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CronoDAS comments on Memetic Hazards in Videogames - Less Wrong
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It's interesting to see what happens when videogames behave more like real life. For instance, in Oblivion (and Fallout 3), you can't just take things unless you're in the middle of nowhere. If someone sees you, they cry out "stop, thief!". Equally, attacking people who didn't attack you first in civilised areas will draw the guard or vigilantes down on your head, and most of the stuff you find lying around is worthless trash that isn't worth the effort to haul away and sell.
I remember how jarring it was when I first tried to take something in Oblivion, only for a bystander to call for the guard. And then I realised that this is how NPCs should react to casual theft.
The Kleptomaniac Hero is very common in video games. If the game lets you take it, you probably should - and you can take a lot of stuff from random people's houses and such, while the people who actually own it stand there doing nothing.
This is an example of Conservation of Detail, which is just another way to say that the contrapositive of your statement is true: if you don't need to take something in a game, then the designer won't have bothered to make it take-able (or even to include it.)
I always assume that there's all sorts of stuff lying around in an RPG house that you can't see, because your viewpoint character doesn't bother to take notice of it. It might just be because it's irrelevant, but it might also be for ethical reasons: your viewpoint character only "reports" things to you that his system of belief allows him to act upon.
I want to see a game where people react normally to this kind of thing ... maybe even have the police increase their watches for thieves as more burglaries happen.
In the original Baldur's Gate, you'd get in trouble if any NPC saw you stealing something. And, perhaps unfortunately, "any NPC" included cats and other animals.