How would you react to playing "morally bad guy"?
This article got me thinking about some ideas that occured to me several months ago. Especially this part:
While we're playing, games may challenge us, frustrate us, torment us, even enrage us, but at the end of it all, we're generally meant to be left with a feeling of exhilaration and a sense of accomplishment. But what about games that make us feel bad? I don't mean whether or not you cried when Aeris was killed in Final Fantasy VII. I mean a game that manages to make you feel ashamed about something you've done.I had occasion to consider this recently when my friend and fellow blogger, MTV News reporter Stephen Totilo, wrote a post about his experience playing the final case in Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney 2: Justice For All. In it, the titular player-protagonist, whose clients have all in fact been innocent, comes to believe that he is now defending a guilty man, yet he must continue to do so to the best of his ability. Totilo wrote that unlike other games that had tried and failed, Phoenix Wright 2 had succeeded in making him feel like a bad guy. In a comment on Totilo's blog, I asked: "˜How would you feel about an entire series of Phoenix Wright games based around this concept: a lawyer game in which your entire client roster – conmen, polluters, thieves, harassers, murderers, embezzlers and war criminals – were guilty, and your job was to secure their acquittals? Would you play Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney Gaiden: The Ends Justify The Means? Would it be fun for you?'
Do you think the games that gave you only the "wrong" choices (from moral point of view) would be interesting? Accepted? Fun to play? Would they evoke emotional response?
To elaborate further, I had this idea for a game: half a year ago, I was reading memoirs of Rudolf Hoess (the boss of Auschwitz and later the inspector of concentration camps. You may remember him from Sophie's Choice, although he was a real person.) What struck me deeply about the book that the guy himself was merely following orders, not questioning their "rightness" or "wrongness" and was proud to carry out his tasks effectively, despite the obstacles of war - lack of supplies, cuts of reinforcements etc. A bureaucrat, one would say, able to find excuses for his actions. Very, very disturbing read.
Based on that, I was wondering how the people would react to "Concentration Camp Tycoon" - where the "winning" strategy would be to produce given set of products each month while keeping the camp - the famine, the infections and revolts - under control. In the case of lack of food, would you give it out equally or rather feed only your guards, as the prisoners are coming in and therefore are an expendable resource? When the order to exterminate comes, will you resort to cheap but messy shooting, leading to revolts, or choose the costly but more "effective" and "smooth" gas chambers? Remember, not fulfilling orders is tantamount to treason and leading to death (Game Over).
And most importantly: would you be able to stand the cognitive dissonance of doing something that is contrary to your basic moral values? Would you be finding excuses to justify your actions? Would it be interesting to play for the experience, the understanding?
I know I'm being extreme, I was just trying to come up with an adequate example. My thought basically was to come up with idea of a game where being good was not an option. The RPGs always give you quick and painless way to be good, but what if there was no such choice?
You can't take the sky from me.
Sounds like it would sell a lot to the 13-19 yr old crowd because parents would hate the game.
There is a choice to be good in the hypothetical game you mention... by not playing it. Surely there's a more tasteful illustration of your question.
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There was a game like this in the late-80's/early-90's. You were the boss of a concentration camp and the objective was to kill as many Jews as possible, given your resources.
Thing is, it wasn't made for moral ambiguity. It was made for neo-Nazis.
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Since this is a hypothetical, I think we'd all have to agree to ignore the practicality of actually producing such a game. Obviously no publisher would ever sign up to fund/advertise/sell such a game today. I'd think few people would actually want to play it either.
However, if it actually came into existence, would it really be much different then a good thinker movie that doesn't have a Happy Hollywood Ending? or so much worse then reading that book of Rudolf Hoess memoirs?
The biggest difference is that it's a game, which is usually synonymous with fun. No sane person is going to think running a concentration camp is fun. Depending on how realistically depicted your camp "guests" are, you might be able to disassociate your game actions from the reality of deciding "I just made a choice to starve/execute/etc. people".
It would be especially cruel if the developer designed a brief moment of hilarity in the game just to freak people out - a bit like laughing at a funeral.
A morally bad game would certainly help evolve gaming as an art form. However, something as inflammatory as "Concentration Camp Tycoon" might not be the best place to start!
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The problem with morals is that they're like opinions - never the same.
You state quite an 'out there' theoretical game but many lesser examples could go unnoticed by the many because the people who created the game would not see their moral 'evilness' being accepted as morally ambivalent to others.
For example, you could play a game in which you have to make sure that scientific progression is achieved to be able to dominate other countries in strategy and ultimate elevation to be first. Not going into the economical aspects of this scenario you'll note that certain types of scientific endeavour are not seen to be morally right (genetics, nuclear physics) by some people.... but then nor is war or violence or even domination of others/countries in the first place.
Many games already exist that practice these principles, it's just that they are catering to the mass populace. Imagine a game that was made by futuristic medieval people where you played an executioner then hang, draw and quarter or behead those who were guilty -regardless of whether they were or were not. Imagine the outrage that many people would have to this nowadays..... but back in the day many people would go and watch these spectacles for entertainment....
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You're not exactly a saint in the GTA games.
Fedaykin98 wrote:
Kind of renders this thread useless, doesn't it?
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Why would it be useless? Did we conclude that GTA games are somehow the definition of what is excused from moral judgement?
Would a game in which you have to crush another man's testicles with a pair of pliers do? They did claim they are doing it for the sake of the art. Not sure if I buy it though.
Overall though, I would not play such a game. I have a hard time reading/watching tragedies, as they make me feel miserable. I don't like to feel miserable. In addition to the overall taste in my mouth that I'm left with, games are not passive like books/movies. You're not just an observer of terrible events but an actual affector of said events. I know that many people dismiss this point with a premise that those events are virtual and "not real," but in my personal opinion, they are still events that you affected. The act of you doing--of an action initiated by your mind--is just as real as anything. And also in my personal opinion, it is the act of you doing it, not the virtual end result, which influences your mind/soul/being.
Even in RPGs, when I play morally questionable characters, I have to keep reminding myself that I, as a person in real life, would not perform a certain action that I am about to make my imaginary character perform.
(@)
Yeah, basically what I came in here to say. There are already many games where you are forced to play a negative role. Kane & Lynch is just one upcoming example of a game you can't complete unless you're killing cops. Several WWII strategy games allow you to play the Nazi side.
I guess the question is where are we going to draw the line?
Your favourite game is over-rated.
The difference between something like GTA and Concentration Camp Tycoon is that I don't think many people would actually have fun playing the latter. There's a certain detatchment from reality when playing games that allows you to make those choices without consequence, however when a game is all of a sudden tied to real life in such a dramatic manner, that disconnection suddenly disappears. That instantly makes CCT a non-starter, as nobody would ever make it and certainly nobody would ever play it.
I think maybe a better question of morality would be, how would it feel if you were playing a WWII flight sim fighting off the Japenese though a number of campaigns, getting promoted and given different and better planes and then you get to the last mission in the game and you're told to get in the bomber and drop the big one on Hiroshima. At that point in the game, the only option you would have is to click 'Accept Mission' or 'Save & Quit'.
How would you react to that? Everything up until that point in the game could be considered morally just (and accepting the final mission could be considered the same, depending on personal opinion), but I bet it would give a lot of people pause.
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Fedaykin98 wrote:
Yes, yes, there are several games where you get to play 'bad' guys - who usually get to kill 'worse' guys though, so there's always an easy justification for what you're doing. When you get to be 'evil' in games, you're usually 'bad' in the context of our society, not really 'bad' in the context of the game though.
But there's hardly any form of narrative, and in the case of Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts Relic is always quick to point out that "you're not playing SS! Oh, and these soldiers have no faith in Hitler anymore!"
I think the movie analogy works - is there an audience that is willing to pay for something that usually is considered entertainment and stress relief? Yes, there probably is - but it's very small. Especially since we're talking about a $50 - 60 investment here.
I remember a story about a teenage girl who was banned from the online Sims game for making real money for running a SimsBrothel. Can't find the link, though. Does this count as morally reprehensible? Or does it count as practical genius?
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Ok, what about Carmegeddon? Postal? I just think games that appeal to our darkside are already out there. So are games that blur the lines. The GTA games led to games like Scarface and The Godfather. Playing bad guys is already common.
So the question really isn't, "How would you feel?", but rather "How did you feel?"
This dicussion is not without merit, but it feels like it is being asked in a rather naive way.
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Yeah, this feels like a question for 20 years ago.
Wasn't there a game, about 10 years ago, where you played the Evil Dungeon Master and set up traps for the legendary heroes invading your lair? It was really fun.
And a couple of years ago we had "Evil Genius", which, while cartoony, left no amount of doubt that you were out to hurt everyone.
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I was about to mention The Godfather. As the owner of a GameCube with a pretty harmless collection of games, the Wii version of The Godfather was the first time I'd played the baddie. After the thrill of participating in the films' stories in a Rosencrantz-and-Guildenstern-esque fashion wore off, I was surprised to find that the game left a bad taste in my mouth. The way the game made the extortion of innocents into a mundane chore became pretty unsettling.
What's odd to me is that I loved the Godfather movies (well, 1 and 2) -- but I could enjoy them because, although I could occasionally relate to the mobsters onscreen, I never had to be a mobster. Being a spectator affords you some objectivity, no matter how manipulative the film.
There's no way that the makers of The Godfather were creating the game as a thoughtful mobster-simulator, intended to make you see the inherent horror of the underworld. The game's just meant to be fun -- I doubt the word "art" ever came into it. I simply found I couldn't stomach the "fun" to be had.
I don't think that an action-based game can explore moral issues adequately, because I think most gamers have stronger stomachs than I; they just get hooked into the achievements of the game. I think most gamers will overlook the moral issues as they kill, torture or maim: they're just following orders -- the game design.
For a game to honestly get people to think about what they're doing, it needs to offer players a world with consequences beyond having to pay off the cops after stashing the bodies.
Apologies for what might be a double post.
The difference between those games, however, and a game like The Godfather, is that The Godfather bears enough of a passing resemblance to our world that your actions as player seem a little more beyond the pale. If the game's world is hermetically sealed, like in Evil Dungeon Master, then you don't really feel as though your actions have any real-world analogue. (Haze even addresses this idea somewhat, through the hallucinogenic effects of Nectar on the soldiers --the drug makes the world seem unreal and without consequences, and enables them to be more ruthless killers.)
As games get more and more realistic, and what you're doing in-game looks more and more like what you'd do in the outside world, I think these sort of discussions will get more relevant, not less.
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Wii Godfather is a better example in this case than just about anything, because the control schema added a visceral undertone to the game that was lacking even in it's other platform renditions. You weren't just pushing a button to make your guy do the bad stuff, you were making the motions to take that store owner by the collar and bash his head into the cash register until he coughed up his protection money. It made an already tawdry tale into a string of localized and personalized visciousness that really made me pause. After watching me play it none of my kids would touch it. Not even the ones who had played the game when it first came out on the PS2.
Fable had some of this element. You had the option to be good, but if you wanted to you could revel through the landscape like Caligula and succeed in the game just as well as any of the Boy Scout types. My younger son tried to play it as a perfectly evil character. He did pretty well, but he reached a point where he simply couldn't stomach it. My son has some issues, and he had always thought of himself as being a villain. He's the kid who got in trouble with the law, and has done some serious stuff. But when it came down to even pretending to sacrifice those children to that temple or murdering his sister in cold blood he just couldn't do it.
Duoae wrote:
Don't forget Tie Fighter, a game well received, that was entirely based on advancing ranks in the Imperial Navy by squashing those troublesome little rebel do-gooders.
Historical influences forgotten, it gave folks a chance to be a part of the Imperial machine that they had probably fantasized about since first seeing Stormtrooper armor back in '76. It's all fantasy, nobody gets too caught up on what the Empire would represent.
At its most basic, I think the desire to wear the Imperial Stormtrooper armor because it looks cool, is probably not very different from the feelings a German youth would've felt in the late 30's upon seeing an army officer walk by in their 'cool' uniform. The moral implications of it are not a factor in either situation.
(And no, I'm not equating Star Wars fans to Nazi's.)
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I think we need to make a distinction between cartoon villainy and being "morally bad." Evil Genius is more about tactics and base building than right or wrong. It doesn't really evoke the same reaction as the aforementioned Phoenix Wright case (in which the guy you're defending is a thoroughly bad person).
It's also important that the player gets to make the decision. If you're playing Hitman, you're going to be killing people. That's the game. Your alternative is not playing it. In order to make a player feel guilt, you need to at least give them the illusion that they chose to do the wrong thing. If the decision is made for the player, they aren't responsible.
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I have to admit, I shy away from doing things in games that I think would be morally wrong. It depends on the type of game to a degree. In shooters, I avoid proactively killing of innocents, but at the sametime if it happens I'm not going to restart a level over it. RPGs usually cause the most reflection, and when those decision points come up, I will generally take the high road. I guess I reflect a bit of myself on the character I play. In strategy or team based online games... the two sides are just different textures and weapon layouts to me. I never find myself reflecting on what they may have represented historically whether its Call of Duty or Battlefield 2.
Dungeon Keepers, Evil Genius, Overlord etc.. like lobster said.. they are over-the-top and don't really force the same reflection on right versus wrong.
From an industry perspective games that force heavy soul seeking decisions or have you playing a universally accepted 'bad guy' will likely never have the interest to warrant large investments because the customer segment would be too small. I think these titles range from social experiments to marketing ploys. I think the whole Manhunt fiasco is overblown. A game based on over-the-top cruelty may make headlines, but I doubt it has a long term presence, impact or even sales.
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One thing about the Hitman games is that your targets are almost always presented as thoroughly bad people. My memories are freshest with the latest one I played, Blood Money, but I can tell you that the dossiers in that game all present your victims as hardcore criminals and thugs. Crime bosses, assassins, rapists and murderers. (One has turned state's evidence though.) Though at the end, well, it'd be a spoiler to say too much.
Fedaykin98 wrote:
Um, yeah that would have been Dungeon Keeper by Bullfrog, then Dungeon Keeper II also by Bullfrog, Evil Genuis, and most lately Overlord, Fable (sort of), Jade Empire (sort of), the Sims (Don't tell me I was the only one to find new and creative ways to kill off Sims)...
Personally I've never had an issue playing either side of the coin, Evil, Good it's all the same to me.
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Because Lucas' plotting was so bad, there are arguments to be made that the Empire is the good side and the rebels are the bad guys.
Remember: this conversation is just between you and me ... and the NSA.
At a risk of entering P&C territory here, how would you claim that CCT is tied to real life in such a dramatic manner, while GTA is not? One could easily spin a CCT game to be like Evil Genius or Dungeon Keeper where you number crunch and manage resources, while in GTA you actually take a baseball bat and smash someone's face in. I'm not trying to be argumentative here, but when did smashing someone's face in with a bat (and not in self defense) become less morally reprehensible than pushing a little red button that changes some number on some spreadsheet that may or may not represent human lives.
From what I follow in the news, we put people who smash others' faces in jail. People who push buttons get our retirement investment money to make more of it (and sometimes numbers that represent human lives in other parts of the world get in the way of some other numbers that we want to increase). I am not judging here. Just providing some more food for thought.
I think that was a wonderful example of how reading about a true bad guy and playing a true bad guy are not the same thing.
(@)
Oh you. That argument is so 1985.
Fedaykin98 wrote:
Yeah, although some of those games you could choose to be evil, and even then it usually came off as selfish more than truly evil. I think the discussion is more in the vein of a game where you had no choice but to be a horrible monster.
And I already know I couldn't play it. Sweet mother of god, I feel a huge pang of guilt when I choose "No, I won't help you, poor farmer" in any RPG, and when someone I know said he harvested the Little Sisters, I felt like punching him.
Your favourite game is over-rated.
Yeah, playing the evil character can be fun. That being said, be it in an RPG or a videogame, it seems whenever I play the evil guy it ends up being more just chaotic, Loki-esque if you will. I never kill babies or anything of that sort, more just overthrow those in power and create anarchy. Lately though, I like playing the good character, in the classical liberal sense.
*Legion* wrote: