On Mon, 7 May 2007, R. G. 'Stumpy' Marsh wrote:
> The same question could be asked of players of first person shooter
> style video games. Provided one can firewall the morality of the
> character sufficiently from the morality of the player (in much the
> same way that a GM does for the Evil characters s/he plays), there's
> much fun to be had watching the pyrotechnics that result.
Bear in mind that there is disagreement over how well people can or do
firewall such things.
> Remember that the "people" getting "hurt" in roleplaying games are no
> more real than the "people" getting "hurt" in video games - especially
> MMORPGs.
It is my understanding, not having played MMORPGs since the days of text
MUDs, that (A) the "people" getting "hurt" are largely monsters or evil
humans and (B) PvP (the equivalent of one role-playing PC killing another
PC) is a fairly complex issue that lots of people frown upon and lots of
games limit, and (C) the social aspect of sitting around a table and
looking the other players or the GM in the eye is missing.
Bear in mind that we are not talking about PCs killing monsters and bad
guys. We are talking about PCs kidnapping the bar maid and torturing her
for days, possibly played out in great detail. Don't think about the
conventional combat-oriented stuff that PCs do in role-playing games.
Think about players playing Evil characters who really do Evil things like
replicating the acts of a sadistic serial killer or those carried out on
the civilians in Nanking by the occupying Japanese army during WW2.
> I really don't understand the objection to playing evil characters in
> rpgs, vs. playing a multiplayer first person shooter where the aim is
> to "kill" the other players characters.
Well, I think there are a few key differences.
First, you don't look other real people in the eye while playing a first
person shooter, so there is moral distancing (you can find discussions of
the psychological difference between firing at a few moving human-like
shapes a hunded yards away vs. hacking them to death up close with a sword
or looking them in the face through a scope before putting a bullet in
their head. From what I've seen, most first person shooters tend show
faces that are fairly generic and lacking in expression.
Second, you are (to my knowledge) killing other combatants (people who are
there to kill you) and not civilians (or innocent NPCs) because your
character thinks that killing helpless or innocent people is fun. Are
there any first person shooters where one side has to maim and kill
innocent civilians while the other side has to stop them?
Third, the voice and text message systems in many competative first person
shooters make it very clear that you haven't really killed or eliminated a
person when you kill your opponent. They might send you a message or say
something after their character dies. And the same name (character) comes
back again and again in many competative situations.
Fourth, while they allow killing of other characters, they don't generally
emphasize pain or violence nor do they allow you to torture, violate, or
humiliate other cahracters. Role-playing games are much more flexible in
that characters can do (or at least try to do) anything that the players
describe. A tabletop role-playing game (or game engine) doesn't need to
have rules to handle torture in a detailed manner in order for the players
and GM to play out such things in detail.
That's not to say that there aren't any potential issues with first person
shooters, but I think the most obvious difference is that players play
first-person shooters and MMORPGs for a challenge. But that challenge is
often missing when we talk about Evil characters doing really Evil things,
particularly to helpless and innocent NPCs. The only challenge I can see
in such a situation is the challenge to see whether the player can get
vile and twisted enough to shock one another.
To give you an example, one game of Evil characters that I've heard about
involved an elven princess turned over to a band of 300 duergar for their
enjoyment, considered in some detail. Can you think of anything
comparable to that in an MMORPG or first person shooter?
John Morrow
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