Robots, human avatars, and immersion

Hey guys, I'm wondering what people's reactions to robots as playable characters is compared to humans. Would you play something like Counter Strike/Call of Duty if everyone was androids or non-humanoid robots instead? What about an MMO? How does that affect immersion for you? I've been talking to some friends who have an aversion to human violence but don't mind playing games where you blow up robots. Personally, I don't see much difference between a computer game human and robot, but others do. What are your thoughts? I'll also add a poll just for helpful tallying too. I wish I could add multiple polls to a single thread . Thanks all!!!

 

I'm with your friends on that. If the game depicts realistic violence — sniping head shots, blowing away large numbers of enemies with machine guns, etc. — and this is directed at people, then I find it repugnant. But if it's evil robots, I'm cool with it.

I'm thinking of the Terminator arcade game... one of the only shooting games I've played at any length. You're armed with a machine gun and occasional grenade launcher, destroying robots (and occasional robotic vehicles) by the bucketful. It's good clean fun, but if the targets were human instead, I'd find it both morally questionable and no fun.

For what it's worth, zombies are acceptable targets too... though a bit more in the gray area.

 

This is a loaded topic -- or perhaps more than one topic!

We've always had war stories, and kids have always played Cops-and-Robbers and "army," pretending to shoot each other with make-believe guns, or swinging sticks in earlier eras. It's okay to have humans fighting in make-believe, even interactive make-believe like a shooter. Gratuitous violence can cross the line, though.

I think this applies to any sufficiently anthropomorphized sentient character, not just humans. (Watership Down still gets to me.) Zombies are acceptable targets because they're no longer sentient. They're traditionally depicted as mobile wood-chippers made of dead meat. There's no sense that they have any kind of potential. Nothing unique is lost when they cease to exist. (This accepted convention lets movies like Fido play with the idea, re-anthropomorphizing zombies to make the player feel something for individual zombies.) On the other hand, an android like Lt. Data in ST:TNG doesn't have even a zombie's human flesh and blood, but viewers felt a loss when he died because something unique was extinguished from that world. Inflicting gratuitous violence makes it worse, as if that uniqueness were extinguished simply to satisfy some twisted visceral desire.

Which is a long-winded way to say that it's okay for humans to fight humans in a make-believe world, as they have in make-believe worlds as long as humans have been around. But there's usually no justification for crossing into torture porn, regardless of whether the sentient victim is human or not. In rare occasions, it can be done judiciously to a thematic effect, such as supporting the brutal, nihilistic theme of Fallout 3, which was inspired by the even more brutal McCarthy novel, The Road.

MMOs are more about player characters than player action. I could enjoy an MMO that had non-human characters as long as they were sufficiently anthropomorphized -- and I mean that not in the physical sense of being human-shaped, but rather that they'd have humanlike aspirations, fears, relationships, etc. Then they're essentially just humans in a different skin.

So, anyway, I voted "I prefer humans" because it's usually easier for games to make them relatable. When I see a human enemy running at my avatar guns blazing, I feel like he or she has it out for me; it's personal to some degree. When it's a robot, I feel like it's just an obstacle, even if a human player is controlling it.

 

Just to throw a mid point in because the topic is interesting. What do you all think of anthropomorphised robots that have human conscience e.g. There's a way to download human conscience into a robot form for either real time action (the player character is still alive somewhere) or the conscience is transferred out into a robot when the human shell dies? If it was all tied in & the player is aware of the human character linked to the robot character so you had some investment in the transition would it impact how you played & what you enjoyed?

 

Right, the "robots" I referred to in my post are mindless killing machines, not sentient beings. Same for the zombies. Of course it doesn't have to be that way, as Tony and Ted point out above.

In the case of robots, though, even if they're sentient (say, uploaded post-humans), I don't get too broken up about destroying them because I assume I'm merely committing property damage, not murder. Once your mind is uploaded, making backups is a simple and obvious thing to do. (As it happens, I wrote quite a lot on this topic when I was in college!) I also assume that such uploaded folk would have sensible caps & filters on their pain inputs. So you're causing disruption, for sure, but it's not sadistic as it would be when hurting or killing squishy people like us.

Also, my answer was in the context of a shoot-em-up game... if it were an RPG, my answer would be quite different. I assume the objective of an RPG is not to just mow down rows of enemies, but to explore, learn, grow, and (yes) occasionally fight. Somehow that seems more acceptable — perhaps because the fights are more balanced? I haven't analyzed that as deeply as I probably should.

Finally, realism matters. One of my favorite games when I was a kid was Sabotage, which does involve blowing helicopters and paratroopers to bits (which then rain down, taking out other craft and paratroopers on a good day). It's horribly violent if you think of it in realistic terms. But, since the paratroopers were only a few pixels tall, it was easy to abstract it and just treat it for what it was — a whimsical game of reflexes and coordination. I can do that when it's just a few pixels, but not when it's high-resolution lifelike blood and gore.

And I suspect that's where the major difference between gamers lies... with enough exposure, you come to ignore the realism, no matter how good it is, and see any game as merely a whimsical test of skill.

 

I suppose part of the question is: Am I a robot blowing up other robots, or a human doing it? Not that it matters too much, I am just curious

I think from the business angle you lose little by avoiding human on human violence and gain a potential market that would otherwise boycot you. However, I also think it will always be less impactful to destroy a machine over a human, all things equal. This means you either need to focus a lot of energy on the emotional impact of killing machines or make the process of destruction so appealing we get away from the fact it is simply more impactful to us by default to kill another human.

 

Or just avoid the whole violence thing, like Splatoon. I think something like Splatoon with robots would be fun.

 

Splatoon would be fun even if the characters were just blocks of tofu!

And yes, kudos to Nintendo for showing us (again) that games can be insanely fun without being violent. I'm probably going to buy a Wii U sometime just to play that game. (And then I'll probably also get Super Smash Bros, which is violent in a way, but not in the way we've been discussing in this thread!)

 

Why is there no option for preferring humanoid robots? Or just preferring robots in general? There's so many neat design decisions you can make with robots that you just can't with meatbags

 

Possibly related to this topic: APA links violent games to aggression, asks devs to improve parental controls
(Be sure to read Kotaku's counterargument before going on a rant.)

I assume the reason for robot characters instead of human characters in a game has something to do with perceptions of violence. If it's just because robots are cool, well, then never mind.

 

I actually think the robot violence over human violence is more likely to be done as a way to circumvent censorship & higher 18+ classifications

 

Added another option just for you .

 

Myself, I really do prefer humans, or at least humanoid creatures (ex: elves, of course) because that has a large impact on how involved I am in my character and iimmersed I am in the world I enter. Perhaps since I'm a human I need a human-shaped conduit to get me to the game-world? That's what it feels like. If I'm playing a robot I always have that "it's-just-a-game" feeling wrapping everything I do. At the same time, I do not like grotesque violience in movies or games and avoid it when I can. I appreciate gore filters in games and turn it off whenever I can. Personally, removing all gore from a game but keeping a human character is already enough of an abstraction that the violence against in-game humans doesn't bother me provided it isn't gratuitous.

The source of these thoughts for me is I am building an online space combat simulator where you can act as a fighter pilot as usual, but in addition you can play as crew members on larger ships within the big battles. I have no current plans of personal combat via boarding or space stations, only spaceship vs spaceship, although I can see this being a future expansion. I want my game to be very immersive (maintaining a first-person perspective at all times) and I don't see a way around an all (or almost all) human cast to support that immersion, even if I do understand other's reasons for desiring robot avatars. Including android avatars as a selectable option is simple enough, but that would hardly help those who dislike human violence.

 

In a game like that, I don't think you have to worry about it too much. Spaceship vs. spaceship is already abstracted enough. I think the human violence concerns come up mainly with FPS games, where direct mass murder is the primary game mechanic. Here, though, you're either piloting a ship firing at other ships, or you're playing a crewman probably not firing at anything at all — I presume you're scrambling around trying to divert power to the shields or whatnot. No need for robot avatars there that I can see.

Sounds like a fun game, by the way!

 

@Palimon As long as the robotic avatars have a feeling of sentience to them, I think a lot of people would still feel an immersive connection. The key element, I think, is sentience. We (as fleshy meatbags) just have a stronger connection to fleshy meatbags, and can much easier ascribe sentience to other fleshy meatbags.

Generally, most of us are conditioned to believe, if even only subconsciously, that something mechanical and computerized couldn't have real (hard) intelligence. And rightly so, our current levels of tech don't allow for such things. And even if something is intelligent, does it have that ephemeral bit that is "real" sentience?

If you go with robots, don't make them too human. Make them their own. Making them too human would make it harder to empathize with them and see them as sentient beings. However, making them too alien serves the same purpose (great advice, right? )

If you want to look at a pretty good example of a fictional robotic entity that was sentient, and gave off the feeling of sentience, I recommend looking at EDI and Legion from Mass Effect (especially Legion). Legion was both just human enough and just alien enough to create a really empathetic character imho. That series is actually what flipped the switch in my head for seeing an AI as capable of true sentience and having a "soul".

Sorry for rambling

 

No rambling - all on topic . Yeah,ME was awesome. I get what you're saying about robots being too close to humans to allow anthropomorphism. The Uncanny Valley (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley) is a similar idea. I've toyed with the idea of engineers either being able to play as or remote control humorous maintenance bots. But again, that's only a single crew member or a small portion of the crew, not the entire crew.

 

I wouldn't like to play as a robot unless the game had a strong 'robot consciousness' theme. As an enemy, robots are fine, as are evil aliens, and tbh humans as well, I don't really have a problem with human enemies as long as the context is right.

I guess cyborgs fall into the human category, since the human part is really 'what matters'. Cyborgs are my favourite theme. I'm also making a space combat game and I'm toying with the idea of the enemy being genetically engineered cyborgs, which introduces multiple moral dilemmas since not only are they essentially human but in some sense were not given a choice in being who they are. It can make for a strong story though, like Metal Gear Solid, and I'm not averse to intelligently controversial themes in my games. See how it goes.

 

I like to always direct questions like this back to a qore question, will it improve game play. If you have a very long slow paced game that is heavily connected to story, I would go human, you player would usually connect easier to a human so would have more of a impact and improve game play (not saying you cant do the same with a robot, but it would usually be more challaging.). If you plan on slaughtering hundreds of enemy's in horrid ways I would go with robots, unless you want to make something truly gory.

Sorry to leave my answer open, but hopefully I have shared my helpful 2 cents.

 

Nice!

 

okay i guess i have 2 things:

okay, so recently i started playing the game Red Orchestra 2, its soviets vs nazis WW2 , meant to be a realistic tactical shooter, what amazed me is that i think its a war game that did it right, the music is depressing, the guys screeaaaam when theyre dying, and when you are bleeding out.. when u get shot in the game, your vision starts getting hazy and grayscale, you are bleeding out and have to bandage, sometimes you are just bleeding out and just die, cant do anything about it, and your character sometimes says things like "nooo!! its not faiir!!" "why did i come here!?" etc, and when your teamates die "nooo! brother!!" and youll be running somewhere and boom the guy in front of you is suddenly blood and pieces raining down ... lol the players sometimes joke "ooh damn now i have PTSD" .. lol
the war game is meant for fun, some can take away how crappy war is. call of duty is just straight up glorification..
recently ive been studying "cannon fodder" a game for amiga, or SNES (some other platforms i think too) .. lol theres a screen where guys are lining up to be recruited into the army, in front of a hill of graves, and every guy you lose, adds another grave, and the score says "Home: Away:" .. as if war was a sport, and theres soo many levels in the game, where its straight up UNFAIR! and you have to suicide some of your guys to win, at the end of a mission it scrolls Lost In Action: tends to be a HUGE list, literally 50 guys names go by with depressing music, and then it says Heroes In Victory, and like 2-4 guys names go by.


i guess the other thing is, i HATE robots, i HATE the idea that someday a new hitler or something will have an army of robots and wont even have to convince/trick the hearts of the people to "fight for a good cause" and the rich will have the robots, and the starving will have to fight them... (and the rich will say the starving, protecting their own land are "terrorists")...
i got into this art medium of games because well one i modded tons of games my whole life, but also, because someday i hope to make like a grand art piece magnum opus that will convince the hearts of the people to abolish all ideas of robots, and so my convictions automatically make me despise any type of art that glorifies robots,
actually, as i try to come up with ways to "attack" the idea of robots, i find a dilemma in that, Any depiction of the idea of a robot can possibly perceived contrary to my intention, so i wonder if instead i should not have any input upon the "path" towards the idea of robotics... for example a countermeasure to robotics only furthers the technology of robotics (i was considering becoming an engineer in the field) ... lol

also, having computer science knowledge, i know computer consciousness is a false idea, it is simply 1s and 0s, (~5v, ~0v) .. computers are glorified abacus beads, and upon this structure, true consciousness cannot be engineered... it can only appear to be...
likewise, a 3d model character may appear to be a living person... (or handpuppet)
also, the absurdity of dying to a complex trap (animated rocks) like a mouse

 

I haven't read all the replies yet, so here are just my quick thoughts on the topic. Imho you need to decide first if you want to base choices in this area on "will it get more people to play my game or not?". If that is what you want to achieve then I think you are asking in the wrong place to get any meaningful data because a) the sample size here is way too small, and b) you'll want to hear opinions from average consumers in your target demographic instead of almost only gamedesigners. It's an interesting topic to discuss here in its own right, no question. But if you really are serious about designing a multiplayer combat game around it, I think a big poll on a gaming forum might generate better data.

Personally I doubt that there is a large number of people that truly would enjoy (and buy!) Call of Duty if only it was androids/mechs/robots instead of humans, drones and the occasional dog. I am pretty sure however that confronted with the choice between "Robots of Duty" and "Call of Duty" a significant portion of players would want to kill human avatars, just like they are used to.

In some countries the topic itself has a taste of censorship to it, because for example Half-Life 1 in Germany had robot soldiers instead of human soldiers. That totally changed the atmosphere and it was not a choice for the players, it was forced on them through censorship. There is a steam group fighting against censorship in games and it has 87k members. So there are a few people that care about such things. All the guys I know that play first person shooters would go out of their way to get uncut games with full blood and gore. I don't know about female players in that genre. The two that I know probably don't care but I don't know for sure. At least one of them didn't mind the comical violence in borderlands and was amused by it if anything.

If you ask me if it is a good idea sales-wise to make a multiplayer shooter all robots, I'd say "most likely not". If you ask me if it is a good feature to allow players to customize their own experience and have an extensive dropdown list where they can make choices about the opposing teams in a multiplayer shooter I'd say "it sure is a nice feature, but it probably is a waste of resources" because you start to make content that only caters to a small portion of the playerbase instead of putting the effort into things that benefit everyone. And I'd love to see the emerging S***storm if for example Call of Duty gave its players the choice to select for each team (enemies and your own team) between "humans, mixed gender", "humans, all male", "humans, all female" and "all robots".