Being a gamer myself, I’ll admit that I’ve never been one of those who believe that video games will make killers of everyone and open the door to the ruination of all things. (Comic books have already done that.) But there’s a new breed of online survival game gaining popularity. And from what I’ve read and seen so far, it’s a virtual experience that kinda brings out the sociopath in people.
If this is all news to you, let me elaborate. DayZ and Rust are two of the new titles that have people talking the most. They’re games where your virtual self is plopped down, unarmed and alone, in a vast open dangerous world and then given the challenge of gathering items of need to simply stay alive for as long as possible. The former title throws in post-apocalyptic surroundings and zombies, and the latter starts you off as a naked caveman with a Minecraft-like crafting system. But for the most part, they’re both pretty similar.
Those game worlds may even sound like something of a compelling social experiment on the surface of things. How will people band together to face the harsh and occasionally cruel environment surrounding them? But what seems to be emerging from this do-what-it-takes play is the fact that the greatest threats faced in these games aren’t those created by the game designers, but the violent and unpredictable people, played by real gamers, populating the game world.
I saw a video of a band of well-armed virtual survivors in DayZ who surrounded a pair of guys in yellow vests and told them they could either die instantly (losing everything they had and forcing them to start all over) or they could fight each other in a deathmatch with axes. The aggressive gamers, heard via online headsets, chuckled and laughed at the plight of their two victims. And then they cheerily gunned down one of the yellow-vest guys when he decided to try and run away.
I also spotted a YouTube video made by a guy who wanted to figure out why people playing the game Rust were so cotton-pickin’ kill happy. So he decided to go in as his naked defenseless avatar and try to talk to people and ask them about the in-game choices they were making. He was wondering whether or not the players thought the game itself was motivating them to be more violent with one another rather than help each other survive.
The problem was, the questioning guy had a hard time even getting his queries out. Almost every time he approached anyone, someone would bash him over the head with a rock and kill him. Over and over.
He did eventually find some who would hold off long enough to answer a question or two. But their puzzled answers didn’t seem to enlighten much. Why did they kill so often? Because another person, any person, was a threat just by being there, they said.
A wired.com article titled “Why Online Games Make Players Act Like Psychopaths” gave the clearest example I’ve seen of what happens to an average not-necessarily-aggressive gamer in the heat of a survival game encounter. In this case the gamer was just starting out in the game Rust—naked and supply-less—when he came upon a pair of guys who obviously had some things that he desperately needed.
‘Hey man,’ the guy nearest the door said. ‘What’s up?’
And then, I was overtaken by a sudden and forceful thought: I want what they have, and I will take it. I lifted my rock and smashed in the skull of the man nearest the door. I trampled his corpse and rushed toward his friend, who was now holding a pistol.
Firelight flickered, casting shadows on the wall as we fought. He shot me once, twice. I ran away bleeding and was almost to the door when he shot me a third time, then a fourth.
My screen went black.
Back in the real world, on my couch in Mississippi, my adrenaline was pumping. I was overwhelmed by two emotions: disappointment at my failure to rob the men, and catharsis from beating a man to death.
In that moment, the gamer realized that the virtual world he was running around in sorta tossed his “real-world” moral code out the window. Which does indeed make these games start to sound more and more like a social experiment. One that’s gone bad.
But again, why does that sort of online behavior pop up? Is it because a game like this demands that the most ruthless parts of us be pulled forward for the sake of “survival”? Or perhaps it’s the fact that a wide open, ruleless virtual world like this offers no real penalty to dissuade a player from performing horrid acts he’d never consider in real life. Or maybe it simply comes down to being motivated by that thrilling feeling of “catharsis” that the writer mentions above. Or something else.
Whatever the answer, running naked and smashing skulls is not the gaming experience for me. I’ll stick with Mario. At least his noggin bopping comes with colorful overalls and a smile.
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