The Moral Perils Of Breaking The Fourth Wall.

News & General Discussion
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The Fourth Wall: Is the gap between fiction and reality.

Breaking the Fourth wall can be used to great effect in other media, a modern example is the DeadPool movie.

Mature Content from 18 Movie

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfPsRh8G0vA

Or in video games like Metal Gear.

But we are starting to bring AR and VR content to users via social media e.g. Facebook.

What types of fourth wall breaking games will be possible, with full access to your mobile phone/device and social media?

Games already have a bad reputation and are often brought up as a bad influence when there has been another Columbine style massacre.

Games like play is a powerful learning tool and can be misused and misunderstood.

Most games still have the fourth wall as a gap between reality and fiction, with AR/VR and social media we could see some awesome games that break the fourth wall.

We could also have some very dubious and horrific games that break the fourth wall for fun but could have very negative effects on people and society.

Or adversely by breaking the fourth wall games could become a new social media bullying tool with the potential for very bad effects.

And what might happen when we have access to ML based game AI that is developed to access social media and use it to entice/coerce players to play our games.

If you don’t think AI can go bad check out this story on microsoft’s chatbot that was introduced to the internet to learn and preceded to become a racist in 24 hours.

It will become more tempting to follow the likes of Pokemon GO, and with more powerful tools and access to more personal information than ever your future AR/VR game could be a powerful tool for good or evil.

Maybe you want to keep the Fourth Wall intact as a defence or think hard before you break it.

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Breaking the fourth wall has always been an intriguing thing to me. I remember playing Eternal Darkness on the GameCube, and how the Sanity system really messed with the player’s head, once your sanity got low enough.

I think it’s interesting to consider games such as VR as the player breaking that wall, instead of the game doing it. Instead of the game interacting with you outside the normal constraints, you are actually the one going into the game, seeing your hands in virtual reality, being able to manipulate objects simply by reaching out and grabbing them.

One of my best VR experiences so far has been I Expect You To Die. You can do really simple things like put on a hat, or smoke a cigar - I’ve even poured several glasses of champagne/coffee into my virtual face, simple for the sake of doing it. There is absolutely no reason for doing so in the game, but I’ll be damned if I’m not going to try to enjoy my glass of virtual champagne after I poured it.

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Dude. I can only suggest to apply for a job at buzzfeed. Asap.

4th wall break only means situation when an actor acknowledge existence of audience. And that’s it. No morality involved.

You, however, managed to take the original idea, misinterpret it, accelerate it to escape velocity, launch it into a space and then blow up the Moon with it. How?

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What if your music collection were used to procedurally generate the soundtrack for the game, maybe using a node based system? :wink:

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Let’s invent ‘Breaking the 5th Wall’!

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I’m confused, what does AR/VR and social media have to do with breaking the fourth wall?

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I wouldn’t be playing a game like this.

Aside from arcades like audiosurf (never was a fan of them), I’d rather hear a new composition than a rehash of stuff on my HDD.

If you want to mess with player, try subtle psychological profiling instead. That was done in silent hill: shattered memories

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I’m guessing the point is that we’re getting closer to the media, thus being more susceptible to breaking the 4th wall. It might not be in conjunction with the semantics of the expression, but I think I see where it’s going.

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I guess, but I don’t consider Pokemon Go as a 4th wall breaking game, which was used as an example by the OP. I guess you could do some new 4th wall breaking stuff with AR (like actually try to trick the player into believing something is real).

In any case, I really enjoyed Eternal Darkness when I played it (I mean, it “crashed” like 3-4 times while playing it and to this day, I’m still unsure if one of those was legit or not, which is quite an achievement), I would like to see more of that stuff.

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For this to happen, would the actor have to exit the movie, come sit down beside you and watch it with you?

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Either that, or you just abandon your own existence to go be a part of the movie. Alternatively, you switch places with an actor.

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It’s starting to sound a bit like the movie The Ring.

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Breaking the 4th wall could be beneficial as games could monitor player usage and suggest or enforce downtime e.g. when a player’s reaction time drops when they are sleepy.

Or time out for food and hygiene breaks. When everything is connected where will the gamification start and end e.g. Toilet Break 20 pts, Food Intake 100 pts?

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A lot of Nintendo games will remind you to take breaks while playing. I remember Animal Crossing being pretty persistent about it.

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You could also put “YOU MUST GO TO TOILET NOW!” in big red letters hiding the rest of the screen, and then add “Pay $50 to make this window go away” at the bottom of it, then demand to post proof of having done the business to Facebook in no less than 12 megapixel resolution. And make the game subscription based pay to win.

This is an obnoxious behavior for a game, and I think that developer should not be bossing the players around. Unless said developer want to experience a thrill of getting punched by a player IRL.

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Potential scenario Horror or Mobster game, but with information and access to your social media the game starts sending you pictures of your friends with a dark character behind them and the games deadline time counting down.

You could make it like a Horror game where you have to pass the game onto someone else or get others to help you pay off the Mobsters.

What if this AR/VR game needs the player to go to areas of the city that have been mapped into the game, like pokemon go.

So in one regard as a game developer you have the potential for a viral hit, but what if it really spooks some people out and they can’t cope with your fourth wall breaking viral marketing game.

Would such a game need a psychiatric profiling stage to ensure the player can cope with this level of game?

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This is my thinking as well. The term comes from theater, where a stage setting of an enclosed room has 3 physical walls and an assumed 4th wall (that obviously can’t be there for the audience to see what’s happening). So when the actor would address the audience directly, it’s “breaking” the 4th wall by acknowledging its lack of existence and the presence of the audience.

The Deadpool film did plenty of 4th wall breaking to great effect, but I’d argue the brilliant Eternal Darkness wasn’t 4th wall work so much as it was an extension of psychological trickery onto the player, as opposed to being limited to the player’s character only.

None of anything else you described is 4th wall related, but rather sounds more like data mining and using that… somehow.

4th wall breaking in a video game would be something like playing GTA V, Michael and Trevor are having a heated argument, when Michael turns to the camera and says “That Trevor’s a real piece of work, ain’t he?” with a wink, then goes back to arguing. To relate it to what you’re talking about, Michael would say “That Trevor’s a real piece of work, ain’t he, Schneider21?” without me explicitly giving the game my name in any way.

Maybe that’s compelling and interesting in some type of game, but in most situations all I can think of is a combination of “lame” and “what other data is this developer/publisher stealing of mine?” before I angrily uninstall it.

So… yeah, no.

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Well, think of it like this. Traditionally 4th wall is about characters addressing the audience in some way and being self aware that they are in a play, because that’s the only way that medium could do that.

But games have more than narrative. How would you break the 4th wall with game mechanics?

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Here’s my reaction:
Instant uninstall, refund and a negative review on the store.

I want a developer to put some effort in the game. If the best they could come up with it is digging through user’s online profile, I can only conclude that the studio hired bunch of unimaginative clueless idiots, and the sooner their studio goes bankrupt the better.

Basically, pulling real-world data player is familiar with into your game is a good way to turn your game into garbage. I think the best idea is to keep the game realm and real world as separate as possible.

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I would say that I don’t see a way that mechanics can break the 4th wall in games, because the term itself is a narrative one.

Loosely applied, maybe, something as simple as most tutorial content could be considered Bt4W. Let’s say I’m playing Zelda, and I’m so into it that I believe I am Link. So NPCs should address me as such and only say things that are relative to my character, right? But during the tutorial, while teaching me how to use my sword, a character says “Press B to attack!”, which is directed at me, not Link. So that’s a type of Bt4W, I suppose. It makes me aware I’m playing a game instead of being a cross-dressing elf warrior.

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