Gun obsession in video games

[EmperorSubcutaneous]

I like flintlock pistols because they make me feel like a pirate.

I don't like any other type of gun. But I love flintlock pistols and will use them exclusively if they're available to me in a game.

Nothing to do with symbolism or stress relief or insecurity or headshots for me, just pure style.

 

[Heathrow]

That question implies that the fault of having enemies always lies solely on the shoulders of the person with enemies. This is not reality.

Not at all, humanity as a whole bears the responsibility for its own actions. We can not extricate ourselves from the tangled web of events that lead to violence any more than we can untangle our enemies.

If the whole of humanity is to blame then isn't it possible that perhaps there is a better course of action. Perhaps all that is needed is for the first person to step forward and put their arm into the lion's mouth and the whole structure of violence which we have built up around ourselves will crumble to the ground.

 

[radioactive lemur]

I wasn't even a little bit scared my first time with a gun. I dry fired to see how the mechanism felt as soon as I got my hands on it and my uncle showed me it wasn't loaded. I dunno, it was weird. I wouldn't think twice about pointing a gun at anything and pulling the trigger if it wasn't loaded. Never understood the whole "treat an unloaded gun as if it was loaded thing."

 

[pletschee]

I play shooters cause I like being able to shoot things without consequense. Also I just find them fun

 

[Gordon_4_v1legacy]

...it was the first time I ever held a firearm. It terrified me... the knowledge that I held something in my hand that could end a life really terrified me more than I thought it would...

A hammer can end a life. I think you need to conquer your unfounded fear of firearms. It's a lifeless hunk of metal, it's the wielder you only need ever worry about.

A hammer can fix things, build things or destroy things. A firearm is designed to place a hunk of metal into a target at high speed; a function that by and large will not do anything other than maim or kill.

Guns were designed to kill things, thinking anything less is delusional.

However, this does not make anyone who owns one, or wants to own one, stupid or any other negative word you can think of: quite the opposite in my opinion.

I think owning a firearm and being trained in its use is the highest martial discipline one can engage in. The care required to safely operate a firearm is enormous and to the layman, it can be daunting. I am also of the opinion that everyone should fire a gun at least once in their life: it removes the mystical veil they seem to have for those who are unfamiliar with them.

You pick up a loaded pistol, and every bullet in the magazine represents a possible life you could take (context not withstanding), including your own. Power like that must be respected.

A gun is a tool, I agree, however it has a singular purpose.

 

[Pyode]

Regardless of whether or not it's currently being called on to perform the task of killing the whole essence of a gun is focused on its ability to snuff out life. That is the length and breadth of its purpose. You can talk about how cool it is to fire them on a range or out on the farm but that doesn't change their nature. This is a tool we humans have made to kill each other with.

The exact same thing could be said of a katana or broadsword yet I never see people on this site applying this logic to these items. This strikes me as rather hypocritical.

The fact is that the fear the OP felt by simply holding an unloaded gun was irrational. There is absolutely no logical reason to fear a hunk of harmless metal. If the gun where loaded it wouldn't be much better. Handled properly, a loaded gun is no more dangerous than a car being handled properly and it is no more dangerous than a car being handled improperly, yet we would say a fear of cars is irrational (not to mention the fact that it's much more difficult to handle a car than a gun).

Anyway, as to the main point of the OP.

I wouldn't say people who play shooters necessarily have any more of a love of guns in video games than players of racing games necessarily have a love of cars. They may have a knowledge and love of specific guns in a specific game, but this is simply a natural progression of mastering a game. In any game, as you play it you learn to use different tools and eventually narrow it down to the ones that are the most fun and effective for your play-style. This applies cars in racing games, special moves in fighting games, guns in shooters, equipment in RPG's, etc.

 

[Palademon]

I believe the "obession" would come from violence being an easy way of incorporating interactivity and problems within a game's story.

Also, that guns are probably the most used weapon for violence now and can be fairly diverse which adds to it's use in games.

 

[EmperorSubcutaneous]

Never understood the whole "treat an unloaded gun as if it was loaded thing."

That one makes sense to me, because there's always an off chance that it actually is loaded. If you always treat guns as though they were loaded, you're less likely to have a terrible accident.

 

[Kadoodle]

I wanted to pose a question to some folks on the forum. What, exactly, is so appealing about shooter games? And by that, I mean the shooting in general. I enjoy a good shooter as much as the next person but Ive sort of realized something since christmas. My dad bought a sidearm for christmas (its going to be his new hobby) and it was the first time I ever held a firearm. It terrified me. The clip was empty but the knowledge that I held something in my hand that could end a life really terrified me more than I thought it would. Probably a good percentage of people who play shooters are like me, in that they have never even held a real gun before, and yet there is a huge obsession with them.

So basically, why do you think there is such a love of guns in video games.

When I was a kid, I received an archery set for my 11th birthday. It wasn't a gun or a knife, but it still terrified me to know that I owned a weapon that could kill. Such power will do that to people. I don't like to use knives, I don't have the balls to use a firearm, and as for bow and arrow...still sorta gets to me. But videogames are different. When you play one, there are no real life consequences. Nothing you do has meaning, and thus the emotional punch from a tool with which you can decide life or death with is lost.

Now, to answer your question, one must ask why videogames focus on fighting and combat in general. The answer is quite simple: Excitement. Adrenaline. Many people (male in particular) really enjoy those things. It's not just guns. Swords, knives, you name it. The reason we feature guns so much is because thats simply what we fight with in the real world. Unless its a fantasy game, you will likely be using guns. Period.

 

[Vrach]

I wanted to pose a question to some folks on the forum. What, exactly, is so appealing about shooter games? And by that, I mean the shooting in general. I enjoy a good shooter as much as the next person but Ive sort of realized something since christmas. My dad bought a sidearm for christmas (its going to be his new hobby) and it was the first time I ever held a firearm. It terrified me. The clip was empty but the knowledge that I held something in my hand that could end a life really terrified me more than I thought it would. Probably a good percentage of people who play shooters are like me, in that they have never even held a real gun before, and yet there is a huge obsession with them.

So basically, why do you think there is such a love of guns in video games.

Because you get a lot (not all, probably not even most) of the "cool" effect of the gun without that exact responsibility of being able to end someone's life with it.

 

[Nomanslander]

In video games we try to achieve what we can't in real life.

In real life if I try fragging my friends and strangers with live ammunition. There won't be any replay value, and after words I might be looking at death sentence or life imprisonment.

Guns are cool, shooting people is cool, real death is not. Since there is no real death in video games, everything ends up working out perfectly...=D

Oh and I like to add I've held a real M-16 before, all I can say is it's lighter and smaller than what I expected...=/

 

[Random berk]

Guns are not the only weapons (or even the first) that were made from the ground up to kill humans,

Swords were the first.

Is that including, or not including clubs, spears and bows?

 

[Bre2nan]

If the whole of humanity is to blame then isn't it possible that perhaps there is a better course of action. Perhaps all that is needed is for the first person to step forward and put their arm into the lion's mouth and the whole structure of violence which we have built up around ourselves will crumble to the ground.

Not to be defeatist or pessimist or anything, but it's a simple fact that suspicion of people who are different and the desire to frame being different as being a threat are basic aspects of human nature. They are aspects of all animals that help them survive in their environments, and they have been translated into every realm of culture and politics.

The way we've been conditioned through evolution to deal with people who we perceive as being a threat is to act with violence against them, lethally if we can, and all of the weapons we've developed throughout history have been for the purpose of making this process more efficient.

What I'm getting at here is that the whole structure of violence that many people seem to perceive as a quirk of human society or a globally-reinforced lie is in fact a very real, biologically reinforced truth. Sure, removing weapons from the equation or changing how we deal with things like crime or wars will ease the symptoms, but the underlying "disease" still remains. Only by changing biology can the "disease" be cured.

 

[Someone Depressing]

I only liked shooters when : Instead of sitting behind bits of wall for 5 mintues you sidestep across the room. Instead of frantily realoading you go up and punch the enemy in the face!
I missed when not every shooter had to be taken "Seriously" or be "Realistic" even though they come nothing near realistic.

 

[darkrat666]

I wasn't even a little bit scared my first time with a gun. I dry fired to see how the mechanism felt as soon as I got my hands on it and my uncle showed me it wasn't loaded. I dunno, it was weird. I wouldn't think twice about pointing a gun at anything and pulling the trigger if it wasn't loaded. Never understood the whole "treat an unloaded gun as if it was loaded thing."

Because if you screw up once with that thinking, you can kill/severely injure yourself or others. Always confirm a gun is unloaded every time is leaves your sight or your hands, never point a gun at something you don't intend to shoot.

 

[Double A]

I have shot real guns before, I don't see how it's scary. As long as you're careful, and taught how to do so.

I don't know why I like shooters, maybe because I like most every genre (I don't like FF-style JRPGs, sports games, or non-Mario Kart racers). It's just fun to blow the head off of some random guys in a game, it helps cool me down.

 

[Ekonk]

I fail to see why the OP's trepidation at holding such an item is unwarranted. To me it seems very wise to be afraid when touching a gun for a first time. After all, a gun is the culmination of the very worst aspects of human nature and it can be jarring to be confronted with that fact in such a physical way.

I never said it was unwarranted, I just said he needs to conquer it. I had to do the same thing myself. Guns are intimidating at first but once you realize they only kill things they're asked to kill and are perfectly safe once you know how to safely handle them they become no more scary than holding any other mundane dangerous household item. Perhaps even less so, because I've never heard of a gun kicking back and decapitating their owner. But many a chainsaw has done so. Hell despite all the safety features and proper operational procedure those damn things can still bite you in the head. Literally. Even now I still hold the chainsaw in higher regard, danger wise, than I do the .22 or the shotgun because I know the guns will only fire if I want them to.


Fun fact: I conquered guns at age 7. Didn't conquer chainsaws until 19.

I can't even begin to comprehend how it's possible that citizens of America - not exactly a land ravaged by war or zombies - see firearms as a "mundane dangerous household item". I just can't.

 

[Jezzeh]

Personally, I'm a fan of shooters because I like the movement. Humans tend to be aggressive and competitive by nature, and hunting something down in a video game is therapeutic. I like the physics, seeing how different game engines perform, and I like the sound. Mostly I like the pacing, which in my experience has been faster than other genres. For the most part, I've found that shooters have more intriguing story lines, which is another draw for me (in this case I'm thinking more along the "action" aspect, and I'm not just thinking of FPS games - For the sake of argument, let's include TPS games too). That, and I'm just very good at them for some reason, so I tend to play them more by default because, hey, everybody likes to win. To be fair, I play a large array of games, but the first game I ever played was a shooter and I just kinda stuck with them.

I have shot actual guns. Several of them: Both a 12-gauge and 20-gauge shotgun, a .22 rifle, a .40 S&W, and a .45/.22. Holding an actual gun didn't change my outlook on games at all because, thankfully, there's a huge difference between me tearing shit up on my television screen and me shooting clay pigeons IRL. Yes, I've held multiple weapons that can kill people. But that doesn't make the gun I look at on-screen any more likely to shoot the person standing next to me. Owning a hunting knife doesn't make my combat knife in Black Ops any more likely to stab me in the gut.

I can definitely understand the reasoning here, though. We fear death, and actually holding in our hands something real that can very easily destroy a person certainly has the potential to change one's outlook. I suppose I just look at it a little differently...

 

[ntw3001]

Violence is an easy way to create engaging conflict, and guns are easier to translate into the medium than other weapons. While 'point and click' isn't exactly an accurate depiction of gun use, it's a lot more believable than playing through a melee fight using 'click to swing'.

Of course, a dedicated melee combat system includes more than that, but it's tough to make controls that really feel right. Zeno Clash is an example. It's fun, but the controls are complex and it's still too divorced from the reality of the action on screen to be as engaging as a shooter.

I'm told Red Steel settled on its eventual control system (and I've never played it, but I hear it was a selection of prepackaged moves initiated by certain motions) by initially having the weapon directly handled by the wiimote, but finding that the players weren't able to beat anything but the most laughably useless opponents. I'm sure the wiimote itself had more bearing on the decision than was claimed, but the point still stands. Motion controls remain a problem for melee fighting because we are all hopelessly bad at fights.

 

[CatmanStu]

Games are built around conflict resolution and shooting enemies is the laziest way for players and designers to implement that resolution, but also the most immediately gratifying.