A Gamesindustry studio has revealed that 115 of the 349 titles revealed between E3 and Summer Games Fest qualify as non-violent in the eyes of GamesIndustry’s own rating methods. This represents a significant increase compared to 2019, which had only 17% of non-violent games. The study was not done in 2020 due to the low number of events due to the pandemic.
The aspects to take into account to qualify a non-violent game include not having representations of violence or violence directly, but it must be taken into account that it is an ongoing discussion. For example, Gamesindustry considers some sports games or titles like Mario Party to be violent, while others will not.
Definition principles
Here’s how the Gamesindustry rating works:
- No title where you are required or encouraged to harm or kill another living entity.
- No title with graphic or realistic depictions of violence.
- We also count cartoon violence. Mario Party minigames that involve knocking out the other players or Party Animals by throwing each other out of the levels.
- Games related to contact sports are considered violent.
- Reference to invisible violent acts, p. Eg a game where you are solving a previous murder does not count as violent.
- Representations or minimalist representations of conflicts. A Hearthstone-style card game does not count as violent.
- Games in which you give direct orders that lead to violence. Strategy titles or turn-based RPGs are considered violent.
Most indies
In this way, Nintendo is the largest publisher that showed the most non-violent games (6 of 27), followed by Microsoft that showed 31 and only four are non-violent. So it’s clear that the vast majority of these titles were shown at indie title conferences like Wholesome Direct which had 63 non-violent games out of 76 shown.
Ubisoft is the other big one that showed 20 games and four of them are non-violent and yet it is ahead of others like Square Enix, Capcom, Gearbox and Koch that did not show any games that were not violent. Below you can see the shared table.
| Conference | Total games | Non-violent games | Percentage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wholesome Direct | 76 | 63 | 83% |
| Return Digital | 8 | 3 | 37% |
| Future Games Show (E3) | 57 | 21 | 36% |
| Nintendo Direct (E3) | 27 | 6 | 22% |
| Guerilla Collective 2 | 35 | 7 | 20% |
| Summer Game Fest Kickoff Live | 25 | 5 | 20% |
| Xbox & Bethesda Showcase (E3) | 31 | 4 | 13% |
| UploadVR Showcase | 34 | 4 | 11% |
| PC Gaming Show (E3) | 20 | 2 | 10% |
| Ubisoft Forward (E3) | 20 | 2 | 10% |
| E3 Indie Showcase (E3) | 24 | 2 | 8% |
| Square Enix Presents (E3) | 16 | 0 | 0% |
| Koch Primetime | 11 | 0 | 0% |
| Capcom (E3) | 5 | 0 | 0% |
| Gearbox (E3) | 4 | 0 | 0% |
Gamesindustry comments that this study does not pose a criticism of the medium but simply analyze how the main games in the industry revolve around killing, surviving or harming other living beings. A topic that can lead to quite a long discussion.
