Players as Evildoers
[Republished from my thesis blog. See the previous example for more info.]
One possibility I have considered for the enactment of my game is placing players in the position of the evildoer.
I mentioned in a previous post the McDonald’s Flash game, in which players play as corporate magnates shepherding a simplified McDonalds corporation. The objective of the game, without question, is to educate players on the despicable acts committed by this company to produce their fast food. There are a limited number of choices available to the player and all of them involve causing harm to something: the environment, the livestock, the general public. The bias of the game is clear, as it should be for a serious game: McDonalds and their practices are placed firmly on the side of evil.
However, players do not play as an environmental or social activist crusading against the corporation… they are the corporation. Victory is defined as building the biggest, most ruthless corporate empire possible. By design, the players are forced to operate from a position that necessitates evil to achieve success.
What are the implications of this? On the one hand, it gives players a first-hand experience with the practices the game seeks to vilify. By making these acts the result of choice, the player comes to face-to-face with a number of tough realities: that the corporation does these things, that it does them for a specific reason, and it is likely to continue to do so as long as the economic calculus adds up. Incredibly, this tactic also illustrates the higher road by offering it as an implicit contrast: the player may need to embody evil to win the game, but as they play they can see the alternative path and can infer the benefits it offers. Light and darkness must coexist: by acting evil, the player can also see how they might act good, were it an option.
Another interesting side effect is the emotional stress. I do not know the numbers on players who feel comfortable assuming evil personae in video games, but I’ve never been able to stomach it. I, the player, am uncomfortable guiding an evil character in all but the rarest of circumstances. I will nearly always try to play as a good person. So if a game forces me to become evil, how much more potent the message becomes! Now I endure emotional trauma and mild self-hatred for the evil I am becoming. I am forced into an internal battle as well as an external one, and the result cannot help but be a lasting and vivid experience—one that is far more likely to drive home the point the game seeks to make. The same would be true for any conscientious player like myself.
Given, then, a social issue with a clearly definable right-or-wrong dichotomy, a design that forces players to be evil has real power. My research has included studying a number of existing serious games, and I would be willing to hypothesize that many might benefit from abandoning a righteous player-character perspective. I can imagine the game makers felt their position to be so inherently irreproachable that any exposure to it could not help but convince, but one must consider: to those people already exposed to the issue but who remain uninterested or unmotivated, further exposure to the same is unlikely to produce results. The objective of a serious game is awareness and mobilization: to get people to learn about an issue, and then to care about it. To that end, forcing them to play the Devil can have a much stronger impact than the opposite.
I just stopped by your blog and thought I would say hello. I like your site design. Looking forward to reading more down the road.
Robert Michel
Interesting that there’s a tradeoff here. By forcing the player to the path of evil, you necessarily reduce the number of people willing to play your game, because (as you say) not everyone will be able to stomach it. Super Columbine Massacre RPG is a great example of this — a lot more people have heard about it than have actually played it.
FWIW, Peter Molyneux said in his talk at GDC this year that only 10% of the players in the original Fable played evil to the end.
I’d ask: why limit the game by forcing the player to make the “evil” choice to win (unless the POINT of the game is that there IS no “good” choice, that the entire model is unsustainable and inherently flawed, as with McVideoGame)? Could you not give the player the choice of both, with perhaps the “evil” choices being easier or more visible at the beginning?
I agree. I think that’s why the McDonalds game does it this way: to illustrate that there’s nothing good about this system. But for a less focused game premise, such as a non-serious game, a nuanced approach would be more inviting. I’m reminded of Baldur’s Gate, which offered many meaningful decisions along good-evil lines — decisions that altered gameplay significantly. I can recall feeling real emotional stress at those points… and then feeling real pride and self-satisfaction when I chose good — even if it made the game harder. I think for a game like that, the choice is essential.
Good stuff. On a related note, here’s something else you might be interested in:
http://gamepolitics.com/2008/03/04/college-republicans-protest-iraqi-artists-jihad-game-mod/
However, there are players who like to be evil. After all, in a game, there are no consequences, so games invite you to experiment with your darkest desires.
I think I veer more to this side, although I guess I play fairly balanced, as in retrospect think that most of the time I commit evil in a game it is really my ‘testing’ instinct where I try something I feel the game would have to react to, just to provoke it. I definitely know quite a few players who do THAT.
I have friends, however, who when given a game where they have the choice of being good or evil say “Oh, when that game comes out, I am so going to be evil.” Or darkside, whatever.
They delight in it. I often find myself the same way sometimes too.
In every game that has a rogue or assassin-type class I have to play it, and am still unsatisfied with the level of status-quo disruption the game lets me commit, typically.
My proudest moment in D&D was getting one of my characters murdered by his own party because he was so disliked by all the other players for all the evil I had him commit.
Someone, and I cannot remember who it was, wrote about this phenomenon of people playing only the extremes of good or evil while writing about Bioshock, saying, (and I’m paraphrasing here) that everyone either saved all the little sisters or killed them all. Nobody mixes and matches, which basically means that people only really make the choice once, the first time you get to choose, and they probably made up their minds on the decision before they even started playing the game.
I of course read that and then had to mix-and-match, just to disrupt that status-quo, and decided it would be funny to arbitrarily harvest every third little sister.