Comments | billyjr82: Brief Update

billyjr82

Brief Update

Feb 05, 2010 09:14

* Let's see, I bought the Extreme machine from MGL and stuck a PC in it running Stepmania. I can switch back and forth between them at any time, so I just need to find a switcher to do that for me. If someone wants to donate $100 (or once the machine is paid off) I'll buy a 2nd flash card for the system 573 so that I can install whatever mix I ( Read more... )

Comments 6

lifeofmendel February 5 2010, 18:20:08 UTC

i don't understand how your final question relates to the concept of people choosing to play bad guys.

billyjr82 February 5 2010, 20:03:53 UTC

It isn't so much whether they choose to be a bad guy or not so much as their motivation for doing so. Most of the time it's because of some game advantage as opposed to 'because that's what they would do in that situation'.

Part of the problem is that so many games that have 'moral choices' end up just splitting it right down the middle between good or bad. "You saved 49 / 100 people, so you're a bad person...if you only saved 1 more, you'd be a good guy". Would be one example.

lifeofmendel February 5 2010, 20:24:06 UTC

sometimes people play the bad guy regardless of advantage or disadvantage because it's the only time in which they can outlet something that might go against their moral choices. that's why i confused as to the correlation; i have no illusion that a choice to be a bad guy or a good guy in a video game has anything to do with actual moral choices whether concrete or abstract.

(The comment has been removed)

billyjr82 February 5 2010, 20:09:09 UTC

Totally forgot about Portal, that is a good point. It's almost that you have to force the player into making choices that actually affect them or their party.

One of the ideas I've had is to either use ideas where there isn't really a 'right or wrong' choice, but they both have severe consequences. In NLP, we have a term for special kinds of conflicts that we call "double binds". Where you're damned if you do and damned if you don't. Either choice you pick, it's gonna suck. Out of the (surprising to me) large list of games that have moral choices, very few actually put the player in a double bind.

dr0ss February 11 2010, 02:53:49 UTC

Because that's not fun. There are lots of games that give you choices in which each has both positive and negative consequences though.

dr0ss February 11 2010, 02:52:52 UTC

One could argue that that's how morals are learned anyway.