It’s an argument that has plagued gaming since the first time a player was able to pull out a weapon and attack someone else. No one ever worried about Mario jumping on the heads of turtles or Donkey Kong kidnapping a woman and defending himself with barrels. But by the time characters began looking like real people and players had the ability to whip out a gun and shoot Nazis in Wolfenstein or possessed marines in Doom, violence in video games has be criticized by those outside the industry. Now, the argument against it comes from within by an incredibly respected member of the community.

Warren Spector was recently quoted saying, “The ultraviolence has to stop.” This doesn’t come as a huge surprise that he would be an opponent of violence in gaming as Spector left Eidos in the mid-2000’s because of the level of violence he saw in certain games being created by his studio.

Spector continued, “We have to stop loving it…I just don’t believe in the effects argument at all, but I do believe that we are fetishizing violence, and now in some cases actually combining it with an adolescent approach to sexuality. I just think it’s in bad taste. Ultimately, I think it will cause us trouble.”

The rumor mill has been spinning on a sequel to Disney’s Epic Mickey since not long after the first game’s release, and now it’s looking less like speculation and more like confirmation.

After some marketing materials back in August spilled the beans on a potential sequel, a Disney newsletter was spotted detailing the new title and dating it at a December 2012 release.

Players will have the choice in Epic Mickey 2 to play as Mickey, or cooperatively in two-player mode with Mickey and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit “with the power to fly like a helicopter and use electricity to fight or friend enemies and solve challenges”.

Even more exciting is the news that Epic Mickey 2 will be released for Playstation 3, Xbox 360, and the Wii. A bit strange that the Wii-U isn’t a listed title, but since we don’t have a release date for the console quite yet it’s not surprising.

I’m very excited at the prospect of Epic Mickey 2 on multiple consoles. While Epic Mickey wasn’t a bad game by any means, it suffered from a terrible camera glitch as well as the Wii’s poor graphics. But such a strong concept with one of the most iconic characters in all of cartoon history combined with the capabilities of these other consoles AND multiplayer? Sounds very epic indeed.

The full text from Disney’s newsletter is available after the jump.