No Mercy
Have you ever heard of a game that involves forgiveness? I’ll explain:
The concept of total forgiveness for wrongdoing is exceedingly rare in out lives. It is human nature to want to retaliate against those who harm us, in an effort to prevent future harm whether through the inspiration of empathy or fear. To wholeheartedly forgive is to act as if the wrong never occurred — to genuinely feel, with mind and heart, that there was no wrong. This is very hard for us to do, even for the religious faithful that follow doctrines based on forgiveness. People naturally seek to punish, even it means nothing more than studiously ignoring or acting chilly towards the offender in conversation. Even the smallest retaliation is a retaliation, and indicates a lack of forgiveness.
In games, the rules are known at the outset. Indeed, a game exists only in the rules and in the strict adherence to them. The moment players divert from the rules, they are no longer playing the game but some mutated amalgam of the original and their own invention. Anything that occurs within the rules is acceptable. The opportunity for win or loss exists for all players equally, so any action taken in pursuit of victory, though it may necessarily mean harm (in game terms) to other, is not wrong and warrants no forgiveness. But rulebreaking — cheating — must be punished to ensure the integrity of the game. In other words, games fundamentally rely on the human instinct to punish wrong in order to even exist. If a game were written with no provision against cheating and played by players with no method or desire to punish cheating, the game would functionally not exist — cheating would be universally prevalent and the game would never be played according to the original rules. It is by tacit agreement not to cheat that gameplay is possible at all.
So, then, is it possible to reconcile the forgiveness or wrongdoing (cheating) and the existence of gameplay? Can a game be written that permits forgiveness? It seems like a philosophical paradox, or at least a semantic one. What do you think?
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I think The Game may have to involve some kind of twisted forgiveness.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_(mind_game)
You lose, btw. Forgive me?
It’s really quite paradoxal. I mean, if you design your game in order to allow (forgive) cheating, than wouldn’t cheating be an alternative rule of your game? And thus it wouldn’t be cheating at all.
Interesting question, David.
I was actually doing some reading / listening on this during my AGDC trip. One particular member of the clergy had defined forgiveness as a lack of a desire to retaliate or seek revenge. Beyond forgiveness, though, was reconciliation. “I might forgive you stealing from me, but that doesn’t mean that I’m willing to do business with you again.” The reconciliation may require some form of amends - some way to repay the debt owed, whether that debt is spiritual, monetary or whatever the case may be.
It seems to be that there very well could be a kind of pattern in here that is adaptable to games.
In some sense, we do actually see a bit of it in games that use karma systems that are ranked by either the game or by other players. You bail in the middle of a raid or in the middle of a game, and you get dinged for that. During AGDC, I had two wireless breakdowns during games of Ticket to Ride. My karma dropped as a result. There’s the revenge. Though I’ve played at least a dozen games since those two, I have yet to recapture my former karma. My reconciliation, it seems, is still a ways away.