Re:Why I'll never work on First-Person Shooters again
by nikster on Saturday April 20, 2013 @10:17PM
(#5583614)
I forgot to say - the violence we commit on others affects us just as much as them, the perpetrator is as much a victim as the victim.
I recently read the story of the most efficient sniper in the US military, a man who killed well over 200 people in various US wars around the world. Who shot and killed two armed would be carjackers in Texas in a way that would be fit for a dirty harry movie (shot them with his back turned to them). The cycle was complete when he was himself shot and killed while taking friends shooting. Could it ever have ended another way?
But most of these cycles are much longer, spanning generations.
Games and movies are merely ways of processing these real world events - all violence begets violence. Those kids we blow up today with drones, one of their brothers, sisters, or even just friends will eventually come back to us. For example, to senselessly kill innocent people at a marathon.
Boston bombings are a good example - the chechen war / rebellion was a bloodbath, fought ruthlessly and largely off the cameras. It just came back to us.
Violence begets violence, throughout the history of humanity. Its up to us to stop the cycle. We cant do much about conflicts in faraway countries - except maybe to stay out of them. But we can do things we are directly responsible for - CIA operations come to mind, and of course the drone war.