
Video Games That Made People Question Their Beliefs - victorbojica
https://kotaku.com/the-video-games-that-made-people-question-their-beliefs-1836045401
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yocheckit
It didn't make me question my beliefs because at the time I didn't really have
any. But the opening of Bioshock and Andrew Ryan's monologue got me thinking
about that stuff for the 1st time.

"I am Andrew Ryan, and I'm here to ask you a question. Is a man not entitled
to the sweat of his brow? "No," says the man in Washington, "it belongs to the
poor." "No," says the man in the Vatican, "it belongs to God." "No," says the
man in Moscow, "it belongs to everyone." I rejected those answers; instead, I
chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose... Rapture. A city
where the artist would not fear the censor; where the scientist would not be
bound by petty morality; where the great would not be constrained by the
small! And with the sweat of your brow, Rapture can become your city as well."

It really got me thinking about who makes demands on whom about what in
society.

~~~
cryptonode
Every time I read that paragraph I'm reminded of the book Atas Shrugged. Where
Ayn Rand lays out her philosophy of objectivism.

~~~
crtasm
The game's plot is directly referencing Rand, there's also a pivotal character
called Atlas.

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neilk
Papers Please could just be a commentary on the Soviet state, but for me it
threw into question the very idea of borders.

[https://papersplea.se/](https://papersplea.se/)

~~~
ptah
borders are a peculiarity of nation-states

~~~
deogeo
Not really - even wolf packs have borders:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/a3p0uq/an_image_of...](https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/a3p0uq/an_image_of_gps_tracking_of_multiple_wolves_in/)

~~~
spookybones
As do cats

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hprotagonist
I shored up a lot of my nonviolent leanings in the original _Splinter Cell_
series, as well as _Deus Ex_ and its sequels and others of the stealth action
genre.

You can exploit a few glitches in the first _Splinter Cell_ and play the
entire game by killing exactly one person; _Deus Ex: Human Revolution_ has a
pacifist achievement, etc.

I recently tried a D&D campaign after a long time away from tabletop RPGs and
found it fairly difficult to drop into the "kill orcs, get gold" mentality.
Playing an elven ranger, and knowing full well that kobolds are lawful evil,
ganking one on the road still felt ... weird.

~~~
michaelbrave
It would be easier with an older edition of D&D, where you didn't gain XP but
rather gold. Which changes the entire dynamic really, now stealth and
nonviolence are viable options.

~~~
thatguy0900
I prefer the milestone level system for the same reason, you're leveled up
after important character moments or plot advancement so you're not incentived
to kill everything

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colanderman
_Undertale_ had an effect like this for me. [Warning: spoilers] Near the
beginning of the game you are forced to fight a character who has been nothing
but kind to you. The easiest thing to do was kill this character to progress,
but immediately after I felt regret and a strong desire _not_ to have done
that. Fortunately I made the decision not to save and so was able to revert my
decision by taking the more difficult – at the time, far less certain – path
of refusing to fight the character. (Though I still felt bad; and the game
doesn't let you forget entirely either.)

Another belief-altering moment from the same game came after reflecting on the
gameplay as a whole – I had developed an affinity for the main characters in a
way I hadn't in any other RPG. I realized that this was due to the characters
initially not liking me, and me having chosen to do things which didn't
benefit me _at all_ in order to help the characters achieve their goals, which
resulted in their friendship. The option was always there to simply kill them
and move on. But the act of investing energy doing things solely for the
benefit of these characters built a relationship – and I realized that this is
ultimately the basis of all human relationships.

~~~
Rumperuu
Sounds almost like the Ben Franklin effect,[0] which I don't think I've ever
heard of being used in a game outside of this example.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Franklin_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Franklin_effect)

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deogeo
These seem relevant:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_CBF318nBY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_CBF318nBY)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxWlJ_muK0I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxWlJ_muK0I)

I've always found it curious how anti-corporate sentiment disappeared from the
Deus Ex sequels.

~~~
alexgmcm
The original Deus Ex is a masterpiece. I love all the games (even Invisible
War) but the original is a work of art.

Hopefully, Cyberpunk 2077 will be in the same vein.

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dasKrokodil
FTL: Faster than Light changed me. Its mantra of 'losing is part of the fun'
really changed my approach to games, as well as towards picking up real-world
skills.

~~~
beobab
Interesting. I never played more than a few minutes of this game, because the
learning curve was more than I was willing to put in at the time, and I died
on the first encounter.

I might have to give it another go.

~~~
Doxin
Keep in mind that your success in FTL tends to be highly variable too, I still
occasionally manage to die on the first encounter, even though I also often
make it to the last sector.

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Pyrhos
_Nier: Automata_ has made me think about the limits of games and how much
untapped potential there still is when it comes to interplay of game mechanics
and narrative.

The game also explores various philosophical topics without shoving
(political) opinions down your throat better than any recently released
(western) game I've come across.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJxNhJ8fjFk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJxNhJ8fjFk)

~~~
pdimitar
All true but it doesn't change the fact that it has fairly inconsistent
characters who swap traits all the time.

It also doesn't help that they are fairly typical anime archetypes which sadly
are often annoying.

Combine that with the occasional shock value quest that explains nothing
and... I quite like the game in the philosophy department but it's not that
great in several other aspects.

~~~
Pyrhos
>but it doesn't change the fact that it has fairly inconsistent characters who
swap traits all the time.

Mind elaborating on this? I haven't actually noticed any inconsistencies.

~~~
pdimitar
It's mostly 9S and 2B playing swapping the being curious and questioning
authority role. Most of the time 9S does that but here and there 2B does it as
well and then 9S jumps in to give the benefit of the doubt and call for a
reasonable approach -- all the while he's fairly unreasonable himself pretty
often.

(SPOILERS) I also got quite irritated by 2B never succeeding in muttering even
one word of affection. That android had to be on the verge of her permanent
death so as to leave a romantic plus dramatic (and incoherent) voice note to
9S. It felt like a highschool drama. :( (Where saying even one word to your
crush seems like the end of the world, I mean.)

Another very irritating moment for me was 9S waking up in the presence of the
only two androids able to repair other androids, and instead of saying thank
you he proceeds to interrupt their explanations with "where is 2B". Zero
appreciation.

Maybe it's me showing what kind of people I dislike, don't know. But the
general anime archetypes that are shown in this game don't appeal to me.

A2 isn't much better. "Stop talking", "don't tell me what to do", "you are
useless", "stay out of my way".

Don't know, man. I like the message of the game a lot. The delivery could have
been much better though, IMO.

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beobab
The Witness was one for me. The whole game made me look at the real world in a
different light.

I played it with headphones on, and the volume loud enough to hear the
crunching of gravel under my feet. The first time I found one of the "second
kind" of puzzle, I nearly jumped out of my skin, and searching for them made
me see things I hadn't seen before in ordinary places I visited.

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partomniscient
_Path of Radiance is pretty standard Japanese role-playing game fare. The
world in which it takes place is on the brink of war, with the larger nation
of Daein occupying the smaller nation of Crimea._

Considering it came out in 2005, that paragraph is pretty interesting in and
of itself.

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DArcMattr
The article's first example is of a person using a metaphor common to the ex-
Mormon community about breaking "the shelf". "The shelf" is where the facts
that bring one to question church doctrine go to be explained (or not) later.

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JoeAltmaier
I'm not that deep. Its just that, every time RNJesus hoses me I go a little
closer to the dark side.

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scandinavegan
I never finished Metroid as a kid, but I expect that the reveal that
underneath the spacesuit Samus Aran is a woman made a lot of people question
the idea that only men can be action heroes.

A more recent example for me was when I played and finished Dark Souls 3 and
then Bloodborne.

I had been reading the discussions on a fixed vs growth mindset, and grit, but
it hadn't really clicked for me. I realized that my default state was a fixed
mindset. I remember my mother praising me for always being better and smarter
than other kids, not based on any real results or me having spent a lot of
effort doing something, so I just assumed it was something built into me. In
school, I had an easy time with some subjects, but a harder time with others.
This didn't encourage me to work more on the hard ones, but avoid them. I
valued people that displayed seemingly effortless genius rather than people
who worked hard, because I thought the hard workers were stupid or less
skilled and just had to make up for their lack of talent.

I finally had a tough time with math as a master of science student at the
university, because I didn't have any study habits and expected math to be
effortless like before. When I did pass the exams after multiple attempts,
having finally sat down to study, I wasn't proud, I was just relieved and
hated the whole experience. I was annoyed that math seemed to be based on
making mistakes: You reach a problem you don't immediately know how to solve,
you attempt it and fail, and study the rest of the material until you can
figure it out. But the whole point is to be challenged! If you could breeze
through all math problems without failing, the level of math is too easy for
you. But I hated failing or feeling stupid.

Back to Dark Souls 3! The game is very hard, but it's also very fair. When you
die it's because you made a mistake, but the game will throw the same thing at
you again and now you can avoid it. Enemies are placed behind corners that
surprise you the first time, but the second time you know they're there.
Bosses telegraph their attacks. The first time you fight them, you're supposed
to die and have to fight them again and again, learning their moveset. If you
could beat all bosses in a Dark Souls game at the first attempt, same as with
math, the game would be too easy. It's supposed to challenge you and, same as
math, force you to be precise and focused, forcing you to accept that you will
have to adapt your playstyle to the bosses to beat them.

In Dark Souls there's a a feedback loop where you die, but get infinite lives
and can retry the same section of a map or a boss over and over. You know that
other players can beat the boss, so why shouldn't you? The game definitely
taught me grit and perseverance, where I before would quit a difficult game,
this time I attempted again and again until I had figured out the map or boss.

A lot of people view playing the souls games as masochism, and I can see that
in the same way that I considered studying math to be masochistic. Now I've
learned to appreciate the process and take joy in learning to incrementally
overcome an obstacle. I'm no longer afraid of not knowing enough when I start
a task at work, but instead know that by just spending time and incrementally
attacking a problem I will be able to figure it out. Dark Souls and Bloodborne
helped me move from a fixed to a growth mindset, something I try to instill in
my kids today.

