An interesting thing happened over the weekend. I took my Xbox 360 over to my sister’s house. It was a small get-together comprised of myself, my sister, her husband, and their friend. They had asked me to bring over Rock Band 2, and I decided to bring over Fallout 3 as well just to show them. My sister’s husband was a fan of the older games, so I thought he’d appreciate seeing this newest incarnation. After popping in the game I took them on a short tour of the areas I had been to so far and eventually got around to showing off the combat.

Combat in Fallout 3 can be done in real-time, but in my opinion it’s easier and far more fun to bring up the Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System (VATS) to pause the action, queue up shots, and watch the action play out. As I’ve leveled-up my character, I also chose the Bloody Mess perk, which causes enemies to die in spectacularly over the top ways.

At this point in the game, I ran across some humans who were less than friendly towards me. As they ran toward me with pipes and pool cues, I targeted the closest one with VATS, aimed a few shots at his head, and let loose with my combat shotgun. After the second shot, his head exploded, sending brains and eyeballs flying towards the camera and spattering the screen with blood. At the same time, his left arm flew off while his legs simply disappeared, sending what was left of his corpse falling to the ground. I laughed, but my sister and her husband gasped and were shocked by the sight of so much gore. I approached the second enemy, queued up a few more shots, and in the first blast his body simply disappeared in a cloud of blood and gibs. Cries of, “Oh my god!” came from my audience.

Sis and her husband have played plenty of games in their lifetime. Both are avid World of Warcraft players, and her husband grew up playing the Playstation consoles and PC games. They’ve certainly seen their share of games, whether playing themselves or watching myself or another relative play. However, they are not what I’d call hardcore gamers. They own no consoles, and get most of their gaming news from me. They’ve played GTAIV at my house, and have seen violent shooters like The Darkness and Call of Duty 4. Even the brutal hand to hand combat in Condemned: Criminal Origins didn’t faze them, but they were not prepared for the level of violence that was on display in Fallout 3.

Their reactions took me aback. It made me feel a little embarrassed, to be honest. Here I was, laughing at the horror I was unleashing on-screen, when in real life such a scene would probably make me vomit uncontrollably. Why was this even necessary in the game? Sure, Fallout 1 and 2 were gory for their time, but a 2D sprite dissolving into blood doesn’t have the same impact a 3D, high resolution, bump mapped model does. That’s the very reason why Bethesda didn’t include the ability to kill children in the game, while the first two games did. The closest analog to Fallout 3‘s violence I can think of is Gears of War‘s chainsaw execution moves.

Both Fallout 3 and Gears of War are striving for violence so over the top that it’s more like a cartoon than reality. I would say that they succeeded. However, I think they’ve succeeded only for people who are used to playing games in general, and violent games in particular. The mom or dad buying games for their teenagers or college students this Christmas aren’t going to be too impressed if they see the kind of content that these games boast.

I’m no proponent of censorship. I believe that the ESRB and other ratings systems around the world serve a valuable purpose in helping buyers decide if a game is right for themselves or someone else. At the same time, I’m the kind of person who looks at videogames as an emerging art form. I want to see games go from “those things that kids play in their basement” to an experience that many people share like Lost on TV or Pirates of the Caribbean in the theater. I believe that the Wii and the growth of casual games is helping to make videogames more acceptable to the public at large, but I still worry that videogames will be forever condemned to the same ghetto that comic books now find themselves in.

I’m not saying violent games should go away. That would certainly make for a boring medium, or at least a more mundane one. Call of Duty 4 in particular has done a great job of presenting the horrors of real life combat while still being fun and exciting to play. But I do think it’s time for developers to step up and come up with more interesting ways of creating and resolving conflict. Portal has little in the way of direct combat. The old point and click adventure game classics such as Myst and The Secret of Monkey Island all focused on puzzle solving to advance their plot. The upcoming PS3 exclusive Heavy Rain looks to give players several different ways of resolving situations without the use of violence. Fallout 3 can apparently be played so that you only kill one enemy in the entire game, though it is extremely difficult to do so.

My greater wish is for games to become more mature and adult in tone. Not in a sex and violence way, but in terms of themes and stories. There will always be an audience for the latest action game. But if videogames and gamers are to be taken seriously in the long term, we need more than that.

Interestingly enough, after the initial shock, my sister and her husband began to see the humor in the game, and we ended up ignoring Rock Band 2, created a new character, and played Fallout 3 until the end of the night. The average person, however, won’t give a game a few hours to hook them and change their mind once they see an enemy’s body explode into a puff of blood.