Disturbed

That’s awfully disturbing. As much as I’m confident in my ability to distinguish the difference between reality and fantasy where video and computer games are concerned, I grew up in an era where this was hammered home by having nothing more realistic on-screen than Mario in Donkey Kong. Unless you wanted to be a fat little Italian who jumped rolling barrels for a living, it was pretty hard to lose your grip over a video game in the early 1980s. That distinction will be lost to future generations, who will be gradually desensitized to real-world violence since it won’t look any different than what they’ll be presented with in gaming.

It’s hard to imagine recent shooters being developed with a graphic engine capable of producing victims as lifelike as the guy from the phoney Doom IV screenshot. Providing such realistic opponents would dramatically change the character of the games. Just picture how horrific the Normandy Beach level in Medal of Honor: Allied Assault would be if the soldiers being blown apart all around you looked exactly like real human beings. Or how an upgraded version of the entrails-a-poppin’ GHOUL engine used in the Soldier of Fortune games would provide grotesqueries that would make the Marquis de Sade blanch. Consider the sheer amorality of Kingpin with a video card that makes the wasted gangbangers look like extras in a Dr. Dre video.

Now ask yourself—would any of this be fun? At some point very soon, the reality of violence will change the focus of shooters once and for all. Players will demand it. So will Congress. If the violence isn’t either toned down, or presented in better context, the game industry will face a veritable legion of nitwits like Dave “Cash In On Columbine” Grossman and the Killology Research Group he’s founded to convince people that a mouse and keyboard are the perfect training tools for Charles Whitman wannabes.

They will have a legitimate beef this time, too, considering the evolving reality of game situations. Complaints about Doom and Quake conditioning kids for murder seemed pretty stupid a few years ago. Even those who didn’t know the difference between a Cacodemon and an Arachnotron knew that equating pixelly monsters to killing classmates was a real stretch. That won’t be the case if we have another Columbine in the near future, as CNN and the like will be showing game clips that look like news footage from real crimes. Good luck trying to gloss over that when Joe Lieberman readies his next entertainment censorship bill.