That is intense! I know a number of people who dislike them a good deal but that then leads them to revel in being able to gloriously slaughter them in a non-threatening setting.
You are applying reason to an irrational problem...;) I have a friend, a great, big, hulking friend, who is absolutely terrified of spiders. One Halloween we put a molded black rubber spider about the size of a quarter inside his desk drawer so that when he opened it he would see it immediately. We heard a loud scream from his office, the sounds of books and things landing and breaking on the floor, and rushed in to see what our handiwork had produced. This huge guy was literally curled up in almost a fetal position in the corner of the room, on the floor, gibbering. Yes, gibbering. And crying!
We had no idea his phobia went that deep! We "talked him down" out of his fear for about thirty minutes before he could finally get up off the floor and function again. I took his lighter and burned the rubber spider "to death" right in front of him, it gooped into the trashcan, and that seemed to do the trick. Fifteen minutes later it was as if nothing had happened.
Phobias are completely irrational. Reason & logic are of scant help. But they are pretty rare, too.
I don't like spiders, either, and like you, I like to kill 'em...;) And lately in D:OS my summoned spiders have been helping me a lot, actually.
Interesting topic! Interesting problem. Can't imagine there's really anything a game developer might do--because when it comes to monsters there are probably people like my friend who might react like that to any number of monsters featured in a game.
