The Responsibility of Game Developers and Fiction Creators for the Mental Health of Fans
It is the final fate of your soul, Seto Kaiba!
I was rewatching one of my favorite duels in Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters, the duel between Kaiba Seto and Pegasus J. Crawford (Kaiba and Maxmillian Pegasus in the 4Kids dub, respectively), in which Pegasus mentally toys with Kaiba due to Kaiba's lack of knowledge of magic and...
SPOILERS in case you have not seen the Yu-Gi-Oh anime!
...in the final play of the duel, Pegasus destroys Saggi the Dark Clown with Devil Box, winning the duel.
The cost for losing this particular duel (the cost being a "Penalty Game" in the manga, a magical, sick, and gruesome price the loser of a Dark Game must pay) was the loser's soul (Mind or こころ in the Japanese)...
Note:
Pegasus's Millennium Eye attack in Japanese was called マインド カード or "Mind Card" [mind you this was a 2000s translation, so "soul" is used intentially to strike more of a chord with American viewers. Why? Due to the feeling of soul-sucking corporate work. However, it's a funny Japanese double entendre because こころ can interchangeably refer to "mind" or "soul." However, the use of katakana for the foreign English loanword マインド means the word "mind" has emphasis here. Specifically, the emphasis draws parallels in reference to Corporate terminology overtaking the adult mind.
...is bound to a playing card while their physical body is made to do the bidding of the winner of the Penalty Game, in this case Pegasus.
PEGASUS used Corporate Contract!
The fact that Pegasus's attack is called マインド カード or Mind Card in Japanese means something. Starting with slot machines, many big wigs have realized the hypnotic effect of games on a person or group of people to make millions or billions of dollars.
However, what is the real-world effect on the consumer?
In the case of games, whoever buys the digital or physical copies of the games wholesale is the customer [think GameStop or Steam] and the player is the consumer. I recently learned these words have distinct meaning in supply chain terminology.
When you are making a fictional universe or setting, you are literally binding the mental activity of the player/reader/consumer to your creation for a set period of time.
(Caveat: not to demonize this! With skill, this is enriching. We have a word: "satisfying")
Due to what's called The Zeigarnik Effect, wherein people have heightened focus on incomplete tasks (due to us living in the Industrial age of rapid factorization [by that I mean human life is currently defined by the factory]), if the fictional universe is not satisfactorily insular, then fans can get lost in these universes, hungry for more story and content, and the only one who can provide more is the creator(s)/writer(s)/developer(s).
In a sense, where the shadow side of this dynamic plays out (we at Empathy Software can't judge as creators of fictional universes--in their original essense, they are wholesome, harmless, educational and just plain fun), people can get completely lost in these worlds and lose sight of their actual reality.
This is a very clear-cut example of a long-term toxic relationship, and in cases like Pokémon, it's very obvious that despite all of the (often brilliant) theorycrafting by the fans (some of which should be canon...some of the fan art is jaw-droppingly brilliant and talented), Pokémon is very clearly doing an ass pull with each new installment. They are doing what they need to do to meet sales goals and deadlines with no clue/answer to the literal thousands of fan theories there out there (こんにちは, NINTENDOのスカウト!), even if they say they know the answer. Some (some, they're still very smart) of these developers are making things up as they go along and using mystery to keep fans hooked for (now) literal decades.
(In terms of toxic and narcissistic dynamics, this is a behavior called "breadcrumbing.")
The matter partially comes down to intent. Does the writer/creator intend to make a satisfying story or intend to decieve? Energy can't be destroyed.
Having been in the otaku subculture (well, I technically still am 😂), this is exemplary in the typical Western otaku having a filthy bedroom but encylopedic knowledge of their animé (guilty).
Granted!! We (Empathy Software) don't want to bleed into ableism. For some people, they are neurodivergent and animé is their special interest. Some may also have obsessive traits (😁) that attract them to the often mentally rich landscape of animé, but again, that's something I (Russell) strongly feel these Companies should take into consideration.
Some players of games don't have much to interact with outside of the game world, and a person can get utterly lost in fiction to the point that it has a very real harmful effect on their lives and the lives of others around them.
Some people spend their entire lives in these idealized fictional universes, in the same vein as people who spend their days mindlessly at slot machines (We're Millennials...The Matrix calls it the Blue Pill, of course). When you have villains like Pegasus using Mind Card to say lines like "it is the final fate of your soul, Seto Kaiba," how can one not see how these games and universes are (sometimes, where it's not the passion of the creator) being used to trap people in addiction for their lives, or how can you not make real-world parallels to the choices going on in Board Room Meetings that affect real people?
Think back to 2019, when Game of Thrones's horrible ending aired, and how many millions of people took to social media expressing passionate anger. Or, think to the YouTube uploads of people expressing feelings of being lost and/or betrayed after hours of emotional, entreprenurial, and sometimes financial investment into the franchise? Remember that petition?
When you have entire franchises dedicated to making real human persons escape from reality, which has laws that the escapees are potentially not following, what are some of the harmful effects?
If you look in the animé fandom, look to the Isekai genre, which is all about a social reject escaping to an otherworld where he is all-powerful. One particular harmful effect is young men seeking power fantasies in fictional unvierses where they can sexually harrass, assault, and abuse women and children, like the shocking scenes in the 2013 installment of Sword Art Online. Then, all of this is handwaved because it's "fiction" or an "outlet." Ultimately, if you're not harming a real human, you can't be faulted, but if a fan is constantly consuming and eroticizing this material, how strong of a neurological connection to the material are they making in their brain before the fiction stimulus no longer satisfies? Especially the male consumers?
Context: the below video isn't all that relevant to this blog post, but I'm posting it anyways because I have no tolerance for this problem in the community.
We're adults. Say the words. "Rape culture."
Powerful men (and some women! Yeesh) like it, and keep it hush until they can get the money, power, and influence to act on it. This one's not rocket science, folks.
This is one of countless examples of the very real effects that allowing a person's entire mental landscape to be consumed by fiction, and the mental health of the people here often goes ignored or unchecked. These are often highly, highly unregulated spaces.
As a developer and creator in this space, we can't help but agonize over the real impact of our products.
Game Developers have a very serious responsibility for the psychologies of the people they're developing for. As creators at Empathy Software, we strongly believe that.
Warm regards,
Russell Campbell | President & CEO | Empathy Software LLC
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PUBLISHED: 14:00 ET 11 October 2024
LAST EDITED: 20:34 ET 14 October 2024