What is it with gore and blood with games?

Don't get me wrong here-I love gore-filled games. I virtually grew up with Mortal Kombat, and play Modern Warfare 2 regularly. However, a recent Alan Titchmarsh extract led me to thinking this question: are games more filled with blood and gore more attractive than games without them? Are they? Why do gore-filled games attract more people than games without?

I belive farmville and wii sports currently attract the most people, neither of them have gore.

Gore is just a thing that some games have for me. Not really a seller or unseller.

Tell me more about Alan Titchmarsh's extract.

I don't care about gore (as in people's arms flying off in explosions, but that definitely adds something to some games like Gears and Left 4 Dead 2) but I want at least a little blood to come out of someone when I shoot them, it just helps a little with immersion I guess.  Same with swords, it just is more real looking when you slash a guy and blood comes out than if you slash a guy and there are sparks or nothing.  
 
That said, I care much more about the quality of a game than its blood and gore levels.  It's just that good shooters/action games tend to have blood.

It makes a kill more ridiculous and satisfying.  It's not the reason I buy a game though.

I love gore, it satisfies the primordial urge to hunt that we've abandoned as a silly little society. 

I've said it before and I'll say it again, Alan Titchmarch is a fucking gardener. If you want to know the best conditions for your rose bush, then ask him. He's just pissed that there was never a Ground Force game. 
 
And even if there was everybody would play as Tommy Walsh.

" Gore is just a thing that some games have for me. Not really a seller or unseller. "

I personally don't have a problem with Gore in action games, as long as it looks realistic.  If it's over-the-top, it tends to look a little silly, as if the developers just put it in there because they wanted to.   For example, The blood in Dragon Age: Origins, which is one of the best games I've played in recent years,  looks pretty real, and is close to what you see in the Lord of the Rings Movies, or Braveheart. 
  
The games I love to play on the X-Box 360, are the ones that are Story-driven, and if they have blood and gore in them, it won't bother me.

I don't care, as long as it's fun.

I remember thinking Perfect Dark had the most kick ass blood effects. After seeing videos of people playing the recent release, it looks as though they still hold up. Something about good blood effects makes for a satisfying experience. Counterstrike did this well, too. I want to see a technological push for realistic liquids, particles, and splatter effects! Maybe next gen.

I think gore sells more as the games featuring it have generally a more exciting gameplay and theme.

I don't care much about gore. take Ninja Gaiden II for example. gory as hell but when it was re-released on the PS3, all the gore was gone. some cutscenes look downright wrong without the gore but it was super enjoyable and an absolute blast to play. 

An inconvenient game has far too much Gore for my taste though. (Sorry, this pun needed to be in the thread somewhere).

Think about it this way, if the game is like God of war where i am slashing fools left and right, i expect gore. Gore would enhance the game. But if its a fighting game, things like mortal kombat has extra gore that isn't needed as shown by MK vs DC where everything felt like a real MK game but the gore was toned down. 

Do games with gore attract more gamers? 
If so, then it either correlates with the type of game people want to play or the type of game that people tend to talk about. 
I'm totally happy with absolutely no blood in any game. Its not like Ninja Gaiden lost anything without blood falling everywhere. As long as it does not effect the gameplay (trauma centre without blood would be very odd) I have no problem with it being taken out or left in. Its like complaining about the type of texture they use for floors as far as i'm concerned. 

Perhaps just the games you've been picking out lately has had a fair share of gore. Play more T rated games?

i was thinking about this today as i finished GOW3. Im no prude, i like violence in games, hell, i wouldnt want a mortal kombat game with no gore...
 
...but I actually felt unconfortable sometimes during GOW3 to be quite honest. Maybe its because it looks so good, or maybe they just went a bit too far, but damn if I didnt feel slightly wrong about doing some of the stuff in gow3 (the first / second person stuff mostly if you know what I mean)

" Do games with gore attract more gamers? If so, then it either correlates with the type of game people want to play or the type of game that people tend to talk about. I'm totally happy with absolutely no blood in any game. Its not like Ninja Gaiden lost anything without blood falling everywhere. As long as it does not effect the gameplay (trauma centre without blood would be very odd) I have no problem with it being taken out or left in. Its like complaining about the type of texture they use for floors as far as i'm concerned.  "

I like gore, but gore is not a selling point for myself (in any type of media). Video game gore is not the gore I like anyway.

Cuz Amuricah loves them sum BEAR ARMS!!!!!!!!!

Blood and gore sometimes apply a certain image or look to the game which according to the devs might be important to include so the player can grasp the atmosphere of the game. If you want a game to stand out as a game which focuses on violence of war and how terrible man can be against each other, violence and horrible scenes is what you'll have to include in the game.

Gore and Blood With Games? 
I like my Gore and Blood with Games on the side :D 
 
But for me, Gore isn't needed in games to make me wanna play them. 
Heck, I would play the God of War games even if they didn't have blood and gore in them

" An inconvenient game has far too much Gore for my taste though. (Sorry, this pun needed to be in the thread somewhere). "

"i was thinking about this today as i finished GOW3. Im no prude, i like violence in games, hell, i wouldnt want a mortal kombat game with no gore...  ...but I actually felt unconfortable sometimes during GOW3 to be quite honest. Maybe its because it looks so good, or maybe they just went a bit too far, but damn if I didnt feel slightly wrong about doing some of the stuff in gow3 (the first / second person stuff mostly if you know what I mean)"

" @Rhaknar said:

"i was thinking about this today as i finished GOW3. Im no prude, i like violence in games, hell, i wouldnt want a mortal kombat game with no gore...  ...but I actually felt unconfortable sometimes during GOW3 to be quite honest. Maybe its because it looks so good, or maybe they just went a bit too far, but damn if I didnt feel slightly wrong about doing some of the stuff in gow3 (the first / second person stuff mostly if you know what I mean)"

I didn't feel uncomfortable about that stuff, but all of that did seem like ridiculous pandering to a teenage audience that would become giddy everytime Kratos did something 'totally badass.'   I'd like to believe that the industry learned an important lesson last year when  two of thr best games that came out were both rated T and both managed to push that as far as they could to create compelling stories and gameplay, without resorting to showing off boobs and severed limbs. But I'm sure they didn't.    "

when people get shot, they bleed and there is gore. 
 
Lots of games involve conflict of the war variety. 
 
War involves shooting people. 
 
I don't see which step of logic you're missing

" It makes a kill more ridiculous and satisfying.  It's not the reason I buy a game though. "

It's up to the developer to make it tasteful and appealing. Yeah, it's a shit ton more awesome to rip the head off of a harpy in God of War and it's much more awesome to have blood explode out of a zombie and spatter onto the screen in Left 4 Dead 2. So... yes, blood and gore are attractors when it comes to games. It's just up to the developer to make the gore visceral, awesome, and tasteful at the same time.

I posted my thoughts here:  http://www.giantbomb.com/profile/natetodamax/gore-in-video-games-whats-the-deal/30-39551/

I like some blood in a game as a slight concession to reality, but a game like God of War where a point is made to make things as gory as possible really turns me off.  I don't find mutilation entertaining.

"

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" Tell me more about Alan Titchmarsh's extract. "

" An inconvenient game has far too much Gore for my taste though. (Sorry, this pun needed to be in the thread somewhere). "

Al Gore is a former vice president that had heavy involvment in the making of the climate change film "an inconvenient truth".
 
What I've done here is taken his name to have a double meaning (see thread title) and then to put it in the context of games by fabricating the game "an inconvenient game".
 
Ta-Da!

I wanna say no, but all the moments where I went "holy shit that guys head flew off" keep popping in my head. And I smile.

I'm not sure I'd agree with the assertion that games with more gore in them sell better without first seeing some statistics to prove it. Having said that, I haven't got the wherewithall to disprove it, so for the moment I'll have to go on my own oppinion, which is that gore is usually offered up as contextual and therefore necessarry to certain game-playing experiences. Granted this isn't always the case and sometimes games can be gratuitously violent for the sake of being violent, but if one were to imagine a game like Gears of War 2 without any violence then one would surely be imagining a weakened game. It's not that the blood is essential to make the game fun, or that it provides some form of saddistic frisson that sates the bloodlust boiling beneath the surface inside us all (although there's certainly a case for that), it's just that - when you shoot a guy's face off - there's going to be blood, and if there isn't then it makes you think you probably didn't shoot his face off in the right way.

Gore doesn't make for a good game, but it makes for some really funny shit.

can you even say MW 2 is gorey..? And no I dont think violence is the main seller to me. With splinter cell chaos theory, it wasn't the violence that catched me, it was the continuing of the story and being able to see sam fisher evolve, only problem was that now chaos theory was M when the first 2 were teen and this was back when i was like 11 <.<. Its the same thing with the Halo games, I think if the series took a more gears of war approach I just wouldnt see Halo as the same thing anymore. Now games like god of war, yeah the violence is probably the main selling point, but by probably the half way point you just want to go as quickly as possible through enemies and you dont really care much for the killing animations anymore.

They are referred to as ' visceral' experiences for a reason.