Originally Posted by CingularDuality

Sirus, I think he was saying exactly the opposite of what you're suggesting.

And he's on to something, I think. If the games we played were more realistic, perhaps violence wouldn't be so attractive?

That's somewhat what I was getting at. Many people like games because they're given a medium where there's a "buffer zone" between what they're doing and what they're actually seeing. You have many battle-weary veterans playing these games because they can do what they've been trained to do without seeing the actual result. People fantasize about being James Bond, but they cant deal with what actually happens when a .257 round enters someone's tempel.

In a TRUE simulation-sense, you'd be presented with an adequate representation of the effect of your actions on the gamespace. Slowly but surely, you're seeing gaming media go this route. There's now destructable environments along with anatomy; you can break a wall down to get inside a building and hack someone's arm off basically.

EVENTUALLY, we'll get to the point where there's emotional response in games (there are already books on game theory regarding this). In order to evoke these responses, you're going to have to see realistic images. Even further, games will give players chioces based on how they feel about doing certain things... like I said before, SniperJohn may just decide to "push pens" in his favorite MMOs HQ, because he's sick of the gore.

So instead of us seeing people "spec" or choose to go a certain route in a game because X rifle does more damage, you'll start seeing people choose to spec a certain way because they can or cant handle the emotional response evoked with that playstyle.

Alongside these realistic images are realistic consequences. Gore/death gets dumbed-down when someone can get their head lopped off and just respawn immediately with little to no penalty. Games with "permadeath" though add more of a sense of loss to go along with the violence.

Risks will give greater reward, but also come with greater loss if there's a failure.

I know all this doesnt have much to do with Manhunt 2. But, the point I'm trying to make is that in order to advance any artistic or gaming medium you're going to HAVE to have games like that (that push the mold); or else we'll be stuck with Care Bear status-quo games forever.

And like Cingular said, there comes a point when violence is actually "trivialized" because it's been dumbed-down so much. You cant avoid or care about something you're totally ignorant of.