People want to be *proven right* when they do things out of principle, they engage in a certain degree of magical thinking You leave your door unlocked and some primitive part of your brain thinks that by doing so, you will inspire people to be good and not break into your house
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Replying to @arthur_affect @loudpenitent and
But that's not what having principles actually means If you really have principles, you have to prepare that those principles will fail in the material world If you really decide to trust someone, you have decided to allow that person to harm you
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Replying to @arthur_affect @loudpenitent and
That's the tragic sense of life, that good deeds are punished If you actually want to be sure that people don't come into your house, then you have to lock your door, and put up a fence You don't actually get to have both
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Replying to @arthur_affect @loudpenitent and
Sometimes, you have to accept that sticking to your principles will harm you, and stick to those principles anyway and accept the harm Or decide the harm is not worth it, and abandon those principles, and be a less principled person but a safer one Either one is tragic
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Replying to @arthur_affect @loudpenitent and
But it's the reality And the sense of "agency" games as a medium foster is *terrible* for really telling stories about tragic choices, or, having told those stories, getting people to accept them instead of throwing the controller at the screen
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Replying to @arthur_affect @loudpenitent and
Worst thing you can do is to program a King Lear game where you're Cordelia, and the point of the game is you stay true to your principles and therefore you die Gotta program in a Golden Ending where if you're EVEN MORE true to your principles you live and they bake you a cake
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Replying to @arthur_affect @loudpenitent and
People have been trying, for a long time, to engage the "tragic sense of life" in gaming, to really set up a situation where "If you do the right thing, you lose the game, if you give in and do the wrong thing, you win" There's always resistance, people never like it
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Replying to @arthur_affect @loudpenitent and
The author of the OP article would almost certainly call such a situation "moral grayness", even though it isn't really that at all It's not morally gray to show the world being destroyed because someone wouldn't betray their own family
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Replying to @arthur_affect @loudpenitent and
If you actually seriously believe that, if THAT IS YOUR PRINCIPLE -- "It would be better to let the world burn then to betray someone I love" -- then YOU HAVE TO SHOW THAT If you refuse to show that, YOU DON'T REALLY BELIEVE THAT, you DO NOT HAVE THAT PRINCIPLE
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Replying to @arthur_affect @loudpenitent and
I'm not, like, yelling at you for that It's not necessarily good to have that principle, it may be bad It may be that the right thing to do is to stab my own kin in the back for the greater good to save millions But then you have to show THAT Pick one, pick SOMETHING
2 replies 1 retweet 6 likes
It's the need to have your cake and eat it too "I WOULD let the whole world burn to save you, honey, but luckily, the fact that I love you so much means God will reward me by making sure I never have to" Kierkegaardian leap of faith Binding of Isaac cop-out mumbo-jumbo
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Replying to @arthur_affect @loudpenitent and
"I resisted all of the offers to trade principle for power, and as a result of my nobility and sacrifice, the game has rewarded me with MORE POWER" This is why Harlan Ellison, in the process of making the I Have No Mouth game, said gamers must have the worst karma in the world
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Replying to @arthur_affect @loudpenitent and
I find the mechanics of Spec Ops: The Line and The Last of Us at least as interesting as choice mechanics. They provide a specificity of theme and story you can't quite reach when you choose your own path. There is value in the feeling of being dragged inexorably down a bad path.
1 reply 0 retweets 4 likes - Show replies
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