FPS Gaming and the 'Just-World Hypothesis'

Hugh Pickens writes "When people witness someone subjected to some misfortune, they're susceptible to suggestions that the person deserved it and thus see the misfortune as evidence of karma or justice – hence the 'just' in 'just-world hypothesis.' Now consider the controversial new first-person shooter Homefront, which has you play as a freedom fighter in an America occupied by a North Korean superpower. The introduction to the game goes to great lengths to relieve you of any moral misgivings you might have about plugging away at the enemies it's getting ready to throw at you. 'You see enemy soldiers not only brutalizing American civilians, but outright murdering a mother in front of her children and callously tossing corpses around,' writes James Madigan, a gamer with a Ph.D. in psychology. 'The message is clear: Hey, these guys are evil. When we give you a gun, shoot them and feel good about it.' Madigan says the interesting thing about Homefront is that it's not leaving any blanks to be filled, which robs the game of some narrative depth."

Comments

All FPS do this

[slimjim8094]

Half Life 2 jumps to mind. You kill a guard with your crowbar; they're beating up this guy while his wife scream "please, somebody help". Tha'ts how you get your pistol.

Games aren't the real world. A World War I game that forces you to ask "wait, why am I shooting them again?" just isn't any fun. I think that's why people like WWII so much - by war standards, it was morally unambiguous.

Moral ambiguity bothers people. It's not enjoyable. It shouldn't be enjoyable, and it's good that it bothers us. Is it surprising that we don't like it in games?

Re:All FPS do this

[blair1q]

WW2 was morally ambiguous.

Not for America, maybe, certainly not for the UK or Russia.

But for the Germans, who should have been asking why they were shooting us instead of Hitler, it was a psychological minefield. Italy and Austria, too.

And then there's France...and Switzerland...

Re:Battle against Doors.

[Seumas]

Homefront is an awful game with a couple of very exciting set-piece moments, like a confrontation on the Golden Gate Bridge that is kind of mind-blowing.

Unfortunately, it was touted for being story-driven (written by the guy from Red Dawn and apparently Apocolypse Now), while there is nearly no story at all. Here's the story: The resistance needs pilots. You are a pilot. They need to get you from Colorado to San Francisco. That's it. You do fly a helicopter once, for a brief time. But despite being a pilot, you're actually spending the whole time doing the "go from point A to point B while blowing the shit out of everything along the way". Because, of course, if a pilot is such a precious resource, the one thing you're going to do is throw him on the front line with a machine gun. That's it. There is no story other than "You are pilot going from point A to point B . . . on foot".

It looks fairly dated. Has a very "Half Life 2" feel to the presentation. And the whole "this is something new and you'll be amazed by the deep and thoughtful experience!" thing that they tried to push with their advertising campaign was betrayed by the first couple of minutes of game play, where the guy who fights along side you for awhile hands you a gun and says "shoot everything in the head". Oh, wow. Golly. That's new. I don't do that in EVERY OTHER FPS.

There's no survival aspect to it. No gripping story. The best thing about Homefront is the potential of what it *could* have been. That's pretty meaningless, since the finished product achieves none of that aspiration, at all.

Also, the article is making it up. There is no "controversy" over Homefront. That's just ridiculous.