Normally I'd agree, with you-I can be pretty viscious in video games, particularly in RPGs. Normally I feel (esp in rpgs) that it is a significantly harder challenge to play through a game 'evil' than it is 'good', but in some cases the opposite is true, such as in Jedi Academy. I also feel that I rarely get the chance to play through a game as a satisfyingly evil, vicious, or manipulative character, but this this so holds true for the opposite end of the spectrum, where being good is merely the 'default', and requires no real effort, sacrifice, etc to achieve. So on the occasion where being 'good' actually entails an actual effort to achieve, it seems like something worth my time, even if I usually don't play that way.

I usually can't bear to play an evil person in videogames, and I usually don't bother stealing stuff (unless I really needs something and the stealing is piss easy, like in Morrowind). But I really can't imagine that playing a pacifist character in Skyrim would be at all fulfilling. I could see it in Deus Ex, maybe, or Planescape (not sure if possible?), or even Doom or Quake just for the sheer ridiculous challenge... but I dunno... it just seems to me like there wouldn't be any satisfaction in doing it in Skyrim. The TES games are so open already that it'd be easy to just avoid any difficulties that playing a pacifist would bring.

I always just default to being good, because being actively evil takes effort for me. I always feel too guilty (unless it's a game like Saint's Row 3, where there's absolutely no weight to any of the horrible stuff you do). Like in a game like Fallout...I just can't bring myself to be evil. Hell, even in Mount and Blade, I only ever burned a few towns, and that sad music that plays always made me sorry I did.

Yeah, I'm ball-less. Deal with it.

I've never lifted a finger against anyone or anything in real life.

...why do I need a pacifist run in a video game?

For fun or challenge.

I think people (and I'm using that term rather loosely) get freaked out by the interactive nature of video games. Really graphically violent movies or books or TV or whatever other media also gets called out, but I think it takes more for a response to happen because there isn't input by the viewer.

I'm not saying I agree, I think it is partially an issue of video games still not being a hugely consumed medium, and thus less people are exposed to the violence of video games than something like violence in movies. Therefore when people see the ability to chop someone's head off (in Skyrim for example) it becomes much more of an issue than if that occurred in a movie. We (as GOGers, and gamers more broadly) don't have as much of that reaction, I would posit, because we have played enough games to understand the think about games in a different way.

[sorry if any of that isn't really coherent. I'm fairly sleepy right now]