Very interesting article from Jamie Madigan on why shooter games are so popular.
I’ve found that I generally don’t give a rats ass about the gore content in a shooting game. Sure, it can be entertaining sometimes, but I’m more interested in outmaneuvering and outaiming my opponents. That, and the cathartic release of just blowing things up.
It’s why I’d rather play something like Quake or Monday Night Combat, which have little to no gore, to satisfy my shooting game craving than, say, Grand Theft Auto. Ironically, GTA to me has become more about storytelling and character development than the “violence.”
But how important is the “violent” part of “violent shooters?” To help answer this question, Przybylski, Rigby, and Richard Ryan (professor of psychology at the University of Rochester), concocted a series of experiments designed to disentangle the violence of a game from its ability to satisfy our desires for competence and autonomy. In one study, they modded Half-Life 2 so that some participants played a violent and bloody game replete with firearms and death. Other people played a non-violent version of the game with the same mechanics and map, but framed as a game of tag where opponents were gently teleported to a penalty box when highlighted with an in-game tool.
The results were both versions equally satisfied those basic psychological needs, which predicted how satisfied people were with the game and how much they wanted to play more of it. The researchers concluded that it’s not the violence per se, but the degree to which the games met players’ desires for competence and autonomy.
Read: The Psychology of Shooters, Feature Story from GamePro.