Back in my day, video
gaming was more simple and clear cut. It was impossible to get lost,
the objectives were clear, and you were always the hero. You knew
you were the hero even though you never read the book that came with
it, because that’s how gaming worked. And your objective was to
defeat the villain at all costs. All costs.
Obviously those costs
included shooting, punching, or stabbing anything that moved. Don’t
worry. If it’s not a bad guy, you can’t kill it. Even if it’s
that damn dog from Duck Hunt. Sometimes you needed supplies,
and it was perfectly okay to break into people’s houses and take
their grandmother’s medicine. Why? You’re the hero. You need
it to save the world.
Your heroism was defined
by your end goal. To maintain the status quo. Any disruption to
that status quo was, by definition, a villainous deed that needed to
be stopped. Sometimes the villain had a noble end too, but he was
killing everything that moved to achieve that end. Ergo, you had to
kill everything that moved to stop him. It was just so clear. If
you’re not getting it, you must be too young to remember.
All of this started to change when they started letting you be the villain. I think games were a little too goody-two shoes for people. Gamers wanted carnage. Gamers wanted mayhem. The first of such games that I noticed was a game where you play Lee Harvey Oswald in the JFK assassination. I have to admit, I tried it because I was curious, but I was just drinking a Coke, when a man told me the president had been shot. Then, I was being dragged away yelling, “I’m a patsy!” Definitely not my kind of game. I hear they canned the sequel where you play Jack Ruby in the Oswald assassination.
The PS2 Grand Theft
Auto games were a bit more mainstream. I’m sure there was a
story, but I never figured it out. I was too busy... Well, you
know. Being a bad guy can be fun.
But, I guess people still
wanted to be the hero because, more recently, there are games that
can go either way. Oh, boy. Something for everyone.
Well, not really. I was
asked to play one before writing this article. You know? Just so I
could understand how it works. It’s sort of like those sporks you
get at some of the fast food restaurants. They can’t be a good
spoon and they can’t be a good fork. If the designer would have
just picked a design and ran with it, instead of trying to let me
choose what I wanted it to do, it would have been a whole lot better.
The game I chose to play
was inFamous. Why? Well for starters, it's a recent game that
demonstrates the whole hero/villain dichotomy system. But, more
importantly, because I got it for free during the Welcome Back
Programme, that PSN was running after the hack. I like getting free
games. I should get my personal information stolen more often.
I think the biggest
problem is that the main story doesn’t really change, regardless of
what you do. But, that’s like saying the biggest problem with my
rusty car chassis is that it doesn’t have an engine. Even if it
had one, it still wouldn’t really run.
But there are so many
other problems with this, perhaps you didn’t even notice that one.
For starters, the whole process is so arbitrary. Let’s put aside
the fact that bad karma can accrue even by accident, which is
understandable in a game that can’t read your intentions.
Everything is so black and white. Good and bad. Killing a guy
pushes your karma bar into the red by a little. Saving one pushes it
into the blue. Sucking the life out of a bad guy pushes it into the
red. And, yes. You literally have a karma bar that goes from red to
blue. I know how silly it is, but take it up with Sucker Punch
Productions (yes, that’s their real name) because I didn’t
create it. I just report on it.
On top of that, there are
main story points where Cole will tell you what he could do,
and why he shouldn’t. Even though he only tells you one thing he
could do, that doesn’t mean there are more than two. There aren’t.
There are only two possible choices. A good one and a bad one.
Just like real life, eh? I wish deciding the right thing to do in
life was that clear cut. There’s no middle ground.
Actually, there is. You
could alternate good and bad karma the whole game and stay in the
middle, but there’s no reward in that. If you want the good
abilities, or the gameplay to not get incredibly hard, you’re going
to have to pick a side and stay with it. Yeah. There’s another
bit of advice that works in the real world. Pick a political opinion
and then stay with it at all costs. It is your identity after
all. Don’t think about the arguments of your opponents. Never go
back on it. If you stick with it enough, one day, you might get the
good abilities. Political office.
Where you are on your
karma bar also represents what percentage of the people around town
like or dislike you. So, if you’re all in the blue, you could
shoot somebody in the face with your lightning hands, and their
friend would be cheering, “Way to go, Lightning Man!” Yeah. Way
to go. Conversely, when I first learned how to save someone’s
life, I got the damnedest thanks from some of them. Hey! I just
saved your life, buddy. Is that any way to talk to me?
I hear games have been
getting better at this kind of thing, but I don’t think gaming is
ever going to nail down morality. And, why should they? If we
wanted real life, we wouldn’t be gaming. It probably wasn’t very
moral to decapitate the boy with the half pipe in Skate Or Die 2
either, but we did it. Is playing as the first player so we can
steal the second player’s extra lives moral?
Even while we’re
looking at games where you don’t have a choice, there’s a
problem. In the last two Star Ocean games, the villain wanted
to destroy the world and rebuild it anew. Why? Because humanity was
going too far. Its evils needed to be stopped. So, since stopping
evil was the villain’s goal, and means is not an issue in defining
a hero, would that not make the villain the hero and your character
the villain? No, wait. Your goal was also to stop evil. So,
by the game’s own logic, the hero went up against the hero? WTF on
a stick!?
We never noticed this
problem before because they never tried to make it about morality
before. When the game is the game, we’re not judging the
characters. We’re living vicariously through them because our
lives are so mundane, we could use the break. Hero or villain, it’s
all the same to us. Besides, a flawed character is more believable.
A guy trying to be the hero, but has a small case of the kleptomania.
A guy who doesn’t want to care about people, but his heart gets
the better of him from time to time. These are more like real
people. To punish reality in the favour of an extreme version of
Goofus or Gallant from Highlights magazine isn’t just
unrealistic. It’s insane.
Morality is a complex
social feature that can never be defined mathematically. So, please,
developers. I’m begging you. You stick to making games and let us
figure out the morality on our own.
The Ceej
The Ceej is the Writer and Director of comedy short films such as Disciplinary Action, and The Hitchhiker Murderer. Spending most of his time expanding his creative horizons, he has become known for his unmatched versatility, and the ability to turn his hand to almost any creative project. His work can be often found at his personal blog, where his sharp wit and comedic edge can be seen in a multitude of musical parodies, jokes, and political satire.
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