1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF JANUARY 28 | VIOLENCE & PACIFISM
Pulled Punches: Why Most Violence Lacks Impact
Cover Story: Few games have the ability to deliver mature content in a meaningful and memorable way.
D
oes video game violence have any effect on the real world, beyond inspiring never-ending debates about its impact? Some people certainly think so. They fear that combat is portrayed so convincingly and in such a thrilling way that it spills over into actual bloodlust. I disagree with that point of view, not because I think it's unfair to video games but because it gives them entirely too much credit. Most violence is unable to muster any real impact at all.
The truth is, we tend to feel about as much empathy for the characters in games as a chess player might feel for a rook. It's not because we are sociopaths, inundated with brutality for so long that we have become desensitized. It's because people in games are rarely presented as anything more than one dimensional expressions of gameplay. They are artificial objects that help or hinder our progress, and we are all too aware of it.
Up until the end, you would've sworn that I was a ghost. The way that I moved through the streets of Benghazi and London made my Sam Fisher seem like little more than a wisp of smoke. I was neither seen nor heard; the perfect Milford Man. When I did find a guard that I needed to go through, I used my own agility and momentum to knock them out, quickly hid the bodies, and continued on with my mission. I chose to never raise my firearm, and though certain scenarios could've been easily passed with a well-placed bullet, that's not how my Sam conducted his business.
That's what 95% of my time with Splinter Cell: Blacklist was like, and I was really impressed with how the game handled the concepts of stealth, motion, and non-violence in a technical and narrative way. Sadly, the other 5% of my demo stripped away my decision to play as a non-lethal ghost, and forced me to engage in a shootout that went against everything I'd loved about the game up until that point. It was a clumsy final beat in a mission that felt removed from the rest of the level -- a checkmark on some arbitrary list of what a AAA game in 2013 needs to include. While it certainly didn't ruin my experience with the game, that forced section left a bad final taste in my mouth.
Oftentimes the approach developers take when designing a game in an established genre involves adding layers of complexity in the hopes it will add up to a game with depth. What we don't see as frequently is a developer that comes at things from a much different angle, paring back at the excess, and in the process, delivering a more streamlined, yet still deep, game. That is exactly what 17-Bit have come up with in Skulls of the Shogun, and although that notion may be objectionable to diehard strategy game fans who want their games to be anything but approachable, Shogun manages to provide a highly enjoyable game that it just so happens almost anyone can play without hours of practice.
1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF JANUARY 28 | VIOLENCE & PACIFISM
A Farewell to Arms: Games That Grew Less Violent Over Time
Cover Story: Taking a look at series that stepped back from delivering graphic content.
W
e've looked at how the passage of time and the advancement of technology has seen once-simple, less-violent games become significantly and shockingly more so. However, though many series give way to the siren's song of death and destruction on a grander scale, not every series has followed suit. And in some cases, series we've looked at before have even done an about-face to varying reactions from their audiences.
One of the more obvious candidates would have to be Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe. Though a one-off crossover, few will deny that the legacy of the Mortal Kombat franchise was built atop blood and acts so violent that over time, they've managed to cross over into being absurdly farcical in nature. But when you throw the DC Universe into the mix, things apparently change. Despite the fact that the comics themselves-- the very root of the characters and their world-- feature blood, murder, and rape to such a degree that their very fans sometimes think they're going too far, the series which gave rise to the term "Fatality" as a part of popular culture was a little too extreme for the suits at Warner Bros., who at the time was still a separate company from the still-existing Mortal Kombat franchise holder Midway.
Following rumors that began to circulate yesterday, the news was made official today: Junction Point Studios is the latest game development studio to be shut down. While far from outright shocking, considering the moves its parent company had made in recent years, this does call attention to how quickly things can go south for a developer, even one with a name like Warren Spector at the helm.
Spector, who is best known for his earlier work on games like System Shock and Deus Ex, founded the studio in 2005. It was acquired in 2007, joining the likes of Propaganda Games under the Disney Interactive Studios label. It was responsible for the release of two games: Epic Mickey in 2010 and Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two just last year. The former was a fairly well-received game that sold 1.3 million units in the U.S. during its first month of availability, according to NPD Group numbers reported by the L.A. Times. That was a solid figure for a third-party Wii game released at that point in time. Its flawed sequel, despite being available on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Wii U, in addition to Wii, sold a small fraction of that, moving only 270,000 units in a similar window. Update:Joystiq reports the game ended up selling 529,000 units in the U.S. during November and December, though keep in mind the game was heavily discounted during and after Black Friday.
1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF JANUARY 28 | VIOLENCE & PACIFISM
Natural Born Killers: Games That Grew More Violent Over Time
Cover Story: A look at series that became increasingly more graphic throughout the years.
W
hen it comes to violence and how it is perceived, particularly across different media, there are essentially two parts: Actions and reactions.
Take, for example, the idea of a person and a boulder. Let's say that for whatever reason, the person attacks the boulder. While the attack itself might be considered a violent action, the boulder's ability to withstand the assault decreases the overall sense of violence to one witnessing it. Even if the boulder were to crack and crumble, what has transpired would likely be considered by few to be a violent act.
games with essentially the same actions performed by the player both then and now have grown to display more violent reactions in the more modern context
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games with essentially the same actions performed by the player both then and now have grown to display more violent reactions in the more modern context 
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