[Milawe]

I think that humans often tend to try to make our beginning much more special than it actually was. Physically, we are not much different from the animals we share the world with, and if you've ever taken any behavioral classes, you can see that we share many of our instincts with other animals. Most of us start at loud sounds. Our heart rate increases dramatically when we are stressed or scared. (This increases blood flow to allow us to flee or fight.) We eat when we are hungry. We sleep when we are tired. We get irritatble when we go without sleep. You can see all these behaviors reflected in the animal kingdom. We really are simply animals with an awareness of our own existance and the existance of others around us.

Even now, scientists are finding more and more genes that they have linked to specific behaviors. I won't go into all the details here, but here's a quick and easy source if you wanted to get started reading about it:

So, while we have progressed far in the advancement of our culture and our civilization, there are still basic insticts that we possess, especially survival instincts. Studies show that endorphins are released while playing video games or achieving success at various endeavors that involve a struggle. It feels GOOD to succeed at something. In the wild, it may have felt good to bring down prey, to find a source of food, or to escape from a predator and save your family while doing it. Then perhaps it progressed to feeling good bringing in that first harvest, cooking an excellent meal, etc. Later, it progressed as far as advancing in our careers, education, and cosumerism.

I'm not sure that it's the killing that really draws people. That's just the mechanism for advancement. There are plenty of extremely popular online games that also promote advancement in different ways without involving killing at all. For example, you've got the Sims, Neopets, Ikariam, Zoo Tycoon, and tons of games on Pogo, which are actually far more popular than the huge MMOs or any mud and include men and women.

Genetically, though, men are wired pretty differently from women. They have much higher concentrations of several hormones that are linked to aggressive behaviors, and that could be why we see more men playing the "bloody" games that involve killing or PvP. Lots of men also channel this aggression through sports, and it could easily explain why sports generates so much money. In the past, we had much more bloody ways of dealing with that aggression. The Minoans had bull leaping (and killing). The Romans had gladiator battles. The Mayans played kick ball with severed heads. These were all considered sports.

Maybe the game designs take us back to when things were primative and savage and gives us a safe outlet for genetically programmed behaviors. As thinking beings, we know that going out, slaughtering some random person, and stripping them of their loot is a "bad" thing and is "bad" for our society. Thus, MOST of us don't do it. Most of us can also tell "pretend" from "real", and it's not really realistic to go around slaughtering boars, ripping out their hearts, and turning it into a quest NPC with an exclamation point over its head.

I think most of us are self aware enough to know that video games, bloody or not, are just a way to let loose a bit. In a way, you might say we've evolved to harmlessly taking our aggressions out on a computer rather than on each other.