Jumbled Thoughts: The performance art of violence and why streamers seem to tend towards renegade playthroughs.

So, I am not an expert in this. Just want to get that out of the way. These are just my thoughts as I see them both from a viewer standpoint, performer standpoint and, weirdly enough, a story telling standpoint.

So first, the viewer standpoint. I am admittedly not one who likes to see the full renegade. The one to murder everyone. I also SUPER hate playing as them too. As far as I can tell and from statistics apparently, most gamers do. They will play at least their first playthrough being the good guy. This makes it so that when you watch someone play a game you already have, a viewer will often have one of two hopes. The first is to see how the entertainer reacts to the story they've been through, or hoping to see the consequences of actions they didn't take without needing to play the game all over again.

For this section, I want to remind people that I LOVE watching people like Team Four Star and a streamer named Dan Jones, and both who can often fall into some level of this category. Entertainers who do this are not bad, or wrong, it is more about the ubiquity of this version of entertainer.

So, now we have the dilemma an entertainer has to face. On the one hand, they themselves may not want to play the bad guy. On the other hand, while they may get yelled at by pacifist players, there will be a contingent of players overjoyed to see the renegade options. This gets worse when compounded by a couple key factors.

First, there's the element of bringing more people in because your playthrough is 'unique'. It will be an experience that you did not have yourself by people who often give over the top performances doing it, from the mustache twirling villain to the bloody psychopath.

The second is the art of click bait and spreading the word about your work. It's a hell of a lot easier to get someone to make a clip of some awful thing you did. It's abrasive, shocking, and usually leads to more material to bounce off of than what the good guy route would allow. So, if you want to keep people engaged, doing evil things can often help with that.

Finally, the story telling element, which plays a part into both of the parts above. An often quoted phrase about stories is that there is no story without conflict. I would say many slice of life shows can prove that to be wrong, but 90+% of stories and media are about these conflicts in one way or another. This is for good reason admittedly, as conflict presents obstacles and tests to the characters that they must either overcome or waffle under.

In a game, especially a role playing game like most Bethesda RPGs, this conflict can be extremely difficult to touch upon. After all, you're often just experiencing the world and it's questlines to have fun and be given new experiences, and that is wonderful! But there's only so much of that that viewers may want to see before it feels routine.

For most good guy characters in this sort of setting, the answer to every last question is to acquiesce and do the right thing. It is very clear how you're going to behave very early on. But then you add a bit of derangement to the character. A bloodlust or villainous side that could come out at any time. For any reason. You just never know what will trigger it.

This escalates though as you give into those urges. The more you do these awful acts, and the more reactions you get out of an audience for these actions, the more your character leans into the madness. Even worse if you can get mechanical benefits that you wouldn't as a good guy, such as healing by performing cannibalism.

This isn't me trying to say the audience or entertainer are at fault here. After all, the audience wants to be entertained the most they can, and the entertainer wants to be as enjoyable as possible. Feedback on that is useful and so the change happens.

But, violence doesn't need to be the answer to the need to change a character.

This is where I talk about experiences I've had to give context for some of these thoughts. A lot of them has to do with ways I can see a good guy being as entertaining over the long run.

First, get REAL DEEP into the roleplaying. If you're playing a scientist with a consciousness, make sure that science side comes out more. You'll get more real moral conflict out of that as you try not to hurt people for that which you desire. In fact, if you have to make an actually hard choice for the character, make it stay. If he meets too many science characters, he could become someone who often rebels against knowledge or scientists. A dark paladin of sorts possibly for the sake of proper scientific theory. These are the characters I often play.

Then there's the element of rebelling against chat. I once started up a New Vegas playthrough and someone stopped by my chat who fairly quickly said, "Hey, 1000 bits to kill the entire town." I said that wasn't how I play, even if I might like it.

I can have that reflect on the character by making it so that the character now never looks for more caps and is as generous as possible because he has no desire for money.

And finally, there's the way of breaking a good man. Not making him a card carrying villain, but making him end up feeling justified in the evils he may commit. My first playthrough of New Vegas had this where I hated Caesar's Legion, for obvious reasons, and liked the NCR. Except... they kept doing worse and worse things. Things that felt like they would be no better than the Legion.

And then Mr. House desired to be a despot. The man who had made so many miserable for his dream. But... that dream could also be the salvation of the wasteland. All it needed was the right hand.

So, in the final act of the game, I betrayed EVERYONE to make the wasteland safe and it is one of the most vivid, fun times I've ever had in gaming. Not because I was evil, but because I played the character as properly as I could.

But, in case you didn't notice, a lot of that is SUPER HARD to do and stay consistent. Instead of making it so that a character pointing a gun at you dies, or disrespect deserves decapitation, it takes real moral questions and a stance on those morals beyond "Do the right thing." And they will likely lead to violence too, but for a lot deeper reasons than just wanting to hurt people.

Or so I believe and I'd love to hear back from all of you!