Once upon a time there was this boy who fell out of love with games. He sold most of his little collection to afford alcohol - which was immensely more fun. All was well in the World of Moonshine until the day the boy, almost out of coincident, got a hold of the new (well, almost new) Playstation 2. With it came several games, amongst others Silent Hill 2 and Grand Theft Auto 3. These games came to play a extremely important role in the boys attitude towards gaming and in the end even himself.
Of course the boy is me. I am not going to write as this was some magical tale, at least not if you do not want me to that is. Then there was a majestic dragon, who... No. I am not going to. The thing with Silent Hill 2 and Grand Theft Auto 3 was that they became important tools for my feelings. All the darkness, angst, frustration, the feeling of being powerless and the thirst for a truly own way to go suddenly had a way to channel themselves. I felt I had found a counterpart to myself in Silent Hill 2. I also found, and this is the most important part, that I could do what I wanted in Grand Theft Auto 3. While I did finish the game - most of my time in Liberty City was spent doing other things like hunting pimps, taking the easy way out of situations, always killing the ones I thought deserved it and so on. Choices that was not available in the games from my past. That was probably one of the main reasons for me backing out of gaming, there was just no room for selfish, evil if you will, actions. There was a good guy way and Game Over way. One very important aspect of the virtual worlds I surround myself with these days is that I can explore and live out my darker sides, my desperate longing for a simpler way of thought, where I can kill those in my way and achieve everything I want through sheer determination instead of standing in line accepting my position. In the real world I am trying to be kind, patient, collected and loving, but there is this small part of me that want to be ruthless, spontaneous, selfish and cold.
There is also the fact that many times the evil side in games is just misunderstood, betrayed, angry, discontent. It does not not want to let the other side just get what it wants, it wants revenge. In such games, like for example Killzone, I happily defend the dark side. I often want to take the communist side in first person shooters, not because I agree with their politics but because I am so utterly fed up with the notion of a clearly "good" side (mostly the US) to always join forces with.
Another example of this is the Gargoyle's Quest games (where the second one is in the banner of this blog), Firebrand is an evil being to that extent that he does what he have to in order to reach his goals. He happens to do more good than bad, but he does not intent to be good - he fights for himself. For his own personal goals. If one stands in the way there will be consequenses. There is also games where the evil side is bad to choose, like Lemmings. Kind of hard to get anywhere.
