Innocents I happen to run over in GTA I honestly can’t morally reconcile, the thought never really crosses my mind. Maybe its like Andy N explained, and its easier to differentiate the carbon copy people from the carbon copy animals.

I think we differ when it comes to humans. Gillen once said something about scoring games: he said that mainstream games start at 9/10 and lose points from there, and that indie games start at 5/10 and tend to gain points. For me, animals are the former, humans the latter. Working in retail for so many years has utterly broken my faith in the human race, and the only people I actively spend time with are those who I’m sure are good people. To contrast, I universally love all animals until they bite me or try to steal my shit. Even then, I’d never retaliate with violence – making a song and dance of being fearsome is just as effective.

I have a much larger problem with humans. I specifically remember when I killed an enemy in Far Cry 2 who hadn’t noticed me yet. I felt really guilty as I clicked the mouse. This guy was just standing in his hut, probably enjoying his afternoon. But he was standing in a hut I needed to pass by, so he would have attacked me. Still I was just killing some random guy who hadn’t done anything wrong yet, so I felt guilty.
Because of that I often don’t like sniping in games. I can only enjoy it when sniping people who are clearly coming for you.

That is also one of the reasons, why I haven’t really played one of the recent GTAs. They handle killing innocents way too casually. I felt like I was playing some kind of psychopath, and the game didn’t even acknowledge that properly. It still worked in GTA 2, because that was so abstract. But I haven’t really played any game in the series afterwards.

Playing San Andreas, I kept seeing a chubby hooker in a red top and black miniskirt. Every time I saw her plying her trade, I wondered why she kept coming back to Grove Street, since I stabbed her every time? I just KNEW it was the same person. But playing Oblivion, or Far Cry 2, I just KNEW that if an animal died then I would never see it again, although I may see many other animals that look exactly the same.

I suppose this is just because it’s easier to differentiate between humans than it is between animals. I’d say I know at least twenty people who are white-skinned, have 4 limbs, 2 eyes, 1 nose, etc, but I can tell them apart instantaneously. If a game presents us with a character we know as ‘Crack Whore 3′ or ‘Gangbanger 2′ then we recognise them, with their unique appearance, as the crack whore/gangbanger we just killed, rather than as an identically-dressed person. Animals are not the same – I’d find it next to impossible to identify which one of twenty sparrows (for example) I was looking at.

Perhaps when games reach a point where no character model is repeated, EVER, and some effort is made to make each unique (eg. huge database of character voices, with some randomised level of sonic distortion/alteration, so no voice is heard twice), then a game which actually asks you to kill someone/something will be a game many people will have real qualms with.

If I found my cat torturing a mouse, I’d put a stop to it – cruelty isn’t human-only, and nobody may be excused of it. Our brains are complex, yeah, but it’s all software – a cat that could grip a pencil, that could form words, that could live ten times as long, could be taught to write “can haz cheezburger?” at the very least. When we are born, we are innocent, animalistic creatures that would probably kill smaller animals and eat them if hungry and alone.

The long induction into our society is an inexact and profoundly buggered science – parents that criticize and micro-manage their kids can fuck them up for life. Parents that over or under-indulge their kids can fuck them up too. Parenting is actually really difficult, and not because it’s intrinsically hard, but because the booming rabble of society has decided that it knows how to raise a kid, and it is wrong, and it will still tell you how to do it. We’ve very quickly learned to talk and read and write, and made the mistake of assuming it means we’re intelligent. It’s like being given a megaphone and assuming that you’re now in charge.

Getting back on topic, in GTAIV you can kill a person and the whole city reacts. You can kill a pigeon and nobody gives a shit. That’s not realistic. Creating a system where you can commit a crime and nobody gives a shit, nobody even mutters hushed complaints, is misleading and dangerous. It’s like letting you hire a 10 year old prostitute in broad daylight and never mentioning it again. The only argument that hinges on the definition of innocence is the whole PETA thing – that’s for a different thread. My argument is that games shouldn’t misrepresent animals. Sure, let me blow a dogs head off. But don’t turn the dog into an angry monster so that I’m forced to, and don’t lets pretend that society just looks the other way when I do it.

The other issue here is the definition of ‘innocence’ and whether animals are actually more innocent than humans. They certainly kill other animals, but you could argue that there is no maliciousness or evil intent involved in this, thereby distinguishing them from humans. It’s an evolutionary matter of survival more than anything. But if you draw that line, then really you are ignoring the fact that humans, being animals as well, are also an intrinsic part of that evolutionary process, and that our supposed ‘maliciousness’ is another result of the very natural evolution of our brains into complex organs that have the capacity for this kind of ‘evil’ or ‘abuse’. I’m not saying that just because our brains are a part of the evolutionary process that it justifies cruelty, it just makes you question the idea of innocence, which at the moment, your entire argument hinges on.

I’m playing devil’s advocate a bit here because I love this kind of debate; it’s the best way to explore these kind of ideas in my opinion. I also would try to avoid killing animals in games, but I don’t think it’s for the same reasons as you.

2. If I came across a character real enough, I’d have to apply my real world ethics to killing them. I probably wouldn’t kill an old man feeding pigeons if he resembled a genuine, believable old man feeding pigeons. The hole in this hypothesis is that actors are still struggling to approach this level of believability; it’s not an issue of technology (although being able to quickly render tiny emotions is certainly an obstacle, but it’s not about the graphics, it’s the projected feel).

Go watch the Soloist; if I saw that in a game, I’d save and quit and have a think about my life. If it’s one of the pitiless hobos from Spawn, fuck ‘em. I know I’m not committing some symbolic wrong by running over an inane parody of a complex issue.

Thanks for the interesting questions, Laurence!

The role-playing point strikes me as quite inconsistent, because it seems that you are using that as justification for killing innocent adult humans and not children/animals. What if you were to play a game where you play a protagonist who has no qualms about killing animals or he is crazy and spontaneously violent? Surely, for the purposes of role-playing and ‘getting inside the character’ you would kill an innocent animal, even if you were not forced to? I’m sure Niko wouldn’t think twice about breaking the neck of a guard dog if he thought it might, at some point during a mission, get in his way? And yet, I’m also sure you would make every effort to avoid doing this when playing through such a mission, which would involve you suspending your attempt to ‘role play’ for the purposes of avoiding imagery you find disturbing.

You do make the convincing argument that the ‘predictability’ of children and animals is more easily transferred to the virtual medium, because they are not as observably ‘complex’, which I understand. But what if, say, in 30 years time, technology will have advanced sufficiently enough (which I imagine it will have done) for games to convincingly simulate the complexity of adult humans. According to your premise given above, surely you would no doubt feel equally disturbed by killing anyone because they are also ‘just too real’? Be they Nazis, businessmen, evil mutants or whatever? By that point you would be fairly limited by what your morals would allow you to play.