Ethics and Anarchy -- How We Play, Enjoy and See Games

Maybe life is best with a little imbalance?

Consider this an incredibly delayed reaction to J.P. Grant’s article on fair play, which was an incredible response to Jenn Frank’s article.

I have a habit of opening my mouth at times when arguments would simmer without my input. It’s almost disturbing how hard I’ve tried to NOT butt-in, or elbow my way into conversations. Alas, my meme-addled mind would prove that my symptoms are getting worse. If you look at the bottom of Grant and Frank’s articles, there’s me, running off at the mouth about feelings and thoughts not entirely related to the article itself.

How’er, what I took from both articles was a lot to digest. Hence me posting my diatribe weeks after anyone would humor reading. One of the feelings taken from those articles, is the notion of being treated fair [I know, duh] and how we view the fairness in our lives as it pertains to games. My impression from John and Jenn’s takes are that we still view games as an everyman activity. Not only this, but an activity we identify as a solitude experience. Even when the experience is with others, there is an element of wanting specific aspects of games to work in our favor.

Both articles reference contestants from Jeopardy! and The Price Is Right, going an extra mile to find exploits and/or game breaking mechanics. It should be noted that the TV shows they referenced are vastly different. In that one, is an amazing quiz show and the other is the Price Is Right. Why is this important?

In regards to behaving ethically and keeping this mystique of games [and game shows] pure in the eyes of those who play, watch and enjoy them. There is this thought, Jenn touches upon in her article’s comments, that there is this secret knowledge that possibly corrupts how we view winners.

It’s interesting because Grant’s article also acknowledges this “justness” in how we view winners in these individual games. However, both never acknowledge the stage they play on. This secret knowledge that contestants build algorithms for and manufacture methods of jobbing a game is a skill specific to a person who seeks it. The stage they play on isn’t the couch you’re shouting incorrect answers from. The pressure is a little different and unfamiliar to anyone who isn’t constantly in front of a crowd of quiet onlookers.

Spawn camping and shooting through walls in a first-person shooter, given a game of this type’s rule set, could be seen as unethical behavior -- or a poorly designed game, probably both. Because that’s really it, isn’t it? The design of a game didn’t account for every kind of person, playing with every other kind of person. And games, at this point, will never have that power back. When you’ve played the single player mode of Tetris, it was you versus the smartest computer in the world. Or, at least, that’s how I imagined it. When someone is sitting next to you wearing a Tapout shirt, the mystique kinda fades a bit.

Bringing me back to the crux of the point I never told you I’m trying to make. There is a big difference in playing, watching and enjoying a contest by yourself. You can be as unethical, unconstrained and atypical of whom you normally would be. What I’m understanding from Jenn and John’s articles, is that depending on your upbringing [religious, atheist, or other] and exposure to low-crime -- this almost directly paints how we determine a righteous win. In these building blocks, we determine a need to see balance in many facets of games. You know, because life isn’t fair. See that picture of the dog and kitten? This, for some reason, gives us average schlubs hope.

Both Jenn and John use words like “game breaking”, “cheap”, and “unfair.” Words that don’t really apply when particular games are being played with another. In Jenn’s article, commentor Michael Rousseau acknowledges that fighting game players with this secret knowledge should play with people whom they are evenly matched. The reason being, playing against someone with a higher level of knowledge is more entertaining to watch. There is also an element of fun that apparently isn’t had if you are getting your butt kicked by someone who knows more about something than you do. Mind you, the excuse here is that you’re playing the game for fun, but in a competitive setting.

I find it even more interesting that the fun being had by those with the secret knowledge is never pushed further. And again, the the stage in which they play on isn’t brought into the equation. Maybe it’s because we don’t care about those smart people, who’ve worked hard to gain that knowledge. We don’t care about the transformation of them going from a “normal” to something we find it hard to root for -- even at our most competitive. Nope, those weirdos gotta be matched up with other weirdos of their ilk.

Below is an example of two players with what Jenn would call, the secret knowledge engaged in a battle for who has the most secret of the knowledge. Unfortunately, anarchy rears it's ugly head and determines the match, rather than the secret knowledge. This isn't to say this one match occurs all the time in all forms of games, but just an example of how moments of imbalance [at any level] are usually what's most memorable.

Liston is an amazing player. It's unfortunate that most people know him only for this match when he's been a key figure in the fighting game community. I put his explanation after the video because it serves as humanizing the people who participate in games at this level. He also validates some points expressed in this piece.

Liston's take

You too can learn combos, count black jack cards, and even build an algorithm that factors in every popular answer on a game show. That is, if you took the time. All these can be filed into your geeky, solitudinarian life. A life in which games are so closely attached to as a single-person experience.  Yup, even in a group dynamic.

Jenn’s reaction is [I’d assume] common and where I’d say ethics and anarchy meet. She wants this random Tekken player to “ease up,” because the game isn’t fun for her if he’s cleaning her clock. There is a feeling of imbalance and [as Grant puts it] a perception of fairness that is lacking. When in reality, we humans, have always been in favor of imbalance. We favor, to some degree, an element of anarchy.

Without criminals we don’t get cops. Without someone thinking outside of our social norms, we wouldn’t get a tip to the other side of the scale. This topic is difficult for me to write about [see also: my overly wordiness and beginning sentences with “and” and “because”]. Because what we are talking about is the perception of balance as it pertains to our very specific lives. We escape to game shows, sports, video games because we want to see that anything is possible. Games, especially or ideally, make us feel like we are on even playing ground -- when we play by ourselves. We want to see the [perception of the] average person do extraordinary things.

We want to be that person.

When we find out that these extraordinary people found an extraordinary exploit, or studied an extraordinary amount of topics. Topics we couldn’t fathom our average brains parsing, something feels wrong. Their victories feel cheap in our eyes, unfair and against what we’ve come to learn via our upbringing(s).

Here’s the flaw.

As much as human beings have favored living an ethical life, we’ve spent just as much time favoring a life of anarchy. Much like the Roman’s, we’ve bayed for the blood of those we deemed less than. We’ve cheered for diminutive and broken armies to topple tyrannical kingdoms. We love imbalance! I’d argue that we love imbalance more than we love seeing a Pete Sampras versus Andre Agassi match.

Thanks to social mores and the culture of religion, human beings strive to put up the perception of wanting to live an ethical life. We like reading religious texts of hard work paying off, dutiful service, and do-gooders being blessed with wealth for accomplishing a socially acceptable goal.

But we love morally gray areas and occasionally behaving like assholes [see also: The popularity of BioWare games]. It’s great to see the underdog win, but it’s also kinda cool to see Daigo Umehara completely trounce a no-name in the first round of a fighting game tournament. Shows some form of primate strength; a reason why we’ve chosen him to be our alpha-male gaming hero. Which is a weird way of putting it, seeing as Daigo is a shy, reserved Japanese guy who plays Street Fighter. Actually, when you really think about it, he’s a pretty normal guy that took time to learn what people like Jenn have deemed secret rules and perfected them over a decade.

Because of ethical upbringings, we are taught two key things that promote some form of anarchy [or at least a need to witness it]. One thing we learn as children [especially if you’ve been raised with games and religion]* is that you are special. There is no one else like you and you are the product of something that had to be, both or either, predetermined and/or a chance happening.

The other thing we learn is that we are one of many. Your first day of school proves that not only are there other people in your social class, religion and culture, but they may be better at some things and you may be better at others.

These two ideas sculpt so much of our egos and how we perceive the people around us. There is a struggle to remain ethical without taking too much pleasure in enjoying the anarchy that we, ourselves, can create. When we escape into a game show, a sporting event or the various versions of what constitutes a game, we want the rules to be clear. We want to know that everyone involved has the exact understanding as we do, creating some facade of balance.

A balance we were never in favor of to begin with.



*As a youth I’ve read the Bible cover to cover [yes, in one sitting] and taken some of the harrowing stories into my little gaming world. This involved trouncing demons, playing the good guy and always, always saving the princess. Then I went back to religious texts. I wondered why there weren’t more options. Why aren’t you ever told the high score, but you have to tithe? How come all the ladies aren’t treated like princesses? How come all the princesses don’t get gun shoes, but can have magical babies? Games functioned as one of the methods I’d distance myself from religion. In a weird way, it made me care about people more.