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Thursday 14 April 2011

Gaming. Morally.

I was talking to a friend today about morality in games, and how you are often rewarded for choosing a certain option when presented with an ethical conundrum. A case in point is Bioshock; you can either cleave into soft head of a tiny girl to garner extra Adam, or be a philanthropic so-and-so and restore the little mite to her innocence, but receive less. Of course, I chose the former option. The reward for freeing the girls from slavery, although it changes the ending, is pitiful, and the extra Adam is worth the discomfort of the sound of a small girl pleading for mercy, and a gratuitous fade to black. Err… maybe that came out wrong.



The point I’m trying to make is that moral choices in games should not have a bearing on actual gameplay. They should affect the story, but not be cheapened by a quantified reward. I feel guilty for using this as an example, having never played it, but Heavy Rain seems to exemplify how I believe a morality system (if it can be called that) should work. From what I have gleaned on the internet, Heavy Rain is a far more cinematic experience than any predecessor, and the player’s choices are just that - choices. You are not judged by a sneering morality scale (hello, Fallout 3), and your character is not transformed physically into a manifestation of your decisions (Fable, I’m looking at you), instead, you are left only with the choices you made, and the consequences of those actions.

If morality is going to become a part of gaming, and I think it is essential for its growth as a medium, it needs to be implemented seamlessly within a game; not just as another means of evaluating your character upon completion. Heavy Rain seems to have made inroads to a more engaging gaming experience, and I think other games should take heed. I’m not saying that first-person-shooters should force the player to consider the feelings of a common grunt, before blowing its brains out, but when a developer is consciously making the effort to create something morally challenging, they should not let it become just another game mechanic, but something much deeper.

What do you think? How do you think morality should integrate into gaming, if at all? I’d like to hear other opinions, and let me know if I’m totally off the mark here!


2 comments:

  1. Interesting, I saw a discussion about how gaming is having a huge influence on people and what they believe. Of course everything you do has a moral choice to it. Most gaming is some sort of right or wrong choice.

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  2. Where did you read this discussion, I'm intrigued! Do you believe that gaming is having an effect on people's beliefs then?

    Yeah, I guess everything in a game is a moral choice at some level, even picking up and playing CoD requires a certain set of moral values. But most of the time gamers don't consider, for example, the decision to shoot an enemy in a game at any deeper level than whether to shoot them in the head, or perhaps the nads for a laugh.

    You said 'most gaming is some sort of right or wrong choice', and I think this is where a lot of my frustration with morality-systems stems from. Why can't games deal with morally grey issues, and put the player in a position where they have to think carefully, before making a choice.

    Thanks for the comment,
    rockandroll dj

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