Post No.: 0743
Fluffystealthkitten says:
We’re biased to interpret our own actions as more well-intended and moral than the equivalent actions of others.
It’s all fictional but, when we play videogames, we almost invariably ostensibly play the good guys, even though when combat is involved – we’re usually the ones assassinating countless representations of humans or other creatures without caring about our victims’ names or backgrounds!
That henchperson might’ve been unwittingly brainwashed by her master and that’s why she’s serving them? That guard might’ve been from a poor family and was only doing his job because he had five kids to feed? That critter might’ve been just minding its own business until we went too close to it?
…But no moral questions, no wondering if there’s a less violent way – give us weapons and we’ll shoot or slash on sight; often with a fuzzy grin of satisfaction! They’re just fodder for the psychopath we’ve just situationally become!
We’ve probably come from another town or planet and entered their homes or territories, while brandishing weapons. We’re looting their stuff with a sense of entitlement. Yet we have the audacity to call them disgusting, to tell them to get out of our way, and to regard them as ****s for attacking us(!)
We think they’re the brutes, so we kill them. Yet if we took a step back, we’d realise we’re the real brutes for racking up by far the biggest kill count. Per one of us they’ve hurt, we’re often ‘tit-for-tat’ murdering hundreds of them. But we call ourselves badass instead of just bad! This is how all sides can believe they’re the good guys. Sometimes there are no good guys. In how many games does the character we control, along our journey, enter a stranger’s patch, expect them to not attack us for our trespassing, then we eliminate them because they do decide to defend themselves (or we just stealth kill them without them knowing)? We then smash their place up, snoop on their private documents, loot whatever we can, then move on – all the while rationalising we’re ‘the good guys’ because we have good intentions(!)
Magnificent innocent beasts are butchered because we have to do so to save a needy princess, or are captured to fight our battles. Creepy and scary zombies stalk us in the shadows, but we’re surely creepy and scary too for stalking them; and the consideration for a potential cure for the innocent hosts won’t be on our minds as much as wondering which weapon decapitates best! Are they only the baddies because they’re presented as aesthetically uglier and in the protagonist’s way? Humans might’ve created a monster – yet it’s still somehow the monster’s fault.
We’ll gleefully jump on and smush the heads of creatures oscillating from left to right on platforms. What have they individually done to us?! But they drop coins and stuff we want. Yeah that makes it better(!)
Of course we know they’re not real and justify it with the sense that these baddies would hurt our character and that these non-playable characters (NPCs) cannot be negotiated with alternative, diplomatic, solutions because that’s the game’s design. But we still sometimes have to question whether one wrong is morally superior to another (e.g. revenge, or killing to prevent many deaths, as the plot goes) and therefore whether we’re actually the good guys, or not at least just as evil as the antagonists – only better at shooting them than they are at us (or at ‘reloading checkpoints’)?!
So we go to their place (it’s seldom our home), often take the first shot, murder their kind and loot stuff from their land and dead bodies. But when they retaliate and do that well then they’re the annoying ****ers who should stop it(!) I guess this sums up the mentality of the habitat-conquering human pest, as well as cold-blooded capitalism!
We should maybe consider things from the NPCs’ perspectives, even if they’re not real (and even if it suggests that they just wait for hours for their cue to act when we finally enter their vicinity). But who cares? It’s just a game…
Yet it’s inconsistent. Either we should understand that they’re all just fictional characters and no one real is getting killed or robbed – or we should alternatively have empathy for all NPCs whether or not we’ve read a particular character’s diary or inner thoughts that reveal their ‘human’ side. It’s inconsistent because we take some things in a fictional game world seriously, like mourning over the death of a fictional companion we’ve journeyed with as if they were our real family; yet not others, like lacking empathy for the many dozens more who’ve died due to our actions, as if they didn’t implicitly have families too, as mothers, sons, etc. of others. (Even real actors can get attacked, or swooned, over the fictional characters they play(!))
It’s a weird hybrid of treating videogame characters like sometimes real then sometimes not. They should either be regarded as all fictional in a fictional world thus we shouldn’t cry over any of them – or all supposed to be real in a real world so we should cry over all of them.
Well this does reflect how we treat people in real life – those we get to personally know are empathised with while those we don’t are dehumanised, no matter if there are millions of the latter. Enemies in particular get dehumanised. Animals given personal names are pets whilst those without are mere objects. (The Last of Us Part II had adversaries caring about and calling their teammates by name yet this didn’t much change our motivation to terminate them though – thus it needs more than just names.) Attractive people receive better treatment and are allowed to get away with more than others.
If one cute elephant toy gets tortured then that makes us angy, sadge. But, unless we’re emotionally dead – we do feel for the fictional characters we get close to, and for things like cuddly toys. I’ll admit – if one cute cat or dog dies then a game has crossed the line! 1/5 stars. Meow.
Yet elsewhere, we’re callously skinning fluffy animals for hides, or collecting souls, because ‘we need to’, for upgrades(!) (The capitalist justification again.)
Ignorance is psychopathic bliss. Do we have to be nosey and have access to the private life stories of an individual (via collected files) before we’re able to see or consider them as a life with inherent dignity (whether we’re talking about any real or fictional character really)? Even when they’re allies – thousands of allies might die but we’ll only be bothered about the ones we personally get to know.
Are we controlling one of the ‘good guys’ only because we know them better, been simply put on their side and we’re on their journey and seeing from their viewpoint, thus they’re more humanised than the antagonists? The enemies might be just trying to protect their own kind, or just hunting for food to survive like people hunt boars or turkeys?
We shouldn’t be hypocritical by criticising others for trying to slay us when we’re trying to slay them. Yet we’re probably swearing at the screens as if the NPCs are real and can hear us, while we’d consider it rude if they acted similarly towards our character. We argue that ‘the ends justify the means’ but it’s nuts when we cannot see the hypocrisy even as we’re enacting it. We fail to consider the other side’s perspective.
Even when playing against real human foes (player versus player (PvP)) – if we teabag the defeated then it’s just having a laugh, but when others teabag our corpses then they’re being utter ****s(!) Others are also accused of cheating if they easily win, or of stealing our treasure if they reach it first! Basically a multitude of biases emerge in competitive contexts!
We also find it too easy in real life to rationalise that, whenever we do something then it’s for good reasons because we’re the ‘good guys’, but if someone else does a similar thing then it’s vile because they’re the ‘bad guys’.
So we always manage to rationalise that we’re the good guys despite doing much the same things as the bad guys, or things that if we saw someone else do then we’d think they were bad. It takes a lot, or it needs to be explicitly spelled out to us, for us to wonder maybe we’re not playing the good guys after all, or at least we’re not that perfectly good or we’re no better than those we’re fighting against. We naturally take the perspective of the characters we control, but it takes lots of empathy and critical thinking to consider things from an impartial perspective when watching the ‘protagonist’ intruding, slaughtering and pillaging along the way; or when watching the ‘antagonist’ and perhaps understanding that it’s just their unfortunate circumstances or they’re just trying to save their own comrades, livelihoods or homelands. The main boss might be a total **** but their minions might be just like those who work for atrocious, tax-dodging, environmentally-polluting, employee-abusing, propaganda-promulgating corporations they don’t really like in real life; or like civilians or conscripts who are following orders under a coercive dictatorship? Are we the indoctrinated ones for doing horrific things yet still believing we’re the good guys?
They’re just videogames so it’s just a thought experiment (like Post No.: 0536 discussed) – we can put them in their proper context since those characters are programmed to hurt our playable character if we don’t hurt them first. But there’s a near parallel in reality when, for instance, the police prejudge black people as the most dangerous suspects and then the police end up being the real savages for kneeling on their necks until they can’t breathe or for knee-jerk firing upon those who are just holding ‘something’ in their hands. The heightened suspicion and fear of others makes us think we’re (going to be) the victims, even though this makes us the aggressors because we’re thinking ‘I’ve got to hurt them first before they can hurt me’.
In movies too, the protagonists can massacre dozens of grunts and we’ll still believe they’re the good guys – perhaps just because they represent our nationality, ethnicity, or our species! They could’ve become our friends? They would’ve at least each had families and backgrounds. But they were executed by the ‘hero’(!) And aren’t Lara Croft and Indiana Jones just looters?
Videogames are a fantastic way to explore moral philosophies! Furrywisepuppy and I enjoy them. We’re still going to play them and watch our favourite streamers! Well if videogames are mind-rotting then movies are even more so – videogames offer all the functions of movies plus an interactive element. There’s good (e.g. the social aspects, learning through role-playing, training certain cognitive and coordination skills) and bad (e.g. hiding behind avatars can bring out antisocial behaviours). There are good and bad games, or ways to play them. Overall they’re wholesome as part of a balanced lifestyle.
Nonetheless, the next time you play a videogame with combat – try to consider the viewpoint of every character you shoot, slice, bash or jump on, and not just those of the characters you get to know. If you care about one, you should try to care about the other. And ask if you’re invading their patch and whether the ‘baddies’ are justified to defend themselves because they should feel threatened by you and your intentions? Under the constraints of the game mechanics and plot, you likely cannot do anything differently if you wish to complete the game – sometimes there aren’t any (as what I always prefer if available) non-lethal or benign options. But we’ve got to question, “Am I sure I’m not playing the bad guy?” (Duh!)
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