Devs discuss how mass shootings hit their mental health

gamedeveloper.com:

The horrific mass shooting in Uvalde, TX where 18-year old Salvador Ramos fatally shot nineteen students and two teachers at an elementary school has rocked the entire country. While broader news coverage of the story has focused on how police failures on the scene possibly contributed to more deaths, game developers who work on games that center modern-day firearms have been wrestling with their emotions about the event.

While news of the shooting (and the continued lack of regulatory action to prevent future shootings) is traumatizing enough, several developers told Waypoint's Patrick Klepek that their work on first-person shooter games like Call of Duty has become more difficult as more of these shootings take place.

There's an interesting amount of nuance to be pulled from the stories these developers tell. As always, it's worth spelling out that years of evidence and research has shown no causal link between violent video games and violent real-life actions. That said, developers from different backgrounds are now contemplating how their games contribute to American gun culture.

The developers (many anonymous, though some went on the record) described a more diluted link between their work and the Uvalde mass shooting. Games like Call of Duty license the images of real-world guns like the M16 from gun manufacturers to create a specific brand of authenticity in their depictions of modern warfare. Said games realistically depict how said guns fire and operate, but don't show the damage they can cause to people and communities.

Making virtual versions of these real-life firearms fun to play with bleeds into elements of American gun culture that celebrate and advocate for the right to own these weapons. That advocacy has