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Devs Weigh In On Playing The Bad Guy
Gamecloud has an article that goes into detail about the good, bad, and fun of playing a villain in a game. The article refers to several psychological studies, and has developer commentary from across the game design board. From CliffyB's comments: "Video games are a playable fantasy and there are few things more alluring than living out the fantasy of being evil and doing bad or illegal actions without any real world repercussions. As a designer, the best thing I can do when I allow the user to indulge in that fantasy is to show that there are ramifications for those actions. In GTA the more police you attack the harder the game gets, ultimately resulting in capture or death."
Ther always have been, and always will be two schools of thought on this:
1)Bad is always bad and Jesus saves!
2)Bad is only bad for you if there's "something wrong with you".
Stupid people will always be stupid. Crazy people will always be crazy. And when either one of these groups of people have children, they all spend the same amount of time with them, fostering healthy relationships and teaching them how to "get along" with everyone else in the world.
How much time is that, you ask? None.
This is no different than the "Catcher in the Rye" debates from years past.
I don't know about YOU, but I have yet to play ANY game that was as immersive as a really good book. Half-Life 2, WoW, and insert-hot-uber-game-here included. So the "yeah, but you're actually DOING the bad stuff" argument doesn't hold water to me.
We need to just REMEMBER that there have always been crazy people, and there always will be. This is not a new development folks.
Try Elite or any of its offspring. Try attacking civilian vessels. See how long it takes until you're permanently flagged as a pirate and attacked by everyone.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
In the real world, attacking even one police officer, even in a minor way, is going to do far more than making life more difficult. You're likely to end up captured or dead very shortly -- and in either case, you can't just hit reload.
I've always thought there was a wierd conceptual schism in GTA- the sandbox universe vs. the mostly linear missions. In San Andreas, there's an ongoing plotline involving the murder of a police officer, but in the course of the game the player may kill hundreds or thousands of nameless policemen with no long-term repercussions- you just hit a save spot, pay-n-spray, or hit a few stars to reduce your wanted level, and all the rampaging you just did means nothing. That makes the game a lot more playable, encouraging continuous play rather than constant reloading- but I'd like to see the series move in the direction of all actions having more long-term consequences (and they can figure out how to preserve playability).