Love them or hate them, video games pervade our society. Sometimes they act as social commentary, sometimes they guide social behavior. Clive Thompson from Wired talks about the latest episode in how games affect society with an interesting response about torture in video games.

A quest in the recent WoW expansion pack Wrath of the Lich King poses a big cultural, aesthetic and political question: Should games include torture? To which the answer is simple: Sure they should. In fact, I’ll go further. I think we need more torture in videogames.

The article is thought-provoking and a quick read. I have to say, if games can spawn healthy debates about interesting and important issues in society without breaking the player out of the box, I’m all for it.

Coming up this week (hopefully) my thoughts on Mirror’s Edge and Psychonauts.