The Trust of a Hero

Have your ever noticed that the hero is never trusted? Superman and Batman, Buffy and Angel, Master Chief and Cortana; every modern hero has to face the idea that the very people that they save, that they fight with every day will end up mistrusting them. It’s something of a modern convention. In the old days calling a man a liar was paramount to signing your death warrant. A gentleman would have you at ten paces by the dawn, and in the west if you weren’t shot outright, you’d be looking at a six shooter on a dusty main street.

It’s always there, every book you’ve read, any movie you’ve seen that mistrust of the protagonist never fails to reveal itself. I can’t quite say why we mistrust heroes these days. Perhaps our mistrust of heroes is the modern version of the old roman story. Conquering heroes were paraded before the mob of Rome and a slave would stand by the hero whispering in his ear ‘You are only a Man’. Still even in those days the betrayal of the hero was such to become a legend. For all his martial glories we remember Julius Caesar for ‘Et tu, Brute’.

For whatever reason we mistrust our heroes. We don't trust our favorite video game developers, our best companies, or the people that run them. You can almost chart the rise and fall of the companies that Gamers love and trust as if it were an equation. It is destructive. Our industry is fairly close-knit and supply is always greater than demand. Companies fall, developers are fired, and the trust, respect, and love that gamers put on developers may be all that stops them from getting better paying and less stressful jobs in other fields. Instead of mistrusting our heroes perhaps we'd be better off sticking with a  updated version of the old saying 'You are only Human'.