Panel: Non-Violent Video Games

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From a Swancon panel.

Recs from my notes:

Recs from the panel:

Extra recs I just thought of:

And now, the notes I was working from.

This isn't about criticising violent games, they're a valid part of the landscape. But they can dominate that landscape so it's worth deliberately concentrating on the exceptions. Also this is just one limited person's opinions, during the panel my copanelists and audience will hopefully be able to fill the gaps.

What do we mean by 'non violent games'?

I think there's a few things that tend to get conflated:

  1. Games which do not contain any violence at all eg word puzzles
  2. Game mechanics which do not rely on violence eg point and click
  3. Games which do not condone violence on the part of the player character eg Undertale

(1) is a contained in the intersection of (2) and (3): any game which contains zero violence can neither rely on it or condone it. But (2) and (3) aren't subsets of each other. There are games like The Wolf Among Us where the primary mechanic (eg talking to people and making choices) is not inherently violent but the player character still has to take violent actions. And there are games like Undertale which use an inherently violent mechanic (eg RPG combat) in order make the player think about what they're doing and subvert the usual violent tropes of the genre.

Also, I'm using "violence" in the narrow sense of malicious violence intended to cause permanent harm, but a lot of this also applies to games with no violence of any kind.

Why is violence so popular in games?

I think it's a combination of it being a very easy way to make a game exciting, and the specific history of the genre happening to encourage it as a default. I'm not really interested in exploring the historical reasons for it's popularity except to point out that there is space for game makers to think outside the box a bit more. But let's look at the practical appeal of violent games:

Some things which can fulfill similar roles:

Now let's look at some examples.

Non violent uses of typically violent mechanics

First lets look at some games which take typical violent mechanics and make them non violent, or at least allow for non violent uses.

Non violent mechanics

Plotless puzzle games are often non violent, at least in essence: they may have the player "blow up monsters" but exactly the same mechanic could be used to pop bubbles or eat pieces of cake. Examples include Bejeweled, Solitaire, Tetris etc.

There's also games where the plot and mechanic are completely separate, eg "Save the princess by winning the game of solitaire", but these are basically puzzle games with an unrelated plot tacked on. And in my experience the plot frequently does involve violence, along the lines of "Discover the villain's plot, defeat individual evil schemes, have a final battle". But for example Regency Solitaire is a regency romance where the climax of the story is being proposed to.

And then there's games with a plot that is connected to the mechanic. A few examples:

Non Violent AAA games

As we can see there are actually many well established and popular genres of non violent games, although the plots of these games sometimes include violence anyway it's not entirely universal. Where it is pretty universal is the blockbuster big budget "Triple A" games many people really mean when they talk about "games".

Note that big budget is not the same as popular: consider the List of best selling video games, which includes puzzle games like Tetris, non violent sports games like Wii Sports, animal sims like Nitendogs, and life sims like The Sims. Non violent games have always been and will always be a hugely successful part of the games industry, they just don't tend to get much of the money. This is partly because of industry and community attitudes, and partly because the genres which are popular and expensive to make tend to be more violent.

Again: there's nothing wrong with some of these games being violent. Many of my favourite games are incredibly violent and I wouldn't change a thing. But violence being so ubiquitous limits the full spectrum of what games, and specifically big budget games, can be. So, let's look at the biggest budget games and their genres and consider how violent they are and whether they have to be that way.

First person shooters like Call of Duty are the archetypical Triple A game and the violence is right there in the title. Some of these games, such as Deus Ex, have major stealth components, and sometimes even encourage the player not to kill anyone. I don't know of any where non violence is the default, however, or where you can be any less violent than "hunt down enemies and knock them out".

Driving games like Gran Turismo aren't usually violent afaict, asides from crashes which you are intended to try and avoid.

Action/Adventure games like Grand Theft Auto, MMOs like World of Warcraft and RPGs like Final Fantasy are afaict pretty similar in a lot of ways: generally pretty violent but also with significant non violent aspects like exploration, resource gathering etc. There are a number of of non violent indie examples eg Glitch, and the hugely popular Pokemon games are violent in the sense of having battles but as far as I know noone actually dies. So there is definitely space in these genres for more non violent games. There are often already ways to play these games non violently, but that's usually not the most popular or expected approach.

There's a few big budget mystery games like LA Noire and Heavy Rain. They does contain combat but afaict it's not the crux of the game so a similar game without combat could plausibly be made.

There's no sports games on the list but I am pretty sure the bigger ones count as AAA, and are (I assume!) inclined to be non violent.

Other thoughts

Something I have found frustrating in other discussions of non violent games I've seen is the way that Hidden Object games get forgotten: they are hugely popular and generally not very violent if at all. But since they're popular with women they're invisible.

I know there have been interesting discussions on this topic but I can't find any of them /o\ Links and corrections very much appreciated!