Player Versus Player

I mostly ignore the online multiplayer video games that my husband plays, but it caught my attention recently when he mentioned that he and a friend of ours have been unhappy with the new game, ARC Raiders, that they had been excited about before it was released.

The game is like a lot of popular online “shooter” type games – people who choose to play without a partner or pre-selected group will be randomly placed with other single players in a team, and they can encounter other players and teams within a game session. The goal is to collect certain items without being eliminated by the “non player character” opponents or other players within a certain amount of time. In this game, unlike some others, when a player is eliminated, they lose all the items they collected during that session as well as anything they had with them from their collection of items from previous successful sessions.

My husband and friend’s comments were that while some of the other players and teams they encounter are willing to help other players and to collaborate for mutual success, a large number of other players view the game’s goal much differently – they are more than happy to eliminate any other player they encounter for the sole purpose of taking their items.

In the evening as I’m reading or working on other projects, I frequently hear my husband, while playing the game, say into his microphone “friendly, friendly, friendly” to announce his intentions to other players he encounters. From what he told me, the game developers recently adjusted the way the players are put into sessions with others based on their playing style – whether they want to collaborate or do the opposite. It sounds like this technique of creating playing environments that suit individual players was successful for a while but hasn’t entirely worked. Our friend completely stopped playing the game because of how stressful it had become not knowing if they were going to be targeted by other players.

The obvious mirroring within this game to what is happening currently in the United States shocked me into paying more attention to the interactions. In our day-to-day life, as well as on the national stage, we can see people who are only concerned with their own gain rather than working together. The old New England aphorism, “a rising tide lifts all boats” doesn’t seem to mean anything to these people.

It’s beyond my understanding what formative thing could have happened to these people to cause them to choose to hurt others when they have the opportunity to work together.

I’m not sure what we should do with this information. Based on my very surface-level inquiry on AI, it looks like half the players prefer “player versus environment” rather than “player versus player” style of playing and 19% of the non-violent players have never eliminated another player. That’s not totally disheartening information, but I’m still disturbed that so many people choose the more violent path within the game.

I’m upset by the fact that these bad actors are actually real people who will happily hurt others for their own gain. As someone who is naturally concerned with their own survival, this game has woken me up to the fact that I could encounter these people in my day-to-day life and probably do without knowing it. There are bad people out there.

In the recent news, we’re seeing clear examples of what happens when people are given permission to give in to the part of their psyche that wants to hurt others and to forget about the natural collaborative social interaction that is normally expected within human culture.

This video game – and video games in general – don’t cause violent behavior. Plenty of people have grown up with “shooter” video games and view them as a skills-based challenge to collect items and survive obstacles. This particular game just brings to light that when given the choice, some people choose to hurt rather than collaborate. I’m sure social experiments like this have been done since scientists stared doing social experiments. This game is just a real-life, obvious example of what society is like currently, and in a smaller way has been like for time immemorial.

This game, and more specifically current society, seems to be giving permission to the bad actors to not mask their bad impulses. We’re seeing it on the national stage, we’re seeing it on social media when people make unkind comments on posts by strangers, and “cancel culture”, and we’re seeing it in public comment at local government meetings.

We’re clearly in a very unusual period in history – society had been going along in much the same way for generations upon generations, and suddenly the way we communicate and for some people - actually use our brains – has changed drastically.

I hope this shake-up doesn’t last long and I’m sure that in the grand scheme of things it won’t, but human lives are short and I hope those of us who are the “player versus environment” types don’t stop playing the game.