“When you stare into the abyss the abyss stares  back at you.” -Nietzsche

“Don’t wanna be nobody’s hero, be what, be what, be what you are!” --Stiff Little Fingers

 










In this age of manufactured controversy, nothing sells fear like a good hyperbolic FOX news spot. Ever since Mortal Kombat, you can count on the media to get whipped up into a lather over any new game featuring anything that might be considered objectionable to middle America. Face it, video games are the new movies.

Back in the eighties you could count on the same hysterical headlines featuring whatever new violent or sexually charged movie had come out that month, and what impact it might have on “the children”. Today that torch has been passed to video games. Do they harm children? We will not be having that argument. The question I pose today is: “What makes a person play a certain way morally?”

Last year I was getting excited about the release of Fallout 3. My old copies of 1 and 2 were long gone, so I searched the internet for a way to download them so I could run through again. During my research I noticed that there were two versions of the game, the U.S. and the European. Apparently the European version removed the children from the game as you could shoot them. This fascinated me for the very reason that it had never occurred to me *to* shoot children.

Sad to say, I am almost always a Paladin, or a hero, or whatever “good” moral choice there is to be in a game. For some reason I feel that if I were to explore that side of my personality I would find something I didn’t like. My father was a large and imposing man, and he used to use his size to intimidate others for his own gain. Since I have his genes, I am much the same stature, but since I hated his actions so much I go out of my way to put people at ease. In game situations going down the evil path puts me in the same frame of mind as situations when I realize my temper and size are making someone uncomfortable. I know it’s irrational, but there it is.
 
Even in video games, my father’s influence makes me conscious of my moral choices. Of course there’s not always a moral choice to make (Grand Theft Auto, Assassin’s Creed), but in those situations I’m playing a morally ambiguous character with no other options. If there is a choice available, I tend to choose the “good” one. (Unless there are alternate endings, in which case I guess the plebes just have to suck it in the second play through.)

I would imagine that for others the fun would be exploring their dark side, the heady thrill of doing something that you could never get away with in real life. (This is most fully realized in internet misanthrope/hat fetishist Ben "Yahtzee" Crowshaw's game reviews.)

Back in college my neighbors were big tabletop roleplaying fans. Many a night I staggered home from a keg party and dropped by to chat while they played “Shadowrun” or “Call of Cthulhu“. By and large I noticed that the players tended to make characters that were the inverse of who they were personally. If they were skinny and underweight they made powerful warriors, if they were amiable and generous they would become lecherous psychotics, if they were cute (god bless goth girls and wiccans) they would be a horribly scarred elder, etc.

Are games entertaining because they are challenging, or are they entertaining because we are able to become something we aspire or enjoy being? I would argue it is a combination of both, but that still doesn’t account for why people choose to play a certain way.

Let me make it clear that I’m not making a value judgement about people who choose to play a certain way, much like I don’t judge people based on their views on abortion or health care. The choices are available to give the games pathos that wasn’t available earlier, and taking advantage of them is what makes newer generations of games more immersive than ones of years past.

As far the reasoning goes in video games as well as life, I like this quote by Gourmont: “Each man must grant himself the emotions that he needs and the morality that suits him.”