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.

[Ravor]

Well I seem to recall reading on Dumpshock where someone had played a character who honestly thought he was playing a full-VR game by using a Pain Editor and BTLs to simulate his "real life" away from the game.

[Wounded Ronin]

[Ravor]

Well you have to remember that I'm going purely off my failing memory of something I read once, but if I recall correctly the other characters were in on the guy's secret and had to invent excuses as to why he couldn't just go out and test his new gun on the first bystander that walked by, ect. (I think they told him that the game tracked non-combatant deaths and deducted points or something.)

I don't remember the poster saying anything about the OOC interactions, although I imagine that they'd be a little "odd" in most groups, although not as "odd" as when people start wondering if one of their own is a secret Furry based off him always getting animal like biomods done to his characters. (After we found out what was really going on we kicked the freak out of our group.)

[Fix-it]

Yes.

but the reason we have games is so we don't need to be sociopaths by default.

[Critias]

What?

I thought they were for practice.

[Wounded Ronin]

[Wounded Ronin]

[Critias]

[Wounded Ronin]

[Critias]

Because other people already have their names plastered all over other shit, and he wanted to be famous for something?

[Ravor]

[hyzmarca]

[Talia Invierno]

*laugh*

Advertisements have power to shape attitudes precisely because no one really believes they have such power. We're free-willed one and all, so where does an electronic message get off telling us how to think? If the United States army recruitment website starts hosting custom-designed videogames (which don't gain you points by getting all your teammates killed btw), surely that's just because they're trying to make the site cooler?

[Ravor]

My eyes! Oh dear God my eyes are bleeding after researching your reference.


But to answer your question, no I walked in on him having sex, and it wasn't with another human.

[Fix-it]

Jack Thompson is in it for the money.

video game publishers have a lot of money. he just has to drum up enough support for a class-action suite, and then he takes percentage.

the problem is he's a moron, and goes about finding support in very foolish ways. that backfire in his face, and no one really cares about.

[hyzmarca]

He isn't just in it for the money. He appears to be both an egotistical jackass and a hardcore God-Hates-Fags Christian who wants to impose his brand of family values onto the entire world and destroy anyone and anything that disagrees with him or upsets is sense of universal order.

Incidentally, he was Pwned by Janet Reno in 1975 when he asked her to define her sexual orientation and she allegedly replied “I’m only interested in virile men. That’s why I’m not attracted to you.� He then tried to get her arrested for the incident.
Go Janet Reno Go!

[Moon-Hawk]

[Kagetenshi]

[Critias]

"We prefer the term 'interspecies erotica.'"
--Clerks II

[hyzmarca]

While I do happily defend the rights of all individuals to engage in interspecies love or not as they see fit, I am going to attempt to get this back on track.

To address the original issue, I see most video game heroes, even those in highly simulationist games, as being like the heroes of 80s action movies. They're always cool under pressure, because they have to be. They've been trained to complete the mission no matter how horrible they're feeling about the brutal deaths of their friends and they're going to be far better psychologically while they are in the field then they will be when they are off of it. Some, like John McClain, will have trouble relating to their families once back, leading to an inevitable estrangement and divorce. Others, like Lethal Weapon 1's Riggs, will have nothing left to live for but their painful memories and make out with their service pistols every night while contemplating whether or not to go all the way. Some, like Rambo, will drift from town to town without any family to anchor them, and eventually be arrested for shooting a corrupt sheriff's deputy.
But, while they are fighting, they are the best at what they do. Calm, cool, collected, unflinching, witty and quipy.

[Ravor]

I'm sorry, but while I consider myself fairly understanding when it comes to people's sexual drives I draw the line at same species and informed consent. (If/when there are other species with human like intellence then I'll have to review the issue but until then that is where I stand, rightly or wrongly.)

[Kagetenshi]

[Wounded Ronin]

[Backgammon]

There was an article about Jack Thompson in a Rolling Stones I picked up once.

His son gets picked on A LOT at school. Other kids dun like his daddy much.