Some time ago I came across a quote from maybe Huxley or Orwell saying, in effect, that as modern society advances it will become necessary to find a nondestructive means to express the impulse to violence that is a fundamental part of human nature. Maybe I've got it wrong, but it seems that things like video games and paintball serve that function.

I've looked several times for that quote. Not sure who it was from, but there seems to be some wisdom in it.

I don't know about that. I play many games, including violent ones, and I don't really think the appeal is associated with some sort of a natural bloodthirst. I think the #1 reason for large amounts of violence in video games is because a violent conflict is much easier to make a narrative and game mechanics about, and a lot of fun activities are associated with previously violent pursuits, but I believe it exists in a completely different sphere from real life violence and doesn't really connect.

It's similar to how one may find archery fun, and archery was designed to kill people, but people don't find archery fun because they want to kill people, they just find it fun to shoot arrows and that gaining of fun probably was designed to make people better at violence but there's no actual direct connection.

On the other hand, the gaming situations where I have seen the negative aspects of nature come out were games that layered social aspects on top. MMORPG's, especially ones like DayZ, and, at worst, competitive games like League of Legends. When a single player game gets bad, like Doom or Nox, it gets bad over the multiplayer aspect. That's where all the nasty stuff really comes out, and it's not the art or the violence in the design of the game itself causing it, but the socializing aspect, power imbalances, etc. Meanwhile, people are cooperating pretty well in games like KSP or Minecraft as long as you avoid PvP servers, and even in the really dark, violent games like Dark Souls, again, as long as you stay away from PvP.

Human violence instincts seem to come out in situations that simulate social pressures, such as those where there is evaluation, power imbalance, and competitions. Single player games, no matter how much blood is falling on the floor, don't seem to do that to their communities as long as PvP is not involved.

There's a good case to be made that a significant factor is the association of masculinity with violence in American culture, which explains why men commit significantly more violence than women (and also explains some of the success of violent video games). From this perspective, much of our fascination with and performance of violence is far from inevitable.

If we're blaming culture for male violence, "animal culture" would seem the more fitting one, since violent males are a feature throughout the animal kingdom and exceptions are, well, the exception. American culture is not much different from iguana culture or toucan culture in this respect.

Yeah, there are definitely a lot of similarities between humans and other animals in that respect, but that's the problem. It should worry us that humans, an animal capable of resolving conflicts in many different ways, chooses violence so often.

To put it another way, if throwing feces was common behavior among humans, you might say "this isn't a human problem, it's a primate problem." And you'd be right, in a sense. But the key point is that throwing feces (as well as violence) is more easily avoided behavior for humans than for chimps. A human might choose to yell to express a level of anger than chimps only express with feces throwing (I might be uninformed about the feces-throwing behaviors of chimps, but you get the point). When we fail to take advantage of opportunities to avoid violence, we should ask ourselves why.

My question is if we are going astray looking for a "human" solution to what is ultimately an "animal" behavior. :)

That is, I agree it is not an excuse to say "animals do it." But, it is also somewhat askew to me to have a barrier to our explanations that do not involve "humans are just animals."

There's violence and there is violence. While I can enjoy an action movie or an UFC match, watching images from the Holocaust still makes me sick.

It's a gradient: Fake violence like movies and WWE, "consensual" violence like MMA, and non-consensual violence like atrocities.

I wouldn't be surprised if, except for cases of extreme violence, if video games (especially, much more than TV since the audience takes part in the action) and the like serve to pacify their audience in the long run. Perhaps a pacifistic steady-state solution to human nature doesn't involve denying this part of human nature, but indulging it in such harmless ways?