Are you good? Or are you eeeevil?

Winda Benedetti Citizen Gamer • E-mail

It’s not easy being mean.

For starters, people call you names. They tell you they hate you and shake their fists when you pass. Sometimes they organize protests against you. Sometimes they pelt you with rocks.

And who can blame them? After all, you’ve just forced an innocent bystander to take a blast of psychotic black goo to the face so that you don’t have to. You’ve also hoarded piles of food while others in the post-apocalyptic city you call home are starving. Meanwhile, you sucked all the life-force out of a wounded person (or three) so that you could recover from your own wounds.

But hey, what good are the superhuman powers you’ve just been granted if you can’t be a little selfish now and again?

Welcome to “inFamous,” a game that gives you a choice — be a good guy who sacrifices of himself in order to do right by the troubled world around him, or be a bad guy who uses his newly found gifts for his own gain.

I happen to be playing “inFamous” as a bad guy, not because I enjoy watching innocent digital people fry at the ends of the lightning bolts I shoot from my fingertips, but because it is the opposite of what I normally do when given such a choice in a game.

“InFamous,” an open-world action game for the PlayStation 3, is just one of several games of late that let you decide whether to play as a saint or a scoundrel. “Fable II,” “Fallout 3,” “Mass Effect” and “City of Heroes/City of Villains” all ask players to make a choice: Walk the white path of the righteous or walk the black path of the damned. And some of them are exploring the murky grays in between.

Saint or scoundrel: You decide
But I confess, I have a hard time being a bad guy, even in a video game. While I know that there’s nothing remotely real about these games, doing dastardly digital deeds still makes me squirm.

When playing “Mass Effect,” I couldn’t bring myself to take the ruthless Renegade path, which would have required me say things like “A lot of people want my help these days, what makes you special?” to characters desperate for my assistance (and much worse). And as for “Bioshock,” there’s no way in hell I could bring myself to harvest (i.e. kill) the Little Sisters.

Clearly I’m not the only one saddled with a conscience susceptible to virtual guilt. Nate Fox, game director at Sucker Punch, says that when they tested “inFamous,” they found that about 80 percent of players decided to play as a good guy while 20 percent embraced the dark side. Meanwhile, Brian Clayton, general manager for Paragon Studios, says that typically between 70 to 80 percent of “City of Heroes/Villains” customers are playing as superheroes.

Paragon Studios Though I have dabbled in the dark side by creating a villainous alter ego for myself in the MMO game "City of Heroes/City of Villains," I much prefer being one of the good guys.

So what about the other 20 percent? While I’m busy feeling squeamish about extinguishing virtual children, clearly many players are getting a kick out donning the blackest of black hats in a game.

Vince Ste. Marie, a 19-year-old student in Winter Park, Fla., says he’s generally a good guy (his girlfriend even calls him her “white knight”). And yet, he prefers to play a villain online. He’s been playing the massively multiplayer online game “City of Villains” for almost three years and has built up a “level-50 dark melee/dark armor brute” (basically a big ol’ demon in regular speak).

“I grew up watching a lot of Disney movies where the good guy always wins,” he says. “But I would always think ‘what would happen if the bad guy won?’ I don’t find playing the hero’s side as interesting because you know what’s going to happen. You’ll win in the end, everything will be sunshine, you’ll get the girl. It’s all stuff we’ve seen before.”

Joe Morrissey, senior designer for “City of Heroes/Villains,” points out that playing a baddie in a game can be a great way to blow off steam.

“Most people are law-abiding citizens and being a villain allows them to shirk off all of the responsibility that goes along with that,” he says. “It allows them to really escape who they are.”

After a tough day at school, Ste. Marie says a bit of role-playing as a villain “definitely takes the edge off.

“You come home, you log into ‘City of Villains’ and you run into a crowd of guys, sweep them to the floor and just laugh,” he says. “There’s nothing like a cup of butt-kick coffee to put you in a good mood.”

MORE FROM CITIZEN GAMER

Citizen Gamer Section Front

Video games are cheaper than couples therapy Wake up to video game sleeper hits Gaming our way to musical genius Will gamers go for Sony's PSPgo? Which game machine is right for you? In dark gaming times, Nintendo DS shines Is the president a video game hater? Console wars: Microsoft drops Xbox 360 price Sony introduces slimmer PS3 and big price cut With video games, it’s feast or famine Citizen Gamer Section Front   Add Citizen Gamer headlines to your news reader: