Does Profanity equal Realism?

By Mike Fischer
Gamezone.com

In a state of frustration, you scream profanities at the TV screen. Yet, when a game has its share of profanity, you consider it unnecessary.

Why do developers have swearing in video games, when you can get the same gaming experience if there is none? Well, it is unnecessary for you to yell out profanities of your own, but you do it anyway. Does that hinder your own life experiences? No.

The developers are trying to make their characters as realistic as possible by having them say what a real person would say in that situation.

Now, there is a fine line between having profanity to deepen the understanding of the character’s emotions and having profanity just for the sake of having it. What developers have to understand is that you have to write profanity into the dialogue well. You cannot just coat the character with profanity wherever you want and expect the player to fall for your lack of writing skills; it makes the character transparent and shallow.

Yes, characters swear and the character stereotypes that say profanities rarely need an explanation of why they constantly swear. With unique characters, they need a reason or back-story for the player to get better understanding of why this character is screaming profanities.

People still have an overall problem with profanity in games. All they need to do is look deeper into the artificial soul of this computer-generated character and whether or not they should be swearing during this time in their life. It all depends on their emotions and characteristics from their past and current story. There has to be a reason why the character is constantly uttering profanities; they cannot become arrogant and hateful on a whim. It is not realistic and it is poorly written dialogue.

Profanity intrudes on everyone’s life whether you like it or not. It has made an imprint on our civilization and is not going disappear anytime soon. It adds a certain emotional and realistic feel to the characters personality and structure. Does that make it right for developers to add profanity wherever they want? No, video games can do without profanity and still be entertaining. However, if developers use profanity properly to benefit their game, why not use this particular tool to enhance the believability of their characters?