More human than human

Have you seen Westworld? The new TV series from HBO? You should, it's very good. And it's sort of about video games.

HBO seem to be positioning the show as a high profile, Game of Thrones like property - presumably because they're currently panicking about what happens when we have to leave Westeros in a couple of years time. They'll do a Thrones prequel, I reckon.

But if they don't, I think Westworld might do pretty well as a cornerstone of their schedules, because it's great. The basic premise, which is based on a 70s film of the same name, is this. There is a theme park, like Jurassic Park, except instead of them having dinosaurs, they have robot cowboys.

In fact, they have more than just cowboys. They have a whole town full of sophisticated android bartenders, whores, heroes, villains, and mad old men in splendid hats. Customers go there to have a wonderful holiday, immersing themselves in a believable artificial world. The android hosts, meanwhile, believe that they are real, and have their personalities reset each night, no matter what happened to them in the day.

There are lots of reasons to recommend the show. It looks fantastic. The plot is intricate and enjoyable, with lots of different strands to follow and a huge cast of characters. And the story asks interesting questions about God, man, responsibility, humanity, memory - all that cool stuff.

And it seems to be talking about video games. The essential premise is startlingly close to the experience of playing a AAA, open world game. Timely, given the recent announcement of Red Dead Redemption 2. Just like players of Rockstar's epic original game, the guests at Westworld get to play at being cowboys, interact with NPCs, go on missions and shoot people in the face. All safe in the knowledge that they can't really get hurt.

It seems like the show is very deliberately commenting on the fact that we, as a culture, spend a lot of time playing games like this. The creators of the theme park, who spend their time in a vast, futuristic underground complex, are the game designers.

In episode one, we get this, from one of those designers:

"You keep making things more lifelike. But does anyone truly want that? Do you want to think that your husband is really sleeping with that beautiful girl or that you really just shot someone? This place works because the guests know the hosts aren't real."

A very interesting comment, I thought, on what we want from games. One one hand, the pleasure of play comes from transgression - doing things that we're not allowed to in the real world. It's not enough to just exist in the pretend world. We must make the most of our opportunity to misbehave whilst there are no consequences. So we kill, and we steal, and we treat the artificial inhabitants badly.

But if it gets too real, then it stops being fun. We might enjoy the thrill of a perfect headshot in Red Dead, but very few of us would enjoy the prospect of real violence if it burst into our actually-happening-now lives. And the closer games get to real experience, the more they risk losing their appeal.

I'm still enjoying Uncharted 4. But there's one little bit of it that I don't like. The crunch and snap when Nathan breaks a soldier's neck. For some reason I'm fine blowing their head off with a shotgun, but that neck snapping noise sends a shiver through me. I think it gets a little close to reality, and I can sort of feel it. Brrrr.

The guests in Westworld are shown as nice, normal people who can commit incredible acts of cruelty and violence once they find there are no consequences. I wonder, do they do it because they know that they won't be punished? Or because they know that no-one is really getting hurt?

And what does that say about our urges to kill things, as gamers?