I'm going to out myself as somewhat of a contrarian here and say that most of the violence in videogames is bad. While drawing straight lines from media violence to real-life violence is basically impossible and ridiculous, I find it just as ridiculous to say that media representations of the world do not have any impact on the real world. And the fact that this newest medium that is videogames finds most of its interactivity in violence just seems plain not good to me.

There are reasons for it obviously, two of which are wonderfully laid out in these two videos, one of which tries to explain the prevalence of violence in games , basically arguing that violence has become so deeply ingrained in game design since it provides obvious win/lose-states, and this other one which tries to explain the prevalence of shooters in post-3d gaming, arguing that shooters best solve the issue of camera control in games by turning the camera into the main way of interacting with the game world (it is of course no coincidence that videogame controllers are used extensively in military applications).

This is of course not an indictment of the medium of videogames in themselves, but an indictment of the industry which has put profit over any sort of artistic intent probably more than any other media industry ever has. There is little to no incentive to try to make games with less or no violence - even games like stardew valley can't help but feature some sort of combat - when violence works. And it seems to work so well that videogames feature magnitudes more violence than any other medium.

The french director Truffaut famously said something along the lines of: "You can't make an anti-war film, because war will inevitably look exciting up on the screen." If there is a truth to this for movies, to me it seems almost undoubtedly true for games. Naughty Dog gave us the perfect example for it: The Last of Us 2. Created as both a response to the complaints of "ludonarrative dissonance" that were lobbed at Uncharted (this is conjecture on my part) and self-admittedly by the games director Neil Druckmann as a response to the 2000 Ramallah lynching. It's this stupid fucking "cycle of violence and revenge" bullshit story that only a zionist could write, but that's not really important for my argument.

TLOU2 is probably one of the most expensive, most prestigious games ever made, the absolute spearhead of "cinematic storytelling" in videogames, while also being one of the few to try to have an "important" real-life message. It's an incredibly brutal game, both the actions of the player and the non-player characters are incredibly violent and rendered in vivid detail (the devs here did also look at footage of mutilated humans for inspiration), presumably because the story they wanted to tell to them necessitated that level violence. As an interactive prestige videogame however, they also made sure that that violence is as satisfying and engaging as possible. The controls are as tight, the camera moves as smooth around the gameworld as it possibly could, there are no cuts when you go for an execution-style finisher, you can upgrade your weapons by scavenging for parts, there's a skill-tree, you can go into new game plus and keep your upgrades, etc. It's all designed to be as engaging and "fun" as possible. So is the extreme violence actually there to tell a story or to be satisfying and fun?

It's very obviously the latter and the devs couldn't be more upfront about it, since in January they released the remastered version of this game, which includes a roguelike mode, in which you battle against human and zombies in a classic horde mode. The same fucking violence, the same mechanics that were just previously there to tell a dark gritty and "important" story about revenge and israel and palestine are now there for you to enjoy in perpetuity. Violence all the fucking time, for your amusement again and again and with no end. The fact that they released it during the ongoing genocide in gaza is a genuine indictment for the videogame industry and community as a whole.