> Except, of course, aside from its pre-set storyline, Grand Theft Auto doesn’t prescribe any of these things.
This is not a fair characterization of the game. Yes, you can avoid doing those morally reprehensible things but not if you actually want to play the game. In much the same way if you feel it's morally wrong to stomp goombas, you can avoid doing so in Super Mario Bros. But unlike the latter, you cannot proceed in GTAV without engaging in some of those undesirable actions.
The notion that we're making these choices independent of the game is disingenuous.
Absolutely, I just don't think it's sincere to present it as though GTA itself doesn't offer a ton of context to push oneself in this direction. The premise pivots on the notion that we're doing these things of our own volition.
Exactly. These are the types of clues that direct or influence behavior within. It's why I wouldn't attempt to glean any psychological info from decisions made by participants.
It's an interesting side topic - there have been a lot of games that try to allow you to succeed as moral or immoral characters. But that's more sandboxed than GTA, which assigns repercussions for bad behavior in a way that models reality.
The consequence is lighter, of course, and GTA "lives" more independent and ephemeral.
What makes games like GTA interesting to researchers is the open, unstructured analog to our world. If the game lacked the strong user direction and context it could be useful in that regard.
That’s different. In Super Mario Bros., every Goomba in the game is an identical sprite, but story-wise - to the extent the game has a story, anyway - you’re meeting a series of different creatures of the same species.
This is evident if only from the fact that there are often multiple on screen at the same time. The more modern GTA has a variety of looks for pedestrians rather than just one, but the same principle applies: the NPC you just met might look identical to the one you killed the other day, but story-wise, we should assume they’re two different people - because it makes more sense that way and the game hasn’t told us otherwise.
Bowser, on the other hand, is a named character with a specific personality. Combined with supplementary materials and (in some Mario games, especially the RPGs) in-game dialogue, it’s clear that he’s meant to be a single character who Mario (also a single character) encounters repeatedly.
Not in the original Super Mario Bros. You run across the bridge, dodge Bowser's attacks, and "win" by reaching the Axe on the far side. The strong implication (within the NES's limited visuals) is that by collecting the axe, you have destroyed the bridge and sent Bowser plummeting into the lava. Alternately, you can hit him repeatedly with Fireballs, and he will eventually die like any other enemy.
Mario absolutely "kills" Bowser in the original games. Though, of course you're quite correct that he returns in the sequels, and it's heavily implied that the Koopa clan does not die upon contact with lava, unlike the rest of the creatures in the kingdom.
Interestingly I've seen games that require you to cross moral boundaries, even when the game's story shouldn't require it:
1) Knights of the Old Republic: One mission is to steal something form an enemy headquarters. It's possible to sneak all the way to the item and steal it without being detected, but they forced a cutscene when you take it that makes you fight a boss battle.
2) In Morrowind, there are at least some missions where you're just supposed to collect some artifacts but they tag on something where you have to kill a guard even when they're not actually keeping you from getting the item.
People are more flexible there than you might think. A friend and I started trying to beat NES Contra without killing anything (it does force you to in parts), and after Googling it later, it seems quite a few people had the same idea. There are "pacifist" speedruns on youtube.
Yeah, but doing morally reprehensible thing in GTA is not actually morally reprehensibe. Kinda like writing book about mass murderer is not or rooting for actually unethic hero in movie (alost all of them if you think about it) is not unethical.
Not really the point. The premise of the article implies that our actions are free will, as if we were newly born into the GTA world. It's not tabula rasa. Our available actions are constrained by a designed world and our chosen actions built upon context and expectations.
It gives you a chance to put yourself on the shrink couch in the privacy of your room. You get to know yourself little bit more. You know how flimsy the safeguards are for you to not do the wrong thing. Laws, religious ethics are flimsy to stop you from doing the wrong thing. You realize that at the end of the day, it is up to you as the individual, to do the right thing in a situation. Playing GTA makes you a better, responsible citizen. If GTA makes someone violent, then GTA is acting as a filter to weed out mental health patients early on, before greater damage is done by them.
A healthy, well-adjusted individual (which I mean in the psychological sense) notices that GTA and video games in general are very nearly morally null. At best you can create a rather strained line between "desensitization" and the possibility that you will do something bad in the future, which I call strained not so much because it's impossible but just because someone trying to condemn bad behavior in GTA would really like a more solid argument than that, not based in so many assumptions and second-order effects. And if it's that bad you'd like to be able to show a clear line between the rise in play and a rise in violent crime when, if anything, the opposite has occurred. (Which is probably not causal based on this issue. But still, the opposite has occurred, which makes the argument about how bad GTA is even more strained and difficult to make.)
I play GTA and such as videogames, not as morality simulators, because as morality simulators they fail, because there is hardly any moral theory that applies to them. Utilitarianism doesn't tell me to be moral in GTA, because the utiles in my accidentally running down a pedestrian simply because I got impatient at a red light and just drove anyhow is null. Deontological ethics doesn't tell me to take good care of numbers in a computer, unless you adopt a set of rules that says otherwise purely in the name of being contrary for this post alone. (In which case I'd also like you to analyze the ethics of the numbers you changed simply in the act of posting your contrary reply.) Consequentialism doesn't tell me to be concerned about the value of numbers in a computer; I would have higher regard for the health and well being of an individual bacterium than a pedestrian in GTA.
If you tried to read my personality by how I play GTA, you're going to get a very wrong reading, because I am well aware of how null the whole thing is, and I act accordingly. Nor do I find myself learning very much about myself. Nor do I find myself meditating on how flimsy the moral structure is constraining me, because GTA is not "just like the real world except for a few minor differences". It is utterly unlike the real world. It is completely unsuitable for any sort of moral analysis because in a very real way, the entire idea of morality applying to GTA is simply ludicrous, as ludicrous as the idea that I am a psychopath from a family of psychopaths because when we play chess with each other we kill, kill, kill without mercy or concern for how the poor chessmen feel.
Great comment. I think there is a too-literal approach in relating game worlds to the real world, when pretty much no one actually believes that. Instead, we realize at a very young age the differences between playing and real actions. Playing lets us explore feelings of power and powerlessness in a safe way, whether it's playing GTA, Cops & Robbers or Chutes & Ladders.
Even puppies understand play vs. reality because it is so fundamental. I don't know how anyone can buy the concept that mashing the A button on a controller is going to turn you into a murderer or reveal your truest self.
>Deontological ethics doesn't tell me to take good care of numbers in a computer, unless you adopt a set of rules that says otherwise purely in the name of being contrary for this post alone. (In which case I'd also like you to analyze the ethics of the numbers you changed simply in the act of posting your contrary reply.) Consequentialism doesn't tell me to be concerned about the value of numbers in a computer; I would have higher regard for the health and well being of an individual bacterium than a pedestrian in GTA.
It runs afoul of some formulations of Virtue ethics, where the idea is to cultivate certain proclivities and habits/patterns of thinking and behaving that make you “virtuous.”
In this case, the argument is that diminishing your capacity for empathy/compassion and gratifying violent or anti-social impulses are bad for you.
Virtue ethics, deontological ethics and consequentialism can ultimately be shown equivalent, like three imaginary computers shown to be turing-equivalent. Here's a really rough sketch: (the idea being that you can take any theory of ethics in one group and write it in the language of any other)
To implement virtue in duty: "You have a duty to act the actions of a virtuous person."
To implement consequentialism in duty: "You have a duty to make a best-effort estimation of the outcomes, and choose the best."
To implement duty in virtue: "A virtuous person is one who knows these rules and lives by them."
To implement consequentialism in virtue: "A virtuous person is one who always evaluates the possible outcomes, and chooses the best."
To implement duty in consequentialism: "Define 'good outcome' such that any good outcome is one where all of these rules were followed."
To implement virtue in consequentialism: "The only truly valuable thing is personal virtue. Therefore, a 'good outcome' is one where you gain as much virtue-trait-stuff as possible."
Not really. Utilitarians who try to find utilitarianism in other ethical schools can certainly do it, but it only makes sense to them as utilitarians. Deontologists generally don’t accept their formulations because their first principles are different, and that’s actually the key thing that people care about in discussions about ethics: the values that motivate them.
For most situations, all ethical schools of thought wind up with the same answer (unless you’re an Ayn Rand devotee). Those aren’t the interesting parts of ethical theory though, the places where they disagree are the margins where the actual theoretical work is being done.
Just like it failed to deliver so far for humans, it would fail for the AI world.
All three approaches only work if one accepts them, and then goes on to implement them all the time, for all the decisions made. Not possible, hence evil in the world. Hence conservatism is correct. I have been wrong all my life. Any philosophical means to achieve a better world that assumes good humans being good all the time, or even most of the time, is doomed to fail.
>and then goes on to implement them all the time, for all the decisions made. Not possible, hence evil in the world.
This is literally the problem virtue ethics was formulated to solve. It's less about the ideal decision and more about what virtues and habits you have cultivated in yourself.
Bartle's four quadrants is standard in gamification practise. Your assessment of its validity probably tracks with how effective you feel gamification can be in altering human behavior ;)
The more interesting modern use case is when people say: "there's this game on my phone I play a lot that helps me with my anxiety." And it's usually something trivial like a free Puzzle Bobble clone that was developed in a week at zero-budget. But for that player, its a lifeline, a coping mechanism.
That's very interesting to me. What is it about this gameplay mechanic that relieves stress? It can't just be escape. To me it seems it has to tap into something more intrinsic than archetypal "hunter-gatherer" era categories.
I cannot speak for everyone, but in my experience, it is the sense of efficacy and control. You may feel like you don't have any control over your life, but at least you can rule over those colorful bubbles, and be pretty good at it.
I've wondered a lot about that too. I bet (and would love to see hard research on) Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing as it applies to games. Like, if the game has rhythmic elements and alpha-state gameplay with EMDR-type eye movements on top... I bet you've got a therapy machine right there.
> For these researchers, incredibly, enjoyment is not the primary reason why we play video games. Enjoyment is not the primary motivation—“it is rather,” they wrote, “the result of satisfaction of basic needs.”
Isn't this just the definition of enjoyment? Satisfying basic needs is the only reason anybody does anything.
Its a good question, and I hope someone with more knowledge also responds to this, but I don't think they are the same thing. There is a difference between things that give you pleasure and things that you enjoy doing. e.g. you might not enjoy doing drugs if you're an addict but its almost always pleasurable.
So I think enjoying something is more long term, higher level aspect than pleasure, which seems more short term. Which explains a lot why people engage in activities which they may not really enjoy, but get the short term pleasure hit. e.g. binge eating, binge TV watching etc
If I were a quiet and shy neighbor, and you saw me carrying a small wicker basket with a cloth covering the basket's contents with me everywhere I went, year after year after year, wouldn't you desperately want to know what was in the basket?
ie there are drives (eg water when thirsty) but there are other desires too
"We are set up genetically to learn the environment/culture around us. If we have media that seems to our nervous systems as an environment, we will try to learn those ways of thinking and doing, and even our conception of reality."
I am glad they took the time to mention Super Smash Bros Melee. That game took over my life for a time, and in hindsight it was because it was the medium that made me feel as if I was expressing myself honestly for the first time.
I think we as society have lost the ability to give the kids a creative space, that used to be a mile away from homes where they can play in the sand and bushes and water, and just be kids, without adult supervision. Video games let kids experience creation. Video games are satisfying an evolutionary need.
I think nautil.us should write an article on positive effects of mobile phone connectivity. The snobs are looking down on that just like they are on video games.
Urban centers through most of human history have lacked a lot of open spaces, and kids have grown up fine. Human brains are incredibly resilient, and you can raise healthy kids even in dense urban areas.
The problem seems to be more about the constant stimuli that comes from internet enabled devices and video games. I grew up without access to much video games or the internet but that made me dream up entire fantasy worlds as a kid, because I was bored. I don't think the current environment allows kids that kind of space to just be bored and create things via imagination.
I'm not a child specialist though so I might be totally wrong about this.
If you read "death and life of great American cities", Jane Jacobs touches on this quite a bit. Urban centers do offer a lot to children growing up. It offers freedom and unstructured play time, which is important. kids are able to explore easily in an urban environment, if it is walkable, and safe. Safety comes from mixed use urban planning that adds many eyes and feet on the street that keep areas safe and welcoming. This also benefits children since even if they come across a Bully, there are multiple escape paths, and a plethora of adults to around to step in. Large open spaces lead to fewer adults around during unstructured play. Children need both unstructured and structured time.
>Urban centers through most of human history have lacked a lot of open spaces
For most of human history transportation through urban centers was done primarily on foot and roads were designed to facilitate that. Contemporary urban planning is designed around speedily moving motorized vehicles through and the streets, such as they are, are rivers of traffic that pedestrians have to hurry themselves across during the short windows of time that cars aren't speeding by.
The invention of the automobile has been terrible for letting kids roam around. On the flip-side of the dangers they face in urban centers, the ones growing up in newer suburban areas lack the density to have an appreciable amount of kids of similar ages within walking/biking distance of each other. Many older style, "streetcar" suburbs do, but we haven't build many of those in the past 30 or so years.
"streetcar" density suburbs can and do function well with only cars. We just need to start building them again. Just sprinkle in a few multi-story parking lots behind street-level retail and they are great places to live.
I can't speak for Density, but systems that divide people into discrete types are almost always bullshit. At best there's still a small minority who don't actually fit into any type, even roughly (unless the "types" are just a quantized version of a measured dimension, as with the classic quintile-based terms for economic classes). It's fairly common in business settings for managers to buy into one or more of these despite their being bullshit, so the fact that it's used is not much of a qualification.
I'm not saying that there's no such thing as opposing traits, but as far as I know the validated descriptions use continuous dimensions rather than assigning people to corners.
I personally have no issue with the test. Players have different preferences when it comes to video games.
What I have a problem with is researchers attempting to drawn a relationship between video game preferences and basic needs. To me this reeks of Jack Thompson.
> Players have different preferences when it comes to video games.
The point is why they have these preferences, and what these preferences lead to in terms of how different people might approach the same game.
You could present a counter article instead of just telling us how much you don't like the premise of this one.
Anecdotally, I know blasting the crap out of demons in Doom does a pretty good job of channelling my anger. It's cathartic and not something society typically caters for.
A lot of games are about building efficient systems, which naturally would attract people that like solving problems with designs and creativity.
You are dismissing the entire premise of the article based on a dislike for one man that tried (and failed) to convince America that GTA was a murder simulator. A man that (if you bother to read up on what he is up to now) doesn't even believe any of the shit he said back then and actually apologised for it.
My initial comment was extremely vague and off the cuff because I spent too much time in internet echo chambers and I erroneously assumed HN readers would immediately arrive at the same conclusion as me.
My issue with this article is the entire concept of video games meeting basic needs is extreme reductionism at best. People are complex creatures and almost never have singular reasons for liking a type of entertainment.
People's preferences can be measured and graphed fine, but you can't, in good faith, assign a simple basic needs reason for their preferences.
I'm struggling to find the exact article I read (and Wikipedia is light on info about him for some reason) but it was an interview with Thompson himself about where he is and what he is doing now.
He is teaching prisoners civics in Florida now after suffering major stress/depression and marriage problems resulting from his crusade. He went into how the whole thing started because stores were selling violent games to under-age kids and even parents were buying them and that's what he took issue with.
Based on his medical background and knowledge of how entertainment affects the brain he believed that kids that young and also the mentally disabled should not have access to violent games, but because he was beaten in court (multiple times) he began to make tenuous links everywhere between violence and games, music and movies and began behaving very legally dubious in pursuing his cases like a fanatic to the point where he was calling for all-out bans and ridiculous punishments.
He was eventually disbarred and went through a few years of trying not to be such an angry asshole.
From the way the article ended it seemed like he had gone through a positive transformation.
I read "Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades: Players Who Suit MUDs" while developing my own MUD and it seemed _very_ applicable. Both from a gamer and a developer perspective. I'm not sure the FA's reference to that paper makes it necessarily bad.
I'm not sure what your issue is, but Bartle co-developed MUD before it became a generic term, in the 70s, so his taxonomy of game players is seen through that lens.
Well it's not just that; at the time, the Bartle MUDs were the only games like it in existence, and so anyone (who happened to have the relevant network access, of course) who wanted to play a multiplayer online game played Bartle's MUD, which is why you got the whole taxonomy playing the same game.
That changed in the late 1980s, when the source code for TinyMUDs and MUSHes and DikuMUDs started becoming publicly available, and the userbase fragmented; the playerkillers went onto their games, the guys who wanted to chat went onto the games optimized for that, the roleplayers to another game, and so on. Nowadays, when there is a clash of playertypes, the misfits tend to get policed off the server - playerkiller types will get kicked out of other servers for griefing, people who optimize their gameplay too hard will get thrown off the roleplaying servers, and so on...
Bartle's insight is actually specific to his time period and his game and the few other MUDs (AberMUD, MIST etc) that were around while running one was hard to do. The insight still holds, but it would have been harder to spot at a later date, when everybody went their separate ways...
Sure, no arguments with the crediting; I was using 'BartleMUDs' as a shorthand term to specify about 3 games (MUD, MIST, LAND) that were based on the same codebase at Essex University, without reference to who actually did what.
This is not a fair characterization of the game. Yes, you can avoid doing those morally reprehensible things but not if you actually want to play the game. In much the same way if you feel it's morally wrong to stomp goombas, you can avoid doing so in Super Mario Bros. But unlike the latter, you cannot proceed in GTAV without engaging in some of those undesirable actions.
The notion that we're making these choices independent of the game is disingenuous.