Re: Violence, was re: Video Games (was Re: (TFT) back from the olympics)

[PvK <pvk@oz.net>]

It seems to me that the effect upon people of a portrayal of violence in any media, interactive or static, depends largely on the nature of the presentation, as well as the people's own past conditioning. 

My personal theory, and experience, is that violent media or games that are very realistic and include the human experience and effect upon people, tend to produce sobering responses that can be very pacifying. Books (e.g. The Red Badge of Courage, All Quiet on the Western Front), films (e.g. Soldier of Orange, Das Boot), and games (e.g. Computer Ambush, some lethal TFT/GURPS games I've played) that have been very realistic, deadly, and involved relatively developed believable characters and the sudden uncontrollable destructive terrible effects of war on them, have tended to chill my enthusiasm for violence quite quickly, and have made conspicuous to me the absence of these qualities in other depictions of violence. 
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