A couple of days ago, I had the honor of being a guest on the official podcast of the unofficial "Gears of War" fansite GearHeadsOfWar.com. The site's Nick Wangler and Tyler Bleszinski (brother of you-know-who) kindly re-dubbed the show the "Totilocast" as they brought me on to talk about E3.
But we took an unexpected turn and wound up talking about what's good about video game violence.
Yes, what's good about video game violence.
The guys had been asking me what I thought about the new law passed in New York State that will require ratings labels on video games (yes, such labels already are on games, which makes the law a bit odd).
The context of the question they were asking me was that gamers often despair of these laws as a sign that the world at large does not relate to their hobby. My take is that gamers can fight this by getting more comfortable talking about what they like about games and why they like the stuff that's in what we play.
Why is chainsawing a guy in a game fun? How can we explain our penchant for these kinds of actions to people who don't play? Do we enjoy some of this stuff just because it's all pixels and polygons on a screen or despite that?
None of this has to be explained, but I'm pretty certain that most gamers have never even tried in ways that honestly and openly express how we truly feel about the violent moments in video games.
The podcast conversation went really well, I think. So has the comments discussion on the GearheadsOfWar site. Please do check the podcast out. You can find the "Totilocast" here on GearheadsOfWar.com.
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