Slashdot Mirror
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."
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).