I think it's a personal thing that can't be applied generally. I find a lot of the death in video games very disturbing and not casual at all. I think all you h

I think it's a personal thing that can't be applied generally. I find a lot of the death in video games very disturbing and not casual at all. I think all you have to do is look at the right things to see it. With games being more complex and having higher budgets for things like special effects and voice acting, killing people isn't just making some pixels disappear. Take for example using a corrosive gun against a human in Borderlands, or shooting a bad guy with a fire arrow in Tomb Raider (the most recent one): Killing enemies this way usually involve them dying slowly as they are corroded away or burned alive. There are voice actors who act out horrible agonizing death rattles for that (in both instances, there is an initial painful scream, a second of panicked realization, then horrible screaming for seconds afterwards). Animators had to make people writhe around in agony as they slowly die. Game designers made a conscious choice about how they would proceed with the deaths of people - these things have costs and I would imagine they aren't small. More obviously with Tomb Raider: there are some horribly gruesome death sequences for Lara if you mess up. I've lost count of the number of times I've seen her get impaled, or crushed, or shot and all of the deaths are horrible and disturbing. Every time, I've felt it, and thought about how horrible it must be to die that way. I don't think I can really ask for more from a video game when it comes to expressing death, while still making a game enjoyable to play.