Games with low morality are common in the industry. You only have to look at the phenomenal popularity of the decidedly moral-free Grand Theft Auto franchise to see that the audience for them is huge. For those who prefer their games a little less realistic, there are still plenty of other titles which will reward you for killing others or destroying cars and property.

Entire genres, such as shooters and battle royale games, focus entirely on eliminating monsters, zombies, and even other players in order to reign supreme. So why are these games so popular? Are we all just bad people at heart or is there more to it?

Why We Play Games

In reality, the vast majority of gamers are not morally bankrupt, whatever critics may say. While naturally there will be some players who don’t make smart choices in real life, for most of us playing the bad guy is pure fantasy and often done alongside many other games.

Gaming is a pastime which enables players to escape the real world and its consequences. While some games focus on realism, especially now graphics are so realistic, many more are set in complete fantasy realms.

Video games allow players to experience new worlds, interact with engaging stories and explore different moral choices. All of these aspects appeal in different ways and often titles will combine one or more of them. Gaming takes us away from reality and allowing us to make decisions we wouldn’t even consider in real life can be a huge part of that.

Exploring The Human Psyche

Many games explore an evolving narrative and allow players to make choices along the way to influence its outcome. Sometimes these choices allow you to become good or evil, but often you have moral dilemmas that are so rough you don’t want to make the choice at all. (I’m looking at you Life Is Strange.)

Games of this type can be entertaining and engaging, as they explore the wonders of the human psyche. Allowing players to chose if they want to try and follow the most moral path, or just let the world burn, allows us to engage with different decisions and think about morality.

While some will try and chose the righteous path, many others find as much joy in exploring the consequences of the low-morality choices. Both can be equally fascinating and in fact many players will go back and replay games of this type, making entirely different decisions, just to discover the result.

The human psyche is fascinating and in the gaming world we can explore the mind of those whose morals directly oppose our own. Games allow us to come out of ourselves and think about life from an entirely new perspective, exploring these choices in an environment in which no real people get hurt.

Consequence-Free Fantasy

The biggest draw of gaming is that all your actions are consequence-free. Within games players are free to explore all kinds of decisions without any real life consequences. The world of gaming allows us to truly embrace our dark side without actually hurting anyone.

A huge part of the escapism of games involves taking on a persona which is entirely opposite to our own. We can make decisions we wouldn’t dream of, knowing that there are no actual consequences for doing so.

If you hurt or kill someone in a game no one really gets hurt, it’s all just pretend. This fact can also help us disconnect morally from what we see on screen. Knowing it’s not real helps us disengage from the choice and just enjoy experiencing life from a different point of view.

While some are concerned that making morally questionable choices could impact on real life, for many it's the exact opposite. Games can be a release of pent up anger or frustration. If something has got you upset and you feel like exploding, gaming can give you a healthy outlet.

In the gaming world you can be as destructive as you like. Trash a house, crash a car, fight, injure, or even kill someone. The game allows you to channel your rage and express it in a way which has no effect on your real life.

It’s simply not acceptable or appropriate to do these things in reality. They have consequences and serious ones at that. However, in video games they are simply choices can be both therapeutic and outright fun.

Mindless Fun

Sometimes when life gets too much just endlessly shooting things can be hugely enjoyable. There’s no need to think or feel and just seeing things explode around you is somehow hugely satisfying. Games which pit you against zombies or similar are especially good for this. Attacking zombies can give you an extra sense of moral disconnect. After all zombies are a threat and killing them is surely a mercy?

While many gamers enjoy story driven titles other times the story doesn’t matter and mindless slaughter is the name of the game. Often players chose games based on their mood and different types of low moral games appeal at different times.

Limits and Taboos

While low-moral games are popular, many of them impose some limits. For example Cyberpunk 2077 will not allow you to kill children. For most of us this is absolutely fine, and not something we’d chose to do anyway, game or not. However, there are others who cry censorship, believing we all have a right to make our own choices in games, no matter what they are.

For those who believe in a true choice there are always mods. Skyrim for example has a mod which allows the children of Skyrim to die, if that’s your thing.

Meanwhile low morality games, albeit with limits, continue to gain ever increasing audiences. Just know that those of us happily spending hours making terrible choices, crashing cars, vandalizing cities and eliminating enemies aren’t the bad guys. At least not outside of the safety and fantasy of the gaming world.

This article is inspired by Quora. Read the original question here.