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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?
Is it justified to feel guilty about being evil within a videogame?
I don't see why. You should be in touch enough with reality to know that the videogame is a clear-cut fantasy. Let's face it, Japan produces an entire genre of animated films featuring young-looking women being raped by monsters with tentacles. They don't seem to feel guilty about watching those movies.
Hentai films and violent videogames lie squarely in the realm of fantasy. There's no need to apologize for your interest in either of them.
GMD
watch this
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?
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I rented KOTOR, and over the five day period, I found it hard to do dark hearted things. If someone asked for help, I did, and if there was a peaceful solution to a volatile situation, I sought it out.
Even when it came to dealing with the Sith, I never passed up a situation to give them a second chance.
I think by going this route I may have tacked on another five hours to complete the game with all the backtracking that had to be done.
Is there a guide that could show the opportunities lost on taking a single path light or dark? I know of only one or two quests that were exclusively dark side material, acting as bounty hunter.
Yet, I know when I get to the part where the kids are picking on the Ilthorian (Hammerhead for those not knowing what an Ilthorian is) in Taris (very early in the game, so not a spoiler), I will have a very difficult time with myself trying to be mean to it.
Everything else I should easily pick the Dark Side stuff....but the kids picking on the Ilthorian I may just gain a Light Side point or 2. Not that it really matters, I got around 5 Dark Side points my first time through, and still had uber Light Side Jedi by the time I finsihed the game.
Thursdæ Sith Lord in Training
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
In Japan you can take classes on smiling. The theory is: if you force yourself to smile even when you aren't happy, the positive emotions will kick in later.
I worry about playing negative characters for the same reason. When truly embracing the character of a game (and play it for hours!), why wouldn't we expect it to carve neural pathways. It might guide our actions only subtlely in day-to-day life, but isn't that a bit disturbing, regardless?
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
KOTOR, while being an excellent game, is not the first RPG to give you tough, moralistic choices. However, it may be what popularizeses the concept with the console crowd. Seems they're just realizing that not all games put you on strict personality rails, like in most console RPGs. (I'm lookin' at you, Final Fantasy series).
For even more choice-riddled gaming, I suggest checking out Planescape Torment, Fallout 1+2, and Deus Ex, among others.
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I'll attempt to narrate a short passage from a famous Chinese kungfu novel, `The Return of the Condor Heroes'. These and other novels, written by Louis Cha, were responsible for the interest in swordfighting themes that ultimately led to films like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
A very highly- skilled character who spent most of his life killing has become a monk in order to curb his murderous desires. One day, he comes across a snowman, and in order to satisfy his craving to kill, he attacks the snowman with a mighty blow and destroys it.
Initially unbeknownst to him, the snowman was a live person who had been immobilised and left standing in the snow, and so this person perished at the hands of the murderous monk.
So said the monk's teacher: When you destroyed the snowman, you did so because you did not want to kill a real human being. And yet, when you destroyed it, did you not have killing on your mind?
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?
Hm. I don't quite know what point I'm trying to make here, but here goes anyway.
I think we're only going to see more of this as games become more and more realistic and involve online communities rather than single-player games or shoot-em-ups. The latter is specifically made so that if a person loses one fight, he isn't set back much. It wouldn't be fun otherwise.
I play an online turn-based strategy/rp game called BattleMaster, where you have quite a bit of freedom to behave however you like, within the RP restrictions of your realm and class. You can be a jerk, you can be noble, you can be snooty. I'm amazed at the people who are able to pick a path for their characters, and stick with it - "this character will always be true to his country, even at the expense of other players", or "this character will do whatever it takes to get the highest fame and fortune", etc. I, on the other hand, keep coming up against the fact that there are real people on the other side of the computer screen, and they've invested months playing these characters up to this point. We're all here to have fun, and it simply isn't fun to lose all that effort.
As a ruler, I had thirty characters under my command and I controlled not only the future of both my realm as a whole, but through that, each of these characters as well. I ended up failing both miserably, thanks to bad timing and alliances that fell through, and I will probably never try being a ruler again. I have the political skills, but the stress of so much fate resting in my hands was too much of a burden.
Another character of mine once defected from one nation to another. I've seen other players do it all the time. My stomach was queasy and my hands were literally shaking, though, while I wrote my manifesto to my ex-comrades and clicked the button to become a traitor. It took me some time to realize exactly what I was scared of, sitting safely in a cozy computer chair in my living room... I was scared about what everyone else would think of me - that in their eyes, I was a rebel and traitor, not a man of honor.
I have a hard time keeping my real self out of my virtual characters. I set myself a high standard to live up to, and that rolls over into my online lives as well. Likewise, when someone thinks I've done something dishonorable online, it hits me about as hard as someone telling me to my face.
In the end, though, the advantage of the game world is the ability to turn it off, which I will be doing for this game next month. With a couple clicks, I won't ever again hear from any of the people I've endured harassment from or any of the people who I feel I've failed as their leader, yet I can still draw from the experiences as though they were my own - because they were.
-jupo
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 ]
The choices were many and very clear-cut in that game, and they had noticeable consequences that definitely affected gameplay.
The first time I played it through, I was good. It was nice to have the high Reputation, and I know from prior RPG experience that playing a good character is generally quite a bit easier than playing a bad one, mostly due to NPC reactions and general relationships within the party itself. However, I noticed one thing...all those evil characters I couldn't hire sure were tough, and they'd make a great ally...
Henceforth, the second time through I was evil. Not chaotic, just neutral evil, and I was a thief sub-class, so that seemed to fit. Guess what? It was actually more fun playing through the game as the evil character. My allies were tougher and more skilled, and, surprisingly, worked very well with each other. The evil party could have taken down the good party, no problem. There were a few quests that I couldn't attempt due to my alignment, and there were a few quests that I received Reputation points for. As you may or may not know, if you have an evil party and your Reputation gets to a certain high point, your party will not stop bitching at you to "get back on track" and the like. If it gets high enough, they leave the party. So, to keep that stat in check, whenever it got too high, I would go slaughter some random town denizen. It was like a sacrifice. "I want the good items and the experience, therefore an innocent must die." But, like previous posters have pointed out, this was not online, this was single player, so they weren't really NPCs, they weren't people, they were just bits and a method of keeping the party happy and together. That was all I had to do to remain in good, er, evil stead.
I can absolutely see how ruining some other person's gaming experience can make one feel bad, and this is why I don't do it. The only time I go out of my way to make some game a little more hell for someone is if they bring it upon themselves by doing this to others, so it's almost like a "vigilante" point of view. However, I can say that without a doubt, BG2 was more fun to play as an evil character, and I recommend you go through and try it again that way, if you get the urge to play it through again. Single player games afford more freedom in this area, no matter which way you look at it. The only way this would not be true is if there were some kind of unbalance within the game itself, i.e. it being far more difficult to play through as either a good or bad character. That might still be ideal, though, giving players the opportunity to make the game harder or easier on themselves, similar to choices one would have to make in the real world.
Palaces, barricades, threats, meet promises
If i can choose I usually play as a good guy. I have tried the other role as well but i always ended up with a rather watered-down evil guy. It was also quite interesting to note what kind of evil deeds were easy for me to do and what were not. In Fallout 2 for example I found it hard to say no when someone asked for help but i didn't really have trouble shooting dozens of innocents/good guys. Disturbing? I don't know... I guess shooting down a bunch of pixels felt a lot more like 'just a game' than refusing to help. Then again, i remember how i used to get annoyed when one of my friends kept killing civilians in some game (don't remember which game it was) when the player was supposed be protecting them. Just a game, yes? And i'm quite certain i'd never try to ruin somebody else's playing experience. I still play 'evil' games (GTAs, Carmageddon etc.) but the more 'real' they get, the more my conscience starts to speak up.
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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Maybe I'm strange, but whenever I saw a hooker getting slapped around by a pimp or a john in Grand Theft Auto 3 (or Vice City), I'd intervene and teach him some manners with a baseball bat. Seriously.
I'd also pull "Lost Highway" style politeness education sessions on drivers who cut me up.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
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.
For me the line seems to lie somewhere just short of realism, but also consent plays a role. I've never had a problem playing a game where I fragged NOCs, other players, and monsters into tiny bits. In these games, it's kill or be killed, and everyone is a willing participant in the fun.
But then I tried Vice City (the sequel actually). I couldn't finish it. In fact I probably only played an eighth of the way through before I couldn't stomach it anymore. I think the turning point for me was when you had to assassinate a rival mobster using a chainsaw, at his own home. You bust into this guy's place and chase the fat man in a bathing suit around trying to tear him a new one.
There's a line deeply ingrained in me that said "He's unarmed, and he's running away" that makes it not ok to try and dismember the guy. After completing that job my heart just wasnt in it. I prefer to shoot things that shoot back and don't mind that I'm shooting at them in the first place I guess.
"reptilian brain" has very little to do with behavior
You are right... humans do have some kind of "animal instict" behavior, but indeed, it is probably rooted in another place. I have used the term somewhat loosely in this respect...
almost every single study conducted on the cathartic process has concluded that acting out anger only furthers it since the excitation
But for how long is this excitement high ? Is it measured immediately after the experiment or in the long term? Studies with kids and videogames have shown that the arousement levels decrease considerably in time... only because all the violent latent energy was acted out. So if you stop a gamer in mid-session, he'll be aggressive, but if you don't, he will be calm.
Although it is true that Catharsis was defined for passive violence (i.e. seeing a theatre play), so it may not hold for active, there is definetely a calming long-term effect of "harmless" active violence. For example, rugbymen are reputed to be very good husbands because they do all their "macho/violent things" in the field, so they don't feel the psychological need to do them at home.
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