Quote: Original post by GameCreator
Simple. It's extremes that get and keep our attention.

It can't be just a topless woman. It has to be graphic sex.
It can't be just a small wound. It has to be a deep cut. A severed limb.
It can't be just a witty response. It has to be profanity laced.
You can't just save the princess. You have to save the world.

That seems to make sense, yet in World of Warcraft, the majority of people have just average characters (in comparison to all player characters).

Quote: Why is murder so popular in current games? I have my own ideas about why it is (no repercussions for one) but I would like to hear your thoughts...

Because murder is sensational and we love to eat up all the drama it causes. My pet theory is that every day life is somewhat boring and people have a craving for dramatics wherever they can find it. It would certainly explain the prevalence of blood, violence, sex, drugs, etc. in our media and it would also explain why traffic slows to a crawl when there is an automobile accident which isn't blocking any lanes. It would also explain why the 24 hour news cycles seem to be like an IV drip feeding us streams of outrage and sensationalism.

If you think of media and all its forms as entities competing against each other, with the competitive resource being our attention (which gets translated into $$$), then you could expect to find elements of natural selection at work. The media which doesn't get our attention (and hold it) eventually dies off because its sponsor goes bankrupt. Any new meat entering the foray mustn't copy what its extinct predecessors did or it too will quickly find itself extinct. Thus, new media entrants tend to push the envelope on sensationalism and drama. Murder happens to be just one ingredient (of many available) which can be used to concoct the perfect recipe for our attention.