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Is it wrong to enjoy video games that whose plots are heavy on mysticism?

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happiness

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 2/20/2016 at 0:02 AM, happiness said:

Take a game/series like Zelda where it's all fantasy, magic, monsters, and all things unreal. Does playing something like this clash with Objectivist values?

 

1. Reality

 

Dedication to the facts of reality is not a prohibition on counterfactual ideas (like Magick and Monsters). If human beings didn't make-believe (whether through playing a video game, reading a novel, envisioning some invention or simply making a plan) we'd still be on the Savannah, naked and hungry. Sure, Gorons aren't real - neither are John Galt or Howard Roark. That doesn't mean that we can't discuss them, or that such discussions have no value; only that they aren't factual.

 

A dedication to reality demands only that we keep our knowledge separate from our fantasies; prohibiting any substitution of fiction for fact. 

 

The Legend of Zelda, in and of itself, does not violate that.

 

2. Art

 

Art is a selective recreation of reality. No artist can portray the universe, in its entirety (and if they did then it wouldn't be art); they have to choose what to portray, and how, according to whatever-it-is that they consider important. A statue of man as a greek god shows both what thing and what about it was seen as worthwhile; so does a statue of Jesus bleeding on the cross, weeping and screaming in agony. Art conveys a sum of preconceptual notions, judgements, attitudes and passions; a certain perspective on life.

 

It is this perspective (found in every conceivable detail of any given artwork) that can confirm or contradict Objectivist values.

 

The Lord of the Rings, despite its unreal setting and altruistic themes, revolves around Sauron; this unstoppable malevolence of inconceivable power, who's coming to get you. You aren't given so much as a face by which to identify him - just an eye that sees all and hates all, waiting to get you. There's a consistent sense of hopelessness throughout, which one character after another succumbs to. There's a sense of inevitability as the protagonists march through a series of increasingly-nasty scenarios; marching defiantly into their doom. There are also occasional moments which radiate such a sense of triumph and purity that it makes all of Sauron's horrors seem trivial and irrelevant, by comparison.

 

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, despite its modern setting, revolves around every misfortune that befalls a certain family over the course of many years. Not a single member of this family is anybody of significance and the only decisive action they ever take is to find employment (for five-or-so of them) at a local slaughterhouse. It's a sweaty, dirty, dangerous job and they don't make enough to pay their bills, but they don't do anything to fix it - except when the youngest child finds a job selling newspapers. His parents say nothing when he does this, and neither attempt to help nor hinder him, until he takes to smoking the cigarettes he finds on the street (which prompts a good round of yelling and absolutely no action). This sort of tedium continues until the mother(?) gets raped and murdered by her boss, which the police don't do anything about (naturally) and then their cigarette-smoking son gets hit by a car and then the moral of the story is that Capitalism is evil.

 

...

 

In short, while there are certain artworks that clash with a rational sense of life, they don't necessarily come from one genre or another. Sometimes they flush the laws of physics right down the toilet and yet manage to capture the essence of human life. And, as a die-hard fan of sci-fi, I'm sad to say that some of the most revolting things I've seen have been scientifically plausible.

If we're analyzing video games that way then the same standards apply. And, by those standards, I'd rank the Legend of Zelda alongside Assassin's Creed. :thumbsup:

Edited by Harrison Danneskjold
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On 2/20/2016 at 0:02 AM, happiness said:

Take a game/series like Zelda where it's all fantasy, magic, monsters, and all things unreal. Does playing something like this clash with Objectivist values?

I haven't played video games in a long time, but I remember finding video games that relied really heavily on mysticism for their plot as not that enjoyable. There are some video games where you'll be fighting one enemy, and then he'll die for no reason and you'll be inexplicably transported to another location where you have to do something weird that magically helps you accomplish your goal even though there is no rational connection between them, etc. Games like that aren't fun for me because I like to see the plot move along in a logical fashion.

I don't remember much about The Legend of Zelda, but my impression was that it wasn't like that, for the most part. The characters all have believable motivations and the events in the plot have logical connections to one another. The princess gets kidnapped, and then the brave knight has to carry out a series of daring quests to defeat the evil king and rescue the princess. So, there is magic in the game, but the values of the game are not fundamentally mystical, at least as I remember it.

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