The first time I was probably thirteen or fourteen. After a day at school watching The Name of the Rose which features torture, I was at my friend’s and we watched Robocop 2, and then I was home playing Doom. Killing monsters. More blood. More guns. At some point I’m in berserk mode with blood all over my monitor, sound FXs something just kicks in in my head: I don’t want this anymore. Just stop. What the fuck is wrong with you. Hours and hours of violence, just for fun? I stopped. Put some cool music and grabbed my comics. I had found out that there’s a threshold.
The second time was pretty obvious: 9/11. We’re at work and it’s been months that my office is “terrorists only” on Counter-Strike everyday at lunch. We joke all the time about it. How many suicides to make our team win? I don’t know but that day it didn’t work. I think we stopped playing CS for at least two weeks.
The third time was last year with SpyParty. I was starting to dig the spy action and be amazed at the amount of information the sniper has to deal with. Extremely stressful and fascinating. But then, the Colorado shooting happened. Snipping in SpyParty triggers avatars screaming and searching for cover in a room. I haven’t been able to launch the game since then. I failed at making myself a mental “sandbox where it’s all right to shoot people because it’s just a game”. Since then more shootings. Last one I read about.
It’s frustrating because first person view is great. Immersion-wise, it’s hard to beat. Instantly send a player to game over with a headshot is very satisfying too. Beat the shit out of a punk in a third person view game works all right too.
I’m kind of glad I don’t have kids. The threshold for them is probably way up now.