Wow, what a great article. A very interesting take on two games I love. I never thought about it like that, but your points make perfect sense. The beds, especially.
308: The State of Gaming Nature
- Thread starter Andrew Bell
- Start date
...and then there's Dawkins, who argues that the genes that cause us to aid people who are genetically similar to us are often favored by natural selection.Dastardly said:
Basically, if me and my brother share the gene that causes us to help each other out, the gene is more likely to be passed on because we are aiding each other than an alternative gene that would cause us to fight against each other. Parents caring for their offspring is the strongest example of this.
The main functional difference between Dawkins? view and Hobbes and Rousseau?s view is that Hobbes and Rousseau try to approach it as an individual making a rational decision about what is in his best interests, while Dawkin?s view approaches it as innate behavior that has been built into out natures.
Ultimately, I think, all three are correct. There must be some genetic basis for both behaviors (as well as many others), but as (relatively) rational beings, we sometimes seek to rise above instinct and make more reasoned choices. The desires for civilization/organization and for freedom/individuality are both present in everyone. This is part of the duality of human nature; the Yin and Yang of existence.BloodSquirrel said:
Not to beat a dead horse, but the these concepts are so well expressed through the medium of video games - better, I would argue, than through film or drama, and possibly even literature - that anyone trying to argue that video games can never be art is just ignorant or foolish. No other medium allows the viewer to be a participant that can experience the message in a first-hand sort of way. All forms of art try to give the audience a different perspective, but only video games can make it so direct and meaningful.
Plus, they can be a hell of a lot of fun!
^_^
I suspect, like all things, the real answer is a compromise of both viewpoints. Humanity is neither evil or good, but flawed
Why? You have just made an unsupported statement
EDIT: Sorry I was far too harsh towards your excellent and noteworthy contribution.
Statement
1. Human instinct stems from genetic evolution. Correct.
2. Human behaviour can deny instinct. Correct
3. Therefore we can only control our behaviour by recognising the our instinct and it's origins??
The logic doesn't follow. Particularly if you are talking in an evolutionary sense. Neither Gandhi or Martin Luther King studied evolution to come up with their fantastic philosophy and instinct breaking behaviour, but merely philosophers and religious figures.
In a general, psychological sense, we need it to understand humans, but I think it's too much of a logical leap (and probably incorrect) to suggest we need it to be able to modify our behaviour appropriately. It tends to work the opposite, people use it to argue that there is no moral foundation and that they should have sex with as many people as possible and be a douche because that's in line with what genetics has taught them. The study of overriding instincts is what comes after studying instincts and presumably relies (and therefore relies on understanding) a completely different or higher level of mechanism
Sir, you have dared to bring science to a philosophy debate, so now I will force you to stand by your principles.Trolldor said:
Why? You have just made an unsupported statement
EDIT: Sorry I was far too harsh towards your excellent and noteworthy contribution.
Statement
1. Human instinct stems from genetic evolution. Correct.
2. Human behaviour can deny instinct. Correct
3. Therefore we can only control our behaviour by recognising the our instinct and it's origins??
The logic doesn't follow. Particularly if you are talking in an evolutionary sense. Neither Gandhi or Martin Luther King studied evolution to come up with their fantastic philosophy and instinct breaking behaviour, but merely philosophers and religious figures.
In a general, psychological sense, we need it to understand humans, but I think it's too much of a logical leap (and probably incorrect) to suggest we need it to be able to modify our behaviour appropriately. It tends to work the opposite, people use it to argue that there is no moral foundation and that they should have sex with as many people as possible and be a douche because that's in line with what genetics has taught them. The study of overriding instincts is what comes after studying instincts and presumably relies (and therefore relies on understanding) a completely different or higher level of mechanism
I agree with most everything you saythe7ofswords said:
Especially the part on videogames being the best medium through which to explore a philosophical theory. There was a pronounced difference in my feelings towards interactions in both of the mentioned games, and I have never so fully understood and accepted Rousseau's theory of morality as I did when I played Red Dead Redemption, though I personally have to disagree with it.I would also like to add that I think a game could be added to the discussion to greatly enhance it. A few games can be mentioned which don't shift from civilization to wilderness which disprove both theories. They are quite thoughtful and show that morality doesn't exist in a vacuum, that in the prolonged absence of culture, or at least non-hostiles, insanity can set in, warping what is acceptable and unacceptable. In the presence of culture, the different cultures themselves dictate the morality of a situation. Every game with a morality meter takes culture's effect on morality into account (consciously or unconsciously), as it is the culture of the player character, how they were raised, that dictates whether an act is moral or immoral. Killing an innocent carries as much karmic penalty in a town of innocents as it does when a group of bloodthirsty bandits are telling you to in order to initiate you.
Oh gods dammit, no spoiler warning.
There goes the RDR story for me :'(
fuck
where are my amnesia pills?
even before playing either of these, I felt that had many commonalities. both games really appeal to me for similar reasons. Guess I'm a fan of westerns then
There goes the RDR story for me :'(
fuck
where are my amnesia pills?
even before playing either of these, I felt that had many commonalities. both games really appeal to me for similar reasons. Guess I'm a fan of westerns then
Eh, I'd say that if it is genetic, that doesn't alter our experience. I help Billy move his couch because it feels like the right thing to do, and because I believe it means he'll be more inclined to do the same for me. Now, if those feelings and beliefs are genetically influenced, does it negate the fact that I experience them as feelings or beliefs? If I'm genetically predisposed to have strawberry as my favorite ice cream, does that somehow diminish the sense of enjoyment I get while eating it?BloodSquirrel said:
The decision is still a rational one, whether or not it's genetically influenced. I'd say the compromise point between the three would be to say that it's not a conscious decision in the vast majority of cases. That leaves it open to influence from a multitude of genetic and environmental factors. What matters is that we do it because, one way or another, we understand it as being in the interest of Self.
That's a new way of looking at it... Interesting... All the more reason I should play Fallout! XD
I agree that society is not in conflict with our nature, however, it can't be said that society reveals nature, or even how we feel about it (after all, society changes how we perceive nature). Society is our nature, as much as selfishness is; our ability to communicate and empathize with others is probably biologically encoded [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_neurons#Empathy], not simply trained, which is a strong argument that humanity did not simply create society.Dastardly said:
Yet even if that was not the case, and humanity did create it, then society still creates a great deal of our nature, without our willing participation or knowledge of it. Now, as you mentioned, our biological realities shape how we interact with the world, but society still affects how we go about meeting those.
Moving back to your main point: if humanity did create society, even then it is an engine which largely runs on its own, which is in direct contrast to society revealing humanity because humanity constructed it. It would be barmy to claim that humanity has no impact on society, but ultimately humanity as we know it did not create society.
My point is, society and humanity cannot be extricated; society formed us, and we, in a small way, have formed society, much like a child learning a language has their own particular idiolect. There is a dialectic there, I don't wish to sound a determinist, but I find it odd to mention how humanity has shaped society without hitting on how society has shaped humanity.
I don't think we're really disagreeing in any particular way. Mostly, it seems to be how things are phrased.Aphroditty said:
Certainly, society has a huge impact on how each of us develops, and that development shapes the future of society, which shapes the future generation, and so on. It's a feedback loop, no question about it--akin to the "art imitates life imitates art" cliché.
My point is that society itself grew out of the interactions of the individuals that made up our species at the time. As such, it is a product of our nature--first there was us, and then there was society. Certainly there are layers upon layers of cause-effect twisting in modern times, but at the most basic level we (as a species, not as a modern generation of humans) created society.
And that is what I mean when I say society "reveals" our nature: it's because it was originally a product of that nature. And afterwards, we got into the whole chicken-or-egg feedback loop that defines us today.
It's a good, thoughtful article, and I'm glad to have read it, though I do wish there was some more focus on the morality systems more blatantly in play. New Vegas with its Karma meter and Red Dead with its honour. I think it's important to note the game's own opinion on the morality of the individual as well as the philosophy of the world. We can say that it's not the same as morality because we use the words "karma" and "honour," but no one really buys that. I personally like how Dragon Age does it.
I would also argue that the wilderness is not so nice as claimed in Red Dead. I mean, Bears, for one thing. I feel about as awful when I see a bear as when I see a Deathclaw at low level. Rare yes, and the wilderness is more about plant life in Red Dead, but I get the feeling of outside hostility all the same. In addition, the most efficient method of travel is by horse, and Marston is then generally stuck to well-worn pathways if he wants to make any kind of good time moving from place to place. These pathways can't be called anything but constructs of society, and it clearly shows that society is efficient and the only way to progress.
To take that last sentence a step further, we know that Marston's only real mod of progressing is through interactions with other people. It is society that makes him better, that gives him purpose, even if the society is seen as corrupt and flawed, it is the only place to live in the world. Marston's attempts to escape it, however noble, will inevitably fail, because he seeks a static existence. This static quality exists in Rosseau's idea of the free man of nature, but not in Hobbes'.
So ultimately it seems that Red Dead becomes about the futility of Rosseau's ideas, as much as it attempts to tout the moral highs of it. The civilized world, while a sometimes cruel and unforgiving place, is the symbol of progress, and progress is the birth and death of places, ideas, peoples, and philosophies. The "Old West" gave way to the young culture.
I would also argue that the wilderness is not so nice as claimed in Red Dead. I mean, Bears, for one thing. I feel about as awful when I see a bear as when I see a Deathclaw at low level. Rare yes, and the wilderness is more about plant life in Red Dead, but I get the feeling of outside hostility all the same. In addition, the most efficient method of travel is by horse, and Marston is then generally stuck to well-worn pathways if he wants to make any kind of good time moving from place to place. These pathways can't be called anything but constructs of society, and it clearly shows that society is efficient and the only way to progress.
To take that last sentence a step further, we know that Marston's only real mod of progressing is through interactions with other people. It is society that makes him better, that gives him purpose, even if the society is seen as corrupt and flawed, it is the only place to live in the world. Marston's attempts to escape it, however noble, will inevitably fail, because he seeks a static existence. This static quality exists in Rosseau's idea of the free man of nature, but not in Hobbes'.
So ultimately it seems that Red Dead becomes about the futility of Rosseau's ideas, as much as it attempts to tout the moral highs of it. The civilized world, while a sometimes cruel and unforgiving place, is the symbol of progress, and progress is the birth and death of places, ideas, peoples, and philosophies. The "Old West" gave way to the young culture.
Great article.
Usually when I see articles like this, while I may actually like their idea, I roll my eyes at the notion that they were actually deliberately inserted, remembering one article on Portal (the first) that went on a tangent about how it empowered women by replacing the phallic weapons used to assert your dominance by ejaculating bullets onto your enemies with a magical uterus that creates a opening though which you are reborn into new challenges. (Yeah.) But still, this seems like a deliberate approach - whether civilization/society is good or bad is one of those thinks people feel intrinsically one way or the other and automatically assume everyone feels that way. It may be that this contrast exists not deliberately but subconsiously, as a result of what the people creating those worlds feel intimately. It's essentially impossible to write a perfectly neutral essay, exactly because of the intimacy of those ideals that becomes inseparable from our selves, (and sure we may be aware of a few of our tendencies and do our best to rein them in, but all of them? never!), so why should video games be any different? It's just that the combination of the large amount of people necessary to create a game and their usually low-brow choice of subject matter tends to dampen this choice to a homeopathic degree, something also seen in popcorn summer movies, but when allowed to take a more central spot they do.
Usually when I see articles like this, while I may actually like their idea, I roll my eyes at the notion that they were actually deliberately inserted, remembering one article on Portal (the first) that went on a tangent about how it empowered women by replacing the phallic weapons used to assert your dominance by ejaculating bullets onto your enemies with a magical uterus that creates a opening though which you are reborn into new challenges. (Yeah.) But still, this seems like a deliberate approach - whether civilization/society is good or bad is one of those thinks people feel intrinsically one way or the other and automatically assume everyone feels that way. It may be that this contrast exists not deliberately but subconsiously, as a result of what the people creating those worlds feel intimately. It's essentially impossible to write a perfectly neutral essay, exactly because of the intimacy of those ideals that becomes inseparable from our selves, (and sure we may be aware of a few of our tendencies and do our best to rein them in, but all of them? never!), so why should video games be any different? It's just that the combination of the large amount of people necessary to create a game and their usually low-brow choice of subject matter tends to dampen this choice to a homeopathic degree, something also seen in popcorn summer movies, but when allowed to take a more central spot they do.
Neither of them saw a real need, considering the state of nature for either was a thought experiment to illustrate their end goal: for Rousseau, demonstrating that the convention of property was the basis of all inequality; for Hobbes, demonstrating that people are inherently wicked and needed an autocratic figure to guide them. That said, they both very explicitly did discuss the genesis of society out of this hypothetical state of nature, which for both was the capacity to reason: Rousseau held that the desire to claim and own property was that which created society, and Hobbes held that the fear of death was that which created society. Either way, society and the contracts which both philosophers espoused were born of man.Dastardly said:
Honestly, I don't think either philosopher really applies to either game, considering societal constraint pre-dated the time periods either game espoused and throws the whole thing into a mess of either observer's dilemma or confirmation bias depending how you look at it. Yes, Rousseau mistakenly used Native American culture to add rhetorical flair to his argument in A Discourse in Inequality, but that use was not only wildly inaccurate but contradicted his own state of nature; yes, under Hobbes postulated the potential to return to the state of nature in the absence of autocracy, which is empirically disprovable straight out of the game even at the time he wrote the book.
Which, as a sidenote, was little other than pro-monarchical propaganda at the time, until Locke took the concept of the social contract and ran with it in his essays supporting William of Orange. Why yes, I'm still a little sore over my article pitch about vidjagame morality systems being constrained by designer-dictated and -enforced objectivity (and necessarily consequentialist) being rejected.
Yes, as mentioned above this is an excellent feature. Interesting, well written and with plenty of well thought out points.
Reading a little too far into these games.
Certainly they can be a lens into how developers think about human nature, but it seems silly to think they were designed that way to specifically evoke those thoughts. That's a level of reading I doubt they ever intended.
More likely these developers simply looked at the world around them and tried to mimic human nature as they saw it. The best media of any kind has always been that which was true to human nature.
Certainly they can be a lens into how developers think about human nature, but it seems silly to think they were designed that way to specifically evoke those thoughts. That's a level of reading I doubt they ever intended.
More likely these developers simply looked at the world around them and tried to mimic human nature as they saw it. The best media of any kind has always been that which was true to human nature.
That is the great part about Fallout NV...the story and even the general gameplay changes considerably with the choices you make...the wastes don't have to be a bloody place if you make the correct choices, and you can easily play nice with both sides of most disputes. Sure, there are some chem addicts that attack everyone...but they can be dealt with using only a few small bullets; you can even shoot their baseball bats and then they will run away. If you did some planning, you might actually be able to beat that game without killing anything. Also, there are more than two endings. Personally, I liked the ending where the desert was left in Anarchy.