The State of Play by Daniel Goldberg

Author:Daniel Goldberg
Language: ara
Format: epub
Tags: video games, online, computer, technology, anthology, essay, LGBT, sex, race, class, violence, culture, critics, creators, gamers, gamergate, diversity, collection
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Published: 2015-10-19T16:00:00+00:00

The Joy of Virtual Violence

Cara Ellison & Brendan Keogh

Violence has always been a core mechanic in video games, leading to an endless debate on whether or not violent video games encourage violent behavior in real life. In this essay, Cara Ellison and Brendan Keogh defer the question of right or wrong to instead focus on “the why”: Why is violence so ubiquitous in games? And why is it so much fun? Their conversation draws on everything from John Milton to John Romero, shedding light both on our enjoyment of violence in games and on the forces that control how exactly it is portrayed.

Dear Brendan,

Once upon a time, a friend wrote me an email. In it, she explained her worry that people were talking about the violent room-clearing assassination game Hotline Miami in adoring terms, rather than thinking about what video game violence does to us.

I love Hotline Miami. But I also think games are too violent. How can we reconcile the two? Is there something wrong with me? What about me is attracted to this aspect of games?

I’ve had a long time to think about it. I’ve become wiser. And I’ve read people smarter than me talk about the matter. And I think I understand myself better now.

Let me elaborate.

I read Paradise Lost when I was much too young to understand it. Paradise Lost is John Milton’s overlong rhetorical poem about the politics of heaven and hell; about the creation of hell in opposition to heaven, and Satan’s role in it. At the time I read it, when the descriptions of God casting out Satan and the image of Satan’s wings being burned off were fresh in my mind, I was puzzled at the injustice portrayed there. I thought Milton was sympathizing, like the Rolling Stones, with the Devil.

Isn’t John Milton a Christian? I thought, reading as a fully clueless agnostic. Doesn’t he value the moral teachings of God? God seems insufferable in this poem. A dismissive patriarch. A boring moralizer.

This book is teaching me to sympathize with Satan, I decided. Satan’s charisma, the way he questions his ruler, his grandstanding speeches, his love of destruction, his sultry burnt wing-stubs a symbol of his mistreatment—he’s beautiful. He’s fascinating.

Also, Satan’s right: it’s fun to destroy.

I worried about myself for a while, sympathizing with a figure that my long-abandoned Christian upbringing had taught me was the root of all human failure. For a while, I wondered if the reason I liked Doom and Dungeon Keeper was because I was really sympathizing with the Devil.

But it didn’t take long for me to recognize the device. I recognized that what was being said was that human beings are the sons and daughters of both creation and destruction. We love to do both. After all, isn’t sex the creation of love and children? And war is the destruction of lives. And neither will ever end until the earth explodes.

It was several years before I thought about this again, in which time I had become known for critiquing games professionally.

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