The Game You Play and Your Personality

Our true natures are revealed by many choices we make: the cars we drive, our clothing, the food we eat, the music we enjoy and the films we watch. We are, to an extent, what we consume.

Then there are video games -- the red-headed stepchild and favorite whipping boy of pop media. Video games also betray our hidden selves. By their interactive nature, we relate with games more intimately than any other entertainment medium. An average video game requires an investment of 10 to12 hours of our precious time.

Since video gaming is a mostly private pursuit, the games we play may be the most honest expression of our inner lives. Let's face it, there's usually no one around to see us let our freak flags fly.

Eric Zimmerman, author of "Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals" and CEO of developer gameLab, elaborates: "Unlike a book, a film, and other forms of prescripted media, a game is more like a set of tools that the player uses to build his or her own experience. The games we choose to play, and the way we play them, reveal a tremendous amount about us -- from our creative drives and ambitions to the dark corners of our desires."

Video games are a window to our souls and the view isn't always pretty.

With tongue planted firmly in cheek, please find here the field guide to the inner lives of gamers.

The Decompressor

He or she has a high stress, manic paced job -- cop, air traffic controller, stock trader, or kindergarten teacher. Since time on the job is so heart attack inducing, gaming is usually a cathartic release. All those activities that are frowned upon in real life (murder, mayhem, mutilation, etc.) are not only OK in games, they are the foundations of many favorite titles.

"If it feels good, do it" is the mantra of The Decompressor. After six hours with small children or a double shift patrolling the mean streets, nothing short of some unbridled, heavy-caliber gunplay will soothe the nerves.

The Decompressor shares many favorite games with the Latent Sociopath (see below). "Halo 2," "SOCOM 2," and "GTA: San Andreas" all offer a full range of primal pleasures guaranteed to let some of that potentially lethal pressure off.

Without games, The Decompressor literally would pop a gasket.

The Latent Sociopath

Unlike The Decompressor, The Latent Sociopath (LS) can come from any walk of life. They may be the next-door neighbor, the pharmacist or the UPS guy.

We've all seen dumbstruck folks on the news saying things such as, "he seemed like a regular guy," or "her kids were always well dressed" when describing the perpetrator of a horrific crime. The same outwardly normal appearance is typical of the LS.

These are the gamers who come home, fire up the Xbox, and let their id reign supreme. The purpose of gaming is to provide fuel for the inner beast. The more mundane and uneventful real life is, the hungrier the beast becomes.

Fave games will be M-rated bloodbaths. "The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher's Bay," "GTA: San Andreas," "Hitman: Contracts," and "Burnout 3" all feature protagonists free of societal constraints, indulging every psychotic whim.

LS's use games to stay latent. Despite the proclamations of Congress and concerned parents everywhere, games such as "GTA: San Andreas" actually make the world a safer place.

The Alpha Dominator

The Alpha Dominator toils away at a thankless, perpetually promotion-free job. Temp agency regulars, data entry clerks and industrial custodians fit the AD profile.

What the AD longs for is superiority -- utter fear and awe from lesser beings. What may be professionally unattainable is only an Ethernet connection away in the game world. Online multiplayer games offer an even playing field that can be ruled by anyone with the requisite hand-eye coordination.

The AD lives for the thrill of bringing online opponents to their knees. Public recognition for his or her virtual feats is key to the AD's sense of self worth. When Sony decided to reset the online rankings board for "SOCOM 2," the AD may well have sunk into depression.

Games of choice include online battlegrounds "Unreal Tournament 2004," "SOCOM 2," "ESPN NFL 2K5," and "Madden 2005." The AD isn't concerned with violence or a particular sporting event. Winning is everything.

The Escapist

Everyday life is a struggle for The Escapist. They come from all walks of life; their condition may result from an unfulfilling job but is just as likely to be independent of career events. Nothing seems as good as it could be to The Escapist.

TV and movies are effective ways to bring some joy to their bleak and dreary lives, but games are the only true remedy. Games can offer another, infinitely more stimulating existence. Why be a mere mortal when there are otherworldly empires to explore and ancient kingdoms to conquer? Regular life seems unbearably dull compared to the fantastic online exploits for The Escapist.

Like The AD, The Escapist inhabits the realm of online multiplayer games. But that's where the similarities end. Winning or conquering may play a part in The Escapists gaming, but only in the context of a much grander scheme. Escapists may sink the equivalent of entire months into their fave games, lovingly building experience points and elaborate inventories.

The exotic lands of "Everquest II," "Final Fantasy XI," "World of Warcraft," and "Rome: Total War" are where The Escapist prefers to dwell.

The Inner Child

Life for The Inner Child isn't so much unpleasant as it is, well, complicated. The golden prepubescent years are fondly remembered and silly things such as bills and jobs are a downright nuisance.

ICs may be regarded as simpleminded, but this would be a mistake. They can, after all, keep track of the location of every star in "Mario 64" and can name every title released on every platform in the Legend of Zelda saga. Nintendo holds a place near to the heart of every IC.

The ugly, dirty real world has to be tolerated for a time each day, but after work the IC retreats to a simpler, shinier place. "Kirby and the Amazing Mirror," "Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door," "Pikmin 2," and "The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures" are the playgrounds of the IC.

The Control Freak

The Control Freak may think that only games can bring some much needed order to their lives. If everyone else is calling the shots in the real world, they can rule over every detail in the digital realm.

So-called god games are a godsend for the CF. Micromanaging may be a pain to co-workers, but in The Sims and Tycoon series games it's an essential skill. Mighty corporations and entire populations live or die under the CF's focused gaze.

The CF got hooked on gaming with Sid Meier's "Civilization" and "Railroad Tycoon" and has most recently found an outlet for obsessive compulsive tendencies in "The Sims 2," "Rollercoaster Tycoon 3" and "City of Heroes."

Should We Kick Religion Out of Video Games?

Here’s a moral puzzle for you. Do you believe it is acceptable to use religious figures as characters in video games?

It’s a question that has come up in the past week, one that raises many difficult issues about freedom-of-expression, the responsibility of avoiding giving offense and the diverse nature of faith.

Smite is an online multiplayer combat game from Georgia-based Hi-Rez Studios, best known for shooting-MMO Global Agenda and Tribes: Ascend. Players take on the role of various characters from historic-mythical pantheons such as the ancient Greek, Norse and, more controversially, Hindu traditions. The Hindu deity, Kali, is a playable character, prominent in the game’s pre-release promotions.



Very few people today worship Thor or Aphrodite. But there are one billion Hindus around the world, with an estimated 1.5 million in the United States, according to a2004 State Department report. And many of them care deeply about their revered deities.

Nevada-based Rajan Zed describes himself as a “Hindu leader” and is head of an organization called the Universal Society of Hinduism. He has slammed Smite, saying, “[Hi-Rez] should be more understanding of the hurt feelings of Hindus worldwide over the mishandling of their revered deities like Kali. [The] purpose of online games is to entertain and not to offend a large chunk of world population.” He called for Kali and other Hindu deities to be removed from the game.



Zed today released a new statement including supporting opinions from a Jewish and a Buddhist associate. Rabbi ElizaBeth W. Beyer, described as a “prominent Jewish leader in Western USA” said, “We join the Hindus in requesting the company developing this online video game to avoid trivializing the deeply held beliefs of Hindus by changing the product accordingly”.

In the past, Zed has condemned various entertainment outlets for disrespecting Hindu figures, and has counted on the support of Beyer. In 2011, for example, he criticized a SNL skit featuring Jim Carrey that, he said, mocked the deity Lord Ganesh.

Earlier this year he took aim at the game Asura’s Wrath saying its use of Hindu imagery was guilty of “trivializing and re-imagining of highly revered symbols and concepts of Hinduism”.

Zed declined to be interviewed directly by IGN, instead supplying us with various emailed statements. I spoke to Hi-Rez’s co-founder and COO Todd Harris and to Amit Kumar, a blogger of Hindu culture.



Harris claims that Zed’s opinion is not shared by many Hindus, arguing that Hinduism is “embracing and tolerant” and that Hindu’s ancient stories have often been used for entertainment purposes. , “He [Zed] is certainly entitled to outrage if he personally feels that. To my knowledge there's no word or concept for ‘blasphemy’ in Hinduism, because at least in my understanding of it, all deities are considered to be a manifestation of the essence within Hinduism.”

He adds “These particular deities are seen in pop culture, not just in the west, but within India as well, as icons, in comics, depicting the battles between these gods. Smite is basically a game about battling deities, and so we're looking for inspiration from an authentic tradition that has rich stories about deities battling.”

There is one obvious question here, which is that while the game features Hindu deities, it features no religious iconography or reference to other great religions such as Judaism, Christianity or Islam.

I ask Harris if he simply wouldn’t dare to address these religions, because the reaction from large numbers of followers of those traditions would be extremely negative and possibly even dangerous to the safety of the game's makers.



Choosing his words carefully, he acknowledges that, yes, “the reaction would be much more predictable. And again, from a group of believers that believes perhaps, in one truth, versus a faith that is known for its plurality of ways to get to truth.”

Harris argues that the mythology associated with those religions do not include deities battling with one another and would not be appropriate from a story-telling point-of-view.

Here is an excerpt from a Hindu text, the Devi Mahatmya, that gives some flavor of Hindu story-telling traditions. Kali “decorated with a garland of skulls, clad in a tiger's skin, very appalling owing to her emaciated flesh, with gaping mouth, fearful with her tongue lolling out, having deep reddish eyes, filling the regions of the sky with her roars, falling upon impetuously and slaughtering...that army, she devoured those hordes of the foes”.



Very beautiful. And, for those of us raised in Abrahamic traditions, quite different from the religious stories we likely learned from our teachers.

Harris adds, “In the Abrahamic traditions, the main figures are all human. They never overlapped or battled with one another. They're actually positioned as prophets within a monotheistic tradition. There are no stories there of deities battling one another. So it doesn't necessarily provide an inspiration for a game about deities battling one another.”

Put another way, the prophets of Abrahamic traditions make way less interesting video game characters than the deities of the Hindu tradition

Harris says, “There are many stories of gods having dramatic encounters and fights and battles between one another, and what we're doing is trying to take the essence of those deities as we understand it from those stories, give it a unique twist within Smite, and then put them on a battleground with deities from other pantheons as well.”



He rejects Zed’s argument that the depiction of Kali is “pornographic” and a story in The Times of India that pointed out that Kali is “scantily clad”. “I've traveled to India personally three times, and I can tell you that Kali and other goddesses represented on Hindu temples are often much less clothed than the depiction in Smite.”

The Hindu tradition is unfamiliar to me, something exotic and gorgeous and strange. Armed with such ignorance, I wanted to get the perspective of a follower of Hinduism (if that is even the correct phrase). Amit Kumar is a 25-year-old software developer based in Mumbai. He runs a Twitter account devoted to discussing Hindu culture. Talking to IGN, he stresses that he does not speak for Hinduism’s one billion followers.



He says, “It's not right to assume that the Hindus will not be offended if their Gods are portrayed in a video game. The Gods are after all highly revered by the Hindus and are worshiped much like Jesus Christ of Christianity and Allah of Islam. But it's less serious in our case because at the end of the day, we believe that God is within oneself. The life giving force within each one of us is what Hindus refer to as God. This life giving force is what we call Consciousness or Soul or Spirit.”

He does not agree with Harris’ distinction between Hinduism and other religions. “Not fair at all. God is God. Whether it is the God of Islam or Christianity or Judaism or Hinduism...There are stories about the lives of Prophet Muhammad and Jesus Christ. Why would it be inappropriate to have them as characters in a video game when it's appropriate to trivialize Hindu Gods as video game characters? Beats logic.”

Perhaps Hinduism’s all-embracing view means that reaction from the faithful is not as hot as it might have been from adherents to other faiths. He explains, “There is no concept of eternal hell or heaven in Hinduism and hence there is no dogma attached to the religion. I'm allowed to question, criticize and reject any of the teachings that don't suit me without having to face any backlash from the community. As a Hindu I can carve my own path for myself which means I'm allowed to revere Jesus Christ and his teachings while still being a Hindu.”



Back with Hi-Rez, I ask Harris if it wouldn’t have been better to simply avoid offending anyone, and to stick to those pantheons that are not active today as a focus of devotion. Did the team sit down to debate leaving aside Hindu deities? “Yes," he says, "we did have that conversation and debate as a development team, because we recognize that certainly deities that have an active following and set of faithful believers is a different categorization. But we decided that, when there's a rich tradition of deities authentically battling, that would be good inspiration for a game about battling deities.”

Finally, I ask if this controversy has been a useful piece of PR, or an unhelpful distraction. He says, “I think it's probably not too much of either. We're pretty comfortable with our position. I honestly don't think that there is an outrage beyond this one particular organization [Zed’s]. I guess it's enabling a conversation around belief systems and tolerance and that’s a good thing.”

Would you play Browser Games?

In recent years, with the development of web technology, type of game has been varied again. There are quite a lot of browser games online, such as Shifu, Nightfalls, Dragon Atlas and Dawn of King. Instead of having to download the application or client of game, we merely need to open a web browser and install a plug-in maybe and then we can start playing straight away.

Indeed, compared to many massive games like PC, console and massively multiplayer online games, browser games provide a much easier way to play and they are usually free to play. However, in terms of the quality of game, browser games might still have a long way to go.

I don't play much browser games but I'm actually playing one now. It's a Japanese web game called SD Gundam Operation and it's on Yahoo JP. It's a card game that you keep playing everyday to try to get better cards which improve your combat capacity in total. The reason why I play this game everyday it's because it doesn't cost me much time. I can play when working in office. The manipulation is simple: just some clicks on the interface and you finish the things you want to do then all you need to do is to wait. After finishing each activity in game, such as quests, battling with other players and killing bosses, there will be a CD that you have to wait before the next same things you want to do. Well this looks boring as it doesn't even require you to think. Of course I play this because I love Gundam. Honestly the design of cards is good and if this game is not about Gundam, I wouldn't even sign up for it I think. But objectively speaking, the quality of the game isn't too good and it's more likely that you just keep doing something everyday rather than playing a game.

I am not a professional browser gamer but I would say there are also other issues of browser games, which is the content. Let's take Nightfall as an example, when I firstly knew this game, I found it is a copied version of Diablo III. The characters, the images, the bosses and the skills are very close to what I have seen in Diablo III. I can't say it's a bad game but this reveals a lack of creativity and I would play directly Diablo III rather than this game. I would spend money on what is really qualitative rather than spending time on those that I don't feel enjoying. On the other hand, the control is just too simple that you follow all the time the guidance and just give it a click to finish everything. You don't even need to pay attention or to think but do things step by step.

I wouldn't say browser games are 100% not qualitative because I don't play much. I might be wrong to make such comment above and I also know people who spend quite a lot of money on web games. I think that they are at least happy with the game but for me, most web games don't feel entertaining during the playing. I might be focus on stats and number of games while I was still adolescent, especially at the time when I firstly start playing online games. I used to be satisfied by having rare items and powerful characters. However, it didn't last for too long. Now I prefer having more interesting experiences in game, such as visual pleasure, original story and degree of freedom. Browser games can't really provide much of these features. Finally I can only say that browser games might to designed for certain specific gamers.