You say novels have deeply impressed you - at a conscious level, with moving themes and new ideas. Despite violence, evil characters and events, maybe even genocide. They all happen in novels.
Compare a video game - you kill an NPC, scoop up some loot, scrounge around breaking all their crates and pots, then move on. Not thinking about it, not caring what it is you're doing or what it means to loot a body or take the pathetic remains of some poor wretch's miserable existance. Ha! This gun is way worse than the one I'm wielding! Throw it in the trash, or keep it to sell for coin.
Clearly they are very different experiences. You can't tell me killing innocent bystanders, looting strangers' homes, fencing stolen goods not once but 10,000 times to get to the final level - none of this penetrates, not even a little? You mention Doom which is disengenious - that was riveting when it came out because of the tension, the surprises. But we're way past that now. Now we hear the screams of carefully simulated civilians, see their blood, then loot their wallets and cars.
Why? What moron thinks this is entertainment? It substitutes shock for any scrap of intelligent gameplay, until it becomes meaningless. Until its just abstract gameplay.
Anyway maybe I'm off the mark here. But until we admit that something is going on here that's different from a book or movie, we've not begun to figure out whether it matters.
Compare a video game - you kill an NPC, scoop up some loot, scrounge around breaking all their crates and pots, then move on. Not thinking about it, not caring what it is you're doing or what it means to loot a body or take the pathetic remains of some poor wretch's miserable existance. Ha! This gun is way worse than the one I'm wielding! Throw it in the trash, or keep it to sell for coin.
Clearly they are very different experiences. You can't tell me killing innocent bystanders, looting strangers' homes, fencing stolen goods not once but 10,000 times to get to the final level - none of this penetrates, not even a little? You mention Doom which is disengenious - that was riveting when it came out because of the tension, the surprises. But we're way past that now. Now we hear the screams of carefully simulated civilians, see their blood, then loot their wallets and cars.
Why? What moron thinks this is entertainment? It substitutes shock for any scrap of intelligent gameplay, until it becomes meaningless. Until its just abstract gameplay.
Anyway maybe I'm off the mark here. But until we admit that something is going on here that's different from a book or movie, we've not begun to figure out whether it matters.