Have You Ever Stopped to Think About What You're Doing?

Whenever we play video games, we seem to adapt this kind of submissive mindset. The game tells us to do some task and we just shrug our shoulders and go about it. It really doesn't matter how meanial or crazy the task is, more often than not, we just continue on for the sake of the game. Of course, we can't just stop and say, "I don't want to do this" because, well, then we can't continue the game. Developers, though, always seem to design their games around this mindset we have when playing, but why is that?

Why do we go out to slay a dragon because some old man says it is our character's destiny? Why do we run across the street for some book that an NPC is too lazy to get? Why do we deploy into a war zone and just start gunning down anyone whenever the aiming reticule turns red? It's really that carrot on a stick, "keep going for the reward", set up that most games have nowadays. Long gone are the days when we would play games just to beat a high score, now we actually seek something within the game itself to help us get even more rewards that progress to even further rewards. No matter how shameless or bizarre the task, we'll see it done for that shiny new piece of gear, or the next segment of the narrative. There's nothing particularly outstanding about realizing this concept or even conforming to it; like I said, you can't exactly progress through a game without doing what it tells you. The interesting bit is developers not really taking advantage of this mindset when it could provide some very compelling scenarios.

Let me provide an example. SWToR, some months ago, had a world event known as the Rakghoul Pandemic. This event involved Rakghouls (a zombie-like creature pictured above) getting to Tattooine and infecting the local creatures and Tusken Raiders. Players from both factions could fly to Tattooine and begin a quest line that would unravel just how the Rakghouls got to the planet to begin with. As players completed quests and killed the diseased populations, they could earn actual vials of the Rakghoul virus. These vials could then be turned in for various upgrades and some cosmetic rewards. You would think players would hand them in to medical personel or something along those lines, but no! The person taking these vials was, in fact, a Jawa. Just some random Jawa that would sit on top of a sand dune next to a Dewback that wore a saddle with "Medical Assistance" crudely drawn on the side of it. I mean, sure, you're handing over the Star Wars equiviliant of the T-Virus to some Jawa, but at least you got cool stuff for doing so!

It didn't take long for players to realize just how suspect that whole situation was, and that was when the speculation began. There were several theories that basically all boiled down to either the Jawa having a lab somewhere and was expirimenting with the virus or the samples get stolen and the game suddenly becomes a mix of Resident Evil and Star  Wars. Such an occurrence has yet to happen, but I think it would be amazing if it did. Something like that would be a great play on that whole "carrot on a stick" design that games present to us. Such scenarios don't even have to be done in a joking way either. A game that relies heavily on the illusion of choice could very easily make decisions that seem trivial turn around to bite the player in the ass at some instance later on. At that point it really has more of an emotional impact as the player kicks themselves for making those decisions, but not in a way that it would cause game resetting levels of regret.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with driving the player forward with some kind of promised reward for their trouble, but some games do apply this method better than others. Running errands for some NPC is really done begrudgingly just for the sake of said reward, but games that involve some grand adventure, great narratives, or even just fun gameplay can be the driving forces alone with the physical reward just being the icing on the cake. It is important to have players rewarded for their efforts in games -it is one of the reasons why cheevos exist- but playing on the fact we never really expect a consequence until it has already happened provides some very interesting opportunities that I would love for more developers to take advantage of. In the mean time, I'll keep chasing that carrot for more shiny pieces of loot.