Violence in Gaming

Parents Got it Wrong from the Start

Violence in gaming has been a hot button topic for literally decades, one that’s only managed to get worse as graphics have improved and new systems have come out. Unlike the original NES, where one might only expect to see pixel explosions or maybe a Goomba get knocked off the screen by a fireball, modern gamers see blood spatters, severed limbs, and all manner of gore…and protests come attached by the millions, literally.

Punch in “Protests against violent games” on Google, and a grand total of 35,600,000 results pop up. Parents have always been the chief proponents of this movement, but it seems their beliefs are spreading to younger generations, who’re now raising their kids with the same views from the 90s, when the initial screaming matches came out. Amazingly, the greatest magnet for protest, one that’s never stopped being controversial, is the title that’s been a rallying cry for parents since that time- period: Mortal Kombat. Blood spatters, brutal fatalities, and evolving finishing methods (babalities, friendships, and the short-lived animalities and brutalities of MK3/Ultimate MK3), after almost 30 years this franchise still has people screaming bloody murder. Even Game Informer magazine said this is one of two franchises (the other being Sniper Elite) that’s always managed to make people wince.

It’s easy to understand the reason for concern with the bloody content…but what’s not so easy to understand is why parents were so flabbergasted by it in the first place. None of the material was new to audiences, especially after going through the violent gore-fests of the 80s. In fact, there wasn’t a single inappropriate element to this franchise that hadn’t been seen several times before; basically, it was all “been there, done that.” Think that’s wrong? Let’s go through each bit of the original Mortal Kombat’s objectionable material:

-Showers of blood: Blood splatters throughout the title, from great hits to the legendary fatalities…and it’d all been seen in large quantities well before: the sheer volume of blood in John Carpenter’s The Thing was legendary; some of the Dracula movies of the late Christopher Lee are hardly clean material, such as Brides of Dracula; and, of course, the slasher films of the 80s, like Friday the 13^th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Halloween are hardly bloodless—the original film in the former of those three had particularly nasty kill scene with Kevin Bacon getting stabbed through the throat.

-Kano’s fatality: Let’s lead off with the most gruesome kill scene of the game—Kano ripping out his foe’s heart. Bloody, nasty…and been there, done that: in The Terminator,  Schwarzenegger kills a punk in the beginning to get his clothes; Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom’s most infamous scene has an evil priest performing a grotesque human sacrifice after ripping a victim’s heart out; and look at Predator 2, where voodoo gang members execute a Columbian cocaine distributor by cutting his heart out.

-Raiden’s fatality: Next, the legendary deity electrocutes his opponent—yawn. This has been around forever: in Oliver & Company (a kids’ movie, ironically), villain Sikes’ two dogs, Roscoe and DeSoto, fall onto the NYC subway tracks and are fried; Howard the Duck featured an evil villain getting electrocuted in the film’s climax; in Tim Burton’s Batman, Jack Nicholson’s Joker kills an associate by electrocuting him with a hand buzzer; Batman Returns did the same thing with Catwoman killing Christopher Walken with a taser; and in Rapid Fire, where Donnie Yen’s evil villain is shocked by his two hooks falling onto subway tracks.

-Liu Kang’s fatality: The champ uppercuts his enemy up high, and they fall to their death. Womp, womp. This has happened to Disney animated villains literally since the beginning: Snow White’s Evil Queen is standing on a ledge, trying to knock a boulder onto the dwarves when lightning strikes the ledge, dropping her off the cliff…and then the boulder falls after her; The Great Mouse Detective’s Ratigan, in the last battle, falls off Big Ben into the Thames; The Rescuers Down Under poacher Macleach washes off a waterfall; and Beauty and the Beast villain Gaston falls off the Beast’s castle after stabbing him in the back.

-Scorpion’s fatality: He burns his enemy alive—been there, done that: this happened in The Passion of Joan of Arc, with her martyrdom; Terminator 2 had this happening to Sarah Connor in a nightmare scene of a nuke hitting Los Angeles; the vigilante franchise known as The Exterminator has a Vietnam vet who fries people with a flame thrower; and the same human sacrifice from Temple of Doom had the poor victim burning up in hot lava.

-Sub-Zero’s fatality: He originally tears his foe’s head off with the spine attached (sticking with the classic here). Nasty, but done before: in Predator 2, this happens twice—the first to evil drug lord King Willy (you don’t see it happen), and the second to cop Jerry Lambert (this one you do see). You also see the remains of other victims that’ve had their heads/spines removed on the creature’s ship at the end of the film.

-Sonya Blade’s fatality: She blows mist that reduces an enemy to a skeleton. Sorry, but still been there, done that: in the classic film The Magic Sword, a knight falls into a bubbling pool, goes below the surface…and comes back up a skeleton; also, in The Black Cauldron, the evil Horned King, while being dragged into the title object, has his flesh ripped off, his soul ripped out, and his bones consumed in the process; and in the two previously mentioned Batman movies, the two victims are left as charred skeletons.

-Johnny Cage’s fatality: He decapitates his foe—talk about overdone: in Conan the Barbarian, this is done numerous times, most famously by Schwarzenegger, who cuts off James Earl Jones’ head at the end; in A Man for All Seasons, this occurs to Thomas More at the end; in Friday the 13^th, the last survivor of Camp Crystal Lake kills Mrs. Voorhees by cutting off her head with her own blade; and of course, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade sees at least one associate of evil villain Donovan beheaded by a trap trying to reach the Holy Grail.

-The Pit fatality: Last, but not least, we come to where a foe is impaled on spikes…another case of womp, womp. This has happened plenty of times too: in Raiders of the Lost Ark, Alfred Molina is impaled by a trap—through the face, no less; Temple of Doom strikes again, courtesy of a trap room with the remains of those skewered like this; and Bram Stoker’s Dracula, out the same year as the game, shows the title character in the act of skewering an enemy, one of many he leaves like that on the field.

The other games have similar cases of “been there, done that”, such as MK2’s impalement on the ceiling (done by Stallone in Cliffhanger) and MK3’s getting hit by a train (the death of Sikes in Oliver & Company), but the point is the same. People need to realize that violent content is something to be concerned about, but games have ratings for a reason. Instead of complaining about the evils of game violence, maybe parents should try reading the rating on the package—as well as why it got the rating on back corner—and try using common sense rather than complain about how giving their 8year-old Resident Evil Village gave them nightmares. This material isn’t new, since movies have evolved with games, so let’s try and stop pretending gaming companies are out to “get” everyone. Spoiler alert: they’re not.