Games That "Make" You Do Bad Things

[Something Amyss]

This has actually bubbled up in my mind several times in the months since I beat Assassin's Creed Brotherhood. There are three games I was thinking of: ACB, GTA V, and Spec Ops: The Line. I guess you should assume spoilers for all three and other games that may come up, though none of these games are particularly new so that's the last point I'm going to make of spoilers.

There's been a hostile response on some level to all three of these games, though ACB to a lesser extent. GTA got notice for the infamous torture scene, and a lot of the people who were critical of it apparently drew the line at mandatory gamer participation. Spec Ops has you WP a bunch of civilians, and people were upset that they had no choice to continue but also that they were called bad people for doing it. There were other questionable things, and I don't think anyone was under the illusion that Captain Walker was a good guy by that point in the game, but this seemed to be "the line," so to speak. And, in ACB, you are actively asked to participate in the killing of one of your allies.

I never got far enough into Spec Ops to talk about the scene in itself, but I don't get the issues with the other two. Torture in GTA just seemed like something I had to do to advance the story. I'm not particularly sure it was worse than the thousands of people I'd murdered up to that point. In fact, I'd already seen videos of players torturing pedestrials by that point--they just didn't waterboard them.

Because I played Brotherhood after these other controversies, when the button prompt came up, my second response was to wonder if the intent was to make you feel complicit. My first response was "what the hell? I thought this was a cut scene!" My third response was to laugh, because after two minutes it was clear the game wouldn't progress if I didn't hit a button. But after a game where I ran around ganking a bunch of people, I was supposed to feel bad because framing device boy ganked framing device girl while controlled by an Ancient (or whatever the game calls them).

Even the talk around Spec Ops puzzled me. This is a community that will mod a game to kill children, dismiss killing women in games because it's just fiction, and then be outraged at being "made" to kill civilians, and I can't help but wonder if it comes down to Walker being told he was bad for doing it. Most mainstream games are built around how awesome the PC is, and by extent, how awesome we are. I'm not even sure people would have had an issue if we were just told "kill civilians to continue." After all, in Call of Duty's "No Russian" scenario, tons of gamers complied without a second thought, without realising you could go through the mission without firing a single shot.

It's kind of what we do.

"No Russian" was probably a better commentary on gamers than Spec Ops coiuld pull off, ut it mostly became an issue when the press go ahold of it, and then it was more like kids defending themselves after being busted by their parents. And no, I'm not saying that the press was right, I'm just saying our reaction was rather trivial until we were called on it.

But maybe I'm missing something, whcih is why I'm making the topic in the first place. Do these missions bother you? Do they make you feel bad, complicit, or something else? Why is it gamers seem more than happy to go on virtual murder sprees that make everyone this side of Pol Pot look good, but will suddenly balk when told they have to partake?

 

[Sofox]

For a start I think you've hamstrung yourself in talking about Spec Ops without playing the part of the game in question, and using a stereotype of some vaguely defined subsection of the gaming community to back up your argument. Leaving that aside, you bring up a valid and important issue.

Amnesia had something like this, in order to progress in the game, you had to drown someone who you could hear but not even see. Straight out kill them, in order to complete a puzzle and progress. This raises all sorts of questions. Are you a terrible person for killing this civilian? Are you just playing as a terrible person doing terrible things to achieve his goals. Or are the game developers the true evil here, they know your only other option is to stop playing and forefit the rest of the game which you paid for, so they force you to do terrible things to progress. Largely developers claim that these things represent how terrible the character you are playing as is. That would make sense if it was a cutscene, but if you have control than it is something you're doing. And if you don't have a choice, how does the character you're playing as have one?

Spec Ops (spoiler) had one other scene that showed morality much better than the WP scene. You're thrown among a group of civilians who have done something terrible and are now attacking you with rocks in a way that's likely to kill you if you let it continue. Are you willing to fire on a group of civilians? Murder the very people you were trying to protect? If you do, this makes both you and the player character bad people, the same sort of soldiers that fired into crowds in Bloody Sunday, or any number of other riots. They key difference here is that you have a choice: while it's an emotional and stressful situations, and it seems like firing into the crowds is the only option, if you want to prevent their death enough, or are just smart enough, you can try firing warning shots, either over their heads or at the ground. This works, and the crowd disperses. This rewards true morality, while if the person does the most obvious thing, they can be tormented by the idea that they did something terrible when there was an alternative. Essentially, the game will achieve in making a real statement about the morality and beliefs of the player as a person.

 

[Silvanus]

Amnesia had something like this, in order to progress in the game, you had to drown someone who you could hear but not even see. Straight out kill them, in order to complete a puzzle and progress. This raises all sorts of questions. Are you a terrible person for killing this civilian?

Brilliant example-- it's a great method to make the player feel extremely uncomfortable, not only with the castle and the situation, but with the character himself (and yourself by extension). Another example of something the video game medium could do that no other medium really could.


OT: The latest release for GW2 has a situation like this; you experience a flashback and step into somebody else's shoes (Caithe, a renowned hero), and with you is Faolain, Caithe's then-lover. Now, you as the player know that Faolain becomes a pretty monstrous individual some time after the events of the flashback are set... but during the Flashback, of course, Caithe doesn't yet know this.

Caithe is involved in killing a large number of sapient creatures to defend Faolain-- with the implication being that Faolain made the first move, not them. They were, in all likelihood, innocent, but the game has you play it through as Caithe, who doesn't know.

 

[CannibalCorpses]

Yeah, i know what you mean...i hate it in games when i'm 'forced' to help people i would rather just leave to die in real life.

 

[Dizchu]

Papers Please makes you do bad things in two different, conflicting ways. It offers scenarios where you have to have to either bend the rules to help people in need (which includes your family) or follow the rules to the detriment of those same people.

Following the rules means you won't be penalised, which means more money to take care of your family. Later in the game you get bonuses for detaining people so you are tempted to detain innocents for extra money for your family.

Basically whatever you do is gonna suck for someone.

 

[Casual Shinji]

I think it's context. The random acts of violence you perform in the open world of GTA5 is generally played for slapstick. You're not zoomed in on someone's face and pulling out their teeth or something. The only real problem I had with that scene was that I could just see Rockstar's 'Ooh, look how edgy we are' fingerprints all over it.

For me, the WP scene in Spec Ops was just a twist that lacked any relevance beyond the initial surprise. If you've been made aware of it beforehand or you replay it, that scene becomes utterly meaningless. As Sofox stated, the scene where you're surrounded by rightfully angry civilians who are moments away from stoning you to death was way better, because it actually gives you a choice without shoving it in your face. It uses the normal control scheme of aiming and shooting, and then leaves it up to you where you want to aim and where you want to shoot.

I guess it shouldn't matter because you've killed so many people already, but sometimes it does. Like the sequence in God of War 3 where you're forced to drag some poor slave girl over to a heavy gate winch, and then use her to prop it open. And as you walk through you hear her getting brutally crushed. Now I'd already killed plenty of innocent human NPCs just wandering around the game world, yet that moment made me quite sick.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Do these missions bother you? Do they make you feel bad, complicit, or something else? Why is it gamers seem more than happy to go on virtual murder sprees that make everyone this side of Pol Pot look good, but will suddenly balk when told they have to partake?

It comes down to how the material is presented. Abstract kill-a-thons have become commonplace in both Hollywood and gaming and no one bats an eye, save perhaps to criticize them for being derivative. If the film wants to go a step further, and cozy up a little more intimately to the violence, people tend to pay more attention, and the level of criticism or acclaim rises accordingly. Does it feel exploitative? Pornographic? Is it censuring or promoting it? Was it put in purely for shock effect? Did it contribute to the narrative or character growth? Was it formulaic or pat? Was the direction solid or amateurish? Was it tonally consistent with the experience up to that moment in time? Etc, etc, etc.

People will heap scorn on the violence in, say, a Michael Bay film, whilst applauding a similar level of violence in a Michael Mann film. Are they hypocrites? Or is there more at play than "is it violent, Y/N"?

Rockstar employs cartoonish, over the top violence in its GTA series. The argument in its defense is that it's satirical. The argument against it is that the satirical elements are getting pretty thin on the ground and the series appears to be wallowing in its own infantile nastiness. It's a series I feel merits at least some of the criticism it receives. Whereas its cornier, loopier, infinitely more self-aware sibling, Saints Row, tends to skate by relatively unopposed because of its wink-wink 4th wall breaking.

Spec Ops: The Line was quite evidently a condemnation of violence. In a lot of aspects a very amateurish, ham-handed one, but unusually strong for the medium. It's somewhat reminiscent of a film like Natural Born Killers, which bludgeons the audience over the head with its transparent message. Is it bad for being violent? No. Is it bad for being clumsy? Maybe.

Assassin's Creed has never struck me as being either particularly violent or particularly controversial on the subject of violence. It seems to generate all its controversy through Ubi-boners.

TLDR - I have absolutely no problem with violent or controversial games, films, books, etc, as long as said violence and controversy serves a purpose and is handled with a certain degree of skill and care. When it exists simply to provoke, I find it rather tasteless and pointless.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Rockstar employs cartoonish, over the top violence in its GTA series. The argument in its defense is that it's satirical. The argument against it is that the satirical elements are getting pretty thin on the ground and the series appears to be wallowing in its own infantile nastiness. It's a series I feel merits at least some of the criticism it receives. Whereas its cornier, loopier, infinitely more self-aware sibling, Saints Row, tends to skate by relatively unopposed because of its wink-wink 4th wall breaking.

GTA5 reached a point where it's about as satirical as representing someone famous in-game and straight-up calling them 'poo brain'.

 

[Recusant]

Spec Ops: the Line was an interesting case, and Sofox indicated, Zachary, you're kind of hampering yourself by not having finished it. The problem I, for one, had with it was the horrific shaky camera work that made action moments in cut-scenes impossible to follow. Seriously, it's like the cameraman is trying to stand still in a field of rolling marbles, while drunk, during an earthquake. It becomes almost comical after a while, but it destroys your ability to take the plot seriously.

However, it seems I was the only one who noticed that. The more commonly observed problem, and the reaction to it, isn't about the violence, as such, as about the way to game tries to force a reaction to it while depriving you of all agency with it: one your soldiers tells you "we have to use the white phosphorus, we have no choice", to which we get the responses "you always have a choice" followed by "no, sometimes you don't". In this case, you don't; no matter how many you kill, more keep spawning in, and you have no choices to stealth in, or retreat and call for backup, or anything else.

One thing that I have never heard anyone else mention, in discussing this game, is that your soldiers only prove reluctant to use the white phosphorus because "they're Americans"; if an objection would otherwise be felt at all, it's lessened by the fact that the people you'd be bathing in fire have a different nationality; that they're actively trying to kill you is a secondary consideration. The game does try to make you feel bad for it, but it's not simply a "Tsk, tsk, you naughty boy"; it's the beginning of a constantly-referred to mental breakdown Captain Walker undergoes, and the fact that the game tries to push the "it was your decision, you (if unintentionally) did this" angle. That it's a bit clumsy could be forgiven; that it's doing so on the heels of absolutely forcing you to do so is a different matter.

So let's talk about agency; about will and choice. Not ours, as the player; that's a discussion for another time; but that of others, of those who have roles other than that of protagonist. As others above me have alluded to, there's a moment in Spec Ops wherein you're attacked by an angry mob that has

Spoiler

killed one of your squadmates

, and are threatening to do the same to you; you have the option of gunning them down or firing above their heads to drive them off (or walking into the crowd and being beaten to death, or waiting for the thrown stones to overwhelm your health regeneration, I suppose). Whether it's right to gun down innocent civilians is a question we, as a species, have pretty much answered (No), but these people aren't innocent; they're murderers. They may not have wanted this disaster and the accompanying madness to come to their city, but they're a part of it now: they willfully decided to gang up and take the action they did. The objection we feel- that we're meant to feel- toward killing them isn't that they're innocent, it's that they're unarmed. They're helpless compared to us, the protagonist with loaded guns and lots of bullets. Give them guns, and we're on an equal footing. Even here:

Even the talk around Spec Ops puzzled me. This is a community that will mod a game to kill children, dismiss killing women in games because it's just fiction, and then be outraged at being "made" to kill civilians, and I can't help but wonder if it comes down to Walker being told he was bad for doing it.

You fire a gun with your arms and hands, guided by your eyes and brain. Women are at no appreciable disadvantage in doing so. So why is it inherently objectionable to kill women? It isn't- it's inherently objectionable to kill the defenseless. Once they have a sporting chance, all bets are off. But that's the thing: 'a sporting chance' doesn't merely consist of handing them a weapon; it also requires giving them the will to use it. A female soldier, holding gun, not letting you in to an area she's guarding but making no hostile moves towards you, is not a helpless victim; she is (within the context of a violent video game) a legitimate target, no less than her male counterpart guarding the area across the hall. Take away her weapons, that changes. Why? Well...

We are not introduced to the glories of violence by video games, we are introduced to the glories of violence by being descended from survival-at-all-costs beasts, and more recently, from humans possessed a deep-seated primal urge to kill. Those humans who did not have a primal urge to kill were killed off by those who did. Societal indoctrination can overcome instinct. Training can overcome instinct. Will can overcome instinct. But none of them make instinct go away. Few people (at least in the first world) routinely kill anything larger than a housefly, but the impulse is still there. So a way of simulating killing without actually hurting anything or anyone is created, and when it doesn't prove violent enough, modders are there to crank the killing up. This isn't a bad thing; if human perception is an aggregate, it couldn't be unless you experience nothing else. If human perception is will-driven, what you're exposed to doesn't matter.

Spec Ops: the Line was decried by gamers not merely because it showed nasty consequences of horrific violence; it might well've been lauded for that. It was decried because it forced you down a single narrative path without even the real illusion of choice, then spent the rest of the game berating you for the "decision" it forced you to make; a fake that its interesting sidenotes of the player as the protagonist vs the player as the controller of the protagonist didn't come close to making up for.

Also, that camera work was awful.

 

[Sniper Team 4]

I never understood why people were upset about Spec Ops to be honest. I guess that's because I fell hard into the trap the game was going for: You start out playing as a character who thinks he's in the right. Now, I don't know about you, but I tend to get sucked into games. Immersion and all that. And when that part came up, yeah, I felt kind of bad, but to me it wasn't any different (at first) than the AC-130 mission. And at the end, when I saw all those white dots, the only thing that went through my mind was, "Targets!"

And then I saw the aftermath. Soldiers burned, some of the crawling in agony, and out of pity, I shot anyone who was still moving. I didn't feel too proud of what I'd done, but I was still going after Conrad without a doubt.

And then I turned the corner and got the cutscene. I felt so sick that I had to stop playing for a bit. And even then, I still fell for the game's trap. I went after Conrad even harder, vowing to make him pay. It wasn't until the end of the game, when I started to realize just how much Walker's actions were costing and the reveal of his insanity, that I finally understood what the game's point was: the deconstruction of the CoD power fantasy.
But to fully appreciate that, you need to go in blind, you need to be immersed, and you need to be familiar with CoD and other FPS military shooters. A lot of people heard about that scene in the game before they played it, and thus immediately started going, "Well, I'd never do that!" and thus ruined the point of the game for themselves.

Go watch Yahtzee's review of Spec Ops: The Line. He does an excellent job explaining what makes the game special and how it messes with that thrill that gamers get when they are gunning down so many people. He even mentions that, by late in the game, he thinks the player is suppose to feel disconnected from Walker because the man is so far gone.

 

[DEAD34345]

I got enough self awareness to recognize that I am not, in fact, the protagonist of the games just because I control them. They aren't me, I'm me and the fictional characters are the fictional characters. I don't know, people seems to have some sort of delusion where they believe that they "are" the characters, despite how hilariously restrictive all games are. All games tell a single story that barely deviate the slightest bit even among those that are built with the most diversive changes. It's the same reason I can't get into a power fantasy character, mostly because it's a bit pathetic, but mostly because even as a gamer you're still an observer. You can slightly control the characters, but you're still watching them play out the story.

Not "all" games are like that at all, quite a few of my favourite games certainly aren't. In Crusader Kings 2 for example I'm almost always a heartless evil bastard, but it's always my choice, my characters aren't restricted in any meaningful way with regards to the moral choices available to them. [footnote]They are necessarily restricted in some ways due to the format of the game, I can't decide when my character goes to the toilet for example because the game is played from a map and that sort of thing is abstracted, but the fundamental control of how my character affects the world is held by me, and not restricted by any kind of story or railroading whatsoever.[/footnote]

That said, I really agree with your first point. I don't consider myself the protagonist of the games I play, even when I have total control of the character. I've never really understood why so many people sort of self-insert themselves into the games they play. I'm forced to be myself pretty much all the time, so when I play games I generally prefer to be play as someone totally different, and I feel no real guilt for the actions of my characters in fictional worlds, even when they're seriously evil. I also have no problems playing as characters I personally hate, so moments like the one(s) in Spec Ops the line really fail to have the desired effects on me and pretty much make the whole game fall flat.

I've actually treated characters in games like this since a very young age; even as far back as my early primary school years I'd be the person who created the stories and rules of the games my friends played, and in those games I was invariably the villain (or villains) who had to be defeated (as well as every other character my friends would interact with in the game). I don't know, maybe I'm just weird and separating yourself completely from characters is unusual or difficult, but it certainly seems the healthier and just plain more fun way to play video-games to me.

 

[endtherapture]

The Witcher 2 has a load of situations like this. Perhaps it's not as clear cut, but you can role play several choices, it's a binary choice but your decision

One choice in the middle of the game is decision to kill a certain King out of vengeance for how he has treated your friends, or spare him. He's an awful King and a vile person, but for his people, leaving this tyrant alive will probably leave his country in the best state, living under a tyrannical rule but not plunging the country into chaos and war. If you kill him to satisfy your personal vengeance, then the country is going to be in shit even though he's an awful person.

Later in the game, the "personal" choice for your characters feelings has the best outcome compared to the politically shrewd one, so it goes both ways and lets you really think about the consequences of you actions and which is the best choice for you to make.

 

[CaitSeith]

...Why is it gamers seem more than happy to go on virtual murder sprees that make everyone this side of Pol Pot look good, but will suddenly balk when told they have to partake?

Because that's a generalization. They aren't probably the same gamers. Some of those who go in those murder sprees you describe, like to test how the game reacts to it (because in several cases it reacts poorly or too predictable). However, those scenes you mention seem to test the protagonist when the player is at control (so it's testing the player instead).

 

[the December King]

You know, there were a couple of instances in Skyrim where I found myself completely baffled as to how I got in those situations in the first place- I'd be helping someone out on a quest one moment, and then, somehow, I'd be ready to sacrifice someone on an altar surrounded by crazed fanatics, and them thanking me for bringing the sacrifice to them, or something like that- that particular example was near Morkorth I think, and I'm admittedly fuzzy on the details just now. Another was a poor man in a tower who was looking for his captured bride... who was actually moonlighting as leader of the kidnappers and was happily enslaving other people.

I admit, I assumed that these were just amusing, subversive situations- but still, most of the time I was left rather... well, frustrated.