News: Violence for the sake of violence in videogames: Some developers pull back

The Washington Post has reported (via Yahoo News) that some videogame designers are hesitating to make games more violent than they already are. In the case of the 3D game series Postal, Postal 2, and Postal 2: Share the Pain (the networked multiplayer version), the main character wins by murdering anyone he encounters in various creative ways. But Postal designers feel they have already taken the "kill anything that moves" ideal to the point where it has become boring. The only way to take it further would be to cross certain taboos, so the developers are pulling back:

"The developers decide that they are not comfortable with putting children in the game. Mixing sex with violence is also out of the question. No recreation of the Columbine massacre or the Twin Towers falling. Plus no singling out a single racial or ethnic group or gender for violence. Postal is an equal opportunity world Everyone has an equal opportunity to fight -- and be killed. Almost everything else, they conclude, has been done."

According to the Washington Post, the new version of Postal may actually allow for more points if the main character shows mercy in certain situations (such as avoiding running over a wounded man lying in the street.)

The article also gives some of the history behind violence in videogames. The full text is available here.