Sick of playing the nice guy

[SonicKaos]

I haven't written anything in a while now for various reasons... I'm sure you all loved reading my walls of text back in the day anyway. Well I wrote something today if anyone feels like reading it. It's about how moral choices in games don't matter:

Sick of playing the Nice guy

They say nice guys always finish last, and for the most part it's true. In business you'll never get ahead without stepping on someone's toes once in a while, and with woman... well they just love jerks. All too many times I've heard "Well you're a really nice guy, but..."

But what? Is "nice" a synonym for boring? Does it mean I'm not cool because I don't treat people poorly for no reason? Am I just too perfect of a guy so I must be too good to be true? In short, yes. All my life I've been playing the nice guy, whether it be in video games or in real life... and I think it's about time for a change.

No, this isn't a blog post about personal self discovery as it may seem so far, it was simply the reason I thought of writing this post in the first place. The real issue here is about moral choices in video games, how they effect you, and how they mirror you're own being.



Let me use Fallout 3 as an example, as I'm sure many people at least know of the decisions you must make in the game. I, being the nice guy I am have difficulty choosing options that hurt other people, even though they aren't real. Thus, my character is on his way to becoming a hero of the wastelands, and I'm missing out on a few cool abilities. I've noticed that at certain points in the game, the game would reward you with some form of power upgrade for doing something morally wrong... but nothing if you make the nice choice. Doing the "right" thing often leads to extra quests where you can work towards gaining something, but often it's of equal power or worse then the "bad" item anyway. What did you really gain from this experience besides the chance to help yet another person?



When you think about it, what do you really gain from being a good guy that you can't from being a bad one?

You can earn respect by spending a lot of time helping others and creating a positive influence, or you could just take it all at once by killing those who already have it (fear). You can do boring chores and side jobs for people to gain fortune over a long period of time, or you can just steal it. You could save the town from enemies and survive many battles to be declared a hero, or you could burn it to the ground and become infamous. What is the real difference between these two moral choices then? Either way you can end up with fame, fortune, respect, (positive or not) and haven't you noticed how the hot chicks always hang around the badass? It seems that the amount of work you must put into it is the real deciding factor.

Bad guys get what they want when they want it, while good guys have to suffer through chores they don't want to do only to receive the same item or worse. Then my question to you now is this:

How can we change this? Should there not be a greater reward for doing the right thing if that's what we believe to be the honest way? Could there be a way to encourage one action over the other through certain rewards, and is it fair for one side to get different abilities that the other cannot attain just because of their chosen path? Is it even possible to fully convey this message through your personal actions in a video game at all?

In order to get a real feeling from a game, you must take pride in your actions. Seeing as how your actions in a video game don't effect your own quality of life, can we really take true pride in saving a virtual town or simply slaughtering it?



The above reasoning is why I'm going to buy InFAMOUS shortly, and play through the entire game killing everyone who gives me a funny look... just because I can. Being a nice guy hasn't gotten me anything special, so it's time to try my hand at the opposite end of the spectrum. I know I'm going to have to sit down and force myself to make the morally wrong decision many times in doing so, but for once I'm going to bite my lip and see where it takes me. As far as I can tell from playing the demo multiple times, all the evil moves are more powerful then the good ones anyway, so what's the point in being nice when being bad is more explosive. And hey, maybe being a badass for once will help me change a little bit in real life as well, because I'm tired of always being the nice guy... no? Oh well.

Nice guys always finish last... and it's time for a change.