Violence in video games is a hot button topic for this generation. But why is violence so prevalent in games? Sure, the Sims is the best selling PC franchise of all time, and we still get at least a dozen sports games released annually, but there’s no denying that the vast majority of video games are centered around committing acts of violence.
Why are the most popular games violent? What makes it so essential to video games? The reason is the same as in any other medium: conflict. Conflict is essential for any story to be interesting, be it a movie, a book, a TV show, or even a video game. We keep watching or reading because we want to see how the conflict will be resolved, how things will turn out for the characters. No one wants to watch the story of a man having breakfast, going to work, then coming home and going to bed. They want to see something go wrong, for a problem to come up, and our protagonist to have to rise up and solve it.
In non-interactive media, the conflict can be sorted out through any means; a couple can talk out their problems, a man can fight for his rights in court, an underdog team can work their way through a championship, or a man can shoot everyone in sight. The situation can respond to any event that occurs, because the entire thing is planned out in advance by the writer. But in an interactive medium, everything is different. There isn’t just one thing that can happen, there’s many. The player dictates how things occur, that’s the draw of the format. The player wants to be the one resolving the conflict, the one whose actions have a direct effect on the conflict.  But a game isn’t like the real world, where there are reactions for every action. In a game, the only reactions are the ones that are set by the designers beforehand.
And there in lies the problem. Games sometimes try and be dialogue focused, but in the end the player is just picking and choosing from a bunch of predetermined dialogue options. Players don’t have free reign, they can’t say whatever they want. But with violence any approach can be taken, because the reaction to getting shot, or punched, or run over is the same in every instance: they get hurt and then they die. So the designer can give the player a gun, and let them do whatever they want with it, because while players can take whatever approach that they want, the reaction that impacts the game is the same, they kill people and move on.
It all boils down to numbers. Damage inflicted on someone is, behind the graphics, just numbers being taken off of a total. And yes, there are other games that turn player actions into numbers. Games where you manage cities or sports teams take all of the statistics and budgets and run them in the background, showing the results to the player. But those fill a niche market. On the whole, people don’t want to manage simulations, or walk through pre-scripted dialogue scenes. They want to be in the action, resolving the conflict directly, seeing everything they do have a distinct result that directly affects the world around them. And violence is the most straightforward way to do it.