How much violence is OK for a video game?

[MrBehemoth]

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"

This.

People have a right and responsibility to censor for themselves, to the degree that they feel is necessary to remain healthy and balanced. For people who are not mentally equipped to make that kind of decision (eg. children, or people with very severe mental health problems), it's up to the person responsible for their care to help them make those decisions or to make the decisions for them. Deciding whether a piece of media is offensive is a subjective minefield: wherever you draw the line, there are going to be problems.

Edit - Mudbill beat me to it and said what I wanted to say much more concisely.
Personally, I know that no piece of media, no matter how depraved, is going to turn me into a psychopath. There are two movies that I have turned off because they crossed the line for me. I turned off The Human Centipede ten minutes in - as soon as I realised what the tone was going to be like. The other was Crash (the 1996 accident-porn one) because it squicked me out. BUT, I would never, ever say that these movies should not exist. They are fictitious and no-one got hurt making them.

Since someone brought up the subject of child-porn, let me point out the difference. Firstly, it is not a depiction of fiction made with actors and special effects. It is a record of a real event. (Compare consensual adult BDSM porn with an actual snuff-movie, for example.) Secondly, this is a type of media in which it is unavoidable that someone was hurt, mentally or physically, in the making of it and that is why the medium itself should not exist, regardless of the fact that the act it records is illegal, as it should be.

Anyway, I started writing because I wanted to make a point about games...

For me, all the noise people make about GTA is entirely unwarranted and does not compare with things like Hatred or Postal.

GTA is set in an immoral and relatively-consequence free version of our world. The GTA series often has things to say about morality and choice. For example, what would the world be like if the worst consequence the law can give you is that you need to drive fast and hide under a bridge for a hour or so? It makes sense that, in the world of GTA, if you wanted to use and murder a prostitute then that is an option you could choose, just as in real life. If I wanted to murder a prostitute in real life (I don't) then I may choose to do so and then face the consequences.

This is entirely different from Hatred, for example. In Hatred, slaughtering civilians is not an emergent narrative, it is a delivered one. The player does not have a choice in how this story goes. That's what makes it less interesting to me. I don't need to spend hours directing the protagonist in killing innocents, because the predetermined story is not telling me anything that I don't already know: that the protagonist is deranged and evil and the civilians are innocent and scared. There's enough of that in real life already. I don't need it.

But you know what? I still have a choice. I have the choice not to buy or play the game. That's my choice. And if you want to play it that that's your choice too. And as long as you have the mental capacity to censor yourself and understand the limit to which you can absorb horrific media without becoming disturbed yourself, that's ok.