John Kramer believes that human beings have an instinctual will to live in the face of death and that years of evolution have caused their survival instinct to dull and now, people are unable to appreciate their lives. After losing his unborn child and getting diagnosed with cancer, he unsuccessfully tried to commit suicide, which, as he claimed, opened his eyes about the human race. Now a changed man, he vowed to test everyone's will to live for the greater good. As Jigsaw, Kramer targets those he considers to be ungrateful to live, including criminals and people with extreme personal issues Though the nature of his tests are incredibly brutal, Kramer shows no enjoyment in the suffering of his victims. Instead, he believes that it will help them re-evaluate themselves, as most of his victims have already hit the rock-bottom in their lives. He is deeply sympathetic to surviving test subjects such as Lawrence Gordon after he amputated his leg to escape and roots that they live. This sympathy was also shown when he was saddened by Cecilia killing Gabriella, despite Gabriella having passed her test and his wish for her to be taken to the hospital However, Kramer takes a small amount of enjoyment in his tests as he smiled when hearing the screams of the imprisoned detective Matthews (who previously beat Kramer to near-death, so maybe he was happy to hear him screaming for assaulting him) and targeting the corrupt William Easton for his apprentice Mark Hoffman to test after his death when he refused to treat his cancer despite just claims his mission could never be personal (though it might not have been and he simply wanted to break Easton's biased philosophy, as John wasn't the only victim of William's policy). John also targeted the Pederson Group after they had scammed him, to prevent them from targeting anyone else, though the consequences of this game did seem to reinforce his views on the Games never being personal Kramer is also deeply distasteful for killing as he does not consider himself a murderer due to always giving his victims a chance to escape their fate. On a technicality, Kramer became too weak to even put test subjects in their tests and relied on his apprentices to do most manual labor for him such as abducting and implicating victims, so he rarely participated in even second-degree murder Though John saw his games as his life work and wished for them to continue after his death, his main reason for recruiting his apprentices, he also showed that he was ready to abandon his new work if he believed he could survive. When he was tricked into believing his cancer had been cured, he disposed of one of his sketches of traps that he was planning for future games and showed that he truly did value the new lease on life that he thought he had been handed. The discovery that he had been scammed, and other innocent people had died because of the con that they had fallen for, reinforced his desire to continue his work and reverted him to his previous mindset