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# What playing a first-person shooter in real-life tells us about our squalid mortal coils
- URL: https://www.killscreen.com/what-playing-first-person-shooter-real-life-tells-about-our-squalid-mortal-coils/
- Published: 2013-02-26T18:30:15.000Z
- Updated: 2015-11-17T15:57:38.000Z
- Description: Possibly the only live-action role-playing game (long for LARP) cool enough for me to actually consider playing, IRL Shooter (short for in-real-life) is the popular game native to Australia that blissfully unites laser-tag, a haunted house, and the campaign mode of first-person shooters. If the pros
- Author: Jason Johnson
- Tags: News, first-person shooter, IRL SHOOTER, larp, zombie, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2024-07-26 09:39

Possibly the only live-action role-playing game (long for LARP) cool enough for me to actually consider playing, [*IRL Shooter*](http://irlshooter.com/?ref=killscreen.com) (short for in-real-life) is the popular game native to Australia that blissfully unites laser-tag, a haunted house, and the campaign mode of first-person shooters. If the prospect of spraying invisible bullets at circus performers painted as zombies sounds appealing to you, this is your game.

– – –

[The good folks at PC PowerPlay extensively interviewed the showrunners](http://www.pcpowerplay.com.au/2013/02/irl-shooter-interview/?ref=killscreen.com), and buried within the pages and pages of talk was the admittance that the designers had embedded moral dilemmas into the chapters, much like you’d find in *BioShock* or *Far Cry 3*. But in *IRL*, virtual characters are replaced with flesh-and-blood human beings, so the arbitrary moral dilemmas of videogames became an experiment in social psychology.

> *Dave: You’re aware of the Stanford experiment that happened in the States in the 70s? It was a Berkeley psychology experiment. They got a group of students, made some of them prison guards and some of them prisoners, put them in a realistic prison environment, and watched them for a few days. And things went south real quick.*

The designers, who surreptitiously monitor the game with cameras from a control room, say they have observed similar interactions between the actors and the players in their game.

> *Dave: To a degree, we have the same thing. We have these elite soldiers who are in charge of the grunts. Some of our cast have taken on those characters to such a degree, that the grunts who come through as players, well, it’s been quite interesting how the dynamic has worked between the two.*   
>  
> *Some of the players are submissive \[to the elites\] because it’s usually an older guy who’s quite vocal and strong and determined. Some of the actors have been very full-on with the players. \[When he directs them to kill an innocent character,\] the players totally believe him. The conversations \[go like this\]: Should we shoot her? He told us to, but I don’t know if should do it. Then, the \[elites\] go, “Take her out, take her out.” And, the players say, “fuck it.” BANG.*  
>  
> *That’s a moral choice the player makes right then and there. Shooting the infected horde is a victimless crime. Who cares? They’re zombies. But when you’re looking at a person, actually looking someone in the eye and pulling the trigger, and knowing that in the game, you’re taking them out. . .*

. . . it’s harrowing. While moral decisions in videogames are rightfully derided for being disingenuous and binary, *IRL*’s tough choices capture the darker side of human nature, and reveal how when people are thrust into a position of power, they are inclined to act on it, such as the soldiers did in the Iraq prison abuse scandals, or the audience participants in *Rhythm 0, 1974* who stabbed Marina Abramovic with thorns and pointed a loaded gun at her head.

After considering that, I realize I’m just fine with the rather arbitrary Sophie’s Choices most games offer. I have no desire to feel like an execrable jerk during my fun gaming time.