The majority of Megafauna (large animals) were driven to extinction and humans are most likely to blame. I can imagine a small army of humans hunting for meat, tearing down the largest scariest things they see in response to fear and the desire to topple odds. The human spirit wants to cheer for the underdog, to make things equal and spread tall stacks even.

In a video game (especially RPGs), a boss fight is a super-villian goal element where the hero must kill “the head guy” to receive some benefit or reward. In many games, the boss fight is the climax of the story and/or action.

Diablo III‘s limited amount of content release ends with a large beast surrounded by 5 humans. They hack and slash, slowly exhausting their target. I couldn’t help think that this could have been the last Mammoth. The large beast falls and the party stands around, victorious but silent. They stand and the monster is beneath them. You can see the large creature in the screenshot below. The gameplay video shows five heroes running around a very large creature and cooperatively helping each other kill it.

Then in Bioware’s upcoming Dragon Age Origins, a large creature is being attacked by a group of smaller people. It’s seems natural to take down a large intimidating creature. The Russian from Rocky IV, the Empire from Star Wars and any College movie where the Dean gets his comeuppance by the “out of control fraternity”. In the screenshot below, a smaller boss is being fought by the heroes.

Naturally, a video game player is going to side with the human hero versus a large wild beast. There is little for the observer to relate to with the boss (or megafauna). That is to say, when I see a Mammoth I don’t think of it as a mother of smaller Mammoths. There is no empathy and it’s an impersonal large object. Maybe it’s this distancing and repulsion that allows us no guilt in killing something.

This idea spiked when I finished reading The World Without Us, an excellent book that describes what would happen to our houses, streets, cities, pets and wildlife if humans disappeared suddenly.

Once humans did appear, they proceeded to change the world more than any other species — in part by killing off a lot of other species. Weisman visits Arizona to talk to a paleoecologist named Paul Martin, who believes that when humans left Africa and Asia and came to North America, they exterminated three-quarters of the continent’s late Pleistocene megafauna — “a menagerie far richer than Africa’s today.” Huge animals like giant armadillos, giant short-faced bears twice as big as grizzlies, giant lions bigger and faster than African lions and, of course, woolly mammoths — all were driven into extinction, Martin argues, because they did not suspect that the “runty biped” who confronted them was dangerous. Martin’s theory, Weisman writes, remains “one of science’s greatest flash points,” the subject of endless debate.

It was these large creatures that disappeared first. Not the rats, bugs or plants. Humans initially desire a toppled pile of meat and then will be confused as to what to do next. Just as now when modern life brings us squirrels and deer in our daily lives instead of T-Rexes and Sabertooth Tigers. It’s an ancient ritual that wants to be fulfilled, even if it’s not necessary or doesn’t fit in with grocery shopping.

Some coworkers and I play WoW after work and sometimes we co-operatively take down large creatures. It’s the exact same mechanics in Diablo III and any climatic “man vs nature” movie. It seems to make sense after a day of irrelevant office work and engineering that takes place in the upper tiers of Mazlow’s hierarchy. We organize. We run and hunt. It’s dramatic and exciting during the fight but when the polygons stop moving that’s basically the dead-end of it. The landscape is flat and the human experience gives no guidance as to what is next. The hunt has ended and the family is fed by the toppled towers. That’s it. Go to bed. Do it again.