What happens when a medium that communicates largely through violent content becomes obsessed with realism? Traumatic experiences for developers is what happens.
As “AAA” studios achieve evermore believable violence, the artists creating these games are pressured to study the real thing. For years, developers have been poring over authentic imagery involving hangings, stabbings, slaughter and death.
They do this without any psychological guidance or structural care. Rarely are they even warned what they’re in for. And as companies like Naughty Dog try to make us feel like we’re actually murdering somebody, the question must be asked… who the hell even wants that?
I love my video game violence but it doesn’t need to be “real”. The incessant graphic deaths in Tomb Raider for example are horrible enough and don’t have realistic gore. I don’t need either.
Con artist moustache? They’re selling Randy Pitchford moustaches?
I had literally never thought about this. This is why I love your content.
As a developer I had to reference cracked hard hats for a project, worst decision i ever made, i was inundated with horrific construction accidents images and peoples heads being crushed. I changed my search preference to cracked hard plastic and the results were far less gruesome! But it was a horrendous experience.
“An unhealthy work environment means an unhealthy worker”
I can attest to this. I worked in a prison for 2 full years, 80+ hours a week (prisons in the United States are criminally short staffed due to the environment, and so the few willing to work for them are forced, by circumstance, into working damn near comical amounts of overtime). I also worked for 4 years as a bus driver for 60+ hours a week (voluntarily grabbing all the overtime possible). The difference was worlds apart. The hours were almost never the problem. The environment is what kills you… and if these studio executives want violence? Let them sit in on a prison riot. They’ll never want anything to do with it again.
Love how the intro music slowed down sounds like an early 90’s grunge tune.
“the video game industry focuses on only a few things”
Yeah, which is why rockstar invested resources into making a horses nuts shrink in the cold but have the same movement glitches they had in 2015 when you try and ride the fucker
I’m reminded of a story I heard about Christopher Lee. At one stage he was called upon during an audition to portray being shot. As Lee had previously served during WWII and had seen his fair share of people being shot, and when performing a more accurate portrayal of being shot was laughed at because it wasn’t cinematic enough.
I feel that japanese games avoid this issue since most of the times they don’t care about being “hyper realistic”.
To put it simply the violence in the last of us is not the same thing as the violence in Bayonetta.
I trained as an FX Gore Artist. I volunteered to review a guide dealing with hanging and be headings. I was drinking a strong mint tea to help ground me. My class watched a recording of a man committing suicide by gunshot. We were supported be before and after. BUT THAT IS NOT MY POINT my instructors told me, Realism is fine and good, but most people don’t know S about S, and even if they do, you do not want some one to look at your rig and say: my word that is a spectacular rendition of a radial fracture of the hunerous, you want them to go Agggh – cool”
I’ve seen that Bud footage. I’ve seen a few of the… recently re-relevant caucasian-related killings of minorities, in the wake of the currently relevant news stories (can you tell I don’t want to actually have a conversation about that right here, right now?). One thing that always strikes me about these clips, these real images of real deaths, is how “undramatic” they are. How unremarkable, in a lot of ways, the sequence of events unfold, in a purely chronological and clinical consideration.
How *ludicrous* it is, to insist that a game developer be obligated to do such research in order to create a *genuine* cinematic experience, when a game like Mortal (fucking) Kombat is so outrageously graphic that I genuinely couldn’t even tell you if the cartoonishly OTT visuals are in any way… genuine.
I was forced to watch graphic deaths in a “film appreciation” class when we reached the journalism portion of the class. Because of that I find gratioutious depictions of gore and pain very unsettling. I certainly believe in a certain level of gore and violence, but no one should gave to google the shit I had to watch for a job in video games, especially if they are going to be making depictions of gore and violence.
Yea… in any other job, even the medical jobs where you are expected to be seeing gore on a daily basis, there are systems and protocols to get people the mental help they need to deal with all the traumatizing shit violence causes
The gay dancing skeletons are the best bit in this episode.
Also screw corporations that abuse their employees.
Also also Naughty Dog is naughty. So, so naughty.
As a former worker in the “professional toy industry” for McFarlane toys, I can confirm this is a thing in every business where realistic gore must be portrayed.
They mitigated this by only hiring, well to be perfectly honest: “quite brilliantly upset indivividuals”.
The thought was that they bring creativity on the brink of madness so all the reference wont bother them.
…
And we would physically walk around the company showing the worst pics to people like an ambush.
I formed a very close relationship with the Reference Department.
“McFarlane Toys: It’s an Attitude Problem.”
(Edit: all that was an aside to a random memory of that first Fallout documentary which rises from the ether of my brain. The poor guy had a warning system on his desk to mitigate trauma of passers)
This a huge deal. I am a combat veteran. After leaving active duty I worked as a civilian contractor. My job at the time involved monitoring the rise of ISIS activity in Syria, Iraq and Egypt as well as the beginning of the civil war in Yemen. I did that job for two years before quitting and walking away from a 13 year military/military adjacent career. The time spent in those two years spending my entire day sifting through videos and images of civilian men, women and children (so many children) being killed/murdered had as bad, if not worse, of an effect on my mental health as my time actually fighting in Iraq. Having to watch atrocity after atrocity with no way to intervene or help broke me. No one should be doing this for video games.
“No-one wants to see a cat legitimately flattened by an anvil.”
Maybe Randy Pitchford? He likes seeing them get pinched by crabs, so I wouldn’t put it past him.
imagine being the guy who has to animate balls getting crushed. And having to look that up as referance
11:00 On TV Tropes org, there’s a trope article called “Reality Is Unrealistic.” It talks about the phenomenon of how realism in fiction sometimes doesn’t meet people’s willing suspension of disbelief. Because video games are a medium, things need to be changed from reality to be more believable or more dramatic-looking, etc. To quote Marco Polo, “I did not write half of what I saw, because I knew if I wrote it all, no one would believe me.”