As the reply says, most games with any semi serious kind of role playing component reward players for kind and good actions, and usually have penalties and consequences for “bad” actions. Despite all that people often choose to be bad, or to be bad and load Daves after. I mean, people hack and grief games like Minecraft or Among Us that are literally about communal fun and a fair spirit of play. By and large it isn’t the games that are responsible for things like lack of empathy or kindness.
You can spend hours, all day immersed in an environment where you’re entire purpose is to fight evil and wrong, where most all your rewards come from being good or being selfless, and then you go back to the real world where you generally don’t pay your rent or get all the best items and filthy rich helping people, and focus is less about what you did to make the world better today and more about what you did to make your life better or the economy better.
If I had to cast ANY real criticism on most games it might be that they tend to reward a player for almost any good thing they do. Perhaps life should be that way, but it usually isn’t. The kindly farmer you help save their land against an evils corporation- even though they offer you a big pay day to help take it- in real life isn’t likely to give you his life savings, or a unique powerful or cool item he happens to have. You’ll probably get a thank you. Maybe a pie or something, perhaps a life long pen pal or MAYBE some free produce whenever you stop by. No level up, no karma the whole world responds to on meeting you, little or no tangible reward.
But it’s really about us and our focus as a society. Who we REALLY value even while we SAY we value teachers or nurses or those in service of the public- in reality most people would rather their kid be a lawyer or a doctor or a big time business exec or celebrity than a teacher. We give lip service to “heroes” that give all they have to do good for others, maybe once in awhile crowd find them a new car or pay their rent for a few months... for their lifetime of selfless service. But often that’s more to make us feel good, being a hero to a hero.
What we tell children, getting along, listening to others, inclusion, that effort is what counts, drinking and drugs are bad, blah blah- as adults we don’t live that. At some age all kids learn by realizing, or by seeing that the way we told them to behave isn’t the way the adults that have the money and power and the nice things behave. We tell kids to share, we tell them to not hog things so the other kids can have some too. “If you don’t have enough for everyone then don’t show it off...” all these things- and then we lock families in cages and separate kids from their parents- sometimes losing track of who belongs with who. But that’s different. That’s adult stuff you know?
So perhaps it isn’t that games don’t have enough compassion or empathy. Maybe they have too much. Maybe, they are part of a problem where we fill kids heads with high minded ideals that we don’t practice, often we don’t even try to practice; so that when they do get to the real world or get glimpses of it, and see what it’s really like and what really gets rewarded, they know that games just plain aren’t realistic. That in the real world, if you’re scared about having less, even if you already have so much more, you lock families in cages to stop from having to share with them? And then, unlike a game, you get rewarded for it?
I mean even Pokemon Snakewood has that at some point, and we're talking about a pokemon game that lets you loot corpses so...
(it's my fave hack rom out there btw, you should check it)
But yeah. Undertale wrecks you emotionally when you take the bad route.
(it's my fave hack rom out there btw, you should check it)