Videogames: how real is too real?

So E3, the world's biggest videogame conference, has come and gone. Although I've never been to the event, it seems that some perennial traditions never change. The "booth babes" will strut around in skimpy clothing, pretending to be charmed by the sweaty, tight-crotched advances of the gaming masses. Various games journalists, despite having some of the best jobs in the world, will whine about being exhausted as if they're sending grizzled dispatches from war-torn Libya. The three big console manufacturers will put on gigantic press conferences, during which hardcore gamers will attack anything shown that's not specifically made for them (Kinect, Move, Wii Fit etc) with the impotent ferocity of a thousand weaning infants.

One thing that particularly stood out at this year's E3 was the dominance of the big-budget first person shooter. Although differing in many ways, one thing that the likes of Modern Warfare 3, Rage, Far Cry 3 and Battlefield 3 all share is the quest for the holy grail of computer graphics: photorealism.

And for the most part, the quest seems to be going rather well. A glance at some of the footage from Battlefield 3 provides evidence enough that modern developers (and modern PCs most of all) are making serious strides towards creating truly believable environments and character models. It's certainly enough to make you believe that the next generation of consoles could get scarily close to cresting the far side of the uncanny valley.

So it's a baby Space Race to see who'll get there first. But like the Space Race, all the money and effort is being dedicated to getting there, with precious little thought as to what happens when we do. Don't get me wrong, I'm as excited as the next joystick warrior about the luscious visuals that await us in the next few years, but I remain curious about the unintended consequences.

I'm not about to start prattling on about murder simulators or emploring you to just think of the children; like most people, I believe that violent videogames can be enjoyed as part of a healthy media diet. But if games reach a level of visual fidelity that makes them hard to distinguish from reality, I do wonder if that's what we actually want.

I play violent FPS games because they often have compelling and well-developed gameplay, they can be stylish and immersive, and they give me the opportunity to measure my skills against screaming 14 year-olds from South Carolina or wherever. I don't play them because I want an unflinching representation of what it's actually like to kill a human being. I want cartoon violence, movie violence, comic book violence; I don't want something that feels like the real thing. Or do I? I don't know. Maybe videogame violence will never feel that shocking because no matter how real it looks, we know deep down it's just cleverly arranged pixels. But as computer graphics move us ever closer to scarily realistic recreations of some pretty current world conflicts, I expect we'll all be finding out where our limits lie.