Is God Violent?

There has been so much talk about violence in video games in recent years, and it was a hot topic in lecture recently, so I decided to take a look at many of the games I played that included a violent aspect and every time I thought about playing them I always came to the same conclusion. While it was fun to play them, I never really had and desire to re-enact what I was playing. There was no desire for me to pick up a gun and shoot someone, or crash my car into a building. I was able to separate the video game from real life primarily because I knew the consequences that would come from such actions.

However, as I was thinking I started to shift my focus from violence in terms of physical abuse and instead turned my attention to violent actions that I can commit in games that may not necessarily be based on violence. It was when I was thinking about these games that I actually thought to myself, "Hey, it would be kind of cool if I had that power." The types of games I was thinking about were games in which I could take on the role of a higher power, a 'God' of sorts. Games such as The Sims, Sim City and Black and White.

Above you see an image from the game The Sims. What you can see is two sims swimming in a swimming pool and generally having a good time. However, if you look closer, you will see that there is no ladder to get out of the pool. Essentially the two sims pictured above are eventually going to die due to drowning via exhaustion. This may seem as a sick and twisted scenario, and in very many ways it is, but it is one of the possibilities you have as a God-like figure in the Sims. You have the power to build anything you want and rule their lives any way that you please. But you also have the power to take away. There are multiple ways in which you can make your sim die, some more violent than others. Overall the feeling of being a God to these sims is one that cannot really be described, it is one that you would never get to experience in real life, and it is admittedly addictive.

Sim City, from the same maker of The Sims, offers you even more gruesome ways to destroy your sims except on a larger scale. Built into the game Sim City there are options to unleash natural disasters such as the tornado seen above. It may seem illogical to send in a tornado to destroy everything you worked so hard to build, but at the end of the day its pretty exciting to see a tornado that you created on your own will rip through a city. Natural disasters are something that no one is supposed to control, that is why they are called natural. Sim City gives you an opportunity to do something that would never be possible in our everyday life, and having that power even just in a virtual environment can make you feel pretty important.

Finally we have Black & White, a game which is considered to be a "God game" or a game that lets you play as if you are a divine power above everything else. You have powers much like in Sim City to create natural disasters if you so choose, but what makes Black & White even more unique is that you can also punish characters individually. As can be seen above, a man is being hung in mid-air for no apparent reason. There is even a giant hand that you can bring into the game at any time and use it to flick the people if you want to. Overall the power that you are given in Black & White is what makes it such a popular game, and this power is very much a God-like power.

While the above three games are not primarily violent in nature, they all include elements built into the game itself which are extremely violent and downright disturbing if taken into actual context. Yet it is these games which I think it would be cool to re-enact. Both the good and the bad things. I feel that it is the fact that I will never have the power that I have in these games that makes them so desirable. I don't know what I would do if I was able to control the world, but if the above three games are any indication, I would be pretty violent just because I can. It is the fantasy element that intrigues the gamer and makes them want to re-enact what they do within a video game. However, in games that are promoted as being violent, there is no fantasy element. Those playing these traditionally violent games know that what they are doing is possible yet undesirable. They know what sanctions they would face for their actions. In "God games" the power that you have is not equatable to anything in real life, there are no sanctions for those powers, and thus there is no real detractor from wanting to have them in real life.