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Do you feel guilty when you hurt bystanders or innocents in games?
- Thread starter Lightning Count
- Start date
Yeah Emotional Connection to a few characters in a game thats story heavy. Thats me. Outside of that in most single player games with story even i don't care a lot except for a moment when it happens where iam like 'oh so THAT happened damn' and then i move on. There are some moments like in Spec Ops the line Phosphorus scene where it just hits you deep the way the camera work is done and how you play the game. There's definitely something in certain games that can hit you deep but for me thats pretty damn rare but like it has to show on camera infront of my eyes to make an impact like if i just read text dialogues and no animation in 3rd/first person.. i just don't feel much.
If I ever smack a souls NPC on accident, I feel awful, lol.
I've absolutely been a menace in some sandbox games though.
I've absolutely been a menace in some sandbox games though.
depends on the game, i don't care in gta, i will go on killing spree finding the funniest way to kill people, but i will feel bad in something where we're clearly supposed to be the good guy
Depends. If it's story driven, then I'll avoid doing anything bad.
It annoyed me that the NPCs in the Matrix experience disappeared before I could run them over.
It annoyed me that the NPCs in the Matrix experience disappeared before I could run them over.
Yes I feel guilty about hurting innocents because I'm not a psychopath. Some very strange responses in this thread. "They're not real" - uh, if you're even slightly immersed in the game (you should be or why are you even playing) then you should feel empathy to the innocent people living in that world. They are real within the content of the world you are playing in.
Do you really believe that people who enjoy doing this are psychopaths? Do you extend this to people who enjoy evil paths in games?
I think it's wild to label people as psychopaths because of what they enjoy in a video game.
I generally do feel pretty bad about harming random NPCs but there are exceptions. Like, driving in Cyberpunk 2077 was so awkward and painful that I'd ram into pedestrians all the time and instead of feeling bad about my own reckless behavior, hitting the pedestrians made me madder and madder at the GAME.
Yeah there's no way I could ever play the evil path in a game, it's completely baffling to me how anybody could get fun from that
Maybe I'm being a bit hyperbolic with psychopath but I do think it's rather wild
If I get very invested in a story (which is rare) I might feel bad about taking certain actions because I'm invested in the story/characters, the same way you might get sad if something bad happens to a character in a good movie, but outside of that, no, I feel nothing. They aren't real! Random bystanders in a game aren't real and it means nothing.
The only fun in the original watch dogs, for me, because the game was so boring was "911 murder game". Basically I kill a random person, and then wait for someone to call 911, and kill them before they get the call off. See how long I can keep the chain going before a call successfully goes out. I'm not a psychopath. It's a game, and the randomly generated bystanders in these games are particularly simplistic and unrealistic in their depictions.
The only fun in the original watch dogs, for me, because the game was so boring was "911 murder game". Basically I kill a random person, and then wait for someone to call 911, and kill them before they get the call off. See how long I can keep the chain going before a call successfully goes out. I'm not a psychopath. It's a game, and the randomly generated bystanders in these games are particularly simplistic and unrealistic in their depictions.
Reminds me of how the enemies in TLOU2 scream if you blast their knees off with the shotgun. Almost felt like real pain lol..
It's a video game lol so no. That's half the fun of GTA games. I use to load up the game just to go around on killing sprees to get to 5 stars and see how long I could outlast the cops lol
Not being able to be an absolute bastard really hurt AC Valhalla for me. I'm a viking raider let me kill and burn things indiscriminately. The first church I raided and I charged the monks and axed the first one I came to and the game told me no and it sucked all the fun out of it.
That's all I did with GTA 3/Vice City as a kid. Never completed the stories until the DE.
Actually you can set people on fire all you want, as long as you don't kill them with direct damage.
Pull out a torch, throw it at someone. The torch impact will deal like 1 damage which won't kill most civvies, but then they'll burn and you get no penalty.
For extra fun, pick up a burning body and carry it around. Stand next to people and they'll catch fire too. (high fire resistance recommended)
I didn't feel guilty about killing enemies in TLOU2 but i didn't feel heroic (at least in the first half of the game).
When I was younger playing GTA, no.
These days when I played GTA, yes. If I'm bored, I'll even follow traffic rules.
These days when I played GTA, yes. If I'm bored, I'll even follow traffic rules.
I don't go out of my way to hurt NPCs, but I don't often feel bad for them. I will say in my last playthrough of Dark Souls, there was a fuckup at Sen's Fortress that caused a certain Onion to fall off a cliff, and that one hurt.
This actually makes me sad, but not for the human NPC.Only in Watch dogs. If you kill an NPC that has a dog, the dog will lay down next to them.
No because they aren't real people. I don't feel bad about video game characters and never have. I've also never understood the need for "immersion" in games being such a big deal when I've never forgotten I'm playing a game sat on my sofa and never felt like anything in a game has somehow broken immersion and ruined a game.
If someone cuts me off in GTA, they get shot in the head. If a pedestrian brags about a movie role she's up for, she gets beaten to death. I only wish more games let me hurt the innocent bystanders. It's quite cathartic. And just in case that upsets someone's delicate sensibilities, I'll remind you they're just pixels.
Generally I find that it never makes sense for the character to do so. Even someone like Trevor. It especially doesn't make sense in something like Infamous because the stories in those games always have characters with hearts of gold who go through the entirety of the narrative just being ok with the evil shit you do. Digital Travis Willingham still tells you he's proud of you even if you murdered tons and tons of civilians.
The way you described it certainly put to words why I find it real weird when people turn like, a large portion of the exploration gameplay loop into hurting civilians.
The way you described it certainly put to words why I find it real weird when people turn like, a large portion of the exploration gameplay loop into hurting civilians.
I know I play less and less violent games nowadays, or very stylised ones. I can't stomach seing exploding realistic heads with current graphics and technology.
30 years ago, games REALLY were a bunch of pixels, the gore was cartoony. But now you can eviscerate realistic humans while they plead for mercy and shit their pants in 4k. No thanks.
The real world is already a permanent agression and a stressful depressing place, I like my hobbies to be relaxing and to make me forget all the horrible shit.
Well Joel is just a bunch of pixel in Last of us 2, but curiously people were a bit flustered by what happens in the beginning of the game. I mean who cares about anything that happens in any games with this reasoning?
Same thing applies to movies : just a bunch of actors and FX - nobody cares what happens in movies, right ? Or books… I mean what moron could cry of feel anything by reading a bunch of letters printed on paper. Words are not real.
I always find curious this sort of pride of being insensitive to basic human emotions while viewing media.
30 years ago, games REALLY were a bunch of pixels, the gore was cartoony. But now you can eviscerate realistic humans while they plead for mercy and shit their pants in 4k. No thanks.
The real world is already a permanent agression and a stressful depressing place, I like my hobbies to be relaxing and to make me forget all the horrible shit.
This is always that same argument, used in discussions about violence. "Games are not real so it doesn't matter"…
Well Joel is just a bunch of pixel in Last of us 2, but curiously people were a bit flustered by what happens in the beginning of the game. I mean who cares about anything that happens in any games with this reasoning?
Same thing applies to movies : just a bunch of actors and FX - nobody cares what happens in movies, right ? Or books… I mean what moron could cry of feel anything by reading a bunch of letters printed on paper. Words are not real.
I always find curious this sort of pride of being insensitive to basic human emotions while viewing media.
Except there is a very big difference between established characters and randomly generated civilian #24414 crossing the street in GTA.
One is a character, while the other is nothing more than a gameplay device.
I dont go out of my way to do it or play hyper violent games but when it happens, no. They're not real.
"They're not real doesn't cut it cause blah blah" yes it absolutely cuts it. Its the same reason i dont feel bad for mowing bad people either. Even in real life, i wouldnt be okay with killing around everyone i find bad. Its the escapism of videogames that makes me not care as much.
"They're not real doesn't cut it cause blah blah" yes it absolutely cuts it. Its the same reason i dont feel bad for mowing bad people either. Even in real life, i wouldnt be okay with killing around everyone i find bad. Its the escapism of videogames that makes me not care as much.
You have quite the warped view of immersed. Immersed doesn't mean, or at least shouldn't mean, 'I have lost all sense of reality and no longer have the ability to distinguish that I am taking part in a fictional activity.' If you are really into a game or film or anything to that degree, I don't even know if it's healthy for you to take part and might want to look into doing something else. You're kind of one step away from jacking yourself into The Matrix at that point.