Where’s the truth?

There’s hardly a more debatable gaming subject than that of violence and the responsibility of the game makers. For that reason, opinions tend to be extreme. Some think that game publishers are training murderers, like the outspoken Jack Thompson. Others argue that, on the contrary, gamers are perfectly responsible citizens, who go to church, practice sports, etc. This is the position of the ESA and the official opinion of virtually al publishers.

Yet, as many industry professionals, I agree with neither of these views, and think rather that the industry, and specifically game publishers, has an obvious responsibility in game contents and violence. There is no statistical evidence that links violence in games to criminality, and this causality seems extremely unlikely. That being said, several studies have correlated violence in games with troubles in behaviour. Without using the excuse of statistics, it seems reasonable to argue that gratuitous violence in games cannot yield positive effects either in terms of behaviour, player experience, or game quality.

In short, yes, many games are too violent, game publishers should address that, and in most cases, their games will be much better as a result. Still, different forms of violence do not have the same effects on individuals and violence should be analysed and understood, not dealt with in a global way.

Game rating systems exposed

There are several game ratings systems so far. All have been set up by associations of publishers to help inform the parents about the contents of games they may buy for their children. They usually comprise an age category plus description of contestable contents.

Examples of such associations include the ESRB in the USA, PEGI for Europe, and the CERO for Japan.

These ratings systems are the official response of the industry to game violence and inappropriate contents. Publishers fill a form describing their games, send an application to the relevant organization(s) and get a rating. Once they’ve done this, parents are informed and children are allegedly protected.

As a high-level measure, one must admit that such ratings have proved to be quite efficient. Rating a game "Adult Only" or equivalent will make it much harder to obtain, especially for minors. Of course, this is not foolproof, especially considering the rise of alternative distribution channels for games. But is informing the parents enough?

According to the ESA, parents are virtually always involved in the purchase of videogames. In theory, they don’t have to have extensive knowledge of the game scene to take the decisions that will protect their children, as the rating labels are sufficiently explicit.

But what is it that decides that a game should belong to such or such categories?

Different flavours of violence. The ESRB distinguishes several kinds of violence: cartoon violence, fantasy violence, mild violence, violence, and intense violence. In a nutshell, cartoon violence is scenes that leave protagonists unharmed and which do not look real, while intense violence involves limbs flying around. Likewise, there are several levels of gore: animated blood, blood, blood and gore.

A game featuring animated blood and/or cartoon violence can get an Everyone rating (Ages 6+) while a scene of intense violence will get the game a Mature rating at best (Ages 17+).

Other criteria. There are many other criteria that affect the final, synthetic rating. They range in the following categories:
 language: comic mischief, crude humor, lyrics, language, mature humor, strong lyrics, strong language;
 nudity: partial nudity, sexual themes, nudity, strong sexual content, sexual violence;
 addictions: alcohol reference, tobacco reference, drug reference, simulated gambling, use of alcohol, use of tobacco, use of drugs, real gambling.

The PEGI classification, which has been elaborated after the ESRB’s, also includes categories such as discrimination and fear, and narrows down the addiction family to drugs.

The mission of the organization is to come up with a synthetic age rating. Strangely, this system is much more tolerant to violence than to alcohol or nudity. A realistic depiction of a bottle of alcohol would get your game an ESRB Adult Only rating, and so will a sex scene, while games where the hero can murder bystanders can usually get away with a Mature rating. Some games, where the violence is of a less visible nature, can even get luckier. In Bullfrog’s classic game Syndicate, one of the missions that your team of cyborgs has to accomplish is to murder the wife of a politician who refuses your syndicate’s blackmail, just so he’ll understand who’s the boss. Verdict? "Everyone 6+".

Using the ESRB or the PEGI’s guidelines will help publishers ship a game with the most favorable rating. But that doesn’t prevent them from producing a violent game and from shipping it to a large audience. This is why their responsibility is clearly engaged in that process. Rather than trying to ship a violent game with a good rating and shield their responsibility behind this, they should try to understand and confront the nature of violence in gaming, in order to produce the best possible game.

Does violence sell?

From how the ratings are devised, one could think that publishers try to design their game to fit as much violence as they can in order to attract gamers, and get a favorable rating. But, in 2004, mature-rated games represented only 16% of the market, and that number was boosted by the release of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas this year. In addition, most gamers or game buyers won’t admit that they are looking for violence in their games. So there is good reason to believe that contrary to a popular myth, violence doesn’t sell.

Many publishers have tried to emulate the success of Grand Theft Auto by producing violent gangster-themed games. Yet, all have failed. This is because none of them have understood the essence of GTA, which is a game of exploration, based on freedom of movement and action in a vast and deep world. Gun action in GTA, although it’s very visible, is only a minor aspect of the game. That doesn’t go to say that GTA isn’t a violent game - it certainly is, and it certainly could have been made differently - but that’s not what makes it successful.

If violence doesn’t officially sell, one could reach a different conclusion by analyzing what makes a player win in a game. In racing or sports games, which represent a considerable size of the market, this is simple: winning follows the rules of the simulated sport. A racer must finish first, a football team must score more than its opponents, etc. In the smaller segment of puzzle games, players must use their brains and reflexes to overcome abstract situations: arrange bricks in Tetris, devise the best path in Mr. Driller, etc.

But the answer is less clear for the huge segment of games that remain, from strategy games to platformers, from FPSs to RPGs, from adventure games to action games. For the great majority of these games, and for virtually all FPSs, RTSs and RPGs, there’s no winning without fighting. In order to advance through the game, the player must kill (entrenched soldiers, armies, monsters, you name it). It seems that games that try to escape that paradigm do not fare well. Herdy Gerdy, with its non violent gameplay, did not convince. More generally, Nintendo, which kept its games focused on the family market, was distanced by its rivals.

How can videogame violence be described?

The idea of ratings, which only deliver a synthetic and subjective conclusion on a game, does not accurately describe violence and other questionable contents, although they are effective in making violent games much more difficult to get for underage players.

My framework for analysing violence in games splits it in six components:

 shock,
 gore,
 death,
 transgression,
 domination,
 language, sex and drugs.

Shock: The "shock" component relates to images appearing quickly on the screen and directed at the player. Such effects aim to startle or to excite the player. In many Resident Evil games, while the hero walks slowly in a deserted corridor, all of a sudden, a swarm of zombie crows flies in, shattering all the windows at once, and attacks the player. In first-person games, opponents seem to exit the screen to attack the player.

While this is the main cause of concern about cartoons and other forms of television entertainment, it goes completely unnoticed in games. For younger children that cannot fully understand the nature of the screen, this is quite damaging: aggressive characters facing the screen or attacks directed towards the player can be quite traumatic for this audience. More generally, shock can cause behavioural and physiological reactions (excitement, agitation).

Conclusion: Games for children should be careful to avoid "shock": avoid bright things popping up on screen and any form of aggression that could be perceived as directed towards the player. For such games, a special attention should be dedicated to menu and interface. In games for other audiences, shock is part of what makes them games, as it participates in the immersion and the excitement. Unless game makers try to install a very peaceful atmosphere for their game, they should not try to get rid of it completely, but, in any case, they should try to understand its nature.

Gore: The gore component is the most graphic part of violence. How far do developers go to represent violence? characters blinking when hit? non-red substance briefly squirting from wounds? Or rather, a red and thick liquid? limbs being severed, broken, or exploded?

The gore component is the one on which most ratings systems are based. The ESRB, for instance, distinguishes fantasy violence (an RPG character summoning a magic meteor to smash monsters to smithereens) and intense violence (a human character’s head explode after being hit by a magnum bullet). You can still get an E6+ rating with fantasy violence, but an intensely violent game will probably be restricted to a mature audience.

There’s obviously too much attention devoted to that aspect. Depictions of violence, no matter how gory, are extremely abstract. When Mortal Kombat was released, it was harshly criticized for its "fatalities"; spectacular (bloody) finishing moves. But a player pulling out a fatality was usually too concentrated to execute the complicated combination of keys in the right order in the right time to pay attention to the bloodshed. A successful fatality was just an acknowledgement from the game that they were doing well.

Likewise, just because the violence is characterized as "animated", "cartoon" or "fantasy" doesn’t mean it is innocent. Doom 2 involved two very controversial hidden levels featuring Commander Keen, a child character from earlier Id games, hanged... and the player could shoot him. Commander Keen was definitely not realistic, yet those levels left a powerful impression on those who played them. Allegedly, this is probably not due to how the kid was represented (gore or not) but rather to the disturbing fact that children suicide and murder could be included in a game (more on that below). By the way, if you ask, Doom 2 was rated Teen (13+) by the ESRB, while Doom 3, which include no hanged kid, but more blood and more monsters, was rated Mature.

Conclusion: while there’s probably something sick in trying to get as much blood and gore effects in a game, this doesn’t seem to have much effect on gamers, not more than in the movies. The same rules should apply. It’s probably not a good idea to confront children with bloodbath-type games, but not because of the blood aspect, but because of the aggression themes included in those games. Apart from that, blood proper should not be taboo.

Death: Surprisingly, a very small minority of games actually deal with death, or the permanent loss of a character. Games where generic opponents are quickly disposed of are not taken into account, nor are those where the "dead" character can reappear, respawn or be resurrected in some way, or where "death" just means a light penalty: the character will wake up in the hospital, or will be able to return to the multi-player game a few seconds later.

Very few games feature characters passing away, with all the emotional charge implied. A famous example is the death of Aeris in Final Fantasy VII, which has affected a generation of gamers. Some were shocked, some outraged; many believed there was a way to avoid it or to get her back. But it isn’t so, she’s gone for good and there is no (legit) way to avoid this.

Interestingly, such deaths have a completely opposite effects to other forms of game violence: because of their impact, they do not appear gratuitous, meaningless. Again, younger players will not react well to such scenes, as they are not equipped to understand them well. Similarly to Takahata’s movie Grave of the Fireflies, they can be seriously traumatic for children. For teens and mature players, however, they should just be considered as an element of storytelling.

Conclusion: avoid on games for children, but no restriction for other games.

Transgression: This is probably the most interesting aspect of game violence. Transgression is violently breaking commonly accepted social values, like advocating crime, encouraging murder and so forth.

Transgression is definitely the most important element of game violence and, to put a long story short, should be avoided at all costs in any game.

The most shocking examples I cited throughout the article all range under transgression: requiring that the player assassinate an innocent in Syndicate, displaying a hanged child in Doom 2. Without going to these extremes, we can find plenty of examples of transgression in most games.

One common transgression is rewarding acts of violence, especially against humans (as opposed to monsters), innocents and not in self-defence.

Sniping an enemy soldier who hasn’t seen the player in a wartime FPS is one thing. Executing a suspected criminal with a sniper rifle when the player is a law-enforcement agent is a completely different one.

In infiltration games, it is often best to avoid confrontation. An enemy that doesn’t see you is one that will not shoot you. In many action games, the opposite holds true: killing "enemies", whether they are aggressive or not, often produces a reward: money, points, bonus items, etc. In RPGs, it is common to "level up", that is, to roam the countryside in search of lesser enemies to exterminate in order to get more powerful. Is that heroic?

That can be even worse. When there are identifiable minorities that can be targeted, the player can go on a racist rampage. In GTA3, this was avoided: Liberty City has no coloured citizens, and no kids either. In Vice City, the introduction of Haitians caused quite a bit of turmoil. While San Andreas has a greater ethnical diversity, the hero is black.

Another aggravating factor is when the immoral act is mandatory, like the assassination in Syndicate. In GTA, it is possible to kill bystanders, which is unavoidable in a physically-realistic world with guns. It is never mandatory, and the reward is generally negative (people will attack you, you will be wanted by the police).

There can also be implications based on the camp you are fighting for, even if there are no gameplay consequences. Some people feel uneasy siding up with the Germans in Castle Wolfenstein, or with the Terrorists in Counter-Strike, although these are just names for the "defending" team. More generally, some games have religious or political connotations that could hurt the players sensitivities - these are best avoided.

Some games, while they don’t go as far as advocating murder, put lesser offenses under a favorable light, such as theft or tagging, which is considered OK or no big deal as opposed to more serious stuff. Recently, Atari’s online ads for Mark Ecko’s Getting Up take pride in the fact that it was banned in Australia. How responsible is that?

The most serious cases are those where transgression is caused by provocation. Some games feel that they only exist because their content is against the accepted norms, and their developers will seek to create the most shocking game in order to get coverage, and, again, to create a GTA-like hype. In that case, the developers seek willingly to cram as much violence as possible in the title. I cannot think of one example where this has produced a good game. This is because good games are focused on what makes them good (consistency). Trying to add violence to a game can only hurt its coherence. GTA, which is seen by many as the holy grail of the violent game that made it big, doesn’t follow this path: it could easily have been made much more violent, like its clones. It would have been much less successful.

Conclusion: transgression should always be avoided. This doesn’t mean that all games should take place in Supermario land or anything. There is obviously room for more mature themes. But to willingly try to shock with a game is just dead wrong.

Domination: if we try to analyse the philosophical dimension of violence, Hobbes teach us that what characterizes violence is an aggressive intention. In this sense, being able to punch a character in the face for free and get away with it is more violent than watching the bad guys’ secret headquarters blow up.

Many games let the player express their aggressive drives in a completely gratuitous way. The obvious example is the GTA series where the player can kill people in the street for no reason. While this is certainly not as bad as if they were required to kill them at some point (i.e. transgression), there is something deeply disturbing in that (why not just make them immortal?). In many games, the player has teammates or friends that they can execute in cold blood - the IA never imagines that the player could turn against them.

We can see how much this dimension of violence is more important than gore. Imagine a game where there is animated or cartoon violence "only", but where the hero could beat up other characters at will for no reason (and most RPGs will fit the description). Wouldn’t this be a violent game?

That merchant guy in Resident Evil 4 is a fine example. The player sadistic tendencies can just as well be expressed towards their character, which can die in gruesome ways in so many games. GameFAQs hosts a FAQ about how to die in Fear Effect, for instance - and that’s far from being the best example.

In multiplayer games, this takes a whole different dimension as players can team up and league against a weaker player, both legitimately (i.e. World of Warcraft game systems which heavily favors guilds against solo gaming) or not (cheating). Some players can therefore be in an unfair situation, while at the other end, other players enjoy dominating them.

Games that keep such systems in place (whereby a player can be helplessly dominated) enforce a very specific kind of violence, which, again, goes largely unnoticed by rating systems. Like "shock", this is, to some extent, a necessary evil, as freedom is inherent to gaming. And likewise, it should not necessarily be avoided systematically, but understood and managed by game makers, rather than being treated as completely inevitable.

Language, sex and drugs. The reaction to that type of content is highly dependent on the culture. The USA seem to have a much lower tolerance to either than Europe or Japan.

Sexual intercourse, for instance, will definitely get a game an "Adults only" rating, while this is OK in movies. For a while, it was believed that realistic, frontal nudity will also make the game AO. But BMXXXX has managed to get a Mature rating, just like DOAX Volleyball and Fear Effect: Retro Helix, which were close contenders. Neither of them got the "nudity" mention (DOAX got mature sexual themes and Retro Helix, just suggestive themes). BMXXXX got nudity and strong sexual contents. Still, the menace is very tangible, and publishers are usually quite reluctant to include sex and nudity in games, despite the importance of this subject on many a gamer’s agenda. How about violence then? So far, videogames is about the only media where sex and violence haven’t been associated: let’s keep it up. Rape is a taboo that game developers haven’t challenged yet [1] (except those weird games from Japan, but they are clearly labeled as pornography material).

While language doesn’t have much influence on ratings especially in the Teen and above zones, "strong language" will appear on the ESRB back label. Usually - I suspect this is because clarity is essential in game dialogue - the game language contains very few 4-letter words. What does it have to do with violence? While rating agencies are more concerned with coarse language, game does include much fighting words. In Resident Evil 4, there is a cutscene where the French subtitle goes: "why don’t you just die now?" (the original English text being: "get off my back, old man!"). Not the type of language a law-enforcement agent should use! Likewise, there are plenty of examples where heroes swear to kill their enemies.

Drug use, or, in general, addictive behaviours (alcohol, tobacco, gambling, drugs) can also have a very strong effect on ratings. That’s ironic, because gaming is an addictive behaviour, too. How about violence? To the best of my knowledge and after extensive research, there is no game where violence is caused by alcohol (nor by tobacco or gambling, but that’s not as surprising). Drug usage linking to violence, as opposed to drug dealing leading to territory wars, has been the subject of one game: The Dig, rated Everyone 6+.

Conclusion: game publishers have not attempted to push the limits in the sex, profanity and drug department, and it’s probably best that way. While some games do feature violent language, that doesn’t come close to the level of the messages that players can exchange in heated multi-player games.

Closing comments:

Game violence is not where we expect: while the public debate focuses on gore, sex, and death, the real issue comes rather from transgression, shock and intent. Rather than aiming to secure "just" a mature or a teen rating for their game, no matter the contents, publishers ought to understand the nature of game violence and include just what the game needs to be good - no more, no less.

As the age of gamers increases, many argue that we need more mature themes. But is violence mature? Quite the contrary. Mature games would go beyond that. They would feature ethical dilemmas, stories that don’t always end well, heroes with more realistic capacities, but which could still make a difference. There could be games about courage, justice, sacrifice, rather than games about blasting aliens and saving the universe one swordfight at a time. Games that would leave the player with the impression that they gained something.

While this dream can take some time to come true (it’s already started), there’s still a lot we can do to improve the current generation of games, to bypass that sterile controversy with NIMF and its affiliates and to clear the name of our industry.