The following is an episode of With a Terrible Fate’s weekly podcast discussing video-game storytelling from all angles. Find all episodes here.
On this week’s episode of With a Terrible Fate‘s podcast, join Aaron and Dan in a treacherous, invigorating relitigation of domains of video-game discourse with a reputation for being too messy and iner
The With a Terrible Fate podcast is back with a vengeance! On the heels of Aaron’s relocation to Los Angeles for his PhD, we’ve settled into a new weekly recording time and are excited to share more regularly scheduled conversations about the storytelling of video games with you, our dear listeners.
First on the docket is a follow-up to the conversation of our last episode, which discussed the normative and metanormative content of games that tell rich, spiritually and intellectually rewarding stories far beyond the constraints of what popular culture typically has in mind when it mentions “morality in gaming.” Now, we take a step back to ask whether the tools of game design could be used to actually require and motivate gamers to engage with these philosophical levels of inquiry when they wouldn’t otherwise do so. Miyazaki’s games trained a generation of unsuspecting gamers to become sophisticated anthropologists and historians of lore; what could come of turning these same mechanics to the domain of values and their sources?
Mind the spoilers for Elden Ring, Shadow of the Erdtree, Mass Effect 3, the Dark Souls series, Bloodborne, Spec Ops, and Undertale. Also note some spoiler-free discussion of the Ultima series and Baldur’s Gate 3.
Citations:
Hughes, Dan (2022). “The Gwyn Moment,” With a Terrible Fate.
Suduiko, Aaron (2024). “Why You Must Play Tales of Hearts R 389 Times,” With a Terrible Fate.
Williams, Bernard (1973). “A Critique of Utilitarianism,” in Utilitarianism: for and against, Cambridge University Press.
5 Comments
prfcstrm479 · September 28, 2024 at 4:30 pm
I really enjoyed listening to this podcast. You guys are very intelligent and I respect how deeply you are trying to consider video game storytelling. It’s truly inspiring how much insight you put into this.
There’s just one thing I think you overlooked. In your analysis of the situation from the critique of utilitarianism of Jim and the prisoners, you neglect to consider Jim’s option to sacrifice himself either by dying in place of one of the indigenous prisoners or taking the gun and threatening to kill himself unless all the prisoners are released unharmed. If either of those things stops the military from killing the prisoners, than Jim’s death is justified because he willingly gave up his life to save another. If not, his death is still not entirely in vain because it would attract the attention of his home country and render the dictatorship more suspect by foreigners, which means it has to be more careful about how it treats its citizens in order to stay legitimate and survive, reducing its ability get away with crimes against its own populace in the future.
That’s not to say the ultimate moral responsibility doesn’t belong to the military commander, I agree with you that it does. What I’m trying to say is Jim has more agency than you give him credit for, and he is able to use that agency to do something unequivocally good, even in this horrible situation.
Anyway, I’m still thankful you had that part in the conversation because it really got me thinking, since I feel like there are a lot of times in my life where I’m in situations that, though not nearly as extreme, operate on somewhat similar logic. Keep up the great work on this podcast and blog, I really enjoyed the last two episodes and the Tales of Hearts R essay, and I’m looking forward to whatever you put out next. Also, good luck on your PhD Aaron!
Aaron Suduiko · September 30, 2024 at 3:40 am
Thanks so much for engaging with the publication and joining the conversation, prfcstrm479! I’m honored that you’re finding our work valuable, and I hope you continue to enjoy our other work and upcoming projects 🙂
As I read Williams’ construction of the case in context, I don’t think he wants us to entertain the option or threat of self-sacrifice as a live option for Jim. I think the case is designed in such a way that the captain wouldn’t entertain that as responsive to the “special occasion” on account of which Jim had the right to kill a hostage (and Williams is explicit that Jim couldn’t get the gun and “hold [them] to threat”). And even if you want to open that possibility, the example aims to reveal a conflict between utilitarian views of morality and an individual’s integrity, and it’s probably taken as a given here that killing oneself, directly or indirectly, on a utilitarian basis would likewise undermine the personal projects that underwrite one’s integrity—only further reinforcing the point Williams aimed to make with the case absent those additional possible outcomes.
I don’t say any of that by way of debating the matter of what’s morally right for Jim to do in the case (that’s not really what’s at issue for Williams, either, as I read him). I’m just not convinced those considerations you raise complicate the case specifically with respect to the point Williams is making with it. But if those particular considerations are interesting to you and you haven’t read it, you might enjoy Judith Jarvis Thomson’s “Turning the Trolley”: she considers the relationship between sacrifice of the self and killing of the other quite centrally there, and it’s a great paper. And cheers to video games for being uniquely powerful tools for prompting the consideration of such dilemmas! I think that it’s remarkably common and powerful that gamers, by virtue of the ways in which games agentially and critically involve us in scenarios of this kind, quite readily call to mind the possibility of actions and outcomes which others may never have considered. That’s one of the many reasons I hope this whole agenda of normative inquiry as a core mode of gameplay can come to fruition!
Thank you, too, for the well wishes on my program, and for the time you spent reading my study of Tales of Hearts R! I’d love to know how you found it, if you’d ever like to discuss it.
prfctstrm479 · October 2, 2024 at 9:53 pm
Thank you so much for such a detailed and insightful reply! I understand better what you were trying to say now, and thank you for the recommendation.
The Tales of Hearts R study was great! I’ve never played any game in these series before, and you made me want to change that. I particularly liked the part about Kunzite (I think, whichever one is the robot type thing in the party) being empowered by his creator to be his own person and the analysis of xeromization. Since I hadn’t played the game I also enjoyed piecing together the story from the information in the essay. Looking forward to reading the Tales of the Abyss one next since the title intrigues me. Hope I can find the time for it soon.
Aaron Suduiko · October 3, 2024 at 12:02 am
My pleasure! If I got you to want to play Tales of Hearts R for the first time, then that alone made the study worth it. Let me know whenever you get to the Tales of the Abyss study; that one was a core motivator for Tales of Praxis more broadly, and its topic remains a focus of my research (you’ll notice it prefiguring some of the elements I treat more granularly in Tales of Hearts R). Hope to see you around the ecosystem; we have a couple of new podcast episodes dropping soon, with lots of other content close behind! And do feel welcome to join our Discord server as well, if you’d like a more dynamic way of engaging with the broader WaTF community!
prfctstrm479 · October 2, 2024 at 9:54 pm
Ah oops sorry for the duplicate replies, I thought the site ate my first one so I went and rewrote it. My bad hehe