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[family_guy]

GTA 5. I don't see how anyone could like that cast of characters. They kill for no reason plenty of times.

Spoiler

Like that one mission with the cellphone blowing up in the guys face. Was there really no other way to handle that?

 

[Xando]

MW2- no russian
I usually dont have any problems with violence in games but that level was just too much.

 

[BajiBoxer]

I play plenty of games where I find a part morally objectionable for some reason, but not too many that I could name which I dismiss outright for purely ethical reasons. Two off the top of my head would be Rapelay, and that Blackwater game.

 

[N30RYU]

Carmaggedon... Combos for killing ppl... Was a shock back in the day.

Also Soldier Of Fortune dismembrements with the shotgun were pretty shoking

 

[jimmyd]

I don't know the first game that done this, but it used to be that costumes were unlocked by beating the game or with cheat codes or such. Now you have no option but to just pay extra for it.
I may just be behind the time but never in a million years will I ever buy a costume. I don't even care about costumes or people who do buy them, I just find the practice morally objectionable.
(by the way this mainly applies to full priced console games, I feel the situation is different with mobile games, for better or worse)

 

[Uraizen]

The first I can remember is SCV's Dampierre being a Best Buy exclusive unlock key at launch.

 

[HP_Wuvcraft]

I feel like I'm going to get shit for this, but I never felt good about mowing down cops in the Payday series

Yeah. Manhunt was disgusting, but at least the core gameplay in that was not bank robbery and mass slaughter of law enforcement.

As far as I know Payday is not satire, either.

 

[pixlexic]

I am going to say the first scene in COD MW where you kill guys in their sleep.

That bothered me more than anything any gore filled game did.

 

[Monocle]

The airport massacre level in Modern Warfare 2 really put me off. That shit was distasteful.

In interviews the devs were all like "Lulz, we got a reaction. Mission accomplished." Pretty gross.

 

[HP_Wuvcraft]

Also:

Saints Row 3.

It got really, really repetitive to the point of disgusting and stupid how every single character basically was a mass murderer.

SR4 kind of washed that taste away because it was a video game that brutally made fun of video games.

 

[BibiMaghoo]

Yeah. Manhunt was disgusting, but at least the core gameplay in that was not bank robbery and mass slaughter of law enforcement.

As far as I know Payday is not satire, either.

I think the point is that in most levels, shooting anyone means you essentially failed. Some levels granted cannot be stealthed, but the aim of the game is to avoid combat through sneaking and preparation.

I mean really, this is kind of how real robberies would go in an ideal world. No one stealing from a bank wants to hurt anyone, because it dramatically increases the punishment if you are caught. Even holding a weapon while you do it does in most countries.

It is certainly a "play the bad guy" game, but I'd never really though about it in this way.

 

[PerZona]

Violence would be God Of War III, or just plainly the whole God Of War series. The way Kratos killed all everybody in the game is just too damn brutal. It didn't really bothered me and frankly speaking I enjoy it lol.

 

[petran79]

the intro of Personal Nightmare
A religious person would be deeply offended. It is too extreme even after so many years

Also the finnish game Damage sadistic butchering of humanity. Literal meaning!

 

[4444244]

Sort of. Not really but kind of. Violence and murder, while ostensibly the greatest of crimes, is contextualized in our culture in a large number of ways and is something inherent in almost all of us (we've all at least felt the urge to punch someone before). The Manhunt series is on the very edge of even "acceptable" violence which gives it some degree of artistic merit even if its also seemingly psychopathic. The difference might be that we're further along as a culture in recognizing violence and murder and so its safer to explore, whereas all of our baggage around sexual assault including how much difficulty we often has recognizing that its happened makes anything that seems like its providing the player with an indulgent experience of sexual assault more objectionable.

Jim Sterling had a pretty great episode on this general conflict

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/jimquisition/5972-Rape-vs-Murder

You and Jim raise very good points but I see the reason elsewhere. The act of rape is political in a sense that murder rarely is: a rapist disrespects the very fabric of our communal life (not just a maybe honorable man), a system heavily relying on honor by means of the exchange of "pristine" women; he not only devalues a commodity (her chastity) in maybe great demand, he gravely diminishes the overall pool everyone draws from; there's now almost nothing to be gained from having her/giving her. The intense actual mental and physical damage done to the victim is of comparatively little concern to people fervently asking for a rapist to be tortured, then lynched.

Things are much more subtle and/or sophisticated these days, but that line of thinking is still very present. People will much rather tolerate disrespect towards the male members of their family than towards the female members (just think of the popularity and effectiveness of mom jokes), but not because they think more highly of the latter, quite the opposite. If you call somebody's mother (or sister) a "whore", to take a drastic example, you raise the honor of the entire family (or its capital in the case of an unmarried sister) to question; the males and their honor are represented by their women (whom we narrowly watch showing chastity, raising the children, adorning the house and their husbands, covering their backs, caring for guests, easing discord, appealing for charity etc.). It might be another reason why promiscuous men are accepted while promiscuous women rarely are; if a woman is (seemingly) available to all, she can't be given/owned. And here the rapist figures in: he, too, treats women as available to all.

That's what we can't tolerate, the harm to our way of thinking, not that to the victim, that's mainly a rationalization. We aren't necessarily showing great insight into the complexities of ethics if rape seems worse to us than murder. We hardly differentiate between a rape victim and a women in control of her sexuality; they're valuable things. It's quite disturbing.

Thanks for the responses, I watched the clip and I see some distinction between a scenario where you play an soldier and you're fighting and killing, because others are fighting an killing you.

However, in games where you can indiscrminately kill or torture people who are innocent victims then that distinction does not play out.

There is a cultural bent to all this in the way that women are portrayed and treated in society as a whole, so therefore violence against women, particularly sexual violence is demonised, more so than against men. At the same time, women are still ridiculed, criticised and attacked for expressing themselves and acting against cultural norms. It's absolutely bizarre.

I still think that if you can murder in a game and maim indiscriminately, then pornographic content, and sexual violence (in theory), should be no more questionable a content to have.

 

[MC Safety]

Dead Space was pretty gratuitous in its lingering on ultra-violent scenes.

I don't mind violence, but there's definitely a difference between a violent game title and one that seems to revel in extended scenes of beheading, dismemberment, and gore. Dead Space went above and beyond in terms of its post-game death sequences. And at some point, I was definitely turned off.

 

[mambadragon]

Ground Zeroes

 

[inm8num2]

Postal felt very iffy when it came out. Had no interest in the game as it was too morbid for me.

Then years and years later I played it for about 2 minutes on Steam to get Playfire rewards. I guess my morals are worth about £0.40.

 

[Mman235]

Chuck Rock 2. No seriously.

There's a part where you come across a mother walking along with a few babies and, while she damages you, if you take her out the babies just sit there crying. Even playing that really young I thought that was pretty fucked up so I went out of my way to avoid killing her on replays. Here's the moment: http://youtu.be/V5-d11hZvj0?t=17m34s

 

[GavinUK86]

I find nothing in games 'morally objectionable' to be honest.

Obviously cut content and packaged as DLC really gets my goat though.

 

[Blairinks]

Pretty much any character in a David Cage or Peter Molyneux game. I liked Fable 1 and 2 but to call anyone in either of those games a character is a laughable.

And I think it's generally understood that David Cage consistently exhibits M. Night Shyamalan levels of understanding of humans in all his games, but his pretense of intellectualism really frustrates me. I feel a little sick when I see uninformed sources cite Beyond 2 Souls or Fahrenheit as examples of "Games as Art".

 

[beril]

In terms of business, Broken Age and any kickstarter by a famous developer. Leveraging nostalgia to get ordinary people with no experience of the risk and challenges of game development to fund your business venture without offering any financial reward and no accountability.

 

[EloKa]

I'll go with manhunt 1 / 2.

Propably the only game that I can totally agree with that it got confiscated in germany and never really hit our market here

 

[ZeroXcuses]

As a young black kid with zero black protagonists, I was not too pleased with GTA: SA being the "first" "representation of black people" that mainstream gaming would be exposed. Stereotypes everywhere.

I only played through the story of SA once as I 100% the game, so my memory is pretty cloudy. IDK how much they used the n-word, but there was enough of that and f-bombs to make me cringe and ask myself, as a college-aged individual, if I should be playing this game.

 

[Apt101]

I don't remember exactly why but there were parts of Legacy of Kain I remember not feeling comfortable with. God of War 3. Kratos was just a marauding murder by that point, plain and simple.

 

[spirity]

Space Invaders. There were no negotiations, no attempt at peace, just shooting the "invaders", over and over again. Brutal.

lf only you could talk to these creatures, then perhaps you could try and make friends with them, form alliances… Now, that would be interesting.

I wish Space Invaders had stealth elements and branching dialogue trees so I could talk my way out of situations and change the outcome of the game.

Please Bethesda, give Space Invaders to Obsidian next time.

 

[LurkerPrime]

Murdering pigeons in GTA4 for the sake of collectibles was gross. It was like the shadow twin of skulltula hunting in Ocarina of Time, only without the rewards along the way.

 

[superNESjoe]

As a young black kid with zero black protagonists, I was not too pleased with GTA: SA being the "first" "representation of black people" that mainstream gaming would be exposed. Stereotypes everywhere.

I only played through the story of SA once as I 100% the game, so my memory is pretty cloudy. IDK how much they used the n-word, but there was enough of that and f-bombs to make me cringe and ask myself, as a college-aged individual, if I should be playing this game.

I have games that offended me more, but I thought I would reply to say that I shared this feeling.

I was in high school at the time, I'm white but I grew up in a neighborhood that was primarily a mix of Black and Mexican families. It made me uncomfortable to play SA, always thinking how cartoonishly it portrayed people. It didn't help that I experienced a lot of racism so this felt like an extension of that. I didn't finish the game.

 

[Videospel]

MW2- no russian
I usually dont have any problems with violence in games but that level was just too much.

I just walked by that level without shooting, my hands and conscience are clean.

But after playing Postal 2 for the first time and beating someone to death with a shovel, I felt sick. They didn't die on the first hit, and not the second either. That gave me enough time to ask myself what the hell I was doing. After some time though, I was setting people on fire like it was nothing.

 

[TheBlueBomber]

Probably Dead Space and the artists looking at photos of car crash victims for inspiration.

Do you not watch horror movies either? Because a lot of makeup artists do this too

 

[Nemmy]

The first would probably Postal, I never played any of those games because I know they're not for me and that's it.
Playing God of War was the first time I felt that what I was doing in the game was morally objectionable and not in a fun, guilt-free way. I had good fun setting cities on fire in Fable, but deeply despised Kratos, not just for the goddamn "guy in a cage" scene.

Thanks for the responses, I watched the clip and I see some distinction between a scenario where you play an soldier and you're fighting and killing, because others are fighting an killing you.

However, in games where you can indiscrminately kill or torture people who are innocent victims then that distinction does not play out.

There is a cultural bent to all this in the way that women are portrayed and treated in society as a whole, so therefore violence against women, particularly sexual violence is demonised, more so than against men. At the same time, women are still ridiculed, criticised and attacked for expressing themselves and acting against cultural norms. It's absolutely bizarre.

I still think that if you can murder in a game and maim indiscriminately, then pornographic content, and sexual violence (in theory), should be no more questionable a content to have.

I kinda agree with you, in theory. In practice a thought of games like GTA allowing you to, for instance, rape random women with no repercussions other than usual makes me cringe. I honestly don't think we should go there.

 

[ZeroXcuses]

I have games that offended me more, but I thought I would reply to say that I shared this feeling.

I was in high school at the time, I'm white but I grew up in a neighborhood that was primarily a mix of Black and Mexican families. It made me uncomfortable to play SA, always thinking how cartoonishly it portrayed people. It didn't help that I experienced a lot of racism so this felt like an extension of that. I didn't finish the game.

Thanks. I appreciate your honesty.

 

[meltingparappa]

Moral outrage for a collection of pixels creating a poor simulacrum of a fictional reality?

What is this, viral marketing in the voice of the Dowager Countess for Downton Abbey?

 

[Alessandro]

I always found Ace Combat Horizon Assault propaganda hard to swallow. It still surprises me how everyone bashed CoD or Battlefield and yet no one said anything about HA.

 

[mclem]

Probably How to be a Complete Bastard on my ZX Spectrum, so around the late 80's. You had to fill your bastardometer by committing morally objectionable acts. Though you can go too far. You get arrested if you electrocute someone with a car battery.

Always fun: Go to the bedroom and reset the computer.

Didn't actually find it that objectionable, actually. I think for me, it and other offensive games are so established as fantasy or parody that I find it hard to get particularly riled by it.

So I think for me, where I start having difficulty is when things are a bit too close to reality. I'm not sure if it's quite the first game I'd take issue with, but one that springs to mind:

America's 10 Most Wanted

 

[King Tubby]

Besides those Japanese loli games, not much. Violence is generally a-okay in my games.

First and maybe only time I've felt empathy was Soldier of Fortune 2 after sneaking into that Latin American mansion through the roof, and cutting the throat of a main without thinking as she surprised me in the first room to keep her silent. She sort of looked blankly and gurgled for air out her throat, and it gave me pause in a way that I don't know if any other video game has. I play a lot of shooters and GTA since the PSX, and never really felt empathy -- or at least haunting empathy. I never feel the gameplay is actually objectionable. But in SOF2, whenever I replayed that area, I tried not to kill her again because I did feel I just personally rather not see her killed.

I wish more games did this. And not in a glorifying, "look at this feature!" fashion, but rather as dirty and horrifying as you made it sound.


Ever-so-slightly off-topic, I was thinking about morality systems in games and how they're pretty much always some extremely simplistic "Save the town or kill the children" dichotomy that only exists to add a modicum of replay value or alternate upgrade paths rather than actually explore moral quandaries. It occurred to me that one of the best morality systems in any game I've played wasn't really a morality system at all.

In Rome: Total War when you take a city you are given the option to Occupy, Enslave, or Exterminate the populace, each with their own respective pros and cons. I'm pretty heavily against slavery and genocide, but when I contemplated the choices I considered only the economic benefits of each option against each other. I never considered any moral implications, since of course all of the "people" involved in this calculus are not real, they are simply numbers. I tended to pick Enslave fairly often just because it seemed to benefit my empire as a whole, I picked Occupy on a case-by-case basis, while I almost never picked Exterminate because it felt like a waste - why would I kill so many potential slaves?

This is an effective morality system because the "morality" of your decisions in this game do not have any associated rewards or repercussions, just as in real-life. You have only the act itself, and its results, and your conscience, so-to-speak. Of course there was no toll on my conscience, because I don't consider numerical representations to be on the same level as actual people. Those who commit grave atrocities tend to consider their victims as subhuman. It gives me some pause.

 

[Currygan]

probably Soldier of Fortune 2

that shit was unbearable at times

 

[maxcriden]

In terms of business, Broken Age and any kickstarter by a famous developer. Leveraging nostalgia to get ordinary people with no experience of the risk and challenges of game development to fund your business venture without offering any financial reward and no accountability.

Wow, that is interesting. I'm saying that sincerely, I haven't encountered this POV before, especially from a developer. Your own games definitely appear to tap into some types of nostalgia too (GMC is in my backlog, I'm really looking forward to playing it); are you opposed to KS in general?

 

[Videospel]

probably Soldier of Fortune 2

that shit was unbearable at times

Why? Is it worse to shoot someone in the head if it explodes than if it would just leave a red mark? The act of shooting someone in the head is still the same.
Unless you're talking about killing innocents or something, but I remember nothing like that from the game.

 

[beril]

Wow, that is interesting. I'm saying that sincerely, I haven't encountered this POV before, especially from a developer. Your own games definitely appear to tap into some types of nostalgia too (GMC is in my backlog, I'm really looking forward to playing it); are you opposed to KS in general?

I've been ranting about Kickstarter quite a lot, though there's a bit too many talented developers using it these days for me to really speak out against it completely.

I didn't mean to say there's anything wrong with nostalgia pandering in general, though not the most noble quality of game design, and I'm definitely guilty of it myself. But my games are fully self funded and I'm not asking anyone for money until the games are readily available to be judged on their own their own merit, and not just vague promises and warm fuzzy talk about community and evil publishers. Though I should also clarify that I don't necessarily think Tim Shafer, Moleneux, Inafune and the others are just cynical moneygrabbers, but whether it's sincere or not I still think it's morally dubious and often very manipulative.

 

[Talyn]

I think the point is that in most levels, shooting anyone means you essentially failed. Some levels granted cannot be stealthed, but the aim of the game is to avoid combat through sneaking and preparation.

I mean really, this is kind of how real robberies would go in an ideal world. No one stealing from a bank wants to hurt anyone, because it dramatically increases the punishment if you are caught. Even holding a weapon while you do it does in most countries.

It is certainly a "play the bad guy" game, but I'd never really though about it in this way.

Stealth is a bigger factor in Payday 2 than in the original. In the original only a few heists allowed for it and even then you were going to end up facing waves of cops at some point. I mean it's basically Left 4 Dead with cops instead of zombies really.

As for the morality of it all, it's basically like in Reservoir Dogs. They had no problem shooting cops, just as the cops had no problem shooting them; they drew the line at civilians, considering them to be the "real" people. That's how it is in Payday, you get punished for shooting civilians because it's completely unnecessary and unprofessional. The characters think of themselves as thieves, not psychopaths gunning down innocent civilians. I never had a problem with it, indeed I used to play co-op with a woman that wanted to be a cop IRL, she also had no problem gunning down hundreds of them. I always did find that amusing.

 

[maxcriden]

I've been ranting about Kickstarter quite a lot, though there's a bit too many talented developers using it these days for me to really speak out against it completely.

I didn't mean to say there's anything wrong with nostalgia pandering in general, though not the most noble quality of game design, and I'm definitely guilty of it myself. But my games are fully self funded and I'm not asking anyone for money until the games are readily available to be judged on their own their own merit, and not just vague promises and warm fuzzy talk about community and evil publishers. Though I should also clarify that I don't necessarily think Tim Shafer, Moleneux, Inafune and the others are just cynical moneygrabbers, but whether it's sincere or not I still think it's morally dubious and often very manipulative.

I really appreciate your thoughtful reply, thank you. I think you're hitting on something important that's really only going to be borne out by the long-term successes and failures of KS and what people end up thinking about the games it produces. I can definitely see your point, though; there is something manipulative about asking consumers to become patrons on the promise of something that's going to tap into their sense of nostalgic, and clearly materially different from asking them to consider purchasing a complete product as a consumer.