It doesn't sound like drivel to me. I've had more or less the same experience. The video was passed around the office a few years back, and it showed a policeman in Iraq approach a suspicious suitcase, attempt to open it only to get blown up. The explosion, his body bouncing around and the reactions of the crowd made me feel the same as you: phsyically nauseous. Most of my colleagues (all non-gamers) were full of how silly he was to even go near the suitcase, but that for me was missing the point. Someone just died and dozens of people got injured. There is nothing entertaining in that.

So, Legion, I wholeheartedly support your conclusion. Video game violence is nothing like, and does not desensitize to, the real thing. Thanks for a well-written post.

I'd like to point to this BBFC study - one of the conclusions: there probably is a stronger disconnect between violence shown in games compared to violence shown in TV/games, partially even because of their interactive nature. Players tend to perceive it as something more abstract that way.

I don't think you can describe that feeling accurately to someone who's never had that experience before. I know how you feel too, and I think I'm a bit more sensitive than most people when it comes to that.

I can go into a game and hack someone apart viciously. I can shoot someone in the head and not care. I can bathe in their blood, while taunting more enemies to follow them to the grave... It doesn't bother me in the slightest.

I can't watch gory movies, because they bother me to the point where I won't be able to sleep. I can get through Saw, but I didn't make it through Saw II. I didn't get far into that new Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie, because I thought I was going to throw up.

The difference (in my opinion), is our perception of the scene. For me, I like a movie that can allow me to ignore the fact that it's not real, no matter how unreal the fantasy world is. So a particularly violent scene will affect me nearly as much as it would if it actually happened (I'm assuming I'd be affected in the same manner, just far worse, if it were real).

With video games... I just can't ignore the fact that it's a computer simulation. The interactivity is the key. You're brain isn't thinking about how real it is, how much pain something would cause, or "what if that was me?"... it's trying to determine what the computer will do. Not "what will that guy do?", because the guy is just another part of the program you're trying to defeat. Your brain, while it may differentiate between types of characters (this guy is a melee, this guy shoots, this guy's a boss), still views all of them as a part of the game you're trying to get through.

Growing up next to Cleveland i was exposed to real violence then after moving down here to the south and be exposed to farm life where there's another type of violence but still very real. None of those things have been remotely close to being emulated in a game.

The closest a game comes to real life is in tatics. I've played competitive paintball in my younger days and over 1/2 our team was ex military so we were taught how to move more like a military unit. In some games it works to apply the same ideas but beyond that after you click on your mouse or pull the controller trigger is nothing more than shooting electronic paint. Not a real bullet.

Haven't seen a real murder before and I never want to. I have a very definite line between fantasy and reality. Closest I've seen was a video of a gun suicide they showed us in my EMT class to get across the point of safety and taking everything into account. And it was cops who failed to take proper safety precautions in that case. The scariest thing was how casual the guy was about it, and that he could've just as easily killed one or more of the cops instead of himself.

Highly disturbing, and yes, it made me feel ill.

Legion, even reading that small quote about the reporter's death made me incredibly sad, whereas the blood thrown about in Gears makes me giggle. I really don't have any interests in guns outside of video games and think we could do a lot better if there were stronger gun laws and enforcement of those laws. But, I still love me a shooter.

I completely agree with you on this, with the emphasis on the *sane* gamer making that distinction...but should that also include mature? I honestly don't know if some teenagers would have the same reactions we do. I'm not trying to suggest they are less able to make the distinction but am treating it as an open question.

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Honestly, no. Nothing is born out of a vacuum, and I think that the current climate of blaming games for all the evil in the world influenced Legion to write his post. Note the obvious disclaimer: I do not speak for Legion, nor do I pretend to. I just made an educated guess about his reasons for writing. If I am wrong, feel free to point your finger in a smug manner.

Cleveland!! That's what has been missing in this thread all along!

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We're desensitized by the media in general. As time has moved on it keeps getting more and more pervasive.

It's taken me a while for me to think how i'll respond to this post.

While i think that i am completely desensitised to certain types of violence (mainly slapstick and removed violence - i.e. behind a screen), violence and violent actions in the real world are completely different. The situations and adrenaline levels are different, the emotions and reasons are different. There is no comparison beyond some sort of hypothetical model.

Let me put it this way: I felt more shock, fear and despair watching a cat almost get run over two nights ago than i ever have at any violence in a game. There is no emotional attachment to the moment.
I can casually head-shot enemy after enemy without raising my pulse - just as i can play through a semi-difficult song without worrying and raising my pulse or pass a test on a certain subject.... i'm used to it. But if i see a woman about to be hit by some guy or i feel there might be an edge of uncertainty between playfulness and harm between people i feel my chest tighten and adrenaline pump through my veins.

On the opposite side of the fence i have felt positive emotions when engaging in the characters/plot of games - just like i do when i experience pride for a friend who receives a reward for coming top in maths in the region... or when he got married last weekend.

I have felt regret and sadness for characters within a game when they failed to keep someone they cared about alive etc....

But i reiterate, i've never been driven to anger from frustration or the knowledge of unfairness of a character's plight in a game to date. I've only experienced those two emotions from the angle of "the gameplay".
I've had books that i've had to put down, movies i've had to stop watching.... but never a game and i think that the pure emotional level of violence can never be recreated as perfectly as it is in acting and in the mind's eye when it's in game form. Maybe i'll be proven wrong but it'd take one heck of a game...

I don't like slasher films or "torture porn". Even the descriptions of the real murders/deaths posted in this thread make me a bit queasy. So yeah, the cries of "desensitization" ring pretty hollow to me too.

I think it depends on the context as well. Watching an innocent, for lack of a better term, get murdered would I think invoke disgust in most anyone. However, I remember watching some french language CBC about three or four years ago... quebecois journalists are insane by the way, the 'imbedded' themselves with the insurgency... of an Iraqi fighter popping his head out to shoot an rpg at a tank. He gets just utterly smoked by a machine gun and the first thing that comes to my mind is "so much for his jihad" and I smile a little. Not much, but enough to make me think that in some contexts I really don't appreciate human life the way I used to. Was he asking for it? Yes, he was I guess, but he still had a family, he loved to be alive, we all do and that was taken from him. Really shook me a few minutes later when I realized that the first reaction this human beings murder invoked in me was laughter.

I don't want to be that way and I have no idea what got me there.

Not to run off into p&c territory, but I believe that war is murder. I'm not going to move from that, ever. I don't feel it does humanity any service to get euphemistic with the willful and violent ending of a person's life in malice. It's why it struck me so hard, that I actually laughed at it, not maniacally or whatever but more 'haha... holy f*ck, that had to hurt'. I wonder and worry about what got me to that point.