SmackDown vs. Raw vs. Video game morality

A couple of weeks ago, as part of my gradual evolution into a wrestling fan, I bought SmackDown vs. Raw for my Xbox. I generally don't go for fighting games like Tekken or Mortal Kombat, because A) They get repetitive, B) Eventually, I get to the point where I'm not good enough to progress any further, and C) I don't have the attention span necessary to memorize the various combinations of buttons you have to know in order to pull off the more complicated moves which are necessary to progress (see Point B) so the game doesn't become repetitive (see Point A).

But I figured a wrestling game might be different, and so far it has been. There's enough variety to keep things interesting, even though I actually wouldn't mind it being a little more difficult. I played a Royal Rumble match last weekend, and personally eliminated 15 wrestlers. That doesn't seem right.

In the game, as in real life, there are both male wrestlers (called "Superstars") and female wrestlers (called "Divas"). I hate these terms, but for the sake of simplicity, I'll use them anyway. You can play as a Superstar in any of the many types of matches that are available in the game. You can play as a Diva in any match except for a first blood match, where the goal is to be the first to draw your opponent's blood. (Fun wrestling fact I read about when I was a kid: When a match called for a wrestler to get bloodied in the ring, he'd carry a small razor blade in the waistband of his trunks and at a certain point, surreptitiously take it out and cut his forehead or nose open. I have no idea if this still goes on, but I'm guessing being a wrestler back in the day was a lot crappier than it is now.)

After playing the game for a while, I started to get a little bored just beating up guys like John Cena and R-Truth over and over. I looked at the roster of wrestlers, and decided it might be fun to go for what would have to be the most incredibly lopsided match in the history of wrestling: An intergender match between The Undertaker and Kelly Kelly. The former is six feet, ten inches of solid muscle, whereas the latter is five and a half feet of blonde hair and silicone. In real life, even the WWE writers would have a hard time coming up with a way for this match to last longer than a minute. I figured I could win in half that time.

I tried to set up the match, only to discover that the game wouldn't let me. Intergender wrestling, it seemed, was verboten. A quick Google check revealed that was indeed the case. Apparently, previous editions of SmackDown vs. Raw let gamers indulge their Andy Kaufman-esque wrestling fantasies, but the past couple have not.

Now, obviously, I can see the WWE's point of view. The company has been trying to repackage itself as family-friendly entertainment, and if they're toning down the violence on their TV broadcasts, it makes sense that they'd do the same with their video games.

But at the same time, it kind of irks me.

I realize this runs the risk of coming off as though I'm upset that I'm not allowed to beat up women, which would be kind of weird. I'm really not. Don't get me wrong, I still think an Undertaker/Kelly Kelly match would be a blast, but in the same way that it would be funny if you had the option of playing as the New England Patriots against a high school football team in Madden. Or like in Grand Theft Auto, how you're able--encouraged, even--to run around, happily murdering innocent bystanders and police officers. Using overwhelming force against mostly helpless opponents is a hallmark of video games. In other words, game ethics are not the same as real-life ethics.

So what annoys me is the idea that a video game, in general, would attempt to force a sense of right and wrong on its players.

This is hardly the first time it's happened, of course. Going all the way back to text-based games like Zork, if you tried to do something violent to someone who didn't deserve it, you'd likely get a horrified response from the narrator, letting you know that wasn't going to happen. And in later games, if you tried to, say, shoot people you weren't supposed to, the bullets might just pass through them. But that had just as much to do with the limitations of technology at the time, as it did trying to make you act like a good guy. Those games weren't sophisticated enough to deal with the in-game consequences of you acting like a psychopath, so the simplest answer was to just not let you.

But here, it also seems more than a little hypocritical. Consider, that while playing a Divas match, you can do the following to your (fellow female) opponent:

-- Pull a sledgehammer out from underneath the ring and attack her with it.

-- Beat her with a metal folding chair, including trapping her leg in between it, and bringing all your weight down on it.

-- Punch her in the face repeatedly, prompting one of the ring announcers to comment, "I think I just saw a tooth fly out!"

-- In an inferno match, toss your opponent out of the ring into fire, where she becomes engulfed in flames and needs to be put out with fire extinguishers.

If you do any of these things to someone in real life, chances are you'll be charged with assault, if not attempted murder. But in the "WWE Universe," it's all perfectly legal. So since we're dealing with an alternate reality where normal rules of violent behavior don't apply anyway, isn't it absurd for a video game to make you follow any sort of rules that are designed to enforce morality?

Additionally, mixed tag team matches, where each team consists of one Superstar and one Diva, are allowed. When you or your opponent makes a tag, the other Superstar/Diva is forced to go tag in his or her teammate, so both legal wrestlers are the same gender. If you, controlling your Superstar, strike the opposing Diva while she's standing on the apron and the ref sees you, you're disqualified and the match is over. But if the ref is distracted (or you've knocked him out) and doesn't see you hit her, you can get away with it. Seems like a weird technicality to include, given how stringent the rules about this sort of thing are, otherwise.

So basically, you can do all kinds of horrible things to female characters in this game--things that would maim and kill in real life--but only if you're also playing as a female character. And like I said, I understand why this safeguard is in place, but given how relatively violent the rest of the game is, it just seems arbitrary and useless.

No impressionable young mind that would play SmackDown vs. Raw and otherwise be unaffected by what's in it, would start hitting women simply because he could do so in the game. Just like how playing Mortal Kombat in arcades didn't inspire millions of young boys to try and rip women's spines out, despite the fact that across America in the early '90s, Sonja and Kitana were probably getting Fatalities performed on them every ten seconds.

A couple of months ago, there was a bit on Raw where The Miz and Alex Riley came into the ring and savagely beat up Daniel Bryant. It was pretty shocking in its brutality, especially since the show was in the middle of its big, "Hey, look how great and family-friendly the WWE is! Vote Linda McMahon for Senate!" push. I'm not saying that sort of thing is going to warp young minds, either, but it's certainly more likely to do so than a virtual Undertaker wrestling a virtual Kelly Kelly would.