I have to imagine the arguments or excuses that the author is parodying. I guess they are excuses that there are more violent games because violent interactions

I have to imagine the arguments or excuses that the author is parodying. I guess they are excuses that there are more violent games because violent interactions are easier to simulate than non-violent interactions. Rather than do a parody, I'd just point out that excuses about simulation are crappy because games hardly simulate anything. Outside of rigid-body physics, game logic is just a nonsense of magical rules. Why can't I blast open this door? Why do all the light switches still work after I've released several grenades in the room and decaled all the walls? It's all happily absurd. So if it's a standard in games that stepping over a medkit can cure you of the shotgun blast you took to the face, in some ridiculous simulacrum of first-aid, then why isn't it standard in games that gifting the love interest a rare flower makes them follow you around in some sort of ridiculous simulacrum of infatuation. It's a nice parody argument. But I'd rather have a history of how games got where they got. Maybe we can blame it all on Dungeons and Dragons. That game had HP.