It's fun to break the rules, whether you admit it or not

After playing a marathon, 100 day long game of Dope Wars and successfully not having all my bitches killed (I had failed two times previously thanks to the cops), it made me think about all the games that we play where we do illegal things and how much fun they are. Whether you're punching old ladies on Grand Theft Auto or running around in the backyard playing Cops and Robbers, it's all technically illegal, right? You may not be doing it in real life, but you are pretending to do it.

 (Picture from Saint's Row 3 found at Gandhi's GamePad.)

Let's picture this with Dope Wars. It's a free computer game that let's you buy and sell drugs on the streets of New York City (or New York City, California, Las Vegas, Japan, China and France if you have a Mac because you get the cooler version). You can buy and sell everything from heroin to weed as long as you can find it for the right price. The object of the game is to pay off your debts to the loan shark, not get you and your bitches killed in shoot outs with the cops, and basically just make as much money as you cane before your 30 days (or more if you choose) are up. May not sound like much, but play it and you'll find out just how addicting it actually is. I'm hooked.

This doesn't mean that since I made $10,964,229 in my last game that I'm going to drop out of college and go to New York to work my way up to the cocaine business. But does that mean I'm going to stop playing my game any time soon? Definitely not. It will still be my ultimate tool of procrastination when it comes to library homework and working on articles for months (or at least weeks) to come.

So if I'm never going to live for the dope, why is it so much fun to play the game? It's because I'm human and humans love to break rules. In these games you're breaking the law, but laws are just rules, aren't they? And rules were made to be broken.

I was reading a blog from Dr. Tina Seelig on Psychology Today (found here) where she talks about this very thing. She says that rules are just created by social norms that we feel we have to follow in order to be a productive member of society. When we break them it's exciting because we know we're not going to get the same old outcome and something different (good or bad) is going to happen.

I agree 100%. I once read in Cosmopolitan that breaking rules (like skipping a day of work) can give you an extra adrenaline rush. Makes perfect sense, right? You don't know what's going to happen when you break a rule you usually follow. You think, "Will I get caught? Will I get away with it?" Come on, admit it. It's awesome.

All in all, I'm not saying to go out and kill somebody, but if you want to run some people over with your car in Need for Speed, then whatever. You drive that car like a champ! More power to you. There's not one thing wrong with wanting to have a little illegal fun on the whatever-sized screen you have.

PS: If you want to download Dope Wars for yourself (it's free) here's the link for Windows and here's the link for Mac.