Once Upon a Time There was a Leader…

9 Jul

So I’ve recently started playing Fable III. There are many reasons I hate the game so far, although I’m going to give it the proverbial college try for a little while longer before I give up completely (also, probably going to appear on TLF in the future).

I’m writing this post because of a very particular leadership element I encountered today – that of “having greatness thrust upon me” as the player-character. First of all, my opening choice as a player was “Prince” or “Princess.” Second, I am apparently “chosen” to have magical powers that no one else has (except my father, possibly?). Third, I have been told to go out, gather followers (in those words), and lead a revolution.

Here’s my objection from a purely leadership studies standpoint. Leaders do not appear because someone hands them a magical object, good genetics, and a quest arrow. If they did, more patriarchal monarchs would have been better leaders.

What really bothers me about this “go be a leader” mentality in the game is the fact that it creates a false impression for players. Being a leader isn’t about just deciding “Hey, I’m going to be a leader! I have a pretty rock! People will follow me!” It’s about being willing to stand forward, to make sacrifices, to speak up, to set an example… in short, to be a positive agent in some way, shape, or form. Leadership is ultimately about agency, and my idiotic princess most certainly does not have agency. She is unequipped to be a leader in any way, and just because her weapons instructor and her butler and her dog seem to think she’s spiffy does not make her fit to lead a revolution in any capacity, nor should they suggest that it does.

If you’re going to make a game about developing leadership, then have your player-character actually develop leadership. Have them build loyalty. Have them naturally accrue followers (don’t just tell them to go find some) through actions and decisions. Have them act.

The real problem here is that Fable III is reflecting a potentially dangerous attitude that I see more and more often in real life – entitlement. My princess in Fable III is entitled to her leadership role because she was born to it, she’s magic, and someone told her she’s a leader. But in the real world we aren’t simply entitled to things like leadership – we have to earn them, just as we have to earn promotions, grades, and awards.

No one owes us anything more than basic human rights, and that’s a lesson that far too many people have not learned. They’ve been told all their lives that they’re Special, they can do anything they want, they can be anything they want to be. But they aren’t told that they have to work for it, sacrifice for it, make choices between two things that they want because they can’t have it all. And when they find that they can’t just have, they have to earn, some of those people decide they’re going to take it anyway, even if that means lying, cheating, stealing, and murdering to do so. Because they deserve it.

It would be nice, for once, to have stories and games that aren’t about princesses. That are about simple, ordinary people who don’t become princesses or kings or wizards through happenstance or accident or marriage. That are about ordinary people who work hard, make sacrifices, and become interesting, successful people by earning it. People who don’t have an inherent advantage of birth or magic, just people who become special because they have the motivation to do so. They study hard, they work hard, they sacrifice.

Really, it’s the same problem that’s feeding the weight-loss industry (to make what might appear to be a complete non sequitur). We don’t want to spend every day thinking about what we eat, counting calories, carefully monitoring our fruits and veggies. We don’t want to exercise an hour a day, three or more days a week. We want to sit on our couch in front of our tv and eat cheetos and pizza and somehow magically lose weight because of a pill or a belt or a cream. And just as cheetos and pizza and tv will not result in a fit, healthy physique, entitlement does not produce good leaders. Work does. Dedication does. Devotion does. Agency does. Responsibility does. I’d like our games to teach us that, instead.