Gun obsession in video games

[Someone Depressing]

I only liked shooters when : Instead of sitting behind bits of wall for 5 mintues you sidestep across the room. Instead of frantily realoading you go up and punch the enemy in the face!
I missed when not every shooter had to be taken "Seriously" or be "Realistic" even though they come nothing near realistic.

 

[darkrat666]

I wasn't even a little bit scared my first time with a gun. I dry fired to see how the mechanism felt as soon as I got my hands on it and my uncle showed me it wasn't loaded. I dunno, it was weird. I wouldn't think twice about pointing a gun at anything and pulling the trigger if it wasn't loaded. Never understood the whole "treat an unloaded gun as if it was loaded thing."

Because if you screw up once with that thinking, you can kill/severely injure yourself or others. Always confirm a gun is unloaded every time is leaves your sight or your hands, never point a gun at something you don't intend to shoot.

 

[Double A]

I have shot real guns before, I don't see how it's scary. As long as you're careful, and taught how to do so.

I don't know why I like shooters, maybe because I like most every genre (I don't like FF-style JRPGs, sports games, or non-Mario Kart racers). It's just fun to blow the head off of some random guys in a game, it helps cool me down.

 

[Ekonk]

I fail to see why the OP's trepidation at holding such an item is unwarranted. To me it seems very wise to be afraid when touching a gun for a first time. After all, a gun is the culmination of the very worst aspects of human nature and it can be jarring to be confronted with that fact in such a physical way.

I never said it was unwarranted, I just said he needs to conquer it. I had to do the same thing myself. Guns are intimidating at first but once you realize they only kill things they're asked to kill and are perfectly safe once you know how to safely handle them they become no more scary than holding any other mundane dangerous household item. Perhaps even less so, because I've never heard of a gun kicking back and decapitating their owner. But many a chainsaw has done so. Hell despite all the safety features and proper operational procedure those damn things can still bite you in the head. Literally. Even now I still hold the chainsaw in higher regard, danger wise, than I do the .22 or the shotgun because I know the guns will only fire if I want them to.


Fun fact: I conquered guns at age 7. Didn't conquer chainsaws until 19.

I can't even begin to comprehend how it's possible that citizens of America - not exactly a land ravaged by war or zombies - see firearms as a "mundane dangerous household item". I just can't.

 

[Jezzeh]

Personally, I'm a fan of shooters because I like the movement. Humans tend to be aggressive and competitive by nature, and hunting something down in a video game is therapeutic. I like the physics, seeing how different game engines perform, and I like the sound. Mostly I like the pacing, which in my experience has been faster than other genres. For the most part, I've found that shooters have more intriguing story lines, which is another draw for me (in this case I'm thinking more along the "action" aspect, and I'm not just thinking of FPS games - For the sake of argument, let's include TPS games too). That, and I'm just very good at them for some reason, so I tend to play them more by default because, hey, everybody likes to win. To be fair, I play a large array of games, but the first game I ever played was a shooter and I just kinda stuck with them.

I have shot actual guns. Several of them: Both a 12-gauge and 20-gauge shotgun, a .22 rifle, a .40 S&W, and a .45/.22. Holding an actual gun didn't change my outlook on games at all because, thankfully, there's a huge difference between me tearing shit up on my television screen and me shooting clay pigeons IRL. Yes, I've held multiple weapons that can kill people. But that doesn't make the gun I look at on-screen any more likely to shoot the person standing next to me. Owning a hunting knife doesn't make my combat knife in Black Ops any more likely to stab me in the gut.

I can definitely understand the reasoning here, though. We fear death, and actually holding in our hands something real that can very easily destroy a person certainly has the potential to change one's outlook. I suppose I just look at it a little differently...

 

[ntw3001]

Violence is an easy way to create engaging conflict, and guns are easier to translate into the medium than other weapons. While 'point and click' isn't exactly an accurate depiction of gun use, it's a lot more believable than playing through a melee fight using 'click to swing'.

Of course, a dedicated melee combat system includes more than that, but it's tough to make controls that really feel right. Zeno Clash is an example. It's fun, but the controls are complex and it's still too divorced from the reality of the action on screen to be as engaging as a shooter.

I'm told Red Steel settled on its eventual control system (and I've never played it, but I hear it was a selection of prepackaged moves initiated by certain motions) by initially having the weapon directly handled by the wiimote, but finding that the players weren't able to beat anything but the most laughably useless opponents. I'm sure the wiimote itself had more bearing on the decision than was claimed, but the point still stands. Motion controls remain a problem for melee fighting because we are all hopelessly bad at fights.

 

[CatmanStu]

Games are built around conflict resolution and shooting enemies is the laziest way for players and designers to implement that resolution, but also the most immediately gratifying.

 

[jawakiller]

Believe me, shooting something in real life is actually slightly more fun than using a gun twice as big on a console (or pc).

It's easy to say "Oh yeah, a kitchen knife could kill someone too. Guns aren't much different la la la la"
.

Actually a kitchen knife is a lot more dangerous than an empty handgun. And if you got scared holding a empty handgun... I don't even want to know if you were given a loaded shotgun.

 

[mega48man]

because it's fun to do something that we can't do in real life. we boys like to live that fantasy of being a 20's mobster (mafia 2) or a badass badass with a PHD in badassery (duke nukem forever). duke nukem is a very good example of boy fantasies; built like a tank, immature humor, fighting aliens of impossible odds, lots of topless women, and sunglasses.

same thing goes for halo, master chief is awesome. this is why JRPG's suck: the main character is always this annoying kid who you want to kill.

mario=old, it's been done to death and everytime is boring
Grayson Hunt (bulletstorm)=awesome, maturity of a 14 year old and is a badass (and voiced by steve blum which is a huge plus)

cloud (FF7)=lame, i don't know why he's emo and the over the top sword stuff doesn't impress me, it's all the same
chairman prescott (gears of war)=HE'S GONNA BE A PLAYABLE CHARACTER IN GEARS 3 I'M SO EXCITED. and he's amazing

 

[captaincabbage]

Because overall, people like guns. The sort of power and authority they exude is incomprable to much else.
As for real guns, I do like real guns. I'll sometimes go out rabbit or fox hunting with my dad on his property and it's fun.

 

[KiKiweaky]

First of all, OP, you need to conquer that fear of guns. They only kill things when they're asked to kill things.

Regardless of whether or not it's currently being called on to perform the task of killing the whole essence of a gun is focused on its ability to snuff out life. That is the length and breadth of its purpose. You can talk about how cool it is to fire them on a range or out on the farm but that doesn't change their nature. This is a tool we humans have made to kill each other with.

I fail to see why the OP's trepidation at holding such an item is unwarranted. To me it seems very wise to be afraid when touching a gun for a first time. After all, a gun is the culmination of the very worst aspects of human nature and it can be jarring to be confronted with that fact in such a physical way.

Agree with Heathrow on this, being fearful of a gun is entirely justified. I love going to the range but I'm still pretty cautious with a gun in my hand (its only a .22 at that, some of the handguns on show were monsters and I'd probably hurt myself firing them). At the end of the day its purpose is to kill, sure bringing it to the range is enjoyable and being able to shoot it at long ranges and hit things is an incredibly difficult thing to do and requires great skill.

But theres a reason ranges are so strict your holding something thats made to kill another person. I saw a clip or 2 on YouTube of guys giving their girlfriends shotguns and laughing when they hold/fire them wrong... not really sure they should be allowed to have a gun if thats how they carry on with them.

 

[Daverson]

Because in modern conflict zones, no one runs around with a sword? You can only expect fiction to follow suite with modern trends. The concept of "shooters" (AFAIK, the genreless term is "action game") themselves, it tends well towards gameplay, easier to pick up than an RPG, and not as detached from the actual conflict as a strategy.

As for your queasiness around guns... firearms are the ultimate objectification of individual liberty and responsibility. Yes, a lot firearms are designed explicitly to end human life, denying that is like denying gravity, but are all gun owners implicitly murderous psychopaths? Of course not. I'd wager over 99% of people who own firearms (notice I said *own* firearms, not *are issued* firearms - police and military use is a completely different kettle of fish!) will ever use them on another person, and much less than that will set out with the intention of using them on another person.

 

[Smagmuck_]

I like guns, hell video games and my father got me into them in the first place! Now, I know there are some very serious differences between gaming and the real deal. The largest caliber that I've fired was the .50 BMG, my shoulder hurt badly the next couple of days. The smallest I've fired is the 9x19 parabellum. I do find shooting in gaming very enjoyable, but I also enjoy the real thing... And it irritates the ever loving piss out of me when some kid on Xbox Live thinks he knows everything about guns, just because of video games... -_-

 

[Jack of Spades]

Because if you have a sword obsession, then you "sir" are a nerd. Not saying that's a bad thing.

 

[DarkPegasus333]

I've held a gun before. There wasn't anything frightening or empowering about it.

I really like sci-fi weapons (pew pew pew!). They don't exist, so I can't really go out and own one

Guns are popular in video games because they're modern (er..well...some), they're loud, and cause death and dismemberment. =D

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

Guns are not the only weapons (or even the first) that were made from the ground up to kill humans,

Swords were the first.

Actually, the sword is the only weapon that has no viable purpose save killing people. If you want to hunt, for example, you would be far better served bringing a spear or a bow. A sword asks you to get far too close to deliver a strike, and with many animals, such proximity can be fantastically dangerous. Trust me when I say you do not want to be anywhere near a wild pig that you've managed to piss off by stabbing it.

 

[Sejs Cube]

Nthing the "you don't need to be afraid of a gun, it's not got some malicious intent, it's just a tool" comments.

If it helps, think of a gun like a lion. If you are not thoughtful and considerate with how you handle yourself when you are around one, there's a good chance that someone can get hurt or killed. If you are thoughtful and considerate with how you handle yourself when you are around one, there's significantly less problem. In both cases you probably shouldn't handle one without proper training first.