Meaningful Violence

Henry Jenkins III and Kurt Squire

Writing in 1954, cultural critic Robert Warshot condemned the trivialization of violence not by popular culture but by its critics. The impulse to condemn all representations of violence reflected “willful blindness” and “hypocrisy.” He explained, “these attitudes…have not reduced the element of violence in our culture but, if anything, have helped to free it from moral control by letting it take on the aura of ‘emancipation.’ The celebration of acts of violence is left more and more to the irresponsible.”

Historically, cultures have used stories to make sense of senseless acts of violence, suffering, and loss. Telling stories about violence can remove some of its sting and help us comprehend horrific acts. "Media reformers claim that "violence isn't child's play," yet, in fact, many of the best-loved works of children's literature have dealt with trauma and emotional violence (the loss of a parent, the death of a pet) so that children can bring their fears under their symbolic control."

The problem isn’t that video games are violent. The problem may be that some video games trivialize the representation of violence through the unthinking reliance on formula. How many games are just glorified shooting galleries where monsters are simply moving targets?

Many games deal with violence in a simplistic fashion because games still have a relatively crude vocabulary, inadequate for representing the full range of human experiences and emotions. Game designer Greg Costikyan agrees, “Violence is an easy out. It's the simplest, most obvious way to make a game a struggle.” Games, like all forms of drama, depend on conflict, but in too many games, removing an opponent is the only way for resolution.

In most computer games, the dead disappear as soon as they are shot and little thought is given on their passing. Deus Ex suggests how game violence might have more meaning. In the first level, the player is given both a gun and a tranquilizer and told to use force only if necessary. The player might kill enemies, but by the end of the level, he learns that the so-called enemies were actually friends. The level design forces the player to retrace his steps, to walk back through whatever carnage he created, reflecting on the consequences of his choices.

James Cain, a medieval literature scholar, notes that the epic sagas of the middle ages, which now constitute a cherished part of the western cannon, were filled with hack-and-slash action and brutal torture. Yet, periodically, the bloodletting would stop and the characters would gather their dead, mourn their loss, and reflect on the consequences of their actions.

Games, Will Wright argues, are perhaps the only medium, which allows us to experience guilt over the actions of fictional characters. In a movie, because we do not control what occurs, we can always pull back and condemn the character or the artist when they cross certain social boundaries, but in playing a game, we choose what happens. In the right circumstances, we can examine our own values by seeing what we are willing to do within virtual space.

Morrowind, a fantasy role-playing game, gives characters memories across the family line and thus embeds violence in an extended social and cultural context. Christopher Weaver, founder of Bethesda Softworks developers of Morrowind, explains that Morrowind tried to show the “interconnectedness of lives” in a society governed by strong familial loyalties: “The underlying social message being that one may not know the effect of their actions upon the future, but one must guide their present actions with an awareness of such potential ramifications.”

Peter Molyneux (Black & White) plans to take ethical self-examination even further in his forthcoming game, currently called Project Ego. Project Ego will take your protagonist from adolescence to old age and every choice has consequences in terms of the kind of person you will become and the kind of world you will inhabit. If you work out, you will grow muscles. If you pig out, you will get fat. Players are certainly free to commit violent acts in this world but they will face the consequences in terms of a damaged reputation, social stigma, legal repercussions, or mental anguish.

Games may need to achieve more meaningful representations of violence before they are taken seriously as a medium. As Warren Spector (Deus Ex) explains, “We do violence in games because it's easy. And like every other medium we're going to outgrow it, we're gonna move beyond it, and we're gonna broaden the range of things that we can do and will do in gaming." Not every game needs to be as earnest as an After-School special. The goal is diversity not uniformity. In some games we will explore empowerment fantasies or exorcise frustrations by fragging everything that moves. In others we will think more deeply about the game play and draw on it as a resource for making sense of our own lives.

Can games do that and still be fun? You bet your life.

Originally printed in Computer Games Magazine, November 2003