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I've noticed that videogames, where killing is normally the main point of them, often justify it by dehumanizing the enemies, but does that make any difference

I've noticed that videogames, where killing is normally the main point of them, often justify it by dehumanizing the enemies, but does that make any difference to anybody except worried parents? For example, Wolfenstein 3D has you killing Nazis which we're already trained to see as valid targets for violence fantasies. Doom's human enemies are "former humans", Quake's human enemies have probes in their brains to make them evil. Sonic the Hedgehog only kills robots, not animals or even Dr. Robotnik who always escapes. But you wouldn't know these things unless you read the manuals or really paid attention. So would a teenage player really feel any different killing non-dehumanized humans instead? Maybe it's just a storm in a teacup when there's outrage at games like this immigrant killing one, Postal 2, or CoD's No Russian level. It all seems kind of perverse to train people that killing is very bad unless it's somebody belonging to a class which has been labeled as "bad" in any superficial way, or a humanoid monster, in which case any amount of gory violence is fine, such as Doom 2016.

dragonsky67 7y ago
Except that it's a game, and unless a person has significant problems anyway, they will understand that there is a difference between killing something in a game and doing it in real life. That said, children have been playing games of "shoot em up" for many years. At one point it was cowboys and Indians, earlier it would have been whoever the local defender and perceived "bad guy" was. I have a feeling that this is human nature, and I actually feel that we are far better having our children playing computer games where they are targeting mythical creatures, than playing shoot the Taliban or some such.