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I was reading the following part of the article about the Dutch preview of F3...
And something struck me. While a lot of people think they're making decisions based on their own values, the reasoning they use is potentially faulty.
Look at it this way: it's easy to do the 'right' thing when you're sitting at home, in front of your PC, and the negative consequences don't affect you. It's the 'right' thing to do according to us in the present day. But if you were actually living (read: trying to survive) in a postapocalyptic world, doing the 'right' thing by today's standards might not be as interesting for you. Video games counterbalance the fact that you could have gotten equipment or money for doing something 'wrong' by giving you more XP for doing the 'right' thing instead, but that doesn't happen in real life.
My beef is that it's too easy to do the 'right' thing in video games these days. One major problem is the lack of credible immersion (not solved by shiny graphics)... there's no game out where you genuinely believe that you're fighting for your downright survival in a postapocalyptic world. Even if you do decide to make your decisions by trying to place yourself in your character's shoes for a few seconds, there's still the fact that your resources simply aren't scarce enough. Somehow, you can become very rich and quite quickly, while the rest of the world is bum poor even though they've been around much longer than you... could it be that they're just lazy? I find that hard to believe.
And of course with all this wealth, it isn't hard to play the generous guy. So not only do the consequences not affect you at home (naturally), but neither are they really affecting your character in-game since he can get so damn wealthy.
RPGs need to remind the player what kind of world he's in, and make you really have to work hard for any gains you make. But in an industry that's making its designs easier and easier so that it's more accessible to the masses, I'm afraid that this will never happen, like many other things.
Several bullies harass a girl, what will you do? The moral choices you make here will be the first example what await you during the rest of the game. If you help the harassed girl you lean towards the path of ‘righteousness’, but you could also choose the side of the bullies in order to get in favor with them.
And something struck me. While a lot of people think they're making decisions based on their own values, the reasoning they use is potentially faulty.
Look at it this way: it's easy to do the 'right' thing when you're sitting at home, in front of your PC, and the negative consequences don't affect you. It's the 'right' thing to do according to us in the present day. But if you were actually living (read: trying to survive) in a postapocalyptic world, doing the 'right' thing by today's standards might not be as interesting for you. Video games counterbalance the fact that you could have gotten equipment or money for doing something 'wrong' by giving you more XP for doing the 'right' thing instead, but that doesn't happen in real life.
My beef is that it's too easy to do the 'right' thing in video games these days. One major problem is the lack of credible immersion (not solved by shiny graphics)... there's no game out where you genuinely believe that you're fighting for your downright survival in a postapocalyptic world. Even if you do decide to make your decisions by trying to place yourself in your character's shoes for a few seconds, there's still the fact that your resources simply aren't scarce enough. Somehow, you can become very rich and quite quickly, while the rest of the world is bum poor even though they've been around much longer than you... could it be that they're just lazy? I find that hard to believe.
And of course with all this wealth, it isn't hard to play the generous guy. So not only do the consequences not affect you at home (naturally), but neither are they really affecting your character in-game since he can get so damn wealthy.
RPGs need to remind the player what kind of world he's in, and make you really have to work hard for any gains you make. But in an industry that's making its designs easier and easier so that it's more accessible to the masses, I'm afraid that this will never happen, like many other things.