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Virtual Morality Gives Pause For Thought
Thanks to Globeandmail.com for their article discussing deeper storylines and more complex moral choices for a maturing videogame audience. They cite a forum post from a KOTOR player lamenting: "Being evil is addictive and I find myself in situations where my conscience kicks in and it's difficult for me to do the bad thing", and the article claims this "...represents a new generation of sophisticated electronic games, created for a maturing and rapidly expanding audience, that are transforming gaming consoles from an adolescent diversion into a mainstream entertainment medium with artistic integrity and a social conscience." Is it justified to feel guilty about being evil within a videogame?
Due to the rise in online gaming, for the first time, it is actually other peoples experiences and enjoyment of the game that you are affecting.
The article seems to use examples mainly from online games, which can completely affect someones decisions. When your action is going to affect a few bytes of data stored temporarily on your computer its no big deal, but anyone who has played an online game will at some time have been upset by another player, even if they have simply lost a fair game, so they then feel sorry for anyone that they beat in the future, its no different than what happens in real life imho.
Yet again, this is hardly a new issue. Weren't ethical / moral decision points strewn throughout the entire Ultima series?
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
Videogames are about role-playing, playing a role. Good and evil are just that, roles to be played. In games we play the roles that will reward us with the most enjoyable experience. Real life often imposes a necessary morality to function within society, allowing little opportunity to experience life at the extremes. Games allow, if only for a moment, if only vicariously, the player the chance to experience a life at the extremes. J
Reality is not defined by rocks but by the presence of people. Setting another player back an hour just to acquire a little gold should make you feel guilty, as while the wound is virtual the choice made is real.
Even fantasy is, to some degree, echoes of experiences with people. The Ilthorian mentioned in a previous poster's comments is a stand in for a very real situation we have probably all faced in our lives: Do we add our voice to a chorous of tourments for sake of personal gain or do we sacrifice our social status for the benefit of another? Whether or not we have emotionally injured a person is secondary to whether or not we chose to injure. The physical damage is less important than the insight into one's character, and such insights should evoke feelings.
Films are very different than videogames, in that one does not choose what happens: one only watches the outcome. If a person goes to watch a Hannibal Lectre movie about eating people, their conscious should be clean. They, after all, didn't initiate the action. But if one choses to eat ewoks alive, killing the character and booting the user permanently from the server, one should rightfully feel guilty. If one chose to sell out the Mudokans to their fate in order to save their own hide, one should feel guilty. If one chose to beat their virtual pet whenever they were having a bad day, one should feel guilty.
Guilt is not a question of damage, but character.
The ______ Agenda
I disagree with these examples. That is your GOAL in the game in that context (being an 'evildoer' as our braintrust of a President calls it). Does that player feel worse for having been eaten knowing it was a person being the bad guy, versus a bot/scripted game event? I doubt it. Do you feel guilty when playing Quake 3 and you frag the point leader in an elimination round?
jX [ Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler. - Einstein ]
Is it justified to feel guilty about being evil within a videogame?
Is it justified to feel aroused when looking at a picture of a naked woman? Is it justified to feel hungry when thinking about a hamburger? Is it justified to feel angry about something that happened in a movie?
Yes of course it is! The REASON that movies (and video games, etc) are popular is because they let you "drop your guard" for a little bit. they let you feel emotions or experiences that you don't usually. If you didn't feel emotions like this, you wouldn't be human.. the same part of your brain is involved either way.
Of course it's a problem when somebody confuses "fantasy" with "reality" but I'll admit those are pretty fuzzy lines. We all live in a sort of fantasy world anyway, or more precisely, a subset of reality.
If this fellow feels bad about being evil in a game, then he has two choices: 1) don't be evil in the game, or 2) explore your feelings and self-understanding through being evil in the game. It could be frightening, exciting, and perhaps enlightening. You don't get those changes in the real world.
That is where morality comes into play. Your goal isn't specifically to eat ewoks or sell out the Mudokans... your goal is your choice. A person in a MMPORPG will feel bad when PKed because he has lost experience, gold, and a sum of his time towards his goal, whatever that may be.
I agree that nobody should feel guilty for fragging a point leader. But one should feel guilty if one DDOSes the point leader in order to win. There are certain roads that are immoral to take in the achieving of one's goals. Just because videogames change both the goals and the morality of the situation doesn't mean that the morality has been moved. The closer the videogame attempts to ape the situations found in life, the closer the resulting morality template will be. Characters in stories can act immorally even though they are characters. As a player in the role of a character you too should feel emotional ramifications of your decisions.
The ______ Agenda
I wish I had mod points. I'd mod you up....well, if I didn't already post in the thread.
It's very insightful what you said, and you pretty much hit the nail on the head with what I was saying.
I know what it's like to be picked on as a kid. Hell, I still can get picked on now... but now I'm 6'2" 260 pounds....its harder for people to pick on me when I stand up. And those who try and pick on me now are usually younger than I am (something about this younger generation, I swear)... and I can very quickly make them change their stance, or make them run away.
But, that may be the reason I may gain Light Side points for the Ilthorian. I was picked on for a good portion of my life, and it actually pains me to see it happen to others.
Thursdæ
Morality is something mixed directly with all other interactions with other humans, and even with our own potential in our future. If we like a real simulation, we like our freedom to act within it.. and that suddenly is moral. ALmost *ALL* stories of any type compose moral issues and themes... even the idea of "exploration/testing-the-taboo" is in no-thinking-zone pr0n.
To claim anything else about our interests is to play dumb when you choose one story/experience over another. "Everyone's different" is just another form of "sez you" but the truth is inane style-less games or bad movies or lame plots are generally repulsive to a large majority of people (unless some "get the joke" or like a jaunty little take on the world.. which I *would* say is highly subjective.)
We like things being Realistic ("I was really there!") and all the rest so that we can feel like we are living in the new place/way. We're fond of living in the real world... we just like to bend the rules and explore in ways that give us a Health-Recharge just by bumping into an object on the floor. That sensation is not a myth. We want to fly... live forever... be invulnerable... save others... love the-most-beautiful XYZ. Those needs are all *BASED* in the real world first.
Myth is based in the real world: ergo... morality is a part of any type of myth.
THe question is what it means if you truly enjoy utterly horrible (genuinely, not merely by your social norms) morality and never ask yourself "Why do I enjoy this?".
The moral world has a landscape all its own.. and it's self-deceptive to treat it like a effect-free theme-park. Just ask folks who lived just south of me, two students of Columbine. They loved the immersion because it was "real" and loved the real things they dreamed they could do.
There are many more examples and "That person was insane" is just an excuse for sloppy philosophy. 'Insanity' chages with each decade, each myth, each movie, each FPS.
-- CH
Nietzsche is dead - God
When I played through Baldur's Gate 2 I just couldn't bring myself to play evil. This was even after playing it through a few times and looking for a new challenge.
The best I could manage was a semi-evil character who still does the good things but chooses the mean/smart mouthed dialogue options.
I don't see this as a bad thing though. I also can't bring myself to go on an online game and intentionally cause trouble or try to ruin the experience for others by killing them off. I wonder if there is a link between the two types of gamer?
It is role playing after all, and without evil roles being filled, who would be in conflict with all the do gooders?
Unless the game is "Virtual Boyscout" or "Utopia Online" I think the evil roles are definitely necessary.
Besides the necessity, who wants to be a good guy all the time? I don't mind playing a bad guy, if in the process I'm taken down by do-gooders, so be it, I don't mind. If I'm playing a good guy and evildoers get me, oh well. That's the point of the game, conflict. I try to win, and if I'm going down, I'm going down hard (and taking as many with me as possible). I'm not just going to roll over, how much fun is it for anyone to win a rigged "good should always beat evil" fight?
Not to be offensive, but some comments I've read seem to hint at the idea "everyone should be winner". In my opinion, how can one win if someone doesn't lose? Forget that, I'll take my wins and my losses. Winning without the possibility of losing is meaningless, and even losing can be fun too.
Isn't the whole point just to have fun anyway?
Beware blue cats moving at
Yes, but if he's killed by another person, or a computer drived NPC is irrelevant. He'll still feel bad. So if there is a choice to play the bad guy, adn one chooses that, and they kill another character, so be it. Everyone's getting what they knew could happen.
jX [ Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler. - Einstein ]
True evil exists in this world, but rarely does true evil believe itself to be evil - rarely do you see an evil person sitting down and saying "What terrible thing shall I do today, MUWHAHAHAHA!"
Consider Saddam and Sons - the things they've done are, by most people's judgement, evil - putting people into a shredder feet first, raping women, killing their opposition. Yet, do you think that Saddam thought to himself, "I'm so EEEVIL - I love being me!". I doubt it - he almost certainly rationalized what he did - "Yes, putting this guy feet-first into this shredder is terrible (although kind of cool), but the pure horror of it will prevent anybody else from doing what he did, and thus will keep order in my country."
Or, consider Anakin/Vader - as we are seeing over the course of the first three movies, his descent into evil was not caused by a desire to do evil, but natural and otherwise good impulses ("These raiders are bad people - they hurt an innocent (my mother). I will remove the threat - I will destroy them.")
Now, consider the game - you say you are having problems "doing evil". Good. Don't "do evil" - roleplay. Say to yourself "I am going to do whatever it takes for my character to advance. Everybody else is going to do whatever they can do do advance, I must do it to them before they do it to me." Get yourself in that mindset, and the evil will come naturally.
Then, after the game, please MEDITATE UPON YOUR ACTIONS, and realize why that sort of attitude should be strictly confined to situations where the harm done is fictional!
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Does that player feel worse for having been eaten knowing it was a person being the bad guy, versus a bot/scripted game event? I doubt it. Do you feel guilty when playing Quake 3 and you frag the point leader in an elimination round?
There's a difference though, and it's the reason why people who play "evil" characters in MMORPGs quickly discover it's a bad idea.
In Quake, the entire point of the game is to kill the other players. Without that there's no game, and there's really relatively little downside to having been killed.
In a MMORPG RP'ing an evil person is usually seen as no different from being an asshole. Probably because there's not much difference in reality either, and in neither case do people want to deal with you. Yeah, great, you're a dark elf and you're supposed to be evil and look out for yourself and whatnot, but if you ditch the group because you were worried that you might die, screw you - I don't need to deal with that kind of crap. If I'm in a PvP area and you're killing people and keeping them from getting back to their corpses or whatever -- screw that too. It may be fun for you, but it sure as hell isn't for me, and as far as I'm concerned you're an asshole.
Which is the thing that people tend to forget when they play evil characters, or are griefers, or whatever -- there's a real person on the other end of that avatar, and they want to have fun too. Having your fun at the expense of others -- when there's other options that don't involve screwing someone else -- is deplorable, and you deserve to be treated as scum.