Only a game? Merely symbols? (was: Amoral behvaiour in IF)


20 Jun 1995 10:52:31 GMT

In article <3s0o6j$1q8@styx.uwa.edu.au>,
Charles Miller <cmiller@tartarus.uwa.edu.au> wrote:
>Magnus Olsson (mol@marvin.df.lth.se) wrote:
>: Answering that adventure games aren't the real world is just restating
>: the obvious. The interesting point is _why_ it's different from the
>: real world in precisely that way. [involving theft and murder] Is it just
>for historical reasons -
>: the first adventures were treasure hunts and others followed th
>: ebeaten track?
>
>IF is not the real world, it is simply the manipulation of symbols in
>order to see what happens. Often this involves the solution of
>logical/illogical problems.

(rest of article deleted to save space)

What your argument seems to boil down to is basically "It's only a game",
right?

I can agree with you that in most computer games, the man-like figures
on the screen (or whatever) are jus "symbols" to be manipulated, and
their behaviour has no more relevance to real life than that of
chessmen. After all, we don't normally think too much about the moral
implications of the Mario Borthers' actions, or about what Pacman does
when he isn't being hunted around a maze by hungre ghosts.

_However_, I must contest your view that IF is "just games" in that
sense. IF is a branch of literature (albeit usually of not-too-high
literary merit, but still it's literature). I'm not saying this
because it fulfils some subjective criteria of mine; I say it because
of the way most people relate to IF.

In a nutshell: I've seen so many people on this newsgroup writing
about crying when Floyd died (in "Planetfall") that I flatly _refuse_
to believe that these people regarded FLoyd as just a "symbol" to
manipulate.

People _relate_ to the characters in IF. People tend to view the
worlds described in IF as they view the worlds described in novels.
_Ergo_, discussing the morality of the characters (as measured by
real-worl ethics or the fictional ethics of that game) is a perfectly
valid field of discourse and not to be dismissed as easily as some people
seem to think.

Besides, I wasn't asking whether the world in IF is differnet from the
Real World(tm) - of course it is; if I thought otherwise I'd be fit
for a lunatic asylum - nor was I trying to apply real-world ethics to IF.

I was merely asking about examples of cases where the actions of IF
characters would have been regarded as "amoral" or even "immoral" _had
they taken place in the real world_, and as a follow-up question, why
that kindof behaviour is quite common in IF (or, if you prefer to see
it that way, why so many of the fictional worlds of IF seem to have
radically different ethical norms than the Real World). Please don't try
to tell me not to confuse reality with fantasy; I'm not crazy yet and
I have no difficulty keeping the two apart, thank you.

Magnus Olsson (mol@df.lth.se) / yacc computer club, Lund, Sweden
Work: Innovativ Vision AB, Linkoping (magnus.olsson@ivab.se)
Old adresses (may still work): magnus@thep.lu.se, thepmo@selund.bitnet
PGP key available via finger (to df.lth.se) or on request.