The Morality of Perspective: Point of View, and Connecting with Your Character

I took my last blog post in as a rough draft personal essay for my Creative Non-Fiction class, and got some interesting feedback from a bunch of nongamers. During the course of the ensuing discussion I realized one of the factors that has an impact on my morality or lack thereof in games that I take for granted is the perspective.

Being horrible in Fable 2, and GTA IV is easy, and fun. Both of those games feature a third person perspective in which the camera floats behind the character you control, which disassociates the player from the avatar actually committing acts of violence on screen. Niko Bellic may be beating an old woman with a baseball bat, but to me he's just a puppet dancing on virtual strings. I don't really connect with the character. There are also times when cutscenes take over, and I don't have any control over what Niko is doing. I never have control over what he says, and sometimes the things Niko does in GTA IV are at odds with my desires. For instance in one mission that require you to kill a guy for a business associate Niko knocks on the guy's front door, and basically explains he is here to kill him. Of course the target jumps out the window, and high speed chase ensues. Since I'm a big fan of the Hitman franchise (another third person exercise in immorality) I would have done things differently if I was given the choice. The practical upshot of all this is that I do not identify strongly with the character I control, and through this proxy I can do terrible things without a feeling of remorse.

I already stated Bioshock was different for me from a moral standpoint, and it is worth noting the entire game is shown in the first person. The camera is your character's eyes the entire time. Many first person games have cutscenes that show the character from a third person, removing the player from control, and from the character, but Bioshock never does this. All you ever see of your character are his hands, and it is these hands the player must use to either murder, or save little girls. This perspective makes things more immediate, and the silence of the main character also deepens this immersion into the character. For the most part the main character never says, or does anything the player does not intend, which makes (for me at least) being a child murdering bastard all the harder even in the face of a support character who serves as your guide throughout the game dribbling justifications for killing the little sisters in your ear.

All three of these games also feature NPCs that are not hostile. In many games nearly ever other character you meet is hostile. Killing everything in sight is a matter of survival. Fable 2, and GTA Iv are filled with civilians that have no bearing on the story. They are in effect just scenery. This status of being nonentities is another factor that makes their mass murder nothing to mourn, or hesitate over. The worlds in these two games are playgrounds, and the natural tendency is for a player to explore the limits of what can be done, and to see what consequences there are.

Bioshock is a much more linear game, and is mostly filled with enemies you have no choice but to kill. The little sisters, and their big daddy guardians are exceptions to this rule in that they are not hostile unless provoked. It would be very difficult if not impossible to complete the game without attacking some of them to gain adam, but doing so is not a matter of immediate survival as with other enemies who are hostile.

All of these things are taken for granted by gamers, but I had to actually think a little bit about these issues when explaining to nongamers why in some games I chose to gleefully murder entire towns, and in others I couldn't.

I get the feeling these blog posts are eventually going to be edited together in one massive essay on morality, choice, perspective, and immersion in gaming.