joe_zazen
Member
Do you really feel it when you kill them? As games get more advanced, I wonder if we will come to a point where even killing NPCs becomes a little too realistic for comfort. It's hard to imagine anyone getting really upset about killing a dog in a 16-bit game, but I could understand it being upsetting for some people in TLOU2. Ween't some IGN people upset about the new Call of Duty? Maybe next gen could be a turning point in that regard.
Yeah, it is getting close to that point for me in regular games and i can see next gen being a tipping point. Some neuroscience has been done wrt empathy by showing images of real humans in various degrees of pain and using neural imaging to map areas of activity. Images do affects brains of humans with working consciences (we should test politicians this way before electing them).
So getting super realistic games that involve pain and death could definitely be a turn off for non-psychopaths + non-sociopaths. It could theoretically damage early childhood development of empathy. And then you have to wonder about the developers who will spend 40+ hours a week surrounded by this materials. We’ll see what happens.
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