It seems my main points may have been poorly expressed in the end, so I’ll restate them very briefly: Our society (the world in general) has developed to remove the common person from all of the violence that is inherent with primitive existence. A result of this is that we love fictional representations of harsher lifestyles: blood, guts, gore, death, violence, all that fun stuff!

This is not a generalization that all of us are repressed ultra-violence addicts and are about to explode someday (though a few undoubtedly are) it is just an examination of WHY we have come to create videogames which so strongly feature violence, and WHY they are so incredibly popular. I hope I have made my ideas a bit more clear now.

Your point about us craving violence because we have been robbed of it is a bit ridiculous. There are plenty of people who go through life (in developed countries) with minimal conflict. I find it very unlikely a relatively peaceful society breeds repressed tinderboxes. You make the peace sound like a bad thing. Much can be learned about man by looking at him as an animal but much more can be learned when you look at him as an animal and something much more.

Not sure I made that last point very well but just the idea that a lack of violent outlets is creating violent people just doesn’t make any sense.

I don’t believe “desensitizing” is a medical phoenomenon. I don’t think a random 4 year old watching Hostel will think “Well, that’s all ok then, is it?” BIG HOWEVER- it’s all in context. If the parents have raised said 4 year old to accept violence as ok, it’ll probably fill in some gaps for them (very bad.) And if instead the parents have said that violence is wrong, the child will probably have a pretty strong reaction to it that could cause some damage. For me, it’s all about the environment in which you were raised, and genetics (which have a pretty big role but are much harder to pinpoint.)

(Disclaimer: I have not seen Hostel, but I would be surprised if it goes miles farther than anything else I’ve ever seen.)

All that said, I am not against censorship in every form. But I think the people making the decisions are making faulty conclusions based on flawed science and traditions. It all comes together to place unfair limits on creative expression, which I have big problems with.

As many of you know, I grew up attending science fiction conventions, which led to early exposure to a variety of normally tabooed subjects like nudity, sex, violence, and alternative lifestyles… so I tend to have a less of a problem with such things and think that anyone could be the same.

And I turned out fine, right guys? Guys?

There are, right now, tons of people around you who feel deep inside themselves that censorship of ANY kind is wrong, what do you think of that? At that point I feel the desensitizing exists, if a 4 year old child were allowed to watch Hostel, it could cause irrepairible damage.

Ultra-violence and other ‘extreme’ issues (pornography I suppose) are really a “I know it when I see it*” issue. The problem is that a democracy of our size is really poorly equipped handle thousands of these kind of decisions a year.

* - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potter_Stewart

And I bet they did a sketch of killing someone with a bowling ball too, but I didn’t hear anything about that…

The Game:  It is less of a person to person concept then a humanity as a whole thing.  We create movies and videogames, and as consumers eat them up, because in general we are removed from the kinds of acts that I listed.   Even for one like DesertDwarf/Drackmire who is in the army, he is exposed to these kinds of things on a far different level then a group of people who has to hunt and kill their own food every single day, or fight for their own survival their entire lives against the weather, animals, and natural threats.  Oddly enough natural disasters are one of the few things that still have a huge impact on humanity even through all of our sophistication.  Perhaps they are the great equalizer that balances out life as it should be, or maybe we’re just not quite sophisticated enough!  Who’s to say?

This is a pretty complicated issue, that I feel that most people who make our laws and regulate are very out of touch with. It has become a political “moral” issue with, unfortunatly, politicians on both sides of the aisle.

One interesting article from Slashdot lately:
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/07/27/1728251
which links to article that talks about an ESRB study that showed Pacman was “64% violent.”

Also a piece on the Daily Show that shows how out of touch Congress is (though admittedly, the Daily Show has a certain slant):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LenbSKbn-U

I’m not sure I’d say that we crave simulated blood & gore because we’re missing it in real life (We know of at least one real-life Soldier who loves shooting Orcs with a Blunderbuss!) but we do crave Escapism, especially ones that can provide an adreniline response. I think “desensitizing” is a myth, and I’d much rather people use games to escape then do something in real life. I think the people who act out violently don’t do it because of video games, but because they were violent in the first place, and so sought out violent games.

Unfortunately, “sick” (for whatever definition you want to apply to that) people do many of the things that “normal” (ibid) people do, including playing video games. Harris and Kliebold also liked to bowl, but it got narry a nod from the press. Go figure. I’m not sure I agree with your conclusion, but I do agree that we as a “civilized” people are too coddled and protected, insulated from those oh-so harmful things like sex and violence.