Defeating enemies gain you experience, which increases your level and makes you more powerful, paving the way to let you get further in the game and survive in more difficult areas. Japanese role-playing games, for instance, use a feedback loop that treat battles as a stepping stone towards progress. If you want someone to feel like they’re doing well, you reward them somehow. As certain types of feedback became codified in certain types of games, genre conventions were born, establishing a baseline for how these games are designed. Games live and die based on the feedback they give - and don’t give - the player.
It’s partially the fault of feedback designed into the game to manipulate the player into doing certain things. You can see everything there is to see in a game, morally questionable or no. After all, it’s just a game, right? You can do what you want. Sometimes games are like this, too, but it’s hard to care as much about pretend consequences. In life, you live with the consequences of your actions.
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