Inflicting Pain To Others, The Gamer Way.
In most video games the main goal may not be to hurt people, in fact some times the main goal is to save someone. But in the vast majority of circumstances I find my self in I am the one causing all the pain and despair. Truth of the matter is, it's fun to kill people. That sounds horrible, doesn't it? Even if you are not killing human beings, most of the time you will be killing some manner of beast to progress through the story line.
There aren't many games where you become a total badass by being a diplomat with your enemies now are there? Most badasses I know of wear seven foot tall suits of armor and run around throwing sticky blue balls on everything they see. And if you're not into the suit of armor look you can always be the guy from a foreign country that's just trying to make it in America but always seems to commit multiple counts of senseless murder on a daily basis, you know instead of getting a real job.
Why don't we as gamers think about what we are doing to people in video games? I mean, say we're playing Grand Theft Auto, any of them in the series take your pick. So, now here we are walking down the street and we see someone who rubs us the wrong way, let's say they're wearing yellow and we totally think that doesn't go along with their complexion at all! So we cycle through our weapons which somehow all fit in our pants (including a full size RPG and varied assault rifles) Now, we decide to kick it old school with the baseball bat, while simultaneously busting out our matching leather jacket with bandanna, mind you. And we wait until there are no cops around and maybe a convenient alley way in case we need to book it. After the coast is clear we casually walk up to our victim (who clearly has no fashion sense) with bat in hand, and promptly smack them in the face like it's nobody's business. While they lay there screaming and receiving, yet even more beatings until they're dead and motionless, can we think of what we just did, you horrible excuse for a human being?
That man might have been going to a family gathering of some sort, but guess what? thanks to you that family is now completely dysfunctional, what if he had five children to support all by himself? Now they're homeless you European asshole.
So, why is GTA fun to play? All you do is kill people right? Well it all depends on what type of experience you are trying to take away from the game itself. Most games where you can kill massive amounts of people, you really don't have to, at least the innocent ones. We just do it because it appeases us, and gives us a good laugh as we see the corpses of the innocent ragdolling all over the streets. All it comes down to is: these are games we're playing and 99.9% of gamers know the difference and can tell reality from the game world. Because, honestly if these games where as bad as the media so enjoys to make them, we would have literally millions of sociopathic maniacs running through our streets shooting anything that moves, followed up by abrupt T-baggings.
And of course, considering we can clearly tell the difference between reality and the ether, video games become an excellent way to release stress, whether that comes in the form of genocide or managing a theme park. But why do so many games (at least the mainstream ones) have to be so murder-centric? Humanity has always derived some measure of enjoyment from watching things that aren't them suffer. It's a cold fact that is undeniably hard coded into your human psyche. Just think about it. We're taught to love thy neighbor, right? Well all throughout history you can find examples of humanity's stupidity, or for them at the time, entertainment. Shall we examine a prime specimen?
It appears they had a very different disposition towards lolcats. Around 16th century in France they enjoyed a wonderful activity called "cat burning" I believe, fun for the whole family!
This is just one of a vast number of forms of entertainment people enjoyed back in the day, they couldn't quench their thirst for blood simply by whipping out the old chainsaw and mutilating a few dozen grubs, sounds like it was a really tough life. So it's really not that hard to see why they enjoyed these activities, without video games what could you do for fun? answer me that. You have to admit it would be pretty exciting to see two men beat/stick each other to the very death, while watching from a spectators viewpoint. At the very least it gives prisoners something to look forward to, you see it all works into the grand scheme of things.
While technically, we have become less violent overall in general, with governments making the lands safe for all and whatnot. What essentially makes us human hasn't changed. At the core all we care about is surviving, correct? And what do you do when someone threatens you? You either run, or fight, that will never change. Neither will the fact that we love violence as a race in whole, it will never stop being at the fore front of the media, whether that be for good or bad. Don't try to fool yourself and sugar coat life, if it came down to it you could kill someone without even thinking about it.
So, embrace it when it comes to playing video games, learn to love the violence, after all it is apart of you. But also take some time while playing these games, how would you feel if some man came speeding down your street in a stolen car, just jumps out while the car is moving at top speed while screaming: "American TEEETEEEEEEES!!" and just kills your whole family without even introducing himself, how would that make you feel? Probably wouldn't make you feel genetically superior, that's for sure.