Was E3 2012 too violent?

Video game violence is a touchy subject, and E3 2012 may not have been helping the video game image.

With various trailers on display from the likes of Assassin’s Creed 3, The Last of Us, Tomb Raider, Black Ops 2 and Far Cry 3 showing off heaps of grisly, realistic violence amidst cheers from the crowd, one has to wonder if it’s not providing fuel for the political agendas of the more conservative politicians and activists.

According to Assassin’s Creed 3 creative director Alex Hutchinson however, the abundance of gore is “a bit of a false positive.”

“I think it’s exactly the same as it always was, but it just looks a lot more real now and it’s a lot more intense. We’re a lot better at doing our jobs, in terms of cameras, timing, set up. And it’s more a marketing thing anyway – if you’ve got three minutes to grab people’s attention you usually blow some s*** up,” he said.

“It’s unfortunate. We could do huge demos of all the parts of the game that have no violence in them at all but I don’t know how it would stand up in a three minute big screen demo.”

When asked if it bothers him when the audience gets more excited the more violent it gets, he replied, “It does a little bit.”

“I just think in terms of the mainstream audience we’re probably not putting our best foot forward if that’s what we’re showing because we’re enforcing a stereotype that I don’t think that is actually true.”

Hutchinson said that in Assassin’s Creed 3, steps were taken to manage the violent content.

“[For example,] there are kids in the game but we don’t want to have any violence towards children even as an option, so we just locked that out,” he said.

“I think it’s more about how you reward players. Are you rewarding them for violence, or for success? Hopefully our game is at least encouraging you through all kinds of mechanics to be stealthy and to be on target. And we’ve added non lethal options to combat in terms of unarmed fighting, so hopefully there’s more room there too.”