There are consequences built into the game though. It's false to suggest that one scenario has no consequences and another has. The consequences are changed not they have been removed. So in BG, you can't be a blameless peasant and never pick up a sword and still triumph in the scenario that the game is set in or fulfill the objective of the game.
It's nitpicking to point at one behavior in game and say this signals you are a bad person. When simply by turning on the game you have already accepted that you are prepared to leave "real life" moralty/behavior on the back burner for a period of time in order to achieve the goal the game has set.
Its amazing what people will do when there are no consequences. If you want to see how strong someone's moral fibre is, watch them in a consequence free environment. I can't do evil runs, or loot people's homes. It just makes me feel bad.
@semiticgod , No, I haven't played it, but from what I've read about it, I see how it ties into this.
Anyone who is noticing my name as the OP of this thread, please note the date. I posted this over two years ago. I had of course completely forgotten about it by now. It's one of my infamous wacky drunk posts that I like to do here from time to time.
Knowing myself, I can tell when I drunk posted by the fact that my thoughts and feelings are expressed with over-the-top emotionally hyperbolic wording. I also ramble and go kind of all over the place with my thoughts. It's a bit like expressing myself while dreaming.
I like to do that here because it's a safe venue to express feelings that I wouldn't in real life, or while sober. Even if I were met by mass condemnation and ridicule, it wouldn't matter, and it wouldn't hurt me much. I guess it would sting a little. But in the end I'd just shrug it off, and chalk it all up to experience.
And even with my most ridiculous, over-the-top posts and overreactions, I've often been very surprised by the kindness and thoughtfulness of the responses I've gotten here. Sometimes I get my faith in humanity restored just a bit by people like @semiticgod .
@UnderstandMouseMagic Its consequence free for the player. No matter what you do, you are safe from an consequences on your person. There is some truth to the op's post. In the absence of consequences, I would not trust anyone who can easily justify atrocities of even a make-believe manner in the name of entertainment.
@ThacoBell it is also consequence free for the victims. As in, the player knows that no real person/animal/creature will suffer for their actions (in single player games that is). Make-believe as you say. It would depend on the player of course, but I think that's a more important factor as to why people can be cruel in games.
I think the most interesting games when it comes to evil are the Total War games like Rome and Medieval 2. Because being a machiavellian douche there really is quicker and easier, as Yoda would say. And since everyone else in that game is a machiavellian douche it can be pretty tricky sticking to being the good guy.
On the issue of adventurers going to everyone's homes. Well there's no way to knock on doors, so letting yourself in and talking to the first person you see is the closest thing to knocking, especially if it's not locked.
And if you're an honorable adventurer and not a burglar, then going home to home is the same as being an annoying door-to-door salesperson. Instead of selling merchandise, you're selling your services as an adventurer. Maybe there's a quest they need doing.
I'd say it's pretty dangerous to assume that people who play evil characters in RPGs are more evil in reality. Or that people who steal are always chaotic/neutral evil. That's more of a lawful neutral mindset than a lawful good one in my opinion.
Its amazing what people will do when there are no consequences. If you want to see how strong someone's moral fibre is, watch them in a consequence free environment. I can't do evil runs, or loot people's homes. It just makes me feel bad.
A lot of RPG games are designed to be where you're supposed to loot everything you can that's not nailed down. It's expected. A whole lot of quests don't happen if you aren't going through every container and entering every house.
Other breaks from reality: 1) You need to talk to every single person on the street. 2) If you read something from a scroll, or simply copy the scroll, the scroll self-destructs like out of Inspector Gadget. I don't know why mage and priest scrolls would ever do this. In Planescape:Torment in The Lower Ward, there's even a guy with a large printing press that is copying tons of paper and running on its own so with that technology it should be theoretically possible to mass copy every mage and priest scroll until they are 1 gold piece each.
Knowing myself, I can tell when I drunk posted by the fact that my thoughts and feelings are expressed with over-the-top emotionally hyperbolic wording. I also ramble and go kind of all over the place with my thoughts. It's a bit like expressing myself while dreaming.
I found this thread because I was wondering on an issue and so I google-searched and usually this forum comes up a lot. And most threads are really old, in the archives, so don't bump but this was newer.
I was just thinking it seems odd that you're supposed to loot and pickpocket everyone.
Now some NPCs are your friends and if you loot their home right in front of you, they won't call the guard. But they would see you as basically like Seinfeld sees Kramer. The friend who comes over and immediately eats out of his fridge.
This game, Hobo Simulator, is the only game where rummaging through trashes and stealing even makes sense: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dl_UB4ZkeBg I guess at the start of Baldur's Gate 1 after leaving Candlekeep and not being able to return, you technically are homeless. But for a modern homeless to be like that situation, the city's pigeon population would have to constantly be swallowing coins and if you kill one you find coins in its stomach so enough of that and you make a living.
The amount of violence in nearly all societies worldwide has been reducing over hundreds of years - and that's not changed as a result of the vastly greater access to violent images in the last century.
There's been some anecdotal evidence (presented in court cases) that exposure to violent images can trigger copy-cat behavior in real life, but I think that evidence is pretty weak. If there is a link at all I think that only occurs as a result of confusion over what is real and what is fantasy. I therefore would have great difficulty in believing that anyone's behavior in real life was influenced by how they played Baldur's Gate as, despite my obvious great affection for the graphics, they're not entirely life-like .
The amount of violence in nearly all societies worldwide has been reducing over hundreds of years - and that's not changed as a result of the vastly greater access to violent images in the last century.
There's been some anecdotal evidence (presented in court cases) that exposure to violent images can trigger copy-cat behavior in real life, but I think that evidence is pretty weak. If there is a link at all I think that only occurs as a result of confusion over what is real and what is fantasy. I therefore would have great difficulty in believing that anyone's behavior in real life was influenced by how they played Baldur's Gate as, despite my obvious great affection for the graphics, they're not entirely life-like .
A video game of war doesn't cause the post traumatic stress of being in a real war.
From what I can find, adult violence has its roots in child abuse. Today people think it's wrong to hit their spouse for disobedience, for workers in an old folk's home to hit old people for disobedience, or to hit someone mentally disabled and in a wheelchair for disobedience. But still a lot of people think it's fine to hit children who are many times smaller than them for disobedience. And unlike an abused spouse, children are completely helpless and have no way to run away to.
Parents physically and verbally attacking children used to be far more common long ago, but there's been a lot of push-back against this.
Researchers looked at the causes of all the violence in World War II and found that it was the rise of orphanages. Children would be in orphanages and ignored by caregivers, and what caregivers there are often changed a lot as people switched jobs, and this provokes a sense of abandonment in very small children. And so the children grew up insane, unable to relate to people, or even pets. They'd throw pet cats out of windows and just were basically like Xzar from Baldur's Gate 1. Orphanages also beat children to make them obey too.
In the USA, they found that the areas of the country where parents are more likely to spank their children are the same areas where the children are more likely to join the military.
In Europe, many countries have made it illegal to spank children and so the natives of Europe are very peaceful and anti-war. The USA by contrast doesn't outlaw it and the USA is always doing something with its military.
The amount of violence in nearly all societies worldwide has been reducing over hundreds of years - and that's not changed as a result of the vastly greater access to violent images in the last century.
There's been some anecdotal evidence (presented in court cases) that exposure to violent images can trigger copy-cat behavior in real life, but I think that evidence is pretty weak. If there is a link at all I think that only occurs as a result of confusion over what is real and what is fantasy. I therefore would have great difficulty in believing that anyone's behavior in real life was influenced by how they played Baldur's Gate as, despite my obvious great affection for the graphics, they're not entirely life-like .
I don't buy the "games cause violence" argument. What I'm saying is the reverse, and the most extreme example. The way a person wishes they could act, and only don't because of consequences, will come out in the entertainment they seek.
The amount of violence in nearly all societies worldwide has been reducing over hundreds of years - and that's not changed as a result of the vastly greater access to violent images in the last century.
There's been some anecdotal evidence (presented in court cases) that exposure to violent images can trigger copy-cat behavior in real life, but I think that evidence is pretty weak. If there is a link at all I think that only occurs as a result of confusion over what is real and what is fantasy. I therefore would have great difficulty in believing that anyone's behavior in real life was influenced by how they played Baldur's Gate as, despite my obvious great affection for the graphics, they're not entirely life-like .
I don't buy the "games cause violence" argument. What I'm saying is the reverse, and the most extreme example. The way a person wishes they could act, and only don't because of consequences, will come out in the entertainment they seek.
I'm not even sure that's true to be honest. I wish I could beat up dragons and save the world of course, but I only break into every container, rob every inhabitant and slaughter every innocent to see what they're carrying because the developers make it worthwhile to do so. By hiding special items, giving extra xp, finding special quests (or cookies), or even adding interesting conversations, developers encourage this behaviour. I doubt people would do it without the rewards (I know I wouldn't bother).
@ThacoBell I don't think that's a fair characterization. Of course people are responsible for their own decisions, but that includes video game developers who make burglary profitable.
Basically what @Balrog99 said. In real life I've had things stolen from me and I hate it so much, but games are games.
It's a break from reality if you do ridiculous things like looting the valuables from peasants.
As for beating up dragons, if dragons existed in the real world, military weapons have advances enough to defeat them. There was an Indie movie a few years back about a man who moved somewhere in the country with a portal and orcs tried to invade and he drove them off with regular civilian guns and such -- it was in the USA which allows this.
What bothered me about the film was the orcs didn't realize he was a civilian. He was doing more to protect the orc's world from humans than humans from orcs. If the US military discovered the orc's world, they could invade and conquer it very easily. The orcs thought the civilian man was a great wizard simply for having guns. What if an actual military comes in with far better weapons? I forgot the name of the film.
So what is the consensus on where 'swatting' came from? Just a gaming environment, the power of the internet and technology, or a combination of either of those and a crook-like personality?
So what is the consensus on where 'swatting' came from? Just a gaming environment, the power of the internet and technology, or a combination of either of those and a crook-like personality?
I don't think it's anything to do with technology - just a development of an age-old way of annoying other people. Long before phones existed knocking on people's doors and running away was a standard prank. Hoax calls to emergency services have always been common; swatting is just the next stage in that.
We are born neither good or bad, we have to be socialized as children. Good and evil really are social concepts. In a world with only one living man there is no morality.
People can become evil and so a number of them are. Since it is by definition antisocial to be evil, it is possible they are over represented in the gaming community since that activity goes well with shutting yourself off from society. I should be clear that I'm not saying that people that shut themselves off or are loners are evil, I'm saying maybe it's more likely that evil people will be since it can have very detrimental consequences for their well being to indulge in evil behaviour (which can only be done involving other people). But then I also doubt what I'm saying because I seem to have seen evil people enjoying and seeking out each other's company.
I don't know. I do know that there is no connection between in-game behaviour such as looting stuff, killing someone for an item or choosing a quest choice based on getting the best rewards and the moral fibre of the player. That some players have a hard time or dislike doing that in a game just means they are immersing themselves more into the fantasy. They are playing the game differently, basically they are more of an RPer.
Being able to detach your morality from the game or approaching the game from a min-maxing standpoint, playing it like a game of chess or for whatever reason not involving their morality in the game does not speak at all of their morality. I've never heard of anyone who feels sorry for the pawns in a chess game. Although that person might exist, it seems unlikely and I think it is because the pawns look so little like people that it doesn't invoke that response. NPCs in a video game look more like people, but yet they are not and do not look at all the same. Whether they invoke that response in a player or not does not say anything about the morality of that player or what kind of response real people would invoke in him.
It's more than that, if you act really loony in a game, it has less meaning.
Now in the adventurer-hero RPGs, you have the ability to rewind time. If you die, fail at pickpocketting, even make a mistake in a conversation, you can just rewind time to get it right.
There's another game where you could rewind time, Life is Strange. Now I never had time a play it and one day plan to, but I saw some videos of people playing it on YouTube and the player character Max Caulfield never went around looting the entire town. With her ability to rewind time, she could and she could do the whole Baldur's Gate style pickpocketting where you try over and over, reloading till it works. Max could do that, but no she doesn't go around pickpocketing. Now I didn't see the whole game but I never saw Max doing standard RPG looting and pickpocketing.
Basically what @Balrog99 said. In real life I've had things stolen from me and I hate it so much, but games are games.
It's a break from reality if you do ridiculous things like looting the valuables from peasants.
So what? It's not ridiculous in the video game, which I note is not reality.
This is also an extremely subjective argument. What may "break" reality for you may not break reality for others. Asserting that such things must necessarily be a break from reality is not convincing when talking to people for whom it's not such a break.
There's another game where you could rewind time, Life is Strange. Now I never had time a play it and one day plan to, but I saw some videos of people playing it on YouTube and the player character Max Caulfield never went around looting the entire town. With her ability to rewind time, she could and she could do the whole Baldur's Gate style pickpocketting where you try over and over, reloading till it works. Max could do that, but no she doesn't go around pickpocketing. Now I didn't see the whole game but I never saw Max doing standard RPG looting and pickpocketing.
There's actually several points in the game in which Max takes stuff, goes through other people's stuff and generally pries and steals. It may not be "standard RPG looting and pickpocketing" but there is definitely looting going on. The thing is that the stuff you loot usually has plot relevance, and for the most part valuables don't have relevance to the tasks Max is trying to complete.
I would go so far as to say that it is not useful to compare Life is Strange to RPGs like Baldur's Gate. They play very differently and are designed based on different assumptions. Mostly, RPGs tend to be very loot-driven, so accessing all the loot you can in a game within the game's assumptions is a rational action. In Life is Strange, you don't need loot the same way, although you may need a specific set of keys, or a particular tool, or evidence from your enemy's dorm room to achieve your goals. Life is Strange is more an adventure game and shouldn't be taken out of that context.
We are born neither good or bad, we have to be socialized as children. Good and evil really are social concepts. In a world with only one living man there is no morality.
People can become evil and so a number of them are. Since it is by definition antisocial to be evil, it is possible they are over represented in the gaming community since that activity goes well with shutting yourself off from society. I should be clear that I'm not saying that people that shut themselves off or are loners are evil, I'm saying maybe it's more likely that evil people will be since it can have very detrimental consequences for their well being to indulge in evil behaviour (which can only be done involving other people). But then I also doubt what I'm saying because I seem to have seen evil people enjoying and seeking out each other's company.
I don't know. I do know that there is no connection between in-game behaviour such as looting stuff, killing someone for an item or choosing a quest choice based on getting the best rewards and the moral fibre of the player. That some players have a hard time or dislike doing that in a game just means they are immersing themselves more into the fantasy. They are playing the game differently, basically they are more of an RPer.
Being able to detach your morality from the game or approaching the game from a min-maxing standpoint, playing it like a game of chess or for whatever reason not involving their morality in the game does not speak at all of their morality. I've never heard of anyone who feels sorry for the pawns in a chess game. Although that person might exist, it seems unlikely and I think it is because the pawns look so little like people that it doesn't invoke that response. NPCs in a video game look more like people, but yet they are not and do not look at all the same. Whether they invoke that response in a player or not does not say anything about the morality of that player or what kind of response real people would invoke in him.
Sorry, if the last man on earth enjoys flaying animals alive for no reason other than to inflict pain, then I still think he's evil. Call me old school I guess...
Sorry, if the last man on earth enjoys flaying animals alive for no reason other than to inflict pain, then I still think he's evil. Call me old school I guess...
Yeah, animals can suffer too. So the last man on earth sans animals. Better?
Sorry, if the last man on earth enjoys flaying animals alive for no reason other than to inflict pain, then I still think he's evil. Call me old school I guess...
EDIT: nvm, derp I didn't notice it was @Nikomakkos posting above lol
I can't believe people are seriously debating this.
Oh shush, debate is not only fun, but healthy
@BelleSorciere "Taking valuables isn't "acting really loony." In an environment where this is rewarding with minor to no consequences, it is rational. "
This is my main point. There ARE consequences, just not for the player. You'll notice if you look back at my post, that I am commenting on an extreme and unrealistic example. In the absence of all personal consequences, people would likely treat real life the same way they treat their games. Its a philosophical argument, not a realistic one.
Comments
Is the OP serious?
Surely not.
How you play a game, a game designed to encourage "in game" behavior should be used to judge a person's out game behavior?
@ThacoBell
There are consequences built into the game though. It's false to suggest that one scenario has no consequences and another has. The consequences are changed not they have been removed. So in BG, you can't be a blameless peasant and never pick up a sword and still triumph in the scenario that the game is set in or fulfill the objective of the game.
It's nitpicking to point at one behavior in game and say this signals you are a bad person. When simply by turning on the game you have already accepted that you are prepared to leave "real life" moralty/behavior on the back burner for a period of time in order to achieve the goal the game has set.
Anyone who is noticing my name as the OP of this thread, please note the date. I posted this over two years ago. I had of course completely forgotten about it by now. It's one of my infamous wacky drunk posts that I like to do here from time to time.
Knowing myself, I can tell when I drunk posted by the fact that my thoughts and feelings are expressed with over-the-top emotionally hyperbolic wording. I also ramble and go kind of all over the place with my thoughts. It's a bit like expressing myself while dreaming.
I like to do that here because it's a safe venue to express feelings that I wouldn't in real life, or while sober. Even if I were met by mass condemnation and ridicule, it wouldn't matter, and it wouldn't hurt me much. I guess it would sting a little. But in the end I'd just shrug it off, and chalk it all up to experience.
And even with my most ridiculous, over-the-top posts and overreactions, I've often been very surprised by the kindness and thoughtfulness of the responses I've gotten here. Sometimes I get my faith in humanity restored just a bit by people like @semiticgod .
I think the most interesting games when it comes to evil are the Total War games like Rome and Medieval 2. Because being a machiavellian douche there really is quicker and easier, as Yoda would say. And since everyone else in that game is a machiavellian douche it can be pretty tricky sticking to being the good guy.
And if you're an honorable adventurer and not a burglar, then going home to home is the same as being an annoying door-to-door salesperson. Instead of selling merchandise, you're selling your services as an adventurer. Maybe there's a quest they need doing.
Other breaks from reality:
1) You need to talk to every single person on the street.
2) If you read something from a scroll, or simply copy the scroll, the scroll self-destructs like out of Inspector Gadget. I don't know why mage and priest scrolls would ever do this. In Planescape:Torment in The Lower Ward, there's even a guy with a large printing press that is copying tons of paper and running on its own so with that technology it should be theoretically possible to mass copy every mage and priest scroll until they are 1 gold piece each.
I found this thread because I was wondering on an issue and so I google-searched and usually this forum comes up a lot. And most threads are really old, in the archives, so don't bump but this was newer.
I was just thinking it seems odd that you're supposed to loot and pickpocket everyone.
Now some NPCs are your friends and if you loot their home right in front of you, they won't call the guard. But they would see you as basically like Seinfeld sees Kramer. The friend who comes over and immediately eats out of his fridge.
This game, Hobo Simulator, is the only game where rummaging through trashes and stealing even makes sense:
I guess at the start of Baldur's Gate 1 after leaving Candlekeep and not being able to return, you technically are homeless. But for a modern homeless to be like that situation, the city's pigeon population would have to constantly be swallowing coins and if you kill one you find coins in its stomach so enough of that and you make a living.
There's been some anecdotal evidence (presented in court cases) that exposure to violent images can trigger copy-cat behavior in real life, but I think that evidence is pretty weak. If there is a link at all I think that only occurs as a result of confusion over what is real and what is fantasy. I therefore would have great difficulty in believing that anyone's behavior in real life was influenced by how they played Baldur's Gate as, despite my obvious great affection for the graphics, they're not entirely life-like
From what I can find, adult violence has its roots in child abuse. Today people think it's wrong to hit their spouse for disobedience, for workers in an old folk's home to hit old people for disobedience, or to hit someone mentally disabled and in a wheelchair for disobedience. But still a lot of people think it's fine to hit children who are many times smaller than them for disobedience. And unlike an abused spouse, children are completely helpless and have no way to run away to.
Parents physically and verbally attacking children used to be far more common long ago, but there's been a lot of push-back against this.
Researchers looked at the causes of all the violence in World War II and found that it was the rise of orphanages. Children would be in orphanages and ignored by caregivers, and what caregivers there are often changed a lot as people switched jobs, and this provokes a sense of abandonment in very small children. And so the children grew up insane, unable to relate to people, or even pets. They'd throw pet cats out of windows and just were basically like Xzar from Baldur's Gate 1. Orphanages also beat children to make them obey too.
In the USA, they found that the areas of the country where parents are more likely to spank their children are the same areas where the children are more likely to join the military.
In Europe, many countries have made it illegal to spank children and so the natives of Europe are very peaceful and anti-war. The USA by contrast doesn't outlaw it and the USA is always doing something with its military.
As for beating up dragons, if dragons existed in the real world, military weapons have advances enough to defeat them. There was an Indie movie a few years back about a man who moved somewhere in the country with a portal and orcs tried to invade and he drove them off with regular civilian guns and such -- it was in the USA which allows this.
What bothered me about the film was the orcs didn't realize he was a civilian. He was doing more to protect the orc's world from humans than humans from orcs. If the US military discovered the orc's world, they could invade and conquer it very easily. The orcs thought the civilian man was a great wizard simply for having guns. What if an actual military comes in with far better weapons? I forgot the name of the film.
People can become evil and so a number of them are. Since it is by definition antisocial to be evil, it is possible they are over represented in the gaming community since that activity goes well with shutting yourself off from society. I should be clear that I'm not saying that people that shut themselves off or are loners are evil, I'm saying maybe it's more likely that evil people will be since it can have very detrimental consequences for their well being to indulge in evil behaviour (which can only be done involving other people). But then I also doubt what I'm saying because I seem to have seen evil people enjoying and seeking out each other's company.
I don't know. I do know that there is no connection between in-game behaviour such as looting stuff, killing someone for an item or choosing a quest choice based on getting the best rewards and the moral fibre of the player. That some players have a hard time or dislike doing that in a game just means they are immersing themselves more into the fantasy. They are playing the game differently, basically they are more of an RPer.
Being able to detach your morality from the game or approaching the game from a min-maxing standpoint, playing it like a game of chess or for whatever reason not involving their morality in the game does not speak at all of their morality. I've never heard of anyone who feels sorry for the pawns in a chess game. Although that person might exist, it seems unlikely and I think it is because the pawns look so little like people that it doesn't invoke that response. NPCs in a video game look more like people, but yet they are not and do not look at all the same. Whether they invoke that response in a player or not does not say anything about the morality of that player or what kind of response real people would invoke in him.
It's more than that, if you act really loony in a game, it has less meaning.
Now in the adventurer-hero RPGs, you have the ability to rewind time. If you die, fail at pickpocketting, even make a mistake in a conversation, you can just rewind time to get it right.
There's another game where you could rewind time, Life is Strange. Now I never had time a play it and one day plan to, but I saw some videos of people playing it on YouTube and the player character Max Caulfield never went around looting the entire town. With her ability to rewind time, she could and she could do the whole Baldur's Gate style pickpocketting where you try over and over, reloading till it works. Max could do that, but no she doesn't go around pickpocketing. Now I didn't see the whole game but I never saw Max doing standard RPG looting and pickpocketing.
This is also an extremely subjective argument. What may "break" reality for you may not break reality for others. Asserting that such things must necessarily be a break from reality is not convincing when talking to people for whom it's not such a break. Taking valuables isn't "acting really loony." In an environment where this is rewarding with minor to no consequences, it is rational. There's actually several points in the game in which Max takes stuff, goes through other people's stuff and generally pries and steals. It may not be "standard RPG looting and pickpocketing" but there is definitely looting going on. The thing is that the stuff you loot usually has plot relevance, and for the most part valuables don't have relevance to the tasks Max is trying to complete.
I would go so far as to say that it is not useful to compare Life is Strange to RPGs like Baldur's Gate. They play very differently and are designed based on different assumptions. Mostly, RPGs tend to be very loot-driven, so accessing all the loot you can in a game within the game's assumptions is a rational action. In Life is Strange, you don't need loot the same way, although you may need a specific set of keys, or a particular tool, or evidence from your enemy's dorm room to achieve your goals. Life is Strange is more an adventure game and shouldn't be taken out of that context.
@BelleSorciere "Taking valuables isn't "acting really loony." In an environment where this is rewarding with minor to no consequences, it is rational. "
This is my main point. There ARE consequences, just not for the player. You'll notice if you look back at my post, that I am commenting on an extreme and unrealistic example. In the absence of all personal consequences, people would likely treat real life the same way they treat their games. Its a philosophical argument, not a realistic one.