It's Life, Jim (But Not As We Know It)

   The seventh in a continuing series of articles related
                to the psychology of gaming

When I finally got rid of my Atari ST and the programs I'd
lovingly accumulated over the years, I only kept two pieces of
software.  One was a MIDI program for composing music on the
keyboard which was the most expensive program I'd bought up until
then (and probably since, come to think of it). The other was
Little Computer People ...

Little Computer People (LCP) had captured my imagination as soon
as I heard of it (1985!) and I bought it as soon as it was
available for the ST. The screen display was fairly simple. It
showed a cross-section through a two and a half storey house,
complete with the usual selection of furnished rooms. The first
time the program was run, a randomly generated character
cautiously opened the front door and peered round it, introduced
himself (yes, it was always a fella) and then moved in. He even
had a pet dog. It was up to you, the player, to keep both of them
happy and healthy.

The LCP (I can still remember that mine was called Lester)
communicated using a typewriter on a desk in one room. He'd tell
you about items he needed, what he thought about the house and
anything else that was relevant. He had a bedroom, kitchen, study
and more ... what DID he keep in his closet? No-one knew. You
could play games with him, ask him to play his piano, watch him
dance and exercise, give him gifts and pat him on the head to make
him happy. If he wanted your attention, he'd sometimes knock on
the 'inside' of the monitor! It was important to remember to
provide food and water (not to mention dog food). If your LCP got
unhappy or sick, you had to rectify the situation. I can't
remember what happened if you upset or starved them. I think they
moved out, which seems fair to me!

LCP started a trend for me, though I didn't realise it at the
time. I enjoy adventures and I relish a good RPG but there's
something magical about so-called 'god' games and I always end up
going back to them. Since LCP, I've enjoyed similar games where
I've taken charge of (among other things) individual people, a
pizza empire, a tower block, a holiday resort, an island, a city,
a civilization, the whole of creation, and heaven and hell. I've
guided people through job hunting and interaction with neighbours,
sorted out cockroach infestations and hired cleaning staff,
designed new pizza toppings, tried to take an entire civilization
into space and attempted to save peoples' souls.

Has this made me a better person, or just given me control issues?

To me, there is something infinitely fascinating about a god game
though I know others would disagree. It's hard for me to say
exactly why I enjoy them so much. I *know* these games aren't
real, that the people *don't* exist inside my computer but that
doesn't make me less involved when I'm playing, just as I do when
playing an RPG. In an RPG I get very miffed when any of my party
are injured or killed and, as I mentioned in an earlier article in
this series, I like to run the same characters because they are so
familiar to me. In the end, my party *are* like real people to me
and they certainly display character traits such as bravery, good
or bad luck and leadership skills. God games have a similar
engrossing effect on me.

The amount of involvement I feel with a god game varies according
to how much I identify with the characters. It's a very personal
interaction for me and I'm less likely to be moved by the plight
of a number of people than by just one. So it was easy for me to
be detached from a game like Civilization (fortunately, since I
was useless at it and my people never managed to leave Earth and
venture into space). But when my character in The Sims got
depressed, I found it impossible to continue with the game. I know
of other people who were equally affected when their 'pets' died
in Creatures.

As the years have passed, times have changed. In the 80s, if you
ill treated your LCP, he just moved out but with modern god games
there is more scope for a player to be benevolent, despotic or
downright cruel. The Sims is a classic example where you can set
out to give your character the best time possible, or totally ruin
his or her life. And you can create a city in SimCity which is
Utopia, or an urban ghetto.

But does it really matter what you do, how kind or cruel? Should
we keep reminding ourselves that they're only collections of
pixels, after all, not real people?

Wondering if I was becoming some sort of megalomaniac, I called on
psychotherapist Adrian Blake for his views. He told me:

     "Psychology has quite a lot to say about power.  Why do we
     seek it?  Alfred Adler (a contemporary of Freud's) had an
     interesting theory.  He felt we all have at least some
     feelings of inferiority stemming from our childhood.  After
     all, he maintained, as children, even in the best of
     childhoods, we are *bound* to feel inferior.  The adults
     around us are all-powerful and know a thousand times more
     than we do (simply because they've been around for longer).
     In adult life, he argued, we will try to compensate to the
     extent we felt disempowered as children.

     The problem is that people who felt especially disempowered
     will try to OVERcompensate.  This can result in the control
     freakery (as it has been described) of 10 Downing Street.
     People who really feel strong and confident do not need to
     control others to prove they are powerful.  The unsettling
     logic of this is that we tend to get the wrong people as
     political leaders (as the comedian Billy Connolly, quoting an
     old Chinese proverb, has cryptically said "People who show
     any signs of craving power should be immediately banned from
     ever being given any").

     So what about computer games?  Perhaps the first thing to
     accept is that we all have at least *some* feelings of
     inferiority.  If in a computer game we decide to wipe out a
     civilisation, we need to acknowledge that there's a part of
     us that does want to achieve superiority, that this part of
     us gets a kick out of feeling god-like.


     The health warning comes in if the *only* way we can feel
     powerful is by wiping out computer civilisations or
     controlling others.  Then of course we have a problem.  What
     to do?  Run for Prime Minister maybe.  Personally I'd
     recommend therapy but then as Mandy Rice Davis famously
     remarked "He would say that, wouldn't he?" "













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