This is not a judgment or condemnation of violent games. I don't think they create more violence in the world. if I had to guess, I'd say the opposite. This is merely an observation as a writer and gamer.
I love violent video games. That is, I used to. Lately, I've found the joy sapped out of killing zombies (in Dead Island), killing Nazis (in Call of Duty) or killing Incas, French, Greeks or any other society (In Civilization I-V, Age Of Empires, Rise of Nations, Rise of Nations - Thrones and Patriots, etc). After all, as a writer, do I not breathe life into worlds that have hitherto not existed before I thought to name them? This is easy to understand if you have ever created a lovelorn bachelor or an idealistic soldier you knew was doomed to tragedy in the third chapter. If you were doing it right, you cried when the lover was rejected or the soldier died. But these are just words on paper. They will always be the same, from the first time you write it to the last person who reads it.
The soldier created in a video game is more than that. He exists electronically, as a series of bits and bytes; his brain is code, his body electric. He has agency beyond you. He has actions (albeit limited) that can and often do exist separate of your own behavior. He has arguably more claim to life and free will than that of a protozoan that exists and acts to accomplish one thing.
The zombie whose skull you bash in may be a monolithic creature whose sole purpose is to seek you out and consume you, but underwritten in his attack is the kernel of humanity: It is more effective and affective because you understand he was once a tourist, or a poor islander eking out a living before bad luck and circumstance made him fodder for your terror and enjoyment.
The Nazi soldier who is just one of thousands you will vanquish on your way from Normandy to Berlin may be a faceless member of an evil regime, but as a writer you know not all enemies were evil. Some were misguided youth under the sway of a powerful national ethic and far more others were just weak (but human) people caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. If it is the stated goal of modern games to strive for realism, is it not too much to suppose that part of that realism is that you, as the Audie Murphy of this digital conflict, have mowed down a more than a few young kids trapped in a bad situation?
What of the myriad woodchoppers, miners, scholars, farmers, yeomen and cataphracts consigned to doom in so many 'total world' games? I suppose this is just life writ small and in a blink of an eye. To a god, all of existence must seem like this. This begs the question: Is it better as the 'god of the power switch' to breathe life (and thus tragedy) into the characters of the game or no? Is it better to be a zombie with a hint of the life you had before than to never exist at all? Is it better to be a misguided German youth, living for a moment to be to be cut in half by a Thompson gun in some Belgian field than to never exist, even for that brief period? Is there merit in existing to chop wood for 30 minutes before some cruel Viking, Abyssinian or Zulu on a horse cleaves you in twain? Is suffering better than nothing?
I don't have the answer. I only know the more I write and invest in the act of being a writer, the harder it becomes to enjoy these games. The video terror becomes real terror, the trite sadness becomes real sadness. The hokey letters to home actually strike home. I guess the understanding of it all is, as a writer, I am the God of my worlds. Sadly I'm an Episcopal God: I love my children but I am powerless to intervene. It hurts when the story carries away a character I loved, one I thought had more to say and so much more to do, but it's beyond me to stop it. If I did, then there would be no real agency in the world I created or purpose in the life they lived. Ultimately it would do a great disservice to them.
Violent video games put you in the role of demigod, of avenging angel. After all, regular bullets hurt but don't kill you. It's not God, but it's as close as you can get in this life, I suppose. As such it cuts too close to the bone for me. It's an easy and fun thing to engage in when you are in your invincible teens and twenties, but once the rust sets in and you understand your death is closer than your birth, there's a reality to the act that's hard to stomach, even if it's just digital death you are dealing. I prefer to play God in my stories. At least then I create these characters with the best of intentions. If they wind up a zombie, or shot in a French farmhouse or stabbed at Bosworth Field, at least I gave them a chance at happiness, even if it doesn't always wind up that way.
I wonder what my favorite writer, Graham Greene, would think of modern video games. I think he'd applaud the valor but decry the one-sided nature of the event. After all he believed in a God that dispensed misfortune equally and without sentiment or national allegiance. Maybe he'd approve of video games. He'd just be more interested in the cannon fodder than the players. After all, just like the characters in the worlds he created, they cannot escape their fates. Maybe that makes them the most human things in the game. And maybe, just maybe, that's why I can't enjoy those games anymore.