The blood of the innocent drips from my hands
Here”s an unsettling thought for today: What if we, the players, are the true villains in MMOs?
In a way, it makes more sense. We assume control of fully trained combat machines that have no past and no conscience. We are given tasks by people we don’t know that often involve killing large numbers of wildlife and sentient beings. We are many times instructed to collect grisly “trophies” from our kills, such as ears, livers, and even entire heads. We scour the countryside like locusts, outnumbering our foes by the score. And, like the Terminator, we do not stop, not ever, until our target is dead. Even if we ourselves are killed, we are resurrected infinitely to carry out our grim mission.
Our motivation for this is not to perform altruistic acts of charity, but selfish greed for the rewards — the blood diamonds — that are tossed our way. We often slaughter those we meet along the road just because we’re curious what trinkets they might be carrying.
We have no qualms against torturing, assassinating, stealing or even committing genocide if our superiors structure it as a “quest objective.” We have no options for diplomacy and no recourse but to end all life in our wake. We do all of this and move on without a second thought as to the carnage and emotional wreckage we leave behind. We build our success on mountains of corpses and call ourselves “heroes.”
Really, what if those “space invaders” and Koopas of yore were the peaceful ones merely trying to defend themselves against our unwarranted aggression? Does this not make us the great evil foe?
Also, never Google image search “blood on hands.” Trust me.
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So true, we are the evil villains… but then again, we also help out the citizens in our worlds, like the hobbits who are being attacked by the wolfs turned evil… Tough decision. I guess we MMO’ers somehow like to be the villains to a certain degree :evilgrin:
The burned homes in Enedwaith and the dead settlers in Archet assuage my guilt for the Half-Orc and Blackwold blood on my hands…
I’ve noted before that Player Characters have dubious morality. The gameplay in these things definitely is fueled by slaughter, and we are pretty much unstoppable in the game world. Scary stuff if taken literally… but then, so is much of what we blithely call “gaming”.
What, you think simply because I will gladly go murder people I don’t know, pretty much no questions asked, because some stranger offers me a few coins, that *I* am somehow the bad guy?
Hrmm, I guess when you say it like that…
Of course we are the evil zealots. But then we are also the ones that writes and communicates the history of what happened, thus applying a slightly different perspective on the whole rampage.
If the NPCs were allowed to actually tell their side, it might be a very different story.
This is one of the concepts behind the Goblins webcomic – dumb adventurers go on killing rampages just because that’s what they’re asked to do, never questioning the value of life of the creatures or people they’re wiping out. I feel better about body-pulling, because then the critter was attacking *me*, and it’s all his fault that I had to kill him. Yeah, I was just the victim there. Really.
The idea of being resurrected infinitely until I’ve managed to accomplish my mission is a bit creepy, but then, whatever is resurrecting me is also bringing back all the orcs and goblins and spider queens and everything else, often while I’m still standing there trying to regain a bit of health. It’s like some massive war game where the supreme overlord is enjoying watching us kill each other over and over. 0.0
@Elinna – Good point. Stuff that attacks me… no guilt there I guess. But those people I killed because some guy paid me 16 silver to “do the whole fucking village…” it’s impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means.
Have you read Mogworld by Yahtzee Croshaw? It’s quite a fun read, written from the perspective of a random MMO NPC. Not even a quest giver, just a background bloke. Adventurers come off very, very much like this in the book.
History is written by the winners, so I’m sure players will come out as heroes in the end
picture = gross
At least Dark Age of Camelot was honest about painting two thirds of the player base (depending on your perspective, always the OTHER two thirds) as “invaders” that cannot be dealt with in any way other than the final sanction.
Also, I suppose, RIFT where whichever side you are on there is plenty of evidence that at least some of your comrades are evil a-holes…
That Google image search (come on, I know everyone who read this post did it) wasn’t so bad. Mostly political commentary, not gore.
How much fun would it be to make an MMO that was not set in an adventure town, but instead in RL? Where you have to work 8 hrs a day so that your character doesn’t starve to death or die of exposure when you are offline, and where any violation of in-game laws is punishable by incarceration of your game key for years at a time?
We play games to escape RL and RL consequences, not revel in them.
Now if you want to make a games that features a different sort of escapism than hack&slash, great, just make sure you can find an audience/playerbase first. 
We’re talking about two different things here, really. We’re talking about mechanics and we’re talking about morality. As much as games make an effort to combine the two, they mostly do a terrible job at it.
Rather than rewrite what Raph Koster says about this, I’d recommend you just try to get your hands on “A Theory of Fun” and give it a look. He makes a very convincing point about game fiction and its separation from game mechanics. We as players don’t see the fiction after a period of time, so it doesn’t really matter what we do in game as it’s just a “power up” or a means to get “experience.”
On the other hand, he says (and I heartily agree) that game developers shouldn’t interpret that as free reign to do anything. There’s a moral responsibility not to make games about viciousness, coarseness, and so forth. When quests ask us to do morally questionable things with no follow through as to the consequences, that’s the sign of bad design.
On the other hand, games CAN illuminate feelings like guilt and responsibility. Consider the Drakuru quest line or the new Stranglethorn line that ends with you rezzing Bloodlord. Here, the developers are teaching us NOT to blindly follow orders, even though the other 95% of the game requires us to do so.
Great post, and great discussion.
Dark Legacy comics (based on WOW):
http://www.darklegacycomics.com/151.html
It depends on the situation and the game. Dr. Bartle had a few poignant words to say about a quest where the player has to torture an NPC because another NPC won’t get their hands dirty. Along the same lines in the beginning of the quests to become a death knight there is a whole quest line where you kill innocent npcs who are unarmed, literally shaking in fear in their homes saying “please don’t kill me.”
Still there are epic quests lines in Lord of the Rings Online where the Lord of Dul Guldur has captured an imprisoned Bori (the cousin of a member of your party).