As a storywriter looking to work on some various gaming projects - mostly through my friends' aspiring dev studio - I've put a lot of thought into how modern games, with the scrutiny of a wider audience, and the technology to more easily immerse you deeply into a story, handle the subjects like personal morality.
We all remember "No Russian". But it's for the greater good, right? And you can't save the people even if you tried.
But what about the nuke in Megaton? Hell, in many RPGs, old and new, killing innocents, even children, is just a matter of course - but why? The children in Skyrim people mod to be killable are simply annoying, but then killing them doesn't really affect the game beyond a few guards shouting catchphrases at you.
Are we always desensetized to violence in video games simply because it is a video game? Or do we, at some point, draw the line between harmless, mindless action and emulating something truly horrific, where we don't want to continue, fiction or not?
I don't intend for this to be a discussion about the morality of killing pixels representing lines of code, because that aspect of video game violence has been discussed a billion times over already by people far more interested in it.
All I want to know is, what about you? Where do you draw the line when you play?
If you're American, imagine yourself playing the role of the Russian Paratroopers in Modern Warfare 2 - Wrecking American suburbia, killing American soldiers, because that's simply what you're supposed to do. Really, the same can be applied to any nationality - why do you think Modern Warfare 3 didn't actually have the player invade Russia, but instead made you fight off Russian aggressors in continental Europe?
There's enough distance between us and World War II that people often question the absence of a German campaign in WWII games, but what if we modernize it? A game where the campaign has you fighting as Mujahideen, ambushing convoys of Coalition troops, or smuggling rockets into Palestine so they can be fired at the Israeli invaders? There's no secret agenda or "greater good" at play - you're playing a fictional representation of the very real enemies Westerners can and do face in reality, with the good and the ill that comes with that.
And what about those children we killed in Skyrim for being so annoying? What if the game actually cared when they die?
It's no small secret to anyone who's even a little informed about the many poverty-stricken and otherwise miserable central African nations that children are often "conscripted" by various local groups - thugs, mercenaries, religious sects, revolutionaries - and forced to fight for them. Hell, if you've seen the movie "Blood Diamond" you probably had more of that particular subject than you'd like.
Brainwashed, tortured, drugged and heavily armed - ten year olds, just big enough to hold an AK-47 and point it at whatever he wants dead - and now that happens to be you. Do you get the job done regardless, or is it a little too stomach-churning to slit the throat of a ten year old boy and hold his mouth shut while he bleeds out so his friends don't hear you coming?
At which point do you stop the game and ask, "What the fuck was the game designer thinking?"
We all remember "No Russian". But it's for the greater good, right? And you can't save the people even if you tried.
But what about the nuke in Megaton? Hell, in many RPGs, old and new, killing innocents, even children, is just a matter of course - but why? The children in Skyrim people mod to be killable are simply annoying, but then killing them doesn't really affect the game beyond a few guards shouting catchphrases at you.
Are we always desensetized to violence in video games simply because it is a video game? Or do we, at some point, draw the line between harmless, mindless action and emulating something truly horrific, where we don't want to continue, fiction or not?
I don't intend for this to be a discussion about the morality of killing pixels representing lines of code, because that aspect of video game violence has been discussed a billion times over already by people far more interested in it.
All I want to know is, what about you? Where do you draw the line when you play?
If you're American, imagine yourself playing the role of the Russian Paratroopers in Modern Warfare 2 - Wrecking American suburbia, killing American soldiers, because that's simply what you're supposed to do. Really, the same can be applied to any nationality - why do you think Modern Warfare 3 didn't actually have the player invade Russia, but instead made you fight off Russian aggressors in continental Europe?
There's enough distance between us and World War II that people often question the absence of a German campaign in WWII games, but what if we modernize it? A game where the campaign has you fighting as Mujahideen, ambushing convoys of Coalition troops, or smuggling rockets into Palestine so they can be fired at the Israeli invaders? There's no secret agenda or "greater good" at play - you're playing a fictional representation of the very real enemies Westerners can and do face in reality, with the good and the ill that comes with that.
And what about those children we killed in Skyrim for being so annoying? What if the game actually cared when they die?
It's no small secret to anyone who's even a little informed about the many poverty-stricken and otherwise miserable central African nations that children are often "conscripted" by various local groups - thugs, mercenaries, religious sects, revolutionaries - and forced to fight for them. Hell, if you've seen the movie "Blood Diamond" you probably had more of that particular subject than you'd like.
Brainwashed, tortured, drugged and heavily armed - ten year olds, just big enough to hold an AK-47 and point it at whatever he wants dead - and now that happens to be you. Do you get the job done regardless, or is it a little too stomach-churning to slit the throat of a ten year old boy and hold his mouth shut while he bleeds out so his friends don't hear you coming?
At which point do you stop the game and ask, "What the fuck was the game designer thinking?"
). From the bandit point of view, the MC of these games is something of an eldritch abomination that they have no way of defeating and kills them just because he is passing by...