America's love affair with firearms bleeds into gaming culture

Gaming culture is rife with graphic representations of gun violence and has been since arcade goers first blew aliens out of Space Invader's skies. You'll be hard-pressed to find more than a handful of AAA titles designed for adults (sit down Rayman) that don't rely on firearms, or use gore in substitution, either as a primary tool for the gameplay or as a thematic element. While firearms have been a mainstay in video games since the mid '70s, few games have cemented their position in popular culture than 1993's pioneering first person shooter, Doom. Not only did Doom bring the FPS genre into mainstream gaming culture, they also helped to normalize a level of gore not often seen since 1988's Turbografx 16 hit, Splatterhouse, one of the first games to ever carry a parental warning label. Doom's influence is clear in nearly every game in the genre.