In just a few hours Black Friday starts, overtaking "Adam Lambert video controversy" in online popularity, and Black Friday sales of all kinds will be available for shoppers, including video game buyers. Some will purchase Resident Evil, Grand Theft Auto, Company of Heroes, Ninja Gaiden, or God of War, which happen to be some of the most violent video games ever created. Why? Why are these games made. Why do people buy them in record numbers? What does this issue say about our culture and the game makers themselves?
All of those questions and more are explored in Spencer Halpin's new movie Moral Combat.
Moral Combat is Halpin's first film and took him four years to make. It "takes the pulse of what's happening right now" in the industry, as Halpin said to me.
The film's a lovely mix of video game images and interviews with some of the game development industry's brightest talents. Halpin told me (in the video above) that getting married and becoming a father really impacted how he saw the role of video games in our lives. I saw recently it at a special screening at Yoshi's San Francisco, where it attracted a standing-room-only crowd.
As of this writing Moral Combat has not played the festival circuit, nor is it in line for theatrical release. In my view it's a film everyone in the gaming industry should see at least once. It's a conversation-starter on a subject that should be on the minds of game developers everywhere: violence in video games. That was discussed by industry leaders in the film and at the screening event.
We'll get to meet some of them - like Lorne Laning of OddWorld - in the second blog post on the movie. But for this blog post I have a question: what's the most violent video game available for purchase today?
I'm using a write-in polling system for this blog rather than my standard pollsb website device. I don't want to influence the final poll results by giving pre-set game titles.
Let me know what you think and the new system will tally the results.
Take the poll here.
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