Do You Like Hurting Other People?” Critiquing American Violence in Hyperviolent Video Games

Abstract

This thesis analyzes hyperviolent games of the early 2010s to identify narratives that conceptually link ‘Violence’ with ‘America.’ The focus is on games by non-American studios, with the aim of investigating how outside perspectives are influenced by such media to supplement existing literature on the effects of American-made media. The approach involves investigating themes of enjoying violence, justifying violence, and the relationship between trauma and violence, using insights lifted from literature pertaining remediation and cultural trauma in addition to relevant works from the fields of American studies and scholarly games studies. KEYWORDS: Media, video games, hyperviolence, post-9/11, Anti-Americanism, remediation