Why You Love Being a Jerk in ‘Untitled Goose Game’
Even — and maybe especially — if you’re a really good person IRL
In the rapidly bestselling Untitled Goose Game, players embody a horrible goose whose only purpose is to bother, annoy, and harass members of a pleasant small town. Goose Game’s primary game mechanic is sadism. As the titular goose, you can chase a small child into a phone booth, lock a groundskeeper out of his own garden, or have a picnic of food pilfered from around town. There’s no combat or complicated narrative, and your only reward is the smug satisfaction of being a jerk.
Yet despite the deplorable behavior of your anti-social anatidae avatar, Goose Game and games like it, which encourage mean-spirited behavior, may highlight how empathetic players can be.
Most of us are familiar with the narrative that video games desensitize players to violence or anti-social behavior. On the surface, the idea feels intuitive. Games like Grand Theft Auto are notorious for allowing players to casually commit criminal and destructive acts — from stealing cars to killing people — which in turn can lead to the (thoroughly debunked) belief that players might try to act out those behaviors in real life. By removing the controversial content — the sex, the drugs, the crime — but retaining the anti-social aspect…
