BROOKE GLADSTONE:

Oklahoma lawmaker William Fourkiller introduced a bill this week     that would impose a 1 percent tax on violent video games. The bill defines "violent" as any game that has received a rating of teen, mature or adults only.

But, as Wall Street Journal reporter Conor Dougherty recently reported, a growing number of gamers who play these violent video games do so non-violently. Dougherty calls it "virtual pacifism," essentially finding ways to play games that incorporate killing and maiming without engaging in either.

Dougherty says that, according to legend, some players have managed to play the popular military shooter game Call of Duty without killing anyone.

[GAME SOUNDTRACK]

CONOR DOUGHERTY:

I don't actually know if this is true, but I've heard rumors about a guy who went through the entire game with nothing but a shield, and there are other games — one was called Deus Ex — that are just all about shooting and mayhem and craziness and, and people sort of sneak through them or they use sedative darts to get through them.

There was one called Metal Gear Solid, Guns of the Patriots, so "guns" is even in the title there. And, and that game, I think you got a bandana or something if you could complete it without killing anybody. When you complete this task, it goes “bing” and this little icon pops up.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:

So in some places designers are actually encouraging people to see if they can get through the game without violence?

CONOR DOUGHERTY:

It's that the game has sort of given them this choice. So I mean, and I — I think it, it's probably the designers signaling to them that they should or could or should try this.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:

You also suggested that YouTube has played a role in some of this.

[BOTH AT ONCE/OVERLAP]

CONOR DOUGHERTY:

A huge role, and when I talk to these people they're very conscious of how many hits their YouTube channel has received from other gamers, sort of. And, you know, when I was talking to this one guy he kept saying to me, well, it was something nobody had really done before.

And I — when I thought about it, I was like, you know, he's playing this — it's a single player adventure game that this guy was playing — he was playing Sky Room. So a lot of it is sort of the solitary pursuit. So when he's saying nobody's really done it before, he's talking about this whole Internet community that he —

BROOKE GLADSTONE:

And how does he know?

CONOR DOUGHERTY:

Yeah, exactly. I mean, well because he's gone to YouTube, checking out what other people have done, he's probably reading blogs. People want to sort of memorialize their experience in the game, and — and sort of show that they did it another way.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:

It seems to me that you could only do this in a single player game like, like Sky Room. But a lot of these games happen online, with people playing against actual other people, who may want to virtually hurt you. So are there online gaming pacifists?

CONOR DOUGHERTY:

Well Brock, this kid I met for my story, he was doing that. And his compatriots would get very upset with him [LAUGHS] for, for going about things that way.

The thing I think that's kind of interesting about it is video games don't really have any rules. I mean, what are the rules? The rules are what's in that box, and nobody really knows what they are until they've tried to bend them every which way they can.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:

Reading some of the critics of video games, you hear the assumption that gamers have to play within the game designer's constraints. A shoot-em-up game is going to require a degree of shooting them up. But the existence of virtual pacifism seems to point to a kind of non-obedience.

CONOR DOUGHERTY:

Presumably, the designers are very conscious of the idea that they want to give their players as many different routes through as they can. And, you know, it's funny, I was talking to the director of Sky Room, and asked him, well, are you surprised that, you know, people would play this without killing? He's like, no, you know, the whole point of the game is to have immense choice, and we sort of anticipated people would do that.

But what he said was the thing that surprised him the most is that some people started discovering that you could put buckets on people's head, and it would make them unable to see. And then you could just rob them blind with no recourse.

[BROOKE LAUGHS]

You know, and he said that was the thing that surprised him, that the players were discovering that artificial intelligence could just be blocked out with a simple bucket over a guy's head.

[BROOKE LAUGHS]

So — but the point is, is that there are so many things that lie undiscovered in these games, and if you give people that much choice, they're probably gonna end up surprising you.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:

Thank you so much.

CONOR DOUGHERTY:

Thank you.

[VIDEO SOUNDTRACK/UP AND UNDER]

BROOKE GLADSTONE:

Conor Dougherty reports for The Wall Street Journal. He mentioned that virtual pacifists upload videos of their game experiences to YouTube to show off their skills. You're hearing one of these videos now, with appropriate scoring added after the fact.

[GAME SOUNDTRACK/WAR BY BOYZ II MEN]

This video was posted by 16-year-old gamer Brock Soicher who's playing a game called Battlefield 3. But he's not responsible for any of the gunshots, explosions or sundry mayhem you're hearing. Instead, his avatar is running around the battlefield with a defibrillator, reviving fallen soldiers amidst the carnage.

BROCK SOICHER:

When someone gets killed in that game, if they're your ally, what you're able to do with the medic class is that you're able to take out a defibrillator, go over to them and by just simply hitting R1 you shock 'em and it'll bring 'em back to life. And so, instead of killing people, I would go around and I was throwing down a health kit which heals and reviving people if they die.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:

That's built into the game, so I assume that's not that unusual.

BROCK SOICHER:

Well yes, it's built into the game but you don't really see people running around only doing that. It's kind of something for the side.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:

So when you're doing this online —

BROCK SOICHER:

Mm-hmm.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:

— you are potentially messing up your teammates, right, because you're not killing anybody. Do they get mad at you?

BROCK SOICHER:

Some of 'em do and some of 'em don't. There was one guy who was yelling at me for quite a while and asking why I wouldn't kill anyone. I don't really know if — if, if the listeners really want to hear [LAUGHS] exactly what he said.

[BROOKE LAUGHS]

But he g — he generally said that — I was a bad person because I should be helping out the team — more. I do kind of feel bad because it is obviously breaking the game.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:

I can't believe you would feel even the slightest bit bad about that. I mean, it —it's not like you're hurting anybody.

BROCK SOICHER:

Well, okay — well, that was a bit of a pun.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:

Do you have a favorite non-kill moment?

BROCK SOICHER:

Yeah, actually. That would be in — one of my other favorite games, Uncharted 3 —

BROOKE GLADSTONE:

Mm-hmm?

BROCK SOICHER:

— where that also has multiple players, but obviously the point of the match is to kill people. But there is no type of healing or anything like that, so literally the whole video is just me hiding —

[BROOKE LAUGHS]

— from the guys. And so, with Battlefield 3 it was great because I could actually heal people.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:

Mm-hmm.

BROCK SOICHER:

And when I finished Uncharted 3, that round, I ended up with, you know, completely zero points, 'cause I didn't do a thing. But in Battlefield 3, even though all these people, you know, they're trying as hard as they can to kill people, by not killing a single person I actually came in first place in the match. And I thought that was actually really cool.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:

Wow. Thanks, Brock.

BROCK SOICHER:

Oh yeah, anytime. Thank you for having me.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:

Brock Soicher, 16-year-old pacifist gamer. You can check out his videos at Brockyboi00.