Issue 2.8: Why We Pirate
A Psychological and Philosophical Analysis of Sea of Thieves
Table of Contents (Vol. 2, Issue 8: Sunday, April 10, 2022)
Summary & Housekeeping
Feature: “Why We Pirate” (~30 minute read)
Food for Talk: Discussion Prompts
Further Reading
Game & Word-of-Mouth
Footnotes
Summary:
Today, we’ll use the online pirate game Sea of Thieves as a springboard for figuring out why we seek out stories and themes featuring pirates, why they resonate so strongly in our collective consciousness, and why pirate games in particular are just so much fun to play.
Housekeeping:
Hello again, dear readers! In case you missed last week’s bonus issue, I’m back from GDC and back in my usual groove! I’ve got a couple of neat things to announce this week—I know you’re anxious to get to the feature, but I hope you take the time to read these updates first. Here goes:
Next Volume’s Topic:
With this week’s feature, and next week’s bonus audio, Game & Word, Volume 2 will wrap up—and along with it, our exploration of pirates in video games. This means we will move on to a different topic for Volume 3.
I’ve given this a lot of thought, as I’ve got 99 lives’ worth of content ideas for this newsletter. But I’ve finally honed in on one. Here is our theme for Volume 3:
Game Over Matter: Games and the Human Mind
Forget space, and forget the bottom of the ocean (though Game & Word will absolutely touch on both in future volumes). The real final frontier for human exploration lies not without, but within; it is the human mind.
Our minds make us who we are, yet we are just starting to truly understand and uncover its secrets. Exploring the mind—whether your own, or the collective unconscious—can yield profound insights. But it can also be fraught, and even dangerous—for we may not like, nor be prepared to know, whatever we discover.
Join us as we look at the intersection of gaming and the mind. We’ll examine ways in which the mind is portrayed, conveyed, and addressed in certain games, how games affect the mind (and vice-versa), and what—if anything—a player’s preferred games and genres tell us about their minds. We’ll also become quite familiar with archetypes, along with how other Jungian concepts, like the collective unconscious and the dialogue between the ego and the self, play out in both game narratives and game design.
Game & Word, Volume 3 will start publishing on April 23, 2022.
Guest Post:
Check out my guest post on Night Water, the newsletter for night owls, published by writer and veteran podcast producer Adam Cecil (Welcome to Night Vale, Milky Way Underground). In it, I write about how video games and night owls are as iconic a duo as Link and Zelda:
Paid Subscription Tiers
As I announced earlier this week, Game & Word is now offering paid subscriptions in addition to free subscriptions. I went over the different tiers in the announcement post. But I also want you to know that whichever subscription you choose, I’m just happy you’re reading!
So with all that out of the way, let’s get into this volume’s final feature, shall we?
Previous Issues:
If you really enjoy my work but aren’t feeling a paid subscription, consider buying me a coffee instead:
Feature: Why We Pirate
🚨🚨🚨SPOILER ALERT!!! 🚨🚨🚨
This post contains visual spoilers for the recent Sea of Thieves expansion, “A Pirate’s Life” (also known as “the one with Jack Sparrow”). You've been warned!
Sea of Thieves, UK developer Rare’s 2018 pirate MMO1 is, in my semi-expert opinion, the studio’s magnum opus. Yes, I played Donkey Kong Country, too. Yes, it’s one of my favorites. Sea of Thieves is still Rare’s crown jewel. Fight me.2
The best thing about this game is that it has you design a scurvy, salty pirate, then sets you loose into an open sandbox world to be a scurvy, salty pirate with other scurvy, salty pirates.
At the same time, the worst thing about this game is that it has you design a scurvy, salty pirate, then sets you loose into an open sandbox world to be a scurvy, salty pirate with other scurvy salty, pirates.
Confused? Allow me to illustrate with an anecdote from a recent session:
I signed up to captain a sloop, a very small ship with only enough room for up to two crew members. It’s more than manageable enough for one crew member to effectively sail, so I often choose it for more casual sessions, when I just want to sail around, explore some islands, maybe hack a skeleton or two.
But I was in a social mood that day, so while setting up my session, I set it to “Open Crew,” meaning anyone playing at the time could be randomly placed into my crew.
Almost immediately, someone joined me. I should’ve known trouble was afoot when I saw this stranger’s stats, not to mention his “Pirate Legend” title—he out-leveled me by a factor of at least 10 (first red flag). Still, I kept an open mind and welcomed him aboard, even though he seemingly wasn’t wearing a headset and didn’t make any effort to communicate back through chat, canned messages, emotes, or any of the other communication tools the game provides (second red flag).
We voted on a quest, scoured the outpost for provisions, and marked our navigation chart; my mysterious crewmate did everything so quickly, and with so much precision, I actually found it a bit eerie (third red flag). Still, against my better judgment, I stayed logged on,3 unfurled the sails, and started on our quest.
Our destination was a long ways away, so I figured I’d whip out my hurdy-gurdy and play a few sea shanties. And then, right when I was just getting into the music enough to stop noticing my surroundings, my shady crewmate pulled out a blunderbomb (basically, the game’s equivalent of a hand grenade) and lobbed it at me, knocking me overboard.
And then, he sailed away. With my ship. With my provisions. And then, to add insult to injury, I could see his spyglass gleaming in the sunlight, as he looked on in sadistic delight, silently taunting me as a shark devoured me and I finally took my seat aboard the Ferry of the Damned.
That, right there, is Sea of Thieves in a nutshell.
And yet… I wasn’t that salty about my crewmate’s betrayal. Sure, I was mad at first. But the more I thought about it, the funnier it became. I could totally see what had just happened playing out in some Our Flag Means Death-esque pirate sitcom; an obliviously naive and optimistic pirate captain getting mutinied and kicked overboard by a seasoned and gruff deckhand, for the sole transgression of being a terrible musician.
You have to admit, the whole thing’s pretty damned hilarious. It certainly elicited a few laughs from me. But it also got me thinking.
“If You’re an A**hole in the Matrix, Are You an A**hole in the Real World?”
People play Sea of Thieves for the same reason people play Grand Theft Auto (GTA): to act out a fantasy. To become, for an hour or two, a sociopathic maniac who doesn’t give two craps about society’s “rules” and does whatever is needed to gain a leg up in the world. Theft, murder, mass murder, nuclear air strikes… nothing is off the table in games like these.
As someone who greatly enjoys both GTA and Sea of Thieves, and who isn’t a maniacal mass murderer in real life, I gotta say playing these games does feel liberating. Shaking off the yokes of society is fun and thrilling, whether you’re playing hooky from a horrible job, taking to the sea in a pirate sloop, or blowing up a SWAT van with a bazooka.4
And when we consider that pirates5 practically invented shaking off the yokes of society? Well, then of course a game like Sea of Thieves exists! Of course it’s going into its sixth season (as of press time). It really shouldn’t be surprising at all.6
Why is this game so much fun? Because the thrill we get from playing scheming, salty pirates stems from a very, very deep desire within our brains, so hardwired into us that it’s practically human nature:
The desire to be a total jerka** to others, without repercussions.
Well… that’s what Thomas Hobbes would say, at least. The real answer’s a bit more complicated, as we’ll find out in a bit.
Was Hobbes Right?
The rightfully beloved comic strip Calvin & Hobbes, along with its titular characters, actually took its name from two rather fascinating philosophers: John Calvin and Thomas Hobbes.
John Calvin was one of the big figures of the Protestant reformation. In fact, there’s an entire Protestant denomination named after him: Calvinism. He’s not at all relevant to this article, so click on his name to read the Wikipedia article if you want to learn more.
Thomas Hobbes, on the other hand, is very relevant to this article. So let’s dive into him.
Hobbes was a British philosopher in the 15th and 16th Centuries, who—and this is putting it lightly—had an unbelievably dim view of human nature. In a nutshell, Hobbes thought that humans naturally tended toward chaos and violence, and can only act “good”7 when things like social contracts, laws, and governments force them to behave.
Unsurprisingly, Hobbes also thought that autocratic systems of governance8 and hierarchical social structures were totally dandy.
So, Hobbes would not have been at all surprised that backstabbing and other underhandedness runs rampant in Sea of Thieves. In fact, Hobbes would’ve loved to have witnessed the rise of online multiplayer. Just five minutes listening in to an Xbox Live voice chat lobby would’ve given him all the proof he’d have needed to forevermore gloat at dinner parties that he was right all along, and people really are insufferable sh*theads by nature.
But… what if Hobbes wasn’t right? After all, if an actor enjoys portraying a serial killer, that doesn’t (necessarily) mean he’d enjoy being a serial killer. So why would having fun griefing9 fellow players be any different?
Ok, I know it’s not an exact comparison; griefing and trolling other players can quickly and easily get out of hand. Far too often, it crosses the line into harassment, cyberbullying, stalking, gaslighting, emotional torment, and even physical violence—all of which actually harm others. Meanwhile, that actor playing a serial killer isn’t actually harming anyone (except maybe inducing nightmares for a few nights).
But griefers, for the most part, wouldn’t dare act the way they do online in a face-to-face environment. Griefers and trolls, like the actor, are merely playing a role that’s different from the roles they play in their day-to-day lives.
Right? ……Right?!
I Stab Your Back, You Stab Mine
There’s regrettably scarce empirical data on how someone’s playstyle reflects her personality, if it does so at all. But from what we do know, our personalities can indeed influence our preferred (or “default”) playstyles. And conversely, our preferred playstyles can reflect our personalities—but only to a point, and with some very big caveats.
Yes, players often default to playing a character that more or less resembles their IRL selves. That said, games also provide a safe environment for players to take on traits they wish they had, or to highlight parts of their personalities that they wouldn’t usually feel comfortable openly expressing. This could include a shy, introverted player creating a more confident and outgoing character, or a closeted trans player playing a character that matches the gender they identify as.
However, inhabiting different roles—becoming different people—doesn’t always look so wholesome or “positive.” People also love to let loose the violent, cruel, and antisocial aspects of their personalities—ones that would get them injured, arrested, or even killed (after dishing out a fair bit of killing beforehand, of course) in the “real world.”
Sure, this has been studied, but the body of research suffers from bias creep and questionable methodologies, and the results are—thus far—inconclusive.
That said, no player worth her gamer tag needs a study to tell her that people act out their darker impulses online. It’s so common in multiplayer games that it’s long ceased being remarkable, akin to window dressing at this point. Visit the official forums, subreddits, and Discord servers for just about any online FPS10 or MMORPG and count how many threads you see complaining about trolls, griefers, cheaters, hackers, some toxic player, or even the entire player base being toxic. Chances are, you’ll find at least a handful before you even start scrolling down.
Griefers, if given free reign, can sink a multiplayer game and cost its developers a lot of money. Griefers’ whole “shtick” is to ruin other people’s fun. So developers engage them in an endless game of cat-and-mouse, trying to quash their efforts and preferred griefing methods. In turn, the griefers try to quash, evade, or even weaponize the developers’ ever-expanding dragnet against them. All this, in games about fighting orcs or mining space minerals.
People play games to have fun. So what kind of person finds it fun to go through so much time and effort just to take away someone else’s fun? Someone who, in all likelihood, they’ve never even met before!
Obviously, such a person must also be a jerk offline. Or, at the very least, wishes he could be one. Well, if that’s the case, then it really is good that we have things like laws and social contracts to keep our baser instincts in check. As we’ve seen with online gaming, we’re just itching to unleash our dark sides onto the world, and will do so if the world gives us even the slightest opportunity.
This explanation makes intuitive sense. But just like with so much about the human mind, the best explanation is actually the most unintuitive one.
Was Hobbes Wrong?
Every single MMO player, no matter how old they are or where in the world they live, shares the same dirty secret: they’ve all been a jerk to another player at least once in their lifetimes. Before you come at me in the comments, search your feelings: you know this to be true. Anyone who claims otherwise is either a liar, or is actually Tom Hanks or Keanu Reeves.
And yet, I doubt all these players consider themselves bad people—they probably drive their kids to school, or their parents to their doctors’ appointments, or donate to war refugees, or volunteer at soup kitchens.
Besides, a similar argument comes up when video games are invariably blamed for the latest mass shooting. And what’s the most common gamer response? “Well, I shoot people in Grand Theft Auto all the time, but I’ve never felt the urge to do it in real life!”
It sounds ridiculous, yet painfully obvious at the same time. Unfortunately, there’s very little good research on whether video games cause violence, so we can’t yet make any conclusions. That said, you’d expect that if games really did cause people to become violent, we’d expect to see crime rates rising along with video games’ popularity.
But they haven’t. Instead, they’ve steadily dropped:
So, what gives? Why do otherwise conscientious people, some of whom may be so compassionate as to not even swat a mosquito, interpret logging into an MMO as a green light to unleash their inner jerkass?
This is partly because, in the context of an online game, the social contract changes significantly compared to the ones we follow IRL. In a multiplayer game, you’re going to be fighting other people—often to the death—if they stand in the way of your goal. Sometimes, you can just run away from them, or around them. But the fact that starting a death match is even an option illustrates how differently game worlds operate from our real world, no matter how realistic games keep getting.
Or, put another way, “different games, different rules.”
And this is especially so when backstabbing, griefing, and other underhandedness is not only allowed, but incentivized and even outright encouraged—perhaps even designed for, on a deeply structural level—by the game developers themselves.
For instance, take sci-Fi MMO/space accounting simulator EVE Online, known even amongst non-players for its unbelievably huge world (even by MMO standards), dauntingly steep learning curve (even by strategy/simulation games’ standards), and the developers’ notoriously hands-off approach to policing moderating their game.
In EVE Online, you start off as a lowly space pilot flying a lowly space junker, a mere speck in this massive, player-driven space economy that’s been built up for almost two decades and counting.
Naturally, commanding your own fleet of deadly space warships sounds much more appealing than running menial mining errands for wealthier players. But it’s up to you to make your way to the top. And on your journey towards galactic domination, anything goes. Anything.
This includes everything from market manipulation, Ponzi scams of every conceivable form and flavor, industrial espionage, political intrigue, galaxy-spanning wars, sabotage, corporate power plays, and even offline social engineering—it's all been done in EVE Online. All with the developers’ approval (or rather, without their express disapproval).
The game’s semi-official marketing tagline says it all: TRUST NO ONE.
I mean, come on. That’s a clear signal to your players that you want them to act deviously to each other. Same goes for Sea of Thieves, for that matter. Why call it Sea of Thieves if you don’t want the players to act like… well, thieves?
(By the way, Marcus Carter’s Treacherous Play, listed in the “Further Reading” section, brilliantly dives into the dynamics of multiplayer play in games that encourage treachery and underhandedness. If you want to dive deeper into this fascinating topic, check it out.)
In any case, games like EVE Online, Sea of Thieves, and the latter’s inspirations (Rust and DayZ) are the exceptions, not the rule. MMO developers almost never abide by treacherous behavior.
And by “treachery,” I don’t mean “violence.” MMOs always allow, and usually facilitate, Player vs. Player (PvP) combat as a key component of player interaction. Heck, entire genres, such as fighting games or multiplayer FPS’s, are built on PvP combat. Many players are drawn to these genres precisely because they enjoy PvP.
But at the same time, multiplayer game developers usually design their games to either limit treacherous interactions, eliminate them altogether, or at the very least impose severe in-game consequences for treachery.
To sum it up: duels to the death are fine, but betrayal is a line too far. Why is that?
If you’re feeling charitable, all you have to do is recall a time when you were betrayed by someone you considered close or trustworthy (whether online or offline). You could argue that since treachery and betrayal are some of the most heinous and scornful ways to treat someone, it’s only natural that developers want to protect their players from them.
If you’re feeling cynical, all you have to do is look at how quickly a game hemorrhages users when players feel that treachery and griefing are out of control. Less subscribers means less money for the developers. And we can’t allow that to happen to a late-capitalist, profit-seeking enterprise, now can we?
Still, no matter how many safeguards the developers put in play—no matter how much they disable friendly fire, or nix sudden allegiance changes, or nerf damage per second—11griefers (always an inventive lot) invariably find new ways to wreak havoc. Griefing may well always be a part of the online multiplayer experience.
But… why is that? What is it about these games that seem to unleash our inner devil?
Safe Shadow Spaces
The short answer to that question is: because in a game, we can. We’re given the power to do things we could or would never do in the real world: fly, cast powerful spells, date our crush, drive fast cars, go into space, and yes, act like a total dirtbag to everyone without facing any consequences.
And exploring those wants, fantasies, and impulses (yes, even the unsavory ones) in a safe environment—like a video game—is not only fun; it can be therapeutic.
What I’ve just described is the cornerstone of video game therapy, which is really just an extension of play therapy, which itself is grounded in narrative therapy. To simplify a bit, narrative theory helps patients rewrite the internal narratives they tell about themselves, re-framing them in a way that instills agency, empowerment, and confidence instead of doubt, anxiety, and despair.
In narrative therapy, the therapist guides the patient in writing this new internal “autobiography.” Like any story, these narratives must have conflict, and they must have characters. And like most stories, these characters take the form of certain universal archetypes.
Archetypes are a concept from Jungian (as in “Karl Jung”) psychology, roughly defined as an unconscious concept, image, idea, or thought that’s collectively inherited. Or, to put it simpler, they’re the different parts of our psyches that represent all the different aspects of who we are.12
Jungian archetypes include the Hero, the Mentor, the Guardian, the Trickster, and so forth. You can make a case for including additional archetypes to the list, as long as they meet one requirement: they must represent universal aspects of human nature. As in, they must be hard-wired into who we are as human beings. Learned images, concepts, and roles that differ across cultures are not archetypal. At least not in the Jungian sense of the term.
Anyway, why are we learning all this? Because online multiplayer games, and particularly MMOs like EVE Online and Sea of Thieves, allow players to commune, reckon, grapple, and integrate with the most feared, yet most misunderstood archetype of them all: the Shadow Archetype.
According to Jung, the Shadow Archetype represents the aspects of someone’s personality that they try to keep repressed or hidden. This doesn’t necessarily mean their dark or violent sides—though the Shadow can, and often does, include these aspects—but rather, any part of their personality that they don’t like and would rather keep hidden from others.
For example, if you’ve experienced a traumatic event and, instead of properly processing it, try to repress it, that trauma becomes a part of your Shadow. Likewise, if you’re ashamed of playing video games, and try to repress the urge to play them, that urge also becomes part of your Shadow.
Since your Shadow is a part of you, it will never go away. Ever. For as long as you’re alive, it’s alive. In fact, the more you try to keep a lid on your Shadow, the stronger it gets, and the more it will consume you from the inside out.
And although popular media is filled with stories of heroes “facing their shadows,” it’s never a good idea to actually fight your Shadow.13 You’ll never win, and you’ll have a miserable time trying.
Instead, it’s best to integrate with your Shadow, accepting it as a part of who you are. Not that you have to go around parading it, but at the very least, come to terms with your Shadow, learn to coexist with it, and even recognize when it can be helpful to you.
Fortunately, it turns out that video games—especially sandbox games, RPGs, and MMORPGs (which combine aspects of both genres)—are excellent playgrounds in which to get to know your Shadow.
The Tall Tales We Tell Ourselves
Roleplaying games (RPGs) have endured as a genre for so long because they fulfill a practically universal human desire: to live, however briefly, a different life, as someone else. Someone richer than you, perhaps. Or more outgoing. Or heroic. Or someone like you in every respect—only you can cast spells. Or fly a spaceship. Or take a private jet from your private island in Barbados to your high-powered job as the owner of a major games publisher in New York, then back to your island at the end of the day (supermodel spouse optional). You get the idea.
And thanks to these wonderful little things called “mirror neurons,” even if we only imagine ourselves in these scenarios, our brain responds the same way it would if we were actually experiencing them.
RPGs were quick to make the leap to video games. And now that video games have advanced so much in technical and narrative capability, video game RPG developers can create massive open-world settings and stories so immersive that—as far as your subconscious is concerned—you really might as well be there. This is doubly so for MMORPGs, due to the social dimension it layers on top of the core gameplay.
This provides a priceless opportunity for trying out various identities, archetypes, and other facets of our personalities in a (mostly) safe environment. Want to indulge your Shadow and see what it’s like to lob a grenade at rush hour traffic? You can do so, and reap the therapeutic growth, without any of the guilt, karma, or legal trouble such an action would normally bring on you.
And while fantasy games dominate the MMORPG genre, it nevertheless boasts such a wide thematic variety, that we can play as—and, in doing so, become—practically anyone we want to be.
Want to be a powerful wizard? Go for it!
Want to take to the stars? Bon voyage!
Want to be an anime pretty boy/waifu? Yabai!
Want to fight crime with Batman? Have fun!
Want to cause crime and rob a casino? Have at it!
Hell, want to be a Jedi Master? Go forth, and may the Force be with you!
So, why is it, then, that when faced with such variety of choice, nearly 5 million of us choose to take to the eponymous Sea of Thieves as a lying, cheating, and stealing sea brigand (instead of as a lying, cheating, and stealing land brigand in GTA: Online or Red Dead Redemption 2)?
Well, it’s for the same reason the Pirates of the Caribbean movies earned Disney a cool $4.5 billion at the box office. Because pirates are awesome!
But pirates were also… not so awesome, in some pretty significant ways (like torturing and murdering, for instance). And yet, they’ve held such a strong grip on our collective unconscious over the past two centuries that they’ve practically become archetypal in and of themselves.
So, what is it about pirates that continue to fascinate and enrapture us, centuries after the last one was hung off his mortal coil and consigned to the history books?
The Death and Life of Captain Kidd
We can explain pirates’ enduring appeal in a few different ways.
First, on a most basic level—and I can only speak for Western sensibilities here, particularly American ones—we simply adore outlaws. We love pirates for the same reason we love Robin Hood, Billy the Kid, Michael Corleone, and Walter White.
Outlaws throw off the yokes of society, march to the beat of their own drum, and thumb their noses at the oppressive social institutions (whether the law or simply expectations of “politeness”) that bind us all together.
We wish we could do all those things, but most of us have jobs to keep, rent to pay, families to feed, and other responsibilities. It’s just not our lot in life. Outlaws allow us to vicariously live the completely free life we all yearn for, but will never realize. Stories about free spirits living free lives resonate very deeply with Americans in particular, as our nation was founded on the very concept of freedom.14 The outlaw’s allure is all but irresistible to us.
And yet, this alone doesn’t present the full picture. If it did, this article would be much shorter—we love outlaws, and pirates are basically sea outlaws, ergo we love pirates for the same reason we love Jesse James, only on the sea instead of in the Wild West. Case closed.
But that’s not entirely it, isn’t it? You know this intuitively, even if you can’t quite articulate it. There’s more to the picture. Don’t believe me? Go to a toy store, count how many pirate costumes you see, then count how many Tony Montana costumes you see.
No, there’s just something about pirates that speaks to us, on a deeply subconscious (and maybe even primal) level. So what is it?
Pirate historian Rebecca Simon lays out a good case in her book, Why We Love Pirates (also listed in the “Further Reading” list). In it, Dr. Simon chronicles the notorious English privateer William Kidd’s sensationalistic—and likely phony—show trial and eventual execution on charges of piracy.15
Kidd’s trial was a hodgepodge of legal scandal and intrigue that makes O.J. Simpson’s trial look like a traffic court session. In fact, Kidd’s trial was such a spectacle, you could easily draw a line from it to Simpson’s own scandalous trial, almost 300 years later.
First off, the constant posturing, domineering, and power plays between Kidd, the Court, and the prosecution’s witnesses seem plucked straight out of a Law & Order episode, or a John Grisham novel. Kidd maintained his innocence until the very end, and some evidence vital to his defense had mysteriously (*ahem*) “vanished” before the trial.
Kidd was an accused pirate, facing a stacked legal system with a presumption of guilt,16 with only his word as his defense. He never stood a chance against an embarrassed Admiralty court that desperately needed to make an example out of a notorious pirate—any notorious pirate—and was thus ready to throw its entire weight17 onto Kidd. No matter how dubious the case against him was.
Second, the printing press had already birthed a nascent print media, which was just as hungry for lurid, sensationalistic stories as today’s supermarket tabloids are. Transcripts of pirate trials and executions sold so fast that newsletter publishers and pamphleteers could barely print fast enough to meet demand. As a result, practically the entire world knew of the trial, and Kidd became one of the world’s first—if not the very first—celebrity trial defendants.
Third, this same early print media ensured that details of Kidd’s exploits as a pirate became seared into the collective unconscious. And one detail, in particular, kept his memory alive for far longer than anyone could’ve expected:
KIDD’S BURIED TREASURE
Or rather, the rumor of Kidd’s buried treasure. As we’ve discussed previously, pirates didn’t actually bury their treasure—they usually spent it as quickly as they acquired it.
But Kidd, in a desperate bid to persuade an old associate to vouch for him at his upcoming trial, promised to reveal where he’d buried a horde of treasure in return. The associate didn’t take him up on this, so Kidd took the secret of his treasure—assuming he actually did bury that treasure, which is itself quite a leap of faith—to his grave.
To this day, Kidd’s treasure has never been found or verified. But just the possibility that he’d left a huge pile of valuables—enough to transform someone’s life— somewhere out in the Caribbean, was more than enough to keep breathing life into Kidd’s story. Generation after generation of would-be treasure hunters would triumphantly declare to have located Kidd’s treasure, only to be exposed as frauds or shysters shortly thereafter. This even happens today—most recently in 2015!
And then, as if William Kidd hadn’t popularized pirates enough, along came a little novel you might have heard of, called Treasure Island. The rest, as they say, is history. History that we’ve already gone through, so I won’t rehash it here—though you can read about it here.
Anyway, long story short: once that novel came out, there was no going back. Fast forward three centuries, and here we are.
Why We Pirate
So, we’ve gone over the appeal of being a jerk in MMOs, and we’ve started going over the appeal of pirates. Or rather, the historiographical reasons we find pirates appealing. What about the psychological reasons? If we can figure this out, we can finally start piecing together an answer to why playing Sea of Thieves—and engaging pirate media, more generally—is just so much damned fun.
Pirates are the ultimate rogues. They’ve transcended their historical origins and become an archetype onto themselves—the historical accuracy of pirates’ popular image is, in a way, besides the point. Things like tricorner hats and Jolly Rogers and peg legs and treasure chests are all just window dressing. The ideas and concepts that the archetype represents are what draw us to pirates.
The freedom to give society the finger and carve one’s own path in life. To do so successfully, becoming unfathomably wealthy in the process. To travel the world and see exotic places on a whim, to be able to go on an adventure anywhere your sails take you. To cultivate unbreakable camaraderie with your crew. To command fear, respect, and awe—not just from friends and peers, but also from those who’d otherwise intimidate, bully, or even subjugate you. To seek recourse for previous harms in the most satisfying, primal way—through the business end of a cutlass or cannon. The swagger and dashing self-confidence that seems to envelop them (and other outlaw archetypes).
Put all these together, and we uncover the three needs that people are intrinsically motivated to seek, according to the Theory of Self Determination: competence, autonomy (agency), and relatability. People engage with pirate stories to fulfill these needs, even if by simulacrum—remember, mirror neurons—and especially if their needs aren’t being fulfilled IRL.
Here’s what each of those needs entails:
Competence: the inner satisfaction and confidence that comes with being good at what you do (whatever it is).
Autonomy: the mental ease felt when someone is in control of their own life, and feels like their decisions can have a lasting impact on the world.
Relatability: the happiness that comes with cultivating quality social bonds with other people.
So, how do pirate stories meet these criteria?
First: famous pirate captains, real and fictional alike, endure in the public consciousness because they were successful. They were good at their craft,18 managing their crew, and evading capture. Their legacies have endured for centuries. And they emanated the infectious confidence that only comes with competence at one’s task.
Second: as we’ve discussed, we love outlaws—including pirates—because they represent total freedom. In other words, complete autonomy. Unrestrained agency in how they live their lives. And as we’ve seen in this volume, pirates really did affect and change the world, sometimes quite significantly. By imagining ourselves in a pirate’s boots, for however briefly, we can feel that agency coursing through our bones.
Finally: there’s the social aspect. Pirate crews spent months or even years packed into cramped, fragile, and smelly wooden boxes precariously floating above a deep, dark abyss. Bound by the pirate articles they signed, and quite literally counting on each other for everyone’s survival, obviously crew members formed iron bonds with each other, and they reinforced this relatability to one another by singing sea shanties and chugging grog in between plunders.
And if they were lucky enough to dock at a friendly port? They’d unleash their raucous and raunchy brand of relatability on the town’s taverns and brothers. Basically, pirate crews were the ultimate fraternities.19
Now, you might be asking: but why pirates, and not other outlaws like cowboy bandits, gangsters, or even space pirates?
That’s a good question, and one I’ve yet to find a satisfactory answer to. But I suspect—in my entirely unscientific opinion—that what your preferred flavor of outlaw is depends on whether you prefer nautical motifs, Western motifs, or what-have-you.20 As to the exact psychological/neurological mechanisms behind those preferences? We’ll just have to wait until later to explore that further.
Anyway, that’s that for pirates. Next: why do people engage with games? Well, that’s a very complicated question, with an equally complicated answer, for another day.
But for our purposes, we can ask a more specific question: why do people play massively multiplayer online (MMO) games like World of Warcraft, or Sea of Thieves?
Why We Play Pirate
[Side note: I’d like to thank Pete Etchells’ phenomenal treatise on gaming, Lost in a Good Game—also in the “Further Reading” section—for showing me how the Theory of Self-Determination is applied to games. That book is the foundation on which this section is built.]
People play MMOs for the same reasons they read pirate stories: to fulfill the three key needs of competence, autonomy, and relatability.
Let’s start with competence. MMOs are cleverly21 designed to keep the player in the game with expertly-timed dopamine hits. These usually come in the form of a player’s character “leveling up”22 as she fulfills tasks in the game—say, by finding a lost trinket, or hunting some nearby monsters.
MMO designers leverage this feeling of getting better, of increasing one’s competence, either to give the player a better experience, or to keep them hooked and perpetually subscribed to the game (depending on how cynical you want to be).
Next up: autonomy. Pirate games are far more immersive than pirate stories in any other medium, because video games give the player agency over their characters what they do in the world, and how they affect the story. By doing something instead of seeing, hearing, or reading about it, your sense of autonomy is nourished. And if a game boasts a non-linear design, as open-world MMOs do, then the player feels even more agency.
She can go wherever she wants, whenever she wants, and do whatever they want when she gets there, affecting the world with her every action.23 In Sea of Thieves, you start each session with a ship, a map, and a practically endless ocean, filled to the brim with treasures and wonders, just beckoning you to explore it. To play this game is to be free.
Finally: the social aspect. Video games’ social aspects are so well-known that I feel silly even mentioning them. Even people who’ve never picked up a controller know that many video games let you play with people from around the world. Playing with or against the same person for long enough can lead to bonafide friendships, partnerships, and even marriages down the line.
For an MMO, enabling and fostering such relatability is critical to its success (I mean, come on, it’s in the genre’s NAME!). Yet it’s here, with the social element (of all things!), that we appear to run into a paradox with Sea of Thieves.
On one hand, Sea of Thieves requires social cohesion for success. Sailing a ship in Sea of Thieves requires far more than just pressing the thumbstick to steer. Large ships, like Galleons, require a crew of 3-4 players, and successfully sailing them requires the coordinated efforts of each crew member. Among the tasks a crew must perform are: raising/dropping the anchor, furling/unfurling the sails on three different masts, bailing water out of the hold, repairing the hull, arming and firing the cannons, charting a course, keeping watch for land and enemy ships, and steering the ship. And they must do so as synchronously as possible. Winning a battle similarly requires everyone to do their part, and tactics to be clearly communicated.
But on the other hand, as I’ve mentioned in this article and as illustrated by my opening anecdote, Sea of Thieves has a not-entirely-undeserved reputation for letting treachery run amok, making it hard to trust even your own crewmembers.24
And this presents a problem. In a world25 filled with serial backstabbers and unrepentant griefers, placing your trust in someone is a genuine act of faith. Sometimes, this faith is misplaced, and the random player you’d trusted—who sailed by your side to the Devil’s Ridge and back again—suddenly calls off your alliance the instant you dock at an outpost. Before you can even react, he takes a blunderbuss to your head before clearing out your hold and selling the loot for himself.
And then—just for good measure—while you wait to respawn,26 he sinks your broken, empty, and unmanned ship.
Each time a player experiences such an encounter, she becomes more and more likely to simply log off and move on to other games. Not that you’d blame her, but this has a subtle yet nasty side effect. Each honest player that quits the game skews the “trustworthiness-to-treachery” ratio even further in the backstabbers’ favor, further exacerbating the problem.
As you can imagine, it’s very hard to feel any relatability in this type of experience.
But sometimes, your faith in a player isn’t misplaced, and the random crewmate turns out to not just be trustworthy, but actually (*GASP*) honorable amongst thieves. Since you’re both aware of how rare honest players are, you exchange gamer tags and soon go on quests and raids together, as a crew.
Just one or two successful quests together will solidify your camaraderie, and thus your relatability to each other. This also leads to very relatable post-quest reminiscing sessions over many tankards of grog at one of the game’s many taverns.
As someone who’s played quite a bit of Sea of Thieves and greatly enjoys the world and core gameplay loops,27 I can personally attest to this.
Sea of Thieves’ greatest strength is, believe it or not, its people. While it’s entirely possible28 to play through the game on your own, you’d be missing out on the whole other dimension that social play adds to the game.
Sure, most of the players you’ll encounter will be treacherous clowns and full-fledged a**wipes. But that makes the friendships you do form feel so much more special. They feel genuine, to a much greater degree than I’ve ever experienced in any other multiplayer game—MMO or otherwise.
In fact, another randomly-matched player, who also highly out-leveled me (though not by nearly as much as Blunderbomb Guy), gave me a crash course on the game’s more “unwritten” rules,29 and even invited me to sail on a few quests with him.
Over the course of the next six hours, we sailed from one end of the sea to the other, sinking skeleton ships and evading Krakens. Our quest culminated in a ridiculously hard (and just as epic) boss battle against some fiery pirate demon lord. The fight clocked in at over 40 minutes, and we’d thrown everything at our disposal—cannonfire, blunderbombs, hundreds of rounds of musketshot—at the fiend, which just refused to admit defeat.
But it was I—a terrible FPS player with a worse aim than any Imperial Stormtrooper, who’d just started playing this notoriously hard and unforgiving game, and was clearly way out of his element—who landed the final blow with a sniper rifle. The ghoul exploded into a thousand gems, gold coins, and loaded treasure chests. It was a good haul, but couldn’t hold a cutlass to the genuine thrill and rush that I felt, and the memories of that moment. The moment I’d finally, irrefutably proven myself as a sailor and marksman worthy of sailing these treacherous waves, and became a valued member of a small, but hardy, pirate crew.30
No other gaming experience, before or since, has ever come close. And it’ll be a mainstay in my grog-laden storytelling sessions for years to come.
By letting online multiplayer’s worst player archetypes run loose in their piratey sea world, the folks at Rare have paradoxically created one of gaming’s best multiplayer experiences.
Birds of a feather flock together, and in a sea of literal thieves, the trustworthy players must band together to survive and thrive. In the process, they create and enjoy the most genuinely and viscerally real form of relatability seen thus far in a virtual world.
And so, Sea of Thieves fulfills the three intrinsic needs because of its game design. Now, let’s combine this with the way pirates fulfill these needs.
Be More Pirate!
Sea of Thieves distills pirate stories and MMOs to the core elements that make both so much fun. But Sea of Thieves is by no means the only pirate game that does this well.
In fact, all of the games I’ve featured in this volume—and many more that I haven’t—do this to some degree, and in ways unique to their design, genres, and lore. Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag is the most faithful to actual pirate history. Monkey Island uses wit and self-awareness to deconstruct pirate tropes. Port Royale gives us a high-level, yet also quite detailed, look at the economies in which pirates operated.
But Sea of Thieves is the purest digital portrayal of the pirate archetype’s very essence. Remember, people play as pirates for a taste of their boundless freedom. Which includes the freedom to act like a total a**wipe and not only evade consequences, but even get rewarded for it.
When the treacherous Blunderbomb Dude from my opening story sneakily launched me overboard, he was playing Sea of Thieves precisely the way Rare intended him to play it.
After all, he didn’t grow his character into a “Pirate Legend” by being nice and courteous. He did so by being ruthless, conniving, and treacherous. And so, all the other players who want to similarly level up their pirates must do so as well. Even the trustworthy pirates31 will be forced to fire their cannons at some point.
Besides, let’s be real: if you saw this game’s name and logged in expecting anything less, you probably had it coming.
In Sea of Thieves, the “Pirate’s Code” is simple:
Be more pirate, or be more dead.32
The end result is the closest thing most people will ever get to actually feeling like a pirate.33 Despite living three centuries after the Pirate Age ended, we can still live the pirate’s life—with all the unfettered freedom, associated perks, and deadly perils that come with it—from the comfort and safety of our living rooms.
And it is the most fun I’ve had with any game over the past few years.
Oh, and the cherry on top? You can get your own kitty! And you can even pet the kitty! How can such a game not be loads of fun?
…But then again, one of my teammates shot my poor kitty out of a cannon when I wasn’t looking.* One of the trustworthy ones, too.
Make of that what you will.
*(Don’t worry, kitty was fine. Shaken, but not stirred.)34
That’s all, folks!
And that’s a wrap! With this, we conclude Volume 2, and with it, our foray into the world of pirates. Join us next week for another bonus audio interview, with one of the most prominent gamer psychologists. We’ll talk about pirates, archetypes, and pirate archetypes. And then, the week after that, we start with Volume 3!
Cheers,
~Jay
Food for Talk: Discussion Prompts
While you wait for the next issue, I invite you to mull over the following discussion prompts. Please reply to this email with your answers, or post them in the comments—I'd love to hear your thoughts!
If pirates appeal to you, why is that so? If they don’t, why is that so?
Looking at the intrinsic needs model, do any games come to mind that fulfill them particularly well? Does a game need to fulfill all of them to be successful?
Have you ever betrayed, trolled, or griefed another player in an MMO or open-world sandbox game? How did that feel?
Have you ever been betrayed, trolled, or griefed by another player in an MMO or open-world sandbox game? How did that feel?
If you answered “yes” to questions 4 and 5, do you feel any dissonance regarding griefing vs being griefed? How do you reconcile the two?
What is your favorite thing to do in Sea of Thieves?
Do you think players react to treacherous gameplay differently when a game either tacitly or explicitly condones—or even encourages it—it? If so, why do think that is? If not, how come?
Have you ever forged a bond or friendship with another player in a treacherous MMO? Do you think that bond was strengthened by the fact that you found someone trustworthy amongst a horde of backstabbers?
If you were suddenly put in charge of Sea of Thieves, would you move to curb treacherous play, encourage more of it, or leave it as is? How come?
Can you think of another one-sentence slogan that distills the essence of pirates down to a single core element?
Further Reading
Plenty of good reading if you want to expand your knowledge on this week’s topics. They’ll serve as good background info for the next volume, too.
Treacherous Play by Marcus Carter — Fascinating, and surprisingly accessible analysis of game design that encourages treacherous play, and how players react to it.
Why We Love Pirates by Rebecca Simon, Ph.D. — An impassioned retelling of the life, death, and legacy of Captain William Kidd, which set the stage for pirates’ still-enduring popularity.
Lost in a Good Game by Pete Etchells — An earnest and excellently-argued defense of gaming, arguing for its value not just as a pastime, but as an educational and even therapeutic vehicle. In a world where we’re constantly reminded of the ways gaming can be harmful, it’s refreshing to remind oneself of all the ways it can be helpful.
Games Featured:
Sea of Thieves — pirate-themed MMO sandbox game, known for being lots of fun despite teeming with trolls and griefers. Steam | Xbox
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Footnotes
“MMO” stands for “Massively Multiplayer Online.” Used to be referred to as “MMORPGs” (with “Role Playing Game” being the rest of the acronym), until games from other genres started their own massively multiplayer online worlds.
But only on the seas, like a real sea dog, ya scurvy landlubber!
If you don’t like your crew, you can always log off, log back on, and be matched with different people. Players are still divided as to how acceptable this is, in terms of etiquette.
In a game, obviously. Please do NOT try this in real life!
The Golden Age variety, as usual.
Especially if you’ve been following this volume!
And to Hobbes, it really IS just an act.
Which, in his day, would’ve been a monarchy. Had he lived today, one has to wonder to what degree he’d sympathize with fascism.
In online games, “griefing” is anything a player does with the intention of ruining another player’s experience in the game. Similar to the more familiar concept of “trolling,” though the terms aren’t interchangeable; all griefers are trolls, but not all trolls are griefers. Griefing is simply a much more specific form of trolling.
First-Person Shooter
If none of those terms make sense to you, all you need to know is that they’re all ways with which developers have tried to curb griefers.
We’ll learn more—much more—about the Shadow, archetypes in general, narrative therapy, and video games’ therapeutic applications in future issues.
I don’t mean literally fight it, like with your fists. I mean to approach it in a hostile or antagonistic way, with the intent of permanently subduing or suppressing it through sheer force of will.
Yes, I know that said “freedom” was quite… selective until fairly recently. But the country was still founded on the idea and ideals of freedom, which is separate from what the reality ended up looking like.
He always denied being a pirate, all the way until the noose choked his last breath out of him.
That’s Legalese for “guilty until proven innocent.”
And the weight of the Crown it served.
Which happened to be plundering.
Only, you know, not nearly as douchey.
Throughout writing this series, I’ve actually asked myself this question a lot. But then my wife, quite astutely, pointed out that I really love ships.
As she said that, I thought back to my childhood, when I was fascinated by ships like the Titanic, the Mayflower, and the Bismarck. I loved building model ships. I’ve always thought nautical terminology rolled nicely off the tongue. And my late grandfather—whom I adored—had also served in the US Navy during WW2. A picture of him in his uniform, onboard his battleship, still stands on my desk.
Maybe I love pirates so much because I love the sea? It makes intuitive sense. But I’d be interested to hear what other pirate aficionados think.
Some would say deviously.
Becoming stronger.
This was one of players’ favorite aspects of Breath of the Wild.
And making it a very hostile game for newcomers.
Digital or otherwise.
Revive.
To the point I actually have fun playing solo, if ever I need to.
Albeit much more difficult.
Here’s what I mean by “unwritten” rules. The “written” rules are those that the developer’s dictated or encoded into the game, and which you need to know to play the game—your goal (become a pirate legend), how you’re supposed to go about it (find treasure, kill skeletons), and how you can or cannot interact with other players (attacking is fine, harassment is not).
The “unwritten” rules are those that arise organically from within the community, and as such aren’t enforced by the developer and thus technically optional, though breaking comes with social consequences. And they’re not just around etiquette.
For instance, experienced Sea of Thieves players know never to drop their anchor before disembarking (unless you’re caught in a really bad storm), and to always turn off their ship’s lanterns at night. Why? Because raising your anchor takes a lot of time, and if you’ve been ambushed, having your anchor up can make the difference between your ship getting away or getting sunk. Similarly, a lookout can spot even a single lit lantern from miles away, and his crew might decide it’d be a really fun idea to sneak up on you, board your ship, drive a cutlass into your torso, and sail away with all your loot.
As such, while dropping your anchor or leaving the lights on at night isn’t necessarily a “faux pas” that’ll get you shunned, doing either one will mark you as an inexperienced player, which many seasoned and experienced players will be more than happy to pile onto. Some players consider being deceived, betrayed, or ambushed as a right of passage, as it teaches them the most important of these rules: be careful who you trust.
These unofficial “rules” (mor elike “norms,” really) can get positively byzantine as an MMO matures, further adding to the game’s learning curve. And yes, you do need to abide by them if you want to enjoy the game’s social elements.
Learning these “unwritten rules,” and how to navigate them, is as much a part of an MMO player’s growth as her character leveling up, as the degree to which she abides by them signals her experience or longevity with the game (and thus, her place on the social pecking order) to other players.
In this case, the real treasure really was the friends I made along the way!
Now, ain’t that an oxymoron?
And if that doesn’t sum up the very essence of pirates, then I don’t know what does!
And I say this as someone who’s dressed up as one for Halloween, plays pirate-themed tabletop RPGs, and is an enthusiastic annual participant in “International ‘Talk like a Pirate’ Day.”
And just to be clear, I’m talking about archetypal pirates more than historical pirates—or the spirit of pirates rather than the letter of pirates, if that makes any sense.
You can’t hurt or kill pets in Sea of Thieves. Kitty simply respawned next to me, covered in soot, looking rather annoyed at it all. Admittedly, he did make a funny sound as he flew through the air.