After reading some more the material provided by the various links, it appeared that violence is another issue imported in video gaming by players who push story above all.
No links make an analysis from a gameplay perspective. All do their analysis with story in mind. It is all about story. How to make violence more engaging from a story perspective.
It reminds of that other thread that reported a lack of female PCs, or stereotypical females depicted in video games.
It was just another issue imported by players who push story above all.
From a gameplay perspective, the look of an avatar does not matter much. But for players who want story, who want to immerse, to feel involved, to engage, the association to the avatar matters most. The incapacity of players who want story to relate with a female avatar, an ageing avatar, a black avatar is what brings in the lack of those types.
It all starts from the demand that games should be about story first. In story, representations are everything. In a game, they are nothing as game mechanics dominate.
Same goes for violence. How to represent violence in a way that engages the player more.
That extract tells it all:
Violence in film, literature or on stage can either be meaningful or meaningless. When it is meaningful, it resonates with the audience; when it is meaningless, it is largely (and rightly) derided. Consider the death of Shakespeare's Hamlet following a duel, or of Sonny Corleone in The Godfather, or of Evelyn Mulwray at the end of Chinatown, versus, say, the nameless mooks mown down in Rambo II or Commando or Hard Boiled. The killing by the protagonist of those without identity devalues human life in the work, and thereby robs the violence of meaning (it being perpetrated upon human forms with no value.)
And so a metric for games comes to mind: violence performed by the player in a video game is only legitimate if the victim is a unique and specific individual.
The metric becomes a constraint on content: don't remove the violence— remove the faceless masses of "enemies."
It starts with observations made on books, movies and plays to distinguish between meaningful/meaningless violence.Then makes a wanted smooth transition to games.
But on what ground should games be treated the same as movies, books or plays? Only if you take the perspective that games should be about story first. Movies, books, plays serves one primary purpose: delivering a story to an audience. When games are given the same purpose, at the exclusion of their native, natural purpose that is gameplay, then the transition is made smoothly.
Nowhere the question of gameplay is analysed. The various authors dont want to examine the possible balance that could exist between swarms of enemies and that big one enemy, how the mechanic of numbers can be exploited to serve a better gameplay.
The final point is that the various authors hide their purpose behind some kind of denouciation of violence. Any violence that goes against that demand degrades the quality of the story delivery. Then make it more personal. But the closer they bring the player to the avatar, the closer they associate the player to the avatar, the easier the transfer of violence from the virtual world of video games to the
real world.
As players keep pushing for story first, with story being about representations, the more the issues attached to representations are going to invade video gaming.
Issues of discrimination, prejudices, violence etc are going to swarm into the gaming industry.
Under the imperium of players wishing for story, the archetype of avatars is going to be that young white male character as it is the one by players to associate closely. When other types are tried, they are going to be loaded up with stereotypes so that the system of representations required by players who want story and the quality of delivery going with it is preserved.