GamerNode: Columns - Do Gamers Secretly Want to be Criminals?

Do Gamers Secretly Want to be Criminals?

Today, I watched my fiancé frantically call debit card companies, her parents and various other hotlines as her wallet was stolen on the way home, bag zipped, wallet secure, or so we wrongfully assumed. It got me thinking about how shocking it is when it happens: I've been mugged five times in London, and assaulted on two of those occasions. It was horrifying, scary and I never saw London the same way again. Yet, why does that shock me when I'm perfectly fine with stealing people's silverware in Oblivion, or stealing cars in GTA IV?

Human beings, by nature, are fascinated by crime and morally unjust acts. It's not because we're all secretly unbalanced and hell-bent on violence, crime and the destruction of the socio-political machine that is, at the moment, ticking over rather unsoundly. Jungian analysis of this behaviour would tell us it's a suppressed "shadow": the element of our subconscious that governs phobias, fears, and all the binary opposites to our morals that conjure the monsters we see as we suffer nightmares when the sun goes down.

Challenge a child not to take a cookie from the cookie jar, and I think the classic playground chant will tell you more efficiently than logic who's going to have their hand in said jar when you walk back into the kitchen fifteen minutes later. Challenge a gamer with a flash car, surrounded by police but the knowledge that you can so bomb it down the freeway, hide out for ten seconds and then spray it red to sell it for gun money, and there's a 99% chance they'll shoot the cops into cover, then jump in the flash vehicle and haul ass down the road.

The only frustrating element of crime in videogames is the occasional mistake. I didn't mean to hit someone with my axe in Fable II, but now they all think I did, and I'm stuck. Recently while playing through Oblivion, I got frustrated with someone who wouldn't give me the information I needed, and stabbed them with my sword, thinking no harm done. Wrong. Guards turned up, I panicked, ran out the door and the game autosaves, leaving me to replay the last two hours of the game because I lost my temper. Why was I so motivated?

Then there's the odd glitch that drives me to the point where my in-game avatar becomes a criminal from poorly thought-out game design. Bethesda, when I'm shopping in Fallout 3, and I notice a nice bit of scrap metal between me and the shopkeeper, don't let me steal it because my crosshair was one pixel away from speaking to the proprietor of the establishment. The whole "accidental theft" problem is a nightmare: in Oblivion you can hold the block button and mash the action key in order to calm down someone you've accidentally struck with a weapon or spell. But there's no way to excuse theft, and as just as this seems when comparing the situation to real life, somehow I don't think I'd be able to stab someone and simply go "sorry mate, I'll just hold my knife in front of my face and talk to you until you realise I'm Jesus personified."

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