent content are vast numbers of entertainment products that serve much higher purposes and some that are just plain fun at no one else’s expense.

Still, other entertainment products aim to provide the same primal thrills that violence may trigger and tap in the same brain chemistry without actually relying on violence itself as the medium.

Dene Waring is the indie developer of Huntsman: The Orphanage, an alternative horror-survival game project on Steam’s Greenlight voting platform.