All gamers are evil

Avault: Well, that seems to be the impression Patrick Bach, executive producer of Battlefield 3, has. When questioned by a competition winner from Rock, Paper, Shotgun he remarked, “If you put the player in front of a choice where they can do good things or bad things, they will do bad things, go dark side – because people think it’s cool to be naughty, they won’t be caught… In a game where it’s more authentic, when you have a gun in your hand and a child in front of you what would happen? Well the player would probably shoot that child.” As a subsequence Battlefield 3 is not going to be keen on letting you strafe any civilian life you encounter. Personally I think his comments are a little naive and at best uncharitable to us gamers.

[Ulf]

Evil people inherently believe that everyone else is also evil. It's their justification, in the face of good actions done by others. Without their excuse-making, they would be forced to face their actions and intentions, and the human self-preservation instinct prevents that.

Many players cannot bear to be evil in any game, even though it seems like it was designed to be fun from that angle. If you can't place yourself, as a character, in said role without feeling displaced from the story, then it won't be fun (unless the story doesn't matter to the player). Without a good story connection, the game becomes much less worthwhile to the players who enjoy games as a form of storytelling. People can't force themselves to role-play something they disagree with, internally, and still have fun with the story around it, because role-playing (almost all games are role-playing experiences, despite not being RPGs) is only fun if you can "get into" the role itself.

If you enjoy evil stuff, don't pretend other people will as well. That's not the case and you're doing nothing but reinforcing your own delusions by relling yourself it's "okay" and "normal", and all that.

Just sayin'.

[zerocrossing]

I couldn't agree more, I hate how gamers are stereo typed as choosing the dark side and committing evil acts purely because they can get away with them in a game.

For most gamers that's simply not true, I know full well there are people who do enjoy going around shooting or butchering innocent NPC's because they get some sick kick out of it, but on a whole that is throwned upon by the majority of gamers.

I myself when presented with a good or evil choice will almost always choose to go good guy, I don't know why that is it just seems natural for me, what Patrick Bach suggested is disgusting and I completely disagree with his statement that "All gamers are evil" It sounds like something coming from someone who enjoys committing these evil acts themselves.

[thugbob]

I agree with you Ulf.

I was going to type a lengthy response to the "all gamers are evil statement" but the last bit of the article summed it up very well.

""How many of you, if you encountered a real dragon on your way home from work, would strap on a shield, grab the nearest sword, and advance confidently on it? Not me. My car would be in reverse all the way.

Gamers know that what they are playing isn’t real – even the majority of seven year-olds fully understand that what they can do in a game they couldn’t or shouldn’t do in reality. So do you really need to be banned from shooting civilians to save yourself from your own evilness or should game developers just give you the choice and hope you’ll do the right thing?""

[tiffac008]

I'm not sure if this Patrick Bach was serious or not when he made that comment but what he said is the farthest from the truth.

We do the evil route because we want to see what that side has to offer compared to the good route and not because we choose to be evil.