DayZ and Basic Human Nature

[Mutonizer 78]

Very interesting and touchy subject that I often debate with friends and family, often ending in grim contemplation of the basics of human nature when society doesn't reign it in, by force of law.

Personally I never found any pleasure in killing others players in video games, which is probably why I never play FPS games and very rarely any online game, but enjoy the journey of single player games. I know perfectly why however: I have no spirit of competition in me whatsoever and therefore have no need to prove myself, or try to win, dominate, etc. I have an ultra strong individualistic instinct however which means I don't take orders, ever.

My wonder usually in Dayz is this: why is it more fun to kill people, than to help them.

Sure it's a game so people play carelessly (compared to when your life is REALLY on the life I mean), but by that standard, anything should be possible so why one dominates the other? It's really a wonder to me, and in all these threads and in game, it's a constant study of why people "tick" the way they do.

With the very few exceptions of really troubled minds where the only goal is to inflict pain, usually the answer is simple, as I noted above: pure sport, competition, desire to win and of course, for that, man is the best game. That's the best I could come up with so far. I'm not sure however if this is true ONLY because it's a game, or not.

Another thing I realized however is that, should, for any reason, mankind revert now to a more basic tribal state of being, it would be almost impossible for us as a species to survive and the reason for this is: firearms.

Back in the days, "survival of the fittest" meant that only the most adaptive of men survived, through the gene pool, into the future generations. The most adaptive often meant the cleverest, but mostly the strongest physically. To have the basics of a society, you need laws and structure and that was maintained by fear of the strongest, the leader. Once that leader was determined, then the others could follow, and therefore perpetuate the species in relative peace.

With firearms, everyone, anyone, even a 7 year old child, can kill the strongest among us in a second, without any risk to himself and therefore no fear, which was the limitation otherwise. With sticks, you can get hurt very easily and that usually means you won't even try and therefore you will submit to the leader, and the tribe will have a structure.

That means "survival of the fittest" in a world with firearms, is now survival of most cowardly, the one who will shoot first, from safety. These will NEVER lead anyone into the peace needed for a tribe to perpetuate, because everyone can do exactly what he did and therefore you can never have a stable societal structure, and we would pretty much go extinct.

A Dayz with only melee weapons and a combat system ala mount & blade would be a VERY, VERY different matter for example.

Just throwing that out there :)

[mistery 0]

you're merely a victim of a flawed game mechanic. for that I forgive you and am sorry for the actions of cod-trolls.

What is this flawed game mechanic? Anyone being able to shoot you was intended, no?

CoD trolls are there to grief you in real life too. Wether it was a bully or something in school, a dickish teacher who never gave a shit about your studies just because you had one funny comment in class or your coworkers and even some peple you might know in real life. Douchebags are reality, not a flawed game mechanic.

In the same way, some people are too weak to fight them back, some people choose not to fight them back and some people just declare all out war on their asses. You can see this everywhere even if it something as small as an office rivalry started by someone signing just himself on an email with collective ideas - more than once.

[fecesreturns 6]

As in all games I play I treat this as if I were in combat. (OIF Veteran). Especially when it comes too raiding towns and villages. During the day I decide to be quick and brutal killing everything in sight whether in a group or by myself and I am usually pretty successful. At night I am very stealthy and try never to even fire a shot. But I always make it my objective to make it in and out in a very short period of time. To me sitting on a objective is a huge no no. Since that gives bandits time to come in and cause problems or causes zombies to respawn and cause problems.

As far as killing people.

Killing lone or groups of survivors is not something I do or have done. Bandits on the other hand are a huge target for me. If your a bandit and I have you in my sights you are dead. If you are a survivor with a group of bandits you are dead. (guilty by association).

Now that I am comfortable with my gear and living situation I will now be spending more time hunting bandits and making life hard for them. Just because I enjoy it.

Think of me as a video game bandit serial killer if you will.

[Goldstein (DayZ) 46]

you're merely a victim of a flawed game mechanic. for that I forgive you and am sorry for the actions of cod-trolls.

What is this flawed game mechanic? Anyone being able to shoot you was intended' date=' no?

[/quote']

no, the humanity system. it encourages the downwards slide

[Zombie Squirrel 5]

Bottom line' date=' if I'm in the USA when the Zombiepocalypse comes. I'm teaming up with the zombies..

[/quote']

:D:D:D

Made my day. +1 for you :)

[fapoo 2]

I too find the behaviours of people really interesting. However I do not think all players are behaving realistically.

Too many bandits seem to be doing it for the lulz and not because they actually would IRL.

[Guest]

I usually want to be *seriously* in the game (Dislike people saying, blah blah, it's just a game, etc - when you really take it seriously, some epic shit can happen, and it's really fucking immersive and enjoyable - won't whine if I die though lol) ... and think a bit about my decisions.

According to me, other people, and that includes friendly survivors, don't care as much about you surviving as you.

From this point I think I can say that I have the right to value my own life (in that game that is) above everybody else's live, though I respect their will to survive.

Therefore, it means that if friendly survivors are coming in my direction and identify themselves as friendly, I may be okay with them but still wont trust them, and if they fail to identify themselves in time and have strange behaviour after my message (Kneeling, trying to determine where I am without answering, hiding without answering) I consider that it's too risky to let them live, and I cannot risk my life as I am the only person who can protect it.

It also results in lots of drama, as people will baw since I opened fire in the first time. But since I killed them, it means I was right, natural selection agrees :)

I do have a burst of adrenaline during fights with players - especially when I attack groups alone. Probably because of the permadeath. Therefore, after the fight, when I win, I'm happy as fuck.

[karlito 3]

Yeah i noticed the same.

killing innocent people really gives me a good buzz.

what if it was a real situation, i keep thinking. I would be ending these people's lives.

It felt so good, the first kill I got.

I sucessfully stalked this guy for atleast 40 kilometers, and he proned down crawling around minding his own buisniss...

then i went up to him and executed him, took all his stuff.

best feeling i've ever had.

[Zombie Squirrel 5]

killing innocent people really gives me a good buzz.

[...]

then i went up to him and executed him' date=' took all his stuff.

best feeling i've ever had.

[/quote']

Ever tried sex? It's better, let me assure you...

[ClinClin 1]

I too find the behaviours of people really interesting. However I do not think all players are behaving realistically.

Too many bandits seem to be doing it for the lulz and not because they actually would IRL.

Well, IRL a lot will be doing it for lulz too. And not necessarily exactly that lot, who do it in-game.

[The Killing Joke 43]

My conscience doesn't come with an on/off switch. My face will probably eat buckshot more often than most' date=' but at least I won't have trouble sleeping at night.[/quote']

Hmm. Interesting...

That sounds like some good' date=' fertile ground for you and your therapist to dig into.[/quote']

"Et tu, Brute?"

That's a harsh light you throw on someone else, when you admittedly cannot determine fantasy from reality. If you have trouble sleeping at night from the choices you make in a video game, I strongly urge you to speak to a professional about it. (It's much different to say, "I can't sleep because the monsters in-game scare me.") It can lead to anything, psychological to physical.

And before you ask, if that was happening to me, I WOULD.

TKJ

[Pharmakon 8]

They would find the nearest help they could get for themselves or family to reinforce these boundaries of safety that this structure provides. But when given no help' date=' no structure, left in a dark and cold desolate outbreak of zombies their only goal would be to protect themselves their families or friends and survive the next day for as long as they can. Rapes, Murders, Thefts, Killings, Suicides will be nearly every day things after a while.

[/quote']

You sound like FOX News reporting on Hurricane Katrina.

The stories they posted about its chaotic aftermath were mostly fictional: there were no mass lootings, unbridled rapes, or murders on a whim: There simply are no accounts of such chaotic post-disasters scenarios, here is a good read on this: http://www.amazon.com/Paradise-Built-Hell-Extraordinary-Communities/dp/0670021075).

When it comes to human nature, western culture is extremely prejudiced. Remember how I said in my first post how the more items I (pointlessly) accumulated in DayZ the more fearful I felt? One could say this is the situation in which western culture finds itself: it has built so much, it worries about an "end of civilization" (as evidenced by its unique TV news and post-apocalyptic fiction) in a way that reinforces the notion that everything hangs on its institutions.

---

Western culture is often inclined to believe that its institutions (I use this this term in a broad sense) are universal, that they are suited to “human nature”, and yet this couldn’t be further from the truth. You say people will all turn on each other for their own benefit: this certainty is so deeply ingrained in your mentality that you do not seem compelled to find any basis or justifications for this hypothetical scenario: it just seems to go without saying that this will happen everywhere, despite any other norms.

And yet, you use cultural, and not universal, terms in your scenario: You say people would look out for themselves and their families, as if their families were extensions of themselves. But this “family” you speak of is not a universally innate concept: it is an invention of the European industrial revolution: in medieval peasant settings, children were not seen as loved ones to be raised but as less-than-useful labourers, and in many indigenous tribes children are cared for by their communities as much as their parents.

The biggest error you commit, however, is being incapable of escaping the liberal concept of the individual subject as an undividable basis that forms and precedes collectivity. There is much evidence that opposes this notion: for instance, before colonisation, when a member of an Australian tribe is outcast, he does not try to start life anew of join a nearby group (which would be easy): he simple dies, like a limb that has been severed from a body, he has no purpose: individual survival is not innate. Better yet, Marcel Mauss showed how our western economy is an exception in history: most cultures were based on giving rather than accumulating, even when it seemed “irrational” from a “personal” perspective: even in tough times the Haudenosaunee organised Potlatches. Sure, the zombie apocalypse does indeed seem like a scenario where survival is tougher, but collectivity will have to survive as much as individuals. Is DayZ’s Chernarus that dreadful? If you could make fires without matches, know basic agriculture and kill animals without modern guns, living there (provided there are no bandits) would be much easier than if I dropped you in the Arctic or the Sahara. Those are two places where humans have lived continuously for the past ten thousand years: and yet the Inuit or the Bedouins are certainly not base and “instinctive” people who kill strangers on sight for their beans: no, quite the contrary (they hate beans). With shared knowledge of the land and a common agreement not to be evil, there is no point being a bandit.

---

Anthropology undeniably shows that the distinction between individual and “other” is limited to western thought, and it is untrue since it is in itself a cultural imprint. It is often hard to get past this idea, as our ethnocentric attitude is fueled by our belief that we are the “victors” of history, that our liberalism will naturally replace all other forms of thought. But I digress.

The point is, there categorically cannot be a cultureless “every individual for himself” scenario since it takes a culture to create this “individual”. To make an analogy: if everyone spoke their own language, there effectively would not be any language.

To sum this all up in one sentence: our behaviour when playing DayZ displays our CULTURE, it would be ethnocentric to think it displays our nature.

[RealSourLemonade 1]

TL;DR

I want to be a bandit but whenever i find a survivor i find myself just stalking them or if they see me typing friendly and offering supplies if i have spares lol...

[fapoo 2]

I too find the behaviours of people really interesting. However I do not think all players are behaving realistically.

Too many bandits seem to be doing it for the lulz and not because they actually would IRL.

Well' date=' IRL a lot will be doing it for lulz too. And not necessarily exactly that lot, who do it in-game.

[/quote']

I really doubt that alot will be doing it IRL. Imagine it. People who have lost their family, their friends, have no one else to help them. Their life is in constant danger. But hey nothing a good laugh can't fix. Where's that rifle?

Yes there would be hostile encounters, theft, robbery, assault; don't doubt that for a second. But mindlessly killing people is something alot of people would not do.

I would love to see this more realistic scenario in this realistic zombie survival simulation (refuse to say game lol)

[i wub pugs 16]

The fact that this thread even exists means that people are battling with these decisions and the game's impact on people is indeed real.

People can poke fun or disregard these stories all they want, but that does nothing to remove them.

I haven't had to make any harsh decisions or hunted anyone yet, but I have found myself hesitating only to be shot over a revolver or beans.

But the thing is that too, my killers almost always hesitated, there is a decision process. Unlike Call of Duty or BF3, you don't have uniforms that automatically make you a friend or foe.......... even the Bandit skin doesn't always mean a foe, they could have just pulled the trigger one too many times on survivors they were scared of.

In later stages of development and greater stability, I have no doubt that we can begin to build societies on servers....... if we so choose. My group will most likely try this since Summer is approaching and we have the time.

Some will flock to society, others will raid it or perhaps even try to destroy it through conquest. There really is a story to Day Z, and we do indeed write it for ourselves. Every story is valid, whether it be the guy who was trying to be a doctor giving transfusions in Cherno, or the Bandit on the beach who kills just for the blood.

I have enjoyed reading this thread, and I don't think the comments saying that "it's just a game" or "you are playing too seriously" are any less valid than those writing full pages about the emotions they are having. This mod is allowing us to examine a wide variety of human interaction and I find that very intriguing.

[Virfortis 111]

Disregard morality.

Acquire Beans.

[qksilvr73 4]

I usually hesitate to even interact with others. Mostly because I don't want to end up dying' date=' or vice versa. It'd make me feel like an asshole ending some persons game that has worked hard running around for days finding good gear etc.

[/quote']

Yeah happened to me was in tower and was getting the big coyote pack and sniped!! 3 days gone.

[pendergraft 1]

My conscience doesn't come with an on/off switch. My face will probably eat buckshot more often than most' date=' but at least I won't have trouble sleeping at night.[/quote']

Hmm. Interesting...

That sounds like some good' date=' fertile ground for you and your therapist to dig into.[/quote']

"Et tu, Brute?"

That's a harsh light you throw on someone else, when you admittedly cannot determine fantasy from reality. If you have trouble sleeping at night from the choices you make in a video game, I strongly urge you to speak to a professional about it. (It's much different to say, "I can't sleep because the monsters in-game scare me.") It can lead to anything, psychological to physical.

And before you ask, if that was happening to me, I WOULD.

TKJ

Heh. Feeling ashamed of one's actions, regardless if the medium falls under "reality" or "fantasy" or whatever other tags you feel the need to include, is, I'd argue, a fundamental aspect of being human. In Day Z, where a single shot can strip another player of their time and effort, the ability to suppress that is scary.

However, I was ultimately being facetious with my therapy comment; I don't believe that killing people in this game means you've a disquieting propensity for asking young women to help you move furniture into your windowless van at night. But if you're not considering your every action and taking into account the effect they'll have on another person just because you're separated by the gulf of Internet anonymity-driven fantasy, or if you are, and you're feeding off of their anguish, your behavior is, I think, morally reprehensible. And that does reflect on you as a person in the real world, not just in the game. Shrugging it off, pretending as if it doesn't, well, that's your way of getting to sleep at night.

[deadbolt (DayZ) 10]

Heh. Feeling ashamed of one's actions' date=' regardless if the medium falls under "reality" or "fantasy" or whatever other tags you feel the need to include, is, I'd argue, a fundamental aspect of being human. In Day Z, where a single shot can strip another player of their time and effort, the ability to suppress that is scary.

However, I was ultimately being facetious with my therapy comment; I don't believe that killing people in this game means you've a disquieting propensity for asking young women to help you move furniture into your windowless van at night. But if you're not considering your every action and taking into account the effect they'll have on another person just because you're separated by the gulf of Internet anonymity-driven fantasy, or if you are, and you're feeding off of their anguish, your behavior is, I think, morally reprehensible. And that does reflect on you as a person in the real world, not just in the game. Shrugging it off, pretending as if it doesn't, well, that's your way of getting to sleep at night.

[/quote']

so if you were about to dehydrate and die would you kill a survivor that you knew had water and wouldnt give you any?

[vedicardi 7]

without direct coms working or really any proper in game coms, ingame communication is rare, and ill advised, which leads to much more killing than there "should" be

[smile_T 0]

Change the death system to be more "death like". Like if you get killed you won't be able to respawn for 24 hours.

This would force people to be careful and would make the decision of either killing someone or letting him live a lot more difficult to take.

Think about it.

[deadbolt (DayZ) 10]

Change the death system to be more "death like". Like if you get killed you won't be able to respawn for 24 hours.

This would force people to be careful and would make the decision of either killing someone or letting him live a lot more difficult to take.

Think about it.

how would it be more difficult? the bandits wont care, and the survivors that do dislike killing people would have already justified it in their mind

[i wub pugs 16]

Servers will be way emptier...

[smile_T 0]

Change the death system to be more "death like". Like if you get killed you won't be able to respawn for 24 hours.

This would force people to be careful and would make the decision of either killing someone or letting him live a lot more difficult to take.

Think about it.

how would it be more difficult? the bandits wont care' date=' and the survivors that do dislike killing people would have already justified it in their mind

[/quote']

I, personally, don't think too much before firing because I know that they will be back in the game within minutes. Death is not death in dayz.

With a more "realistic" death, I would probably think twice before pulling the trigger.

Do I really want the guy in my ironsight to be kicked for 24H ?

Also, that would mean more complicated relationships with the other players. Am I gonna trust this random guy, risking being unable to play for X hours ?

[noego 0]

They would find the nearest help they could get for themselves or family to reinforce these boundaries of safety that this structure provides. But when given no help' date=' no structure, left in a dark and cold desolate outbreak of zombies their only goal would be to protect themselves their families or friends and survive the next day for as long as they can. Rapes, Murders, Thefts, Killings, Suicides will be nearly every day things after a while.

[/quote']

You sound like FOX News reporting on Hurricane Katrina.

The stories they posted about its chaotic aftermath were mostly fictional: there were no mass lootings, unbridled rapes, or murders on a whim: There simply are no accounts of such chaotic post-disasters scenarios, here is a good read on this: http://www.amazon.com/Paradise-Built-Hell-Extraordinary-Communities/dp/0670021075).

When it comes to human nature, western culture is extremely prejudiced. Remember how I said in my first post how the more items I (pointlessly) accumulated in DayZ the more fearful I felt? One could say this is the situation in which western culture finds itself: it has built so much, it worries about an "end of civilization" (as evidenced by its unique TV news and post-apocalyptic fiction) in a way that reinforces the notion that everything hangs on its institutions.

---

Western culture is often inclined to believe that its institutions (I use this this term in a broad sense) are universal, that they are suited to “human nature”, and yet this couldn’t be further from the truth. You say people will all turn on each other for their own benefit: this certainty is so deeply ingrained in your mentality that you do not seem compelled to find any basis or justifications for this hypothetical scenario: it just seems to go without saying that this will happen everywhere, despite any other norms.

And yet, you use cultural, and not universal, terms in your scenario: You say people would look out for themselves and their families, as if their families were extensions of themselves. But this “family” you speak of is not a universally innate concept: it is an invention of the European industrial revolution: in medieval peasant settings, children were not seen as loved ones to be raised but as less-than-useful labourers, and in many indigenous tribes children are cared for by their communities as much as their parents.

The biggest error you commit, however, is being incapable of escaping the liberal concept of the individual subject as an undividable basis that forms and precedes collectivity. There is much evidence that opposes this notion: for instance, before colonisation, when a member of an Australian tribe is outcast, he does not try to start life anew of join a nearby group (which would be easy): he simple dies, like a limb that has been severed from a body, he has no purpose: individual survival is not innate. Better yet, Marcel Mauss showed how our western economy is an exception in history: most cultures were based on giving rather than accumulating, even when it seemed “irrational” from a “personal” perspective: even in tough times the Haudenosaunee organised Potlatches. Sure, the zombie apocalypse does indeed seem like a scenario where survival is tougher, but collectivity will have to survive as much as individuals. Is DayZ’s Chernarus that dreadful? If you could make fires without matches, know basic agriculture and kill animals without modern guns, living there (provided there are no bandits) would be much easier than if I dropped you in the Arctic or the Sahara. Those are two places where humans have lived continuously for the past ten thousand years: and yet the Inuit or the Bedouins are certainly not base and “instinctive” people who kill strangers on sight for their beans: no, quite the contrary (they hate beans). With shared knowledge of the land and a common agreement not to be evil, there is no point being a bandit.

---

Anthropology undeniably shows that the distinction between individual and “other” is limited to western thought, and it is untrue since it is in itself a cultural imprint. It is often hard to get past this idea, as our ethnocentric attitude is fueled by our belief that we are the “victors” of history, that our liberalism will naturally replace all other forms of thought. But I digress.

The point is, there categorically cannot be a cultureless “every individual for himself” scenario since it takes a culture to create this “individual”. To make an analogy: if everyone spoke their own language, there effectively would not be any language.

To sum this all up in one sentence: our behaviour when playing DayZ displays our CULTURE, it would be ethnocentric to think it displays our nature.

I commend you for your greatly crafted argument, and you should know that I made this account just to do so. It's a valuable read, which I fear will be skipped by many merely for it's length. So here, I hope my post will bring attention to what you have to say.