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Meanwhile, somewhere in Gloucester ...

By Stormblade - Posted on 19 September 2015

There's an HoC LAN party going on now and I'm not at it. Anyone reading this site will have seen the drama (soap opera) unfold this past week. While I have no desire to rehash what led to this point, I do wish to clear the air a little regarding ethics in video games and their impact on my own moral compass.

The problem with an individual's sense of ethics is that, more often than not, it's at best in constant conflict with itself and at worst completely hypocritical. In the case of video games, how can one justify enjoying one highly violent game while vilifying another? I am as guilty of this as anyone, but I do have criteria that help my justify my stance. While it may not be completely consistent, it does help me identify and come to terms with my strong feelings towards certain games.

I also want to be clear these are my own personal justifications. It doesn't make them right and most certainly doesn't impact my opinions of others who don't share them. I've never been one to want to push my beliefs on others, despite what some might think.

Realism

This is so subjective that it's hard to define. Why would I not consider a game like Dying Light to be realistic? Certainly the possibility of some sort of virus, man-made or otherwise, could turn the population of a city into zombie-like creatures isn't entirely farfetched. Or Assassin's Creed, which is by far my favourite game franchise, that prides itself on creating realistic historical environments. If these are games I enjoy, how can I use realism as an argument against playing a game?

For me, what separates games like these from the Grand Theft Auto series is that GTA strives to create a world that could very easily exist in our own and, in some places and circumstance, actually does. While there no sense in turning a blind eye to the fact that this stuff is out there, it seems completely unnecessary to me to glorify or encourage any of this.

Protagonists

Again, very personally subjective. Why would Altaïr, Ezio or, more specifically, Edward Kenway be more acceptable to me as protagonists than Michael De Santa or Niko Bellic from GTA, or Aiden Pearce from Watchdogs? I can only say that with the former there is always the feeling they will find the good in themselves and become better people while the latter never develop any redeeming traits. Perhaps it's just that I just can't identify with these characters. I'm not sure, but I do know that I don't enjoy playing as them.

Which leads me to Saint's Row. Specifically Saint's Row 2. Against my better judgement, I purchased and played some of GTA IV, It was my first, and last, GTA experience. When HoC went on an SR2 kick, I was extremely reluctant to say the least. It seemed to me to be so similar to GTA IV that I couldn't justify spending money on it. I eventually did and guiltily enjoyed it. A lot. To the point that I played through it, SR3 and SR4 (on two consoles).

What was the difference? With SR2 it was subtle. It was just enough over the top and it didn't try to take itself too seriously. It made its world just wacky enough as to disassociate itself from reality. Maybe that's hypocritical justification, but hey, this is my article! SR3 and 4 just got wackier and further disassociated themselves from reality. And they were fun, really fun.

While trying to analyse or justify ethics and morals in video games is a process full of contradictions and pitfalls, my stance on GTA has been consistent. This can be seen in a random sampling of HoC posts over the years: Found here, here, here, here, and here. Perhaps it's not rational, but it's consistent.

As for dealing with Blackwalt, "It's complicated".

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No kidding, it's complicated.

Submitted by Q-Bert on September 20, 2015 - 3:36pm.

You had me at "moral compass". We chatted about it last night as a group, but to be fair we all agreed to read your article AFTER the gaming session. So, I sat in my car reading your thoughts, after leaving the fest.
Made me think.

Archetypes: Hero and anti-hero
It's no mystery that the literary world has had many stories based on "anti-heroes"; my personal favourites are The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant and The Gap Cycle series, both by Stephen R. Donaldson. These series are extremely difficult to read as the protagonist commits atrocities in the very first chapters, and it goes downhill from there. I have read these two series many times each, and I've had to give up on quite a few occasions as my life was already stressful enough without attempting to identify with a rapist and murderer.
The stories of anti-heroes often blur the line between the "good" and the "evil" side, making the story that much more believable even if the environment in which it happens is space or middle-earth. Our lives are not black and white, and we identify much more with characters that are broken. Anti-heroes stories bring this to an extreme, and the reader engages more, perhaps, by realizing that however bad we may think our life is going, at least our life choices didn't bring us to the depths of depravity that the protagonist has brought himself/herself to.
Remarkable authors will be able to progress the protagonist from "Scum of the earth/lawyer" level to "reasonable asshole" instead of right up to "goody-two-shoes". Our moral compass goes for a loop with these stories, yet we still find them enjoyable.

Trend towards virtual reality in gaming: "it's the demand, stupid" ?
There are billions of dollars spent on making our games more realistic. Nvidia, AMD, and now Facebook, are betting the farm on keeping us planted on our couches and propose to have us experience reality from the comfort of home. It boggles the mind, just comparing the gaming representation of Lara Croft in the last 20 years that we have come for pixelated blobs to photo-realistic models and movements. At 60 frames per second, no less.
With the advance of the environmental realism and the character physical realism, there seems to be a pressure from the game producers to increase the storyline realism. Call of Duty, Battlefield, GTA, all strive to immerse gamers into real situations, real villages, and use real weapons. It's not obvious that gamers are demanding to live (or re-live in some circumstances) these historical events, or if it's just the availability of the locations, historical documents, and weapon models, that themselves are forcing the producers to use existing materials and not be forced to invent. Perhaps this potentially reduces their already astronomical costs. So, are we forcing storyline realism because, like reality TV, it's cheaper to produce ?

Reality threshold
With this race towards immersion in the gaming world, each of us will hit our "reality threshold" at some near point in the future. The line where our brains will scream "REAL!" and our fight-or-flight reflex will kick in. For me, it's not there yet, at least not in any of the games I've played. It's pretty damn close, but just not there yet. As for the storylines, my thoughts are divided: have I encountered a game where I have insisted on completion just because I wanted to see the full story unfold ? Actually, yes: Assassin's Creed Black Flag. The story of Edward Kenway was compelling and I felt that my actions contributed to the character development. I was immersed in his story and life. I still think that Ubisoft missed somewhat in that I felt the ending was quite rushed and unfocussed. That alone was enough for me to feel detached from the character near the end of the game.

That was for a totally fictional character, but what if, like GTA V, I am able to tune the character to my image and physique, and project him into an environment where the situation is quite believable ? I found myself stopping at red lights when I was told not to attract the attention of the police. I felt stress when my vehicle would not cooperate and near-hits occurred. Certainly, this game could come close to my "reality threshold".

Engagement and aggression
So, where is this bringing us ? The producers are killing each other trying to get us engaged in a game where the environment is familiar to us, the events are familiar to us, the protagonist is physically tuned to us, and the interaction with the environment is very close to intuitive. Why do we have a need to exist outside of our own reality ?
The games that focus on realism invariably bring us into a world of intense violence and aggression. For young boys, this kicks in their adrenaline, and one could argue that this resembles drug addiction in a lot of instances. Older men, I believe are more sparse in the dedication of our time and attention to these games, and the concept of addiction is perhaps less applicable. That being said, there's no mystery that gaming is a form of disconnection and escapism. We use our valuable leisure time with these games, in an attempt to be as different from ourselves as we can; to forget our lives, our work, and our stresses, for a short period of time. My grandfather would drink himself into a stupor. Perhaps his liver would have faired better with Tetris.
Perhaps the demand for realism and aggression is coming from the younger audience, and the older audience is in for the ride.

Individual distaste
With this in mind, and the fact that we are all individual, with all of our own likes and dislikes, it is predictable that some games resonate more with our personality. In my case, Assassin's Creed resonates positively. All the war games, like Battlefield and COD, resonate negatively.
No specific game gives me the feeling of intense dislike, but that may speak more of the fact that I play very few games overall, and certainly a drop in the HoC bucket, all things considered.
Mind you, if they published a game where the storyline was to kill underage girls, in graphic details, then I can see that tickling my gag reflex.

Last night's Lanfest
I told everyone that I would show up at the Lanfest with other games than GTA V because I just didn't have the time in the past 3 weeks to go through the long checklist of things one had to do in order to participate in the GTA V coop play. I figured I would be fine; Stormblade and I would be able to enjoy Burnout Paradise, and I would see my friends that I haven't seen since the divorce. You see, for the past year and a half, I must admit that I have been terribly lonely. My company is growing, my girls are growing, I have a new house, and I have a new relationship. All of that has monopolized my time, and all my friendships have suffered (and mostly disappeared, truth be told). There was no way that I wasn't going to show up.
When I arrived, I understood that I would be the only one without the game. Still, I bucked up, and resolved myself to just be a spectator. Again, there was no way that I would just forgo human contact. Well, in true HoC fashion, the team pulled together and got into action: Revek and Coxxorz drove to EBGames and got me GTA V, and Coxxorz doubled down and made a XBox Live card available to me. That permitted me to install the game, and start grabbing the updates. The many many MANY updates and DLCs. While I was downloading all of this stuff, the herd played a number of coop games in the GTA V world. Very little time was spent on "character development" storylines.
Then came time for me to start the game.

A GTA V Review
I had to do the single-player tutorial, which involves herding hostages into a room, and blowing up a safe. No kills here. I had to escape with the loot. During the escape, I had to shoot down about 30 police officers. Pretty much the same thing as the single player of Call of Duty. The officers where at a great distance and the act involve more spraying bullets at a car, than getting up close and personal.
That being done, I had to drive until I lost the police in the dust. That unlocked the game for me to select the "GTA V Online" menu item.
Once connected to GTA Online, the storyline gets more personal. You are told that you are a Bad Motherfucker(tm) and that you will be an asset to all that is evil and criminal. Moral compass wise, I've had more thrown at me by XCOM than GTA V, so far. GTA V Online did not permit me to connect to the rest of the herd until I chased a druglord's van, shot him and grabbed his drugs. This sounds easy, but you have to shoot at his vehicle while driving, and after 20 minutes of frustration, Revek took pity on me, and grabbed my controller, said "let me do it, this part is really easy" and spent 45 minutes chasing the druglord and completing the mission.
Meanwhile, I joined in the coop fun that had been happening for the last 2 hours.
When Revek handed my controller back to me and grunted "there", I could now connect to the rest of the herd.

Actually, it was fun.
The multiplayer missions in GTA V are actually a hoot; we raced against each other using jets, helicopters, Big Trucks(tm), bicycles, and pretty much everything except cars. None of it was to gather drugs, or rape hookers. We had one mission where we had to liberate a Beechcraft plane from a drug gang, and in so doing, we had to thin them out. Again, COD was way more personal than this.
We had to stop a prison bus and hijack it. Coxxorz *may* have killed the driver in order to do so, but the driver may have died of a heart attack seeing Revek's driving.
Our driving did in fact mean we would crash into other vehicles once in a while, but Burnout Paradise and Carmageddon permit us to do this with way more enthusiasm and (in Burnout's case) more realism.
We did have to shoot 2 lawyers from a bird's nest, but it was clearly explained to us that they had it coming and even the government wouldn't be too sad to see them reach the pearly gates. About 50 police officers showed up to demonstrate their disapproval of our marksmanship (I blame Greybush for shooting late, when we clearly had to shoot at the same time, and I had clearly mumbled "now" under my breath from across the room). We tried 5 times to complete this mission, but it became obvious that the gist of the mission was "the police will cap your asses; doesn't matter what you try".
That was pretty much it. We could have easily just not done a mission and just driven around the city and done challenges, a la Burnout Paradise.
For me, the evening was a success. We gorged on candy, drank beer (thanks again, Greybush), ate good pizza (thanks Greybush), damaged our hearing with cap guns (thanks Blackwalt), got HoC t-shirts (thanks Coxxorz), and farted through the evening (thanks Revek). We had cats to keep us safe, and the venue had the most comfortables seats of any Lanfest I had been too.
Yes, I ended up purchasing GTA V just for this event, and I will probably never play it again.