Sex & Violence- The Future Of Gaming?

I've been playing the first Mortal Kombat game on the Megadrive lately, and it reminded me of the first time I ever seen this game. It was on the news before I went to school one morning and it showed Scorpions fatality move, and then there were interviews with "experts" who claimed that the violence in this game would warp the minds of kids and make them violent. Of course the release of MK was followed by a storm of controversy and people claimed that this "filth" should be banned. Similar news reports and stuff seemed to follow the release of each MK game from there on in.

A few years later a top-down view game where tiny 2D characters stole cars, shot cops, used foul language, dealt drugs, and ran over innocent pedestrians. This game was affectionately know to it's fans as GTA, and it was also shrouded in controversy. Just like the MK series, wherever GTA went, news reports were sure to follow. Anything bad that happened in real life always seemed to be pinned to these games, and games like them. (I know that you guys already now all this, but it looks kinda coll when laid out like a wee story, hehe)

So, after 10-15 years the original MK and GTA games are incredibly tame in comparison to today's titles. Games seem to get more violent, and often sleazier, and generally more adult as the years go on. So basically, what I'm wondering is what's the next stop? Will we soon be playing XXX rated porno games? Has violence reached it's maximum capacity, or what level of violence will be the next to urine of the censors?

We just have to look at manhunt. Manhunt brought new levels of violence to gaming scene.
As developers are allowed to get away ever more violent and explicit content i can see the gaming getting itself into even more extreme territories.

I was thinking about Manhunt while that post. That game really did take violence to the extreme. Looking back at the original MK game, it's actually really tame, so to think that Manhunt will seem tame in ten years is just mindboggling in my opinion.

Altho games like these are blamed for alot of actions of gamers who commit the acts in real life, we have to remember that for someone to be influenced to such a degree just by a game , the person in question could have been influenced by anything.
If you take violent games off the market , these things will still continue through music , the media( films/new/tv shows) and through there own twisted mind.

Something will always be blamed for the acts of others, as no one will ever accept the blame.

I blame the parents, for letting children who are too young, or... troubled, buy these games.

I hate hearing about games or music getting the blame for vicious acts. People have murdered each other for hundreds of years before there were any such thing as video games. If somebody does something horrific then THEY should be blamed for it, not the games they play, movies they watch or music they listen to.

death_by_stereo wrote:I hate hearing about games or music getting the blame for vicious acts. People have murdered each other for hundreds of years before there were any such thing as video games. If somebody does something horrific then THEY should be blamed for it, not the games they play, movies they watch or music they listen to.

this^

I picked up Manhunt 2 (which is banned in Ireland) today. I wonder if this raises the bar violent video gaming even further....