So, not too long ago. Gears of War 2 announced a violence Filter. Which upon being activated, removes blood and removes swears. This got me thinking, what is the point behind this? This question has been pondering me for quite awhile, is it a way for those who get nausous upon the sight of blood to contiune to play the game? Is it simply a excuse for teenagers who obviously should not own the game to convince their parents to buy it? What are developers thinking upon the creation of a violence filter?

Does having this violence filter automatically rate down the game to T?

I simply don't understand the point of changing the blood that shoots out of a chainsaw when you chainsaw someone in half to sparks, the game is rated M for Mature, so adults should be buying the game. Changing little visual details of said chainsawing someone in half doesn't change the fact that your character in the game is chainsawing someone in half! The main message is there.

My only excuse of having a violence filter to cater to those who are Hemophobic (Fear of Blood), or get Nausous at the sight of blood. But that seems to be a small minority of those who would play the game.

I can't think of any other games, but I know there is more than simply Gears of War 2.

Good question, I think there are some people who just do not like to see blood, and there is quite a lot in gears.

Exactly my understanding. But all I see this action of making violence filters as a way to placate concerned parents so they don't feel so bad about purchasing the game for someone who is not able to buy the game themselves. Thus putting games, and gamers in the hot-spot when something else bad happens that can be blamed for games.

You know that liking 'gore' and related is actually the minority ?

And I don't know for the first Gears of Wars, but I think all Epic's game always have the non-violent filter. I'm 100% sure for the first 'Unreal Tournament' and 'Unreal Tournament 2003', as those are pretty much the only FPS I have played extensively (I am hemophobic).

I could get into a debate about implicit/unrealistic and explicit/realistic violence, but that would be too technical for my level of english ... :(

Epic hasn't forgotten all the parents that want seeing their children killing the Locust without taking mental damage. ;)

Quite a few PC based games used to have this, including most Epic games I believe. While of course it doesn't affect the rating I always presumed the goal was to provide choice for those tho didn't want bots, swearing, etc. or violence.

In theory a good idea but of limited practical impact I always thought.

What would be interesting would be ability to set age filters on the console and have games have multiple levels of violence, profanity.

In theory this could allow some games to have multiple ratings and sell more wildly, but I doubt you'd even get this to fly due to confusion, etc.

So it sounds nice and might help a few younger teens convince their parents to let them play using the filter (which they'll of course turn off as soon as they can!) but I imagine that's about it.

I never understood what's the big deal with blood, especially the way Hollywood depicts it. What's truly damaging is seeing dry blood on the face of decapitated child with it's half rotten eyes staring into an endless abyss while wild dogs feed on it's dried up body, it's bones shattered, it's body mangled, it's innocent soul torn asunder, and beside him his family is.... Ok I'm done. The idea is liquid blood is not that big of a deal.

^^^I saw a man blow his brains out with a magnum on Sunday night.

Was there blood or was the violence filter turned on?

Oh, there was blood. There was lots of blood. I took a pic with my cell phone. If you ever saw the Photo Channel on my Wii, you'd never call it a kiddie console again.