I imagine it depends on what you deem as unnacceptable violence. Obviously, there's gory horror games (ala Resident Evil or Silent Hill) that are probably on the list, but there's also a game like... Call of Duty, a World War II game. It's not very gory at all. You don't see blood flying everywhere or arms being blown off like in Saving Private Ryan. But there is a lot of shooting people. Then there's also games like Warcraft... small armies battling it out. Very little blood, but lots of little guys whacking at each other with swords.

Then, you have Mario, Zelda, etc.... these are games considered very child-friendly, but really violence is there... stomping on Koopas or, in the case of Zelda's Link, using a sword and little bombs as weapons.

So, where would you say your threshold is?

And you're right, there is no controlling what kind of project a studio may switch to after they complete one. My studio has gone from an action RPG to a space combat RTS to an action music game to an action humor game. Nothing too extreme, in my opinion. If it's purely the horror games, the GTA types, the war games that you want to avoid, then I think you should have plenty of opportunities. But if even the violence of Zelda is too much, you might have to limit yourself to studios focused on edutainment titles and the like!

As for stability, it's true that the game industry is volatile. But, the longer you stay in it, the better chances you have, I believe, of staying in it due to your growing experience. I've personally been very fortunate to still be working at my first job in the industry after nearly 3 years. It is a rarity in this business for someone to stay at the same studio for over 5 years. But in reality, I'd say this is more due to the fact that most studios like to make sequals to their successful products and people decide to leave for new opportunities because they don't want to make what they see as the same game *again!*

I'm personally also a spiritual fella, and I know where you're coming from. However I'm able to see a distinction between real violence and the cartoon violence seen in video games and even films, so I don't personally have a lot of problems working on violent material, within reason. The main area where *I* draw the line is pornography in games. I remember being very glad when my studio turned down an opportunity to make a strip poker game! lol