Contrary to common knowledge, gamers don't drink blood

http://www.canada.com/topics/news/story.html?id=1186799

Now if only we could convince game developers of this.

Holy fuck! It's another scientific study, courtesy of Captain Obvious!


Human nature doesn't stop when it comes to the vidya, and why should it? competition was what it was all about when videogames were invented!

Blood and gore isn't what makes a game but sometimes lack of blood can detract from a game. eg, I really like MoHAA but for a semi-realistic shooter in a realistic setting to have no blood when you put a bullet through someone always nagged at me when I was playing. However, there are plenty of blood patches on teh intarweb to fix that. Most are not gore patches per se, they just add a little puff of red when a guy gets hit.

Challenge and competition? What a silly idea. If it were true, games with absolutely no gore but a high score "hall of fame", such as Tetris or PacMan, would have achieved some "absolute classic" cult status instead of being obscure references only known by the nerdiest historians of gaming.

Gez said:

Challenge and competition? What a silly idea. If it were true, games with absolutely no gore but a high score "hall of fame", such as Tetris or PacMan, would have achieved some "absolute classic" cult status instead of being obscure references only known by the nerdiest historians of gaming.

Pot and kettle coming from me, but you really need to make your sarcasm less dark and dry.

Anyone up for a round of Princess Barbie deathmatch?

It's a lie. I need blood and gore in my games. There needs to be lots of it, and by lots I mean massive fountains of blood shooting spewing out of a guy when you shoot him. Sweet, delicious, and sexy blood that floods the room and splatters the walls. Without this, a game is meaningless.

Okay, there's a few problems here.
First, if a developer is including blood and gore to push sales and the "bottom line", then they are doing so for the wrong reasons. Doom has blood because carmack\romero like zombie movies, slasher flicks, and the like. It's fun, it's tongue-in-cheek, it's metal. They weren't trying to push sales or make a gimmick; it's just what they though was fun and cool.

The same could be said for Soldier of Fortune, Postal (perhaps), or any game where it's fairly obvious that the blood is there for the sheer enjoyment of it, not because it'll come across as more exxtreeme. This was a problem with Unreal\Tournament - it had the gibs, but it came across so empty. I really doubt there was any real desire to excite on that level, and it feels more like it's included for the feature bullet list.

Secondly, Enjay brings up the valid point that bloodless games depicting war events and the like are... disturbing. It hearkens back to the overly-violent-but-bloodless G.I. Joe. War is something that is very real and very bloody - and it's pretty scary when it's being whitewashed the way it is.

Yet another thing is that the gore, and the games in general, have lost the inherent tongue-in-cheek nature of many titles of the previous decade. They take themselves too seriously, and what humor is in there is ill-fitting (halo comes to mind). LUDICROUS GIBS are there for the lols, much in the same way Brain Dead is a hilarious movie. I don't know why, but apparently "lol I blew his fucking head off, look at that spray!" went out of vogue, or is there simply to push sales or get the xtreme factor.

So now we have a T rating on ETQW simply because it'll widen the target audience. And Tim Willits talking about how "Rage doesn't need gore to be fun".

I just think our definitions of fun have lost a little bit of their sense of humor.

I always considered excessive gore to be a novelty. I know Soldier of Fortune has already been mentioned, but it's the obvious example. I initially was wowed by how many ways there were to kill people, but once I got bored of blowing peoples limbs off I realized that the level design was atrocious and the game itself was boring and easy. Gore doesn't sell games if the gameplay is average.

Anyway, I always turn to Carmageddon if I want to get some rage out.

Craigs said:

It's a lie. I need blood and gore in my games. There needs to be lots of it, and by lots I mean massive fountains of blood shooting spewing out of a guy when you shoot him. Sweet, delicious, and sexy blood that floods the room and splatters the walls. Without this, a game is meaningless.

meet me on Skulltag at 10

This is why when I reinstalled Fallout: Tactics last night I turned the violence dial to normal. The excessive violence was funny the first few times, but it's really kind of unrealistic and unnecessary. If I really want to take out my aggression, I prefer games where you can crash cars like GTA3 or Burnout 3.