Vogel wrote:Except for NPCs though, right?
I've heard this one before. It was a lame attempt to challenge the validity of my theory. I explain it later on.
Vogel wrote:I loved Gray Fox as a tragic character in MGS
I think that whoever finds anything tragic in MGS needs to be institutionalized. At least going from the first two games I've played. Maybe the rest are different, but I doubt it.
Vogel wrote:from the perspective of Snake/me, but I think it would have been a very different story if Fox was the playable character.
Yes, the story would have been a different story if it had been a different story. Indeed.
Vogel wrote:Also, I always figured that this is the reason why the Mass Effect 3 endings did not sit right with many people, myself included to an extent (spoiler alert): killing the protagonist in a non-video game is different from killing the protagonist in a video game
No difference at all. There's nothing wrong with the protagonist in a videogame dying: it happens all the time. And it makes no difference if the player or the director killed him. It's ALWAYS the director killing him, if you think about it.
As for Mass Effect, I haven't played any of them so I can't tell how well their endings were pulled off. Either way, it has nothing to do with non-adherence to a theory, but with how the specifics were worked out in this particular series of games.
Vogel wrote:as the writers did in Mass Effect (except in the extended renegade ending, in which it is revealed that the player character lives; I guess in a sense you do in the other endings as well, as the PC might be said to achieve cultural immortality as the hero of the universe, although I'm not sure if that is something I value achieving in a video game).
We are talking about a character dying or not, and you bring in "cultural immortality". Bleh. You've understood nothing. And there you go again separating videogame values from those of other artforms as if they were fundamentally different. Like I said, you've understood nothing.
Vogel wrote:And is the pain we feel via empathy really comparable to the pain we feel directly?
Yes.
Vogel wrote:I mean, apart from being much weaker, as you point out, is it not also different in some important sense?
No.
Vogel wrote:Artistic expressions of pain, if well executed, I often find intensely pleasurable (be it games, movies or music)
All pain is pleasurable, "for pain and pleasure are not opposites". Read Nietzsche. Or try to live.
Vogel wrote:and it seems
positively valenced compared to some types of pain that I might feel directly (also artistic expressions of other so called negative emotions such as fear and anger). There seems to be some vital difference between the pain I experience directly and the pain I feel by empathizing, both with real people and with artistic representations of real people (which I also count music as an example of). Or maybe I'm confused or missing something important?
You are missing everything. Your justification is gibberish, and I didn't even bother clicking on your link. If direct pain were somehow fundamentally different from pain via empathy 1) we wouldn't be able to relate with other people, and 2) identification in an artwork would be impossible to attain and art wouldn't work.
You are just making shit up because you can't see the connections. I'll use you as an example in my essay on Michael Abrash. He couldn't see that all VR does is enhance immersion, and made some shit up too: the term "presence". He said exactly what you are saying about direct feelings vs. empathy: that "presence" and immersion are something fundamentally different. But that's only because he is a subhuman who can't see past his nose.