Saturday, April 16, 2011
Violence in Sports Video Games
Is this just me, or is there substantially less violence in "sports" video games when compared to all other types of video games? I cannot figure out why this is the case. All the time you see gruesome injuries in professional sports, but in video games there are never very bad injuries to the animated players. Usually when a player gets hurt in a video game, they are just momentarily shaken up and are slower to run up the court or field. There is so much gruesome violence in shooting games (obviously), hunting games, and even racing games. Do you guys think there is no seriously graphic violence in sports games because game creators are hesitant to inflict gross injuries to real athletes, albeit animated representations of them?
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True there may be less violence in sports games than in others on average. But there are exceptions. Ever played NFL Blitz for the N64? Seriously, whenever you tackled a player, it was like hitting them with a freight train. They sound effects were similar to those in Mortal Kombat, where every tackle would result in a grunt or cry from the victim. Truly a brutal game.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-M-T29WhT0
The trailer says it all: "No Refs, no rules, no mercy!"
Epic!
I loved the N64 version of NFL Blitz. It's the only football video game that I think is entertaining. The over the top nature of the violence and tackles were definitely the major part of the appeal for me. When NFL Blitz came out with updated versions on other systems, they lost the same kind of crazy violence that made the N64 version so entertaining. I think in the realm of video games there is no such thing as gratuitous violence.
ReplyDeleteI loved NFL Blitz as well because it was so over the top, it's kind of like professional wrestling in a lot of ways. However, I do agree that definitely most of the sports video games that exist nowadays seem to have a lack of violence. I think it's best that way, most sports aren't necessarily about violence, but skill and technique. Although, I did notice recently in NBA 2K11 that when a player gets injured, they're on the ground for like 20 minutes and overdramatize the injury.
ReplyDeleteSports video games try to be as realistic as possible. If you've ever played NHL 2k, you know that you can get into fights, just like actual NHL players do. In fifa you can slidetackle someone with great force and you see the victim roll along the ground as they do in real life. I think that video game creators actually want to make the violence in their sports games more like the actual kind of violence you witness in sports
ReplyDeleteSports games are an interesting aspect of the video game industry because we want the real thing but not to an extreme realistic degree. We want to be able to put Micheal Vick back into the game and do whatever we want with him. But with the new recent changes to video games like Madden have tried to make the games more realistic in the injury aspect of the game. See this video on the new game:
ReplyDeletehttp://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=6286127
However, although the fans want to see the real thing we don't want our star players hurt for a long period of time. I feel like some backlash will be felt from this installation into Madden and if we can't put a hurt player back into the game a lot of people will get upset...especially this guy: (Explicit language used in this video FYI)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1P0yfq2wDvU