I've just hit the first casino in Dragon Quest V, and like every time I come across a gambling area in a video game, I feel myself conflicted with conflicty feelings.
For the record, I am an rabid anti-gambler. I abhor casinos, and despise the Live For The Next Draw mentality of far too many people. (I know people who spend each Wednesday telling themselves that tonight's the night they're going to win the Big One, as if by sheer force of will the correct balls will fall in Toronto to allow their dreams to come true. And every Thursday, they tend to be quiet--but then there's always Saturday!) I feel physically sick when I hear friends stretch back and casually say how much money they lost in Vegas, or at online poker. And I hate the fact that governments whore up gambling to the point where it seems a wholesome way to spend an evening, while not addressing the horrors gambling inflicts on those who can afford it least.
So when I come across casinos in games like Dragon Quest,Pokemon, and even in Super Mario Brothers there is that conflicty I mentioned earlier. It makes me think that these games should also include whorehouses as well, and maybe throw in a few bars. If I'm going to lose my hardwon gold to the slots, surely there must be someplace I can go and forget my sorrows afterwards? Why one and not the other?
I therefore have a tendency to avoid these areas, but then that can be problematic. In Dragon Quest, for example, you can get some high level loot if you go on the sort of winning streak every Atlantic City dreamer moons about. Gambling in these glittering palaces is part of the game that I'm playing.The money I lose isn't real, I won't have to sell my kidneys and I won't wake up in a dumpster. But yet--but yet --I still feel a little cheap and morally wayward for spending my virtual gold and not getting anything in return.
In Dragon Quest, the gambling can take two forms. You can play the slots, with the expected result. If that doesn't scratch your itch, you can go to a bookie and bet on monster fights all in the same casino. Pokemon offers the slots as well, and in Super Mario Brothers (for the DS), you can play a version of poker with Luigi. (Who, to give him credit, seems sad when you lose.)
What's odd, though, is I have no trouble robbing banks or picking up loose women in Grand Theft Auto. So I guess we all have our own level of gaming immorality, things that make us look at the real world from the safe confines of our virtual one.
So what's yours?
5 comments:
Sadly, I have trouble speeding or disobeying any laws in GTA 4. Kind of makes it hard to progress. But that is why I always have to play a good character in anything resembling an rpg. Give me a shooter and will fuck up everyone and everything. Make me care about a character, and suddenly I'm the flying nun.
Luckily we are only talking about video games. All beeps and blips and pointless pellet eating.
There's only one time I remember facing a moral dilemma in a video game. I was playing The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay on the Xbox and was told by an NPC that I needed to go kill another inmate and bring back something and then he'd help me out.
I asked around and eventually found the inmate I was to kill. Thing is that the guy I was supposed to kill was just minding his own business walking around his cell. He wasn't aware I was there to kill him and he made no moves to try and kill me first. What doesn't help is that early in the game you have no weapons so I was going to have to fight him with my fists. At that point I thought, "so what now, do I just start punching him?" I did just that, he fought back and I eventually killed him.
This kill lingered in my mind for a few days because I couldn't help but wonder if there was another way I could have gone about this? I only killed this character because another character told me to do it. It was a conflicted feeling.
Oddly, later in the game you kill guards without a thought. In those situations it's kill or be killed and I guess that makes it ok. I can't think of another time in which I killed a character in a game that didn't in some way warrant it, especially in such brutal way.
You likely feel stronger than I do about gambling. But I have no use for it. It doesn't appeal to me. It's generally a tax on the Stupid and the Desperate. You'll never find me darken the doorway at The Slots. If I ever go to Vegas, it'll be for Penn and Teller and a tour of the Hover Dam.
I *will* confess to buying a very occasional lottery ticket.
And therein lies the dilema. Moral issues notwithstanding, gambling takes effort. Buying a lottery ticket is easy - especially if you don't even bother to pick your own numbers. Everything else about gambling I find tiresome. So when I run across that sort of thing in a game, I really just lose interest and look for something a little more useful to do, like killing a bad guy or punching a horse.
Adam, I'm in the same boat with Oblivion, where I can become an assassin, but the guy I have to kill is just this old fart who really isn't a threat to anyone. Like David, I don't like playing bad guys. I've tried, in KOTOR and Mass Effect, but I just don't enjoy it. GTA is another matter, since it's so over the top, I don't see it as anything other than a dark comedy.
CL--I do have a deep hatred of gambling, since I've seen what it can do to families. But I'm the same as you--it's just dull.
And I somehow lost David's comment somewhere. It was awesome, sadly.
As is often the case, I noticed that I veered off the main road and forgot about the original question.
I don't really like playing bad guys, either. In theory, it's kind of appealing to play without inhibitions and rules. In practise, I'm no good at it.
I can't even play GTA. It's over the top, but bothersome just the same. And yet... playing a Not Bad Guy that dishes out the whoop-ass is never a problem for me.
And for the record - it would be cool if there WAS a 'Hover Dam' near Vegas, but I checked Wikipedia and it just doesn't exist.
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