When I was very young, there was a period when I would crush every house centipede I saw. I strongly advise you not to look up what that insect looks like.
The explanation I gave myself was simple: I had to kill them because they were unbearably disgusting.
I am not a Buddhist, and I am not here to preach against taking life. Still, looking back, there was something strange about that logic. Disgust had somehow become a reason. Revulsion had turned into a verdict.
Later, in some dim, unlicensed internet café, I discovered a game called Vice City.
After that, whenever I was in a bad mood, I would enter that world.
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If I remember correctly, that was the cheat code that let you switch directly to a Gatling gun. Then I would start spraying bullets at anyone I could see in the city. With the police, I even had the petty, malicious habit of aiming for headshots.
This usually continued until I was surrounded by soldiers and shot dead in the street.
At the time, that game was nothing more than an outlet for me. I never thought about the character I was controlling, what sort of story he had, or what any of it meant.
Much later, when I began playing World of Warcraft, I found myself taking the act of playing a role seriously.
I would salute the king. I would return a soldier’s salute. If I met an enemy who seemed evenly matched, I might even respond with an embrace.
It felt as if I really lived in that world, and my character carried the same moral instincts I did. For a while, I even tried writing fiction based on the characters my friends and I played, turning our adventures into a novel. A few of my friends attempted the same thing. Of course, every one of those novels was eventually abandoned halfway.
I suspect I am not the only person like this.
Back in school, even while sitting through class, my mind would wander to scenes where I tore demons apart in front of my classmates. Everyone, to some extent, probably has a hero dream tucked away somewhere.
Recently, I started playing The Witcher 3.
I had planned to play it for years, but only actually began not long ago. What makes the game interesting is that so many characters, even people who seem like passersby, offer you different options. You can even learn spells that affect the minds of others, opening up still more choices.
And because of what you choose, those characters—even side characters—can end up with entirely different fates.
The scene that left the deepest impression on me involves three grotesque-looking witches who ask you to kill a tree spirit. You can kill the spirit, or you can listen to its explanation and turn against the three sisters.
But if you kill the tree spirit, the three sisters will eat the orphans from the orphanage.
If you kill the witches instead, the tree spirit will ensure the orphans are safe, but it will slaughter a village.
No matter what you choose, nothing ends well. It is bleak. But your decision really does shape that world, and it really does change the direction of the story.
A lot of people will look up the endings first, then follow a guide and choose according to the result they want. I still prefer to make decisions according to my own moral code. I want to see what would happen to me if I actually lived in that world.
There is also a very famous game called Detroit: Become Human.
I bought it a long, long time ago—at least more than a year ago—but I still have not started it. From what I have heard, it has almost no combat, nor much in the way of puzzles that require deep calculation. The process of playing is simply making one choice after another.
And those choices ultimately determine whether the androids become truly human.
In fact, if you can read subtitles quickly enough and operate the controls fast enough, it is almost a film.
Sometimes I imagine what happens after I shut down the computer.
In some parallel space-time, would the characters I controlled sit down together for a drink? Would they complain to one another that many of my foolish decisions looked righteous on the surface, but left them hungry all the same?
After talking this much about games, someone might say that at my age, it is embarrassing to still be so absorbed in them.
There was indeed a time when I believed that, as an adult, staying home and playing games was shameful.
Now I feel almost the opposite: pretending not to be a little “deviant” is what feels shameful.
To be able to fantasize, to imagine, to enter another world and still ask what kind of person you are—that is a rare and valuable thing.