Do videogames make you RP sociopaths by default?, Deep thoughts after playing SEAL Team Options

[Wounded Ronin]

I spent all of yesterday playing an abandonware title, Electronic Arts' SEAL Team from 1989. It's a wonderful game for 1989 which in my opinion has developed a lot of wonderful aspects of simulationist squad level game play which have not been well carried over today. SEAL Team isn't as sophisticated in its treatment of things that have been done increasingly well these days, like differentiating between the utility of being prone, crouched, or standing (in SEAL Team prone is basically always the best and running upright is always suicidal), or in the detailed mechanics of weapons (somehow there are no tactical reloads in SEAL Team!!!), but the wonderful aspect of this game is the flexibility with which you can call in air support or boat support for your team.

Unlike most games today which are basically about the skill of the gamer to defeat the bots SEAL Team constrains player effectiveness based on character skill. There's no way to aim better as a player and kill the enemy faster; the effectiveness of your rifle is based entirely on your character's effectiveness. If your team ends up in a dangerous situation the constructive solution is to call in your support units to help you out, which is a lot more realistic than a Physad-style miracle player killing 30 VC with ultra 100 meter headshots on one M16 mag while under heavy fire. (cough cough, Delta Force Black Hawk Down) The issues become then friendly fire, distant enemy alertness levels, and the length of time it takes for your air support to arrive. I appreciate that as something which isn't well done necessarily today.

Anyway, as I was playing this game while trying to maximize my score I began to wonder if I wasn't by default somehow role-playing a sociopathic pointman. This was my second time playing through the game and I had been trying to maximize my score. Accordingly, in addition to completing the mission objectives, I exposed the virtual SEAL Team to a lot of extra risk by stalking around the map and attempting to kill each and every enemy present. Even if I had injured team members I still engaged in this behavior; I risked losing the characters if they were killed but I didn't care about that very much since my goal was to get the highest body count possible.

If you think about it in terms of role playing anyone who plays a realism-themed or simulationist game that deals with combat would be portraying a sociopath. In real life a person who gets into a firefight could experience a long term mental trauma from the experience, like post traumatic stress disorder. From the perspective of the player controlling FPS hero, though, they're not real people and pants-wetting situations involving grenades exploding everywhere, team members dying and severed limbs splattering to the ground (thank you, Soldier of Fortune II) leads neither to fear, nor anger, nor even a strong emotional experience of any kind. It's all...mildly amusing. Imagine a possible conversation inside a FPS game:

Private: "Oh my god, Jones is dead! He's in two pieces. Oh god, sarge, I heard him moaning until he stopped, but we were under fire, I couldn't do anything...."

FPS hero sarge: "Hmm, I only got 34 headshots out of 40 shots fired. What a bother."

Private: "We've got men down! What should we do?"

FPS hero: "I need your sniper ammo." *kills private, takes his ammo*


I suppose that if somebody were to choose to roleplay someone who doesn't register pain (he probably needs to feel it but literally doesn't care) and who had a sociopathic delusion that he was the hero of a realistic FPS game in a table top role playing game it would be a really weird experience at the gaming table. It might not be a successful character in the long term due to lack of good team playing, but I'll bet that it would be really weird to see.