Are there choices that a game shouldn't give a player? (Was: Are games inherently trivializing?)

[Havenstone]

The original topic was turning into a bit of a straw man; so let’s look at something where I think people will be more consistently willing to disagree. Are there choices that a game shouldn’t give a player?

I’ve agreed in the past that rape is such a choice:

@Havenstone

Rape in a ChoiceScript story, where the second-person protagonist is the rapist, is I think almost impossible to do with any degree of sensitivity. It’s basically catnip for the rape fantasist.

And on this thread we’ve had Dan stating that genocide counts:

@dfabulich

When an author constructs a choice, the act of doing that does inherently represent the options as comparable. Thus, if you give the player a choice “to genocide or not to genocide?” it trivializes genocide.

Now, maybe genocide should be out of bounds, but I’m not convinced by the reason Dan offers. Like @Eiwynn, I don’t think that a game choice inherently represents its options as comparable. By that argument, not only do we have a lot of COG games that trivialize murder (which, let’s face it, we do) but it’s impossible to write it any other way – right? If game choices are inevitably received as comparable, interactive fiction can offer nothing deeper than, “To kill, or not to kill, or to have a nap and a sandwich.”

But I think @Fiogan is right that we already have some examples of games that frame the choice of murder (and indeed genocide) in a non-trivializing way – that treat the characters who are killed as more than objects in a game. @Cataphrak and I are both trying to write series that are to a large extent about atrocity and mass murder, and which will offer players the option to become monsters. I don’t think that either series is doomed to be trivializing, though we could yet get it wrong.

If it’s OK to give the choice of mass murder, why not rape? I tried to answer that on that other, five-year-old thread – a very capably written gangster game, where the MC was in a situation that in real life could very plausibly lead to a choice of rape. I suggested that the difference has to do with the way I think the different stories are likely to be received:

@Havenstone

I know [there’s lots of] murdering, maiming, and mayhem in the game. You’re playing a partly dehumanized character, who dehumanizes other people. I don’t have a problem with that story concept as such – right up until it starts to overlap with the ways that our culture dehumanizes certain specific groups of people, with terrible real-world effects. There aren’t that many strands of our culture that say it’s OK to cut Joe Businessguy’s throat and take his money. There are significant strands that justify treating women as objects, even objects of violence.

I’d be equally turned off, for another example, if when that handsome tailor boy [in the game] comes on to “you,” you had the choice to beat him to a pulp… Gay-bashing and gay-hatred is a real-world problem that feeds on the wrong kind of stories (and, happily, is being reduced by the right kind of stories becoming more mainstream). I’m relieved that in your story, you’re given the choice to be gay, but not the choice to be a gay-basher.

I know you’ve not written it in for kicks, but I wish you’d treat rape similarly to gay-bashing and use your writing skills to gracefully evade the choice.

So if that’s what I think about some immoral choices, what about genocide? There are obviously strands in our culture that would justify genocide, too; we’re seeing them more starkly than ever, with the President’s demonizing language toward various categories of immigrants. But that’s in vivid tension with the way our culture still holds up genocide as the ultimate evil, the Nazi Sin that forever justified using them as conscience-free FPS fodder alongside aliens, devils, and robots.

That contradiction is big and important enough that I’d welcome art that explores it properly – because I think at the end of it, most readers would have a reaction like @Fiogan’s. A game that walked a player through the path that leads to genocide, that shows how a path seemingly consistent with American ideals arrives at something universally recognized as a horror, could be ham-handed and trivializing. It could even be destructive, if the author ended up writing something that many readers took as justification for genocide. But it could also be devastatingly good, and an important art work for our cultural moment.

@EndMaster

Why does a work have to be “done right” at all?

I respect the “artists’ only responsibility is to themselves” perspective – even if I don’t agree that it’s the last word.

I believe in creativity, in taking risks and stretching out of our comfort zones. I believe in stories that echo the moral ambiguity of the world (i.e. that don’t have big simple morals-of-the-story, where villains aren’t necessarily punished or revealed to be sympathetic after all). I definitely believe it’s important for people to try to write characters and experiences other than their own.

And then once we’ve created, I think part of being a creator is accepting a measure of responsibility for how it’s received. Because stories do shape the way we think; if we write certain characters as mere objects in a power fantasy, we’re contributing to a broader culture that treats some people as objects.

@Cataphrak

I have a responsibility to ensure that while the player character might be able to use those justifications to sleep soundly at night, the player will not be able to

One of my pet peeves in the project proposals I review is the use of “ensure” in all kinds of cases where we can do nothing of the kind. I don’t think we can ensure very much as writers, including our readers’ sleeping habits. Like @RedRoses said, " there is no writer skilled enough to make every single person who makes that choice feel the horror and guilt that should be felt behind that decision."

I know in advance that some people are going to draw morals from my work that I didn’t put there. I share some responsibility for whatever they find there, and I’m ready to accept that responsibility; but it’s not going to keep me from writing, including about topics where there’s a significant chance of my writing something inadvertently awful. I’ll listen to criticism as I write, and make use of it where it rings true, and my work will be stronger for it.

tl;dr - yeah, pretty much.