Oddly enough, one game that hit me hard with the violence in it was Pikmin. Simple and cute, you can't help but learn to love and nurture your little underlings, but as the game progressed it became tougher to overcome challenges and before long you started having to plan on sacrificing percentages of your Pikmin just so you could achieve your goal. The first Pikmin death (with a beautifully haunting wail) hit me pretty hard. I never fully got comfortable with their sacrifices and felt every death fairly strongly.

This is of course fairly different than something like your average game where death isn't permanent or particularly impactful, especially when killing nameless/faceless opponents.

I was too young to "appreciate" the gruesomeness of Pikmin when I played it, but your post got me thinking if it was intentional. For anyone interested, I found an interview that covers the topic right at the beginning: http://www.gonintendo.com/s/208519-miyamoto-on-pikmin-3-and-...

In Kerbal Space Program, I have launched rescue mission to save stranded Kerbals that took several hours of planning and flying. Anytime an engine breaks off a lander or a ship runs out of fuel, I feel compelled to send a robotic rescue mission to bring them back home (even though they won't die when merely stranded).

I'm not sure what about the game creates that feeling, but I think the game is much better because of it. Some of my best moments in the game were during rescue missions (one time I had a lander on the Mun with no docking ports and only enough fuel for a short sub-orbital hop; I managed to rendezvous with the lander mid-hop, then EVA the kerbal into the rescue craft.)

haha, I've never thought about it that way when I played it, but it does seem especially heartless since you have no choice but to let some of them die occasionally, after you raised them to help you.

> "it's actually about scoring points"

Right -- you can replace all of the humans with mechs, and the ak-47 with some sort of power-sapping stun beam (that disables, rather than destroying, the mech) and many AAA games would play just as well.

There are people who seem to really like "ultra-realistic" gore instead of exploding robots or de-summoned cartoons, but that doesn't change the fundamental basis: most AAA games are about scoring hits against hitpoints, not really about violence.

> Right -- you can replace all of the humans with mechs, and the ak-47 with some sort of power-sapping stun beam (that disables, rather than destroying, the mech) and many AAA games would play just as well.

Or with paint! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splatoon)

Most likely because the average person doesn't want to explore violence that way. I love some FPS games, but not because they are violent. I like how fast-paced and strategic they are.

The same goes for movies. Most people will watch movies with some violence, but movies like Saw don't have mainstream appeal.

Sounds like something an Indie game could achieve. But even in mainstream titles, I think violence could be explored, as long as it's not the main theme. Many TV shows lately have violent scenes that go beyond mindless splatter. I think the torturing scene in GTA V went into the right direction, but it's just not there yet. In TV shows, such devices are usually used for character development, to mark major plot changes or to emphasize the setting the show plays in. Those scenes revolve around who, how, where when and why in regard to violence. And I would love to see that applied to games as well.

I think the video game that actually has something to say about violence is "Spec Ops The Line."