Virtual Morality Gives Pause For Thought

Thanks to Globeandmail.com for their article discussing deeper storylines and more complex moral choices for a maturing videogame audience. They cite a forum post from a KOTOR player lamenting: "Being evil is addictive and I find myself in situations where my conscience kicks in and it's difficult for me to do the bad thing", and the article claims this "...represents a new generation of sophisticated electronic games, created for a maturing and rapidly expanding audience, that are transforming gaming consoles from an adolescent diversion into a mainstream entertainment medium with artistic integrity and a social conscience." Is it justified to feel guilty about being evil within a videogame?

Comments

It's also easy to become addicted to the high road

[TwitchReflex]

I rented KOTOR, and over the five day period, I found it hard to do dark hearted things. If someone asked for help, I did, and if there was a peaceful solution to a volatile situation, I sought it out.
Even when it came to dealing with the Sith, I never passed up a situation to give them a second chance.
I think by going this route I may have tacked on another five hours to complete the game with all the backtracking that had to be done.
Is there a guide that could show the opportunities lost on taking a single path light or dark? I know of only one or two quests that were exclusively dark side material, acting as bounty hunter.

Re:Forget guilt -- it's fantasy

[jazzmodeus]

Videogames are about role-playing, playing a role. Good and evil are just that, roles to be played. In games we play the roles that will reward us with the most enjoyable experience. Real life often imposes a necessary morality to function within society, allowing little opportunity to experience life at the extremes. Games allow, if only for a moment, if only vicariously, the player the chance to experience a life at the extremes. J

Re:Guilt is not a question of damage, but characte

[bluephone]

"But if one choses to eat ewoks alive, killing the character and booting the user permanently from the server, one should rightfully feel guilty. If one chose to sell out the Mudokans to their fate in order to save their own hide, one should feel guilty."

I disagree with these examples. That is your GOAL in the game in that context (being an 'evildoer' as our braintrust of a President calls it). Does that player feel worse for having been eaten knowing it was a person being the bad guy, versus a bot/scripted game event? I doubt it. Do you feel guilty when playing Quake 3 and you frag the point leader in an elimination round?

eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it justified to feel guilty about being evil within a videogame?

Is it justified to feel aroused when looking at a picture of a naked woman? Is it justified to feel hungry when thinking about a hamburger? Is it justified to feel angry about something that happened in a movie?

Yes of course it is! The REASON that movies (and video games, etc) are popular is because they let you "drop your guard" for a little bit. they let you feel emotions or experiences that you don't usually. If you didn't feel emotions like this, you wouldn't be human.. the same part of your brain is involved either way.

Of course it's a problem when somebody confuses "fantasy" with "reality" but I'll admit those are pretty fuzzy lines. We all live in a sort of fantasy world anyway, or more precisely, a subset of reality.

If this fellow feels bad about being evil in a game, then he has two choices: 1) don't be evil in the game, or 2) explore your feelings and self-understanding through being evil in the game. It could be frightening, exciting, and perhaps enlightening. You don't get those changes in the real world.

Re:Guilt is not a question of damage, but characte

[cgenman]

That is where morality comes into play. Your goal isn't specifically to eat ewoks or sell out the Mudokans... your goal is your choice. A person in a MMPORPG will feel bad when PKed because he has lost experience, gold, and a sum of his time towards his goal, whatever that may be.

I agree that nobody should feel guilty for fragging a point leader. But one should feel guilty if one DDOSes the point leader in order to win. There are certain roads that are immoral to take in the achieving of one's goals. Just because videogames change both the goals and the morality of the situation doesn't mean that the morality has been moved. The closer the videogame attempts to ape the situations found in life, the closer the resulting morality template will be. Characters in stories can act immorally even though they are characters. As a player in the role of a character you too should feel emotional ramifications of your decisions.

actions modify personality

[Lust]

In Japan you can take classes on smiling. The theory is: if you force yourself to smile even when you aren't happy, the positive emotions will kick in later.

I worry about playing negative characters for the same reason. When truly embracing the character of a game (and play it for hours!), why wouldn't we expect it to carve neural pathways. It might guide our actions only subtlely in day-to-day life, but isn't that a bit disturbing, regardless?

Choice is not New, just Mainstream now

[Rayonic]

KOTOR, while being an excellent game, is not the first RPG to give you tough, moralistic choices. However, it may be what popularizeses the concept with the console crowd. Seems they're just realizing that not all games put you on strict personality rails, like in most console RPGs. (I'm lookin' at you, Final Fantasy series).

For even more choice-riddled gaming, I suggest checking out Planescape Torment, Fallout 1+2, and Deus Ex, among others.

Intent

[xyrw]

I'll attempt to narrate a short passage from a famous Chinese kungfu novel, `The Return of the Condor Heroes'. These and other novels, written by Louis Cha, were responsible for the interest in swordfighting themes that ultimately led to films like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

A very highly- skilled character who spent most of his life killing has become a monk in order to curb his murderous desires. One day, he comes across a snowman, and in order to satisfy his craving to kill, he attacks the snowman with a mighty blow and destroys it.

Initially unbeknownst to him, the snowman was a live person who had been immobilised and left standing in the snow, and so this person perished at the hands of the murderous monk.

So said the monk's teacher: When you destroyed the snowman, you did so because you did not want to kill a real human being. And yet, when you destroyed it, did you not have killing on your mind?

My own experience

[hob42]

Hm. I don't quite know what point I'm trying to make here, but here goes anyway.

I think we're only going to see more of this as games become more and more realistic and involve online communities rather than single-player games or shoot-em-ups. The latter is specifically made so that if a person loses one fight, he isn't set back much. It wouldn't be fun otherwise.

I play an online turn-based strategy/rp game called BattleMaster, where you have quite a bit of freedom to behave however you like, within the RP restrictions of your realm and class. You can be a jerk, you can be noble, you can be snooty. I'm amazed at the people who are able to pick a path for their characters, and stick with it - "this character will always be true to his country, even at the expense of other players", or "this character will do whatever it takes to get the highest fame and fortune", etc. I, on the other hand, keep coming up against the fact that there are real people on the other side of the computer screen, and they've invested months playing these characters up to this point. We're all here to have fun, and it simply isn't fun to lose all that effort.

As a ruler, I had thirty characters under my command and I controlled not only the future of both my realm as a whole, but through that, each of these characters as well. I ended up failing both miserably, thanks to bad timing and alliances that fell through, and I will probably never try being a ruler again. I have the political skills, but the stress of so much fate resting in my hands was too much of a burden.

Another character of mine once defected from one nation to another. I've seen other players do it all the time. My stomach was queasy and my hands were literally shaking, though, while I wrote my manifesto to my ex-comrades and clicked the button to become a traitor. It took me some time to realize exactly what I was scared of, sitting safely in a cozy computer chair in my living room... I was scared about what everyone else would think of me - that in their eyes, I was a rebel and traitor, not a man of honor.

I have a hard time keeping my real self out of my virtual characters. I set myself a high standard to live up to, and that rolls over into my online lives as well. Likewise, when someone thinks I've done something dishonorable online, it hits me about as hard as someone telling me to my face.

In the end, though, the advantage of the game world is the ability to turn it off, which I will be doing for this game next month. With a couple clicks, I won't ever again hear from any of the people I've endured harassment from or any of the people who I feel I've failed as their leader, yet I can still draw from the experiences as though they were my own - because they were.

-jupo

Re:I was going to mention BG2 as well

[Kargan]

The choices were many and very clear-cut in that game, and they had noticeable consequences that definitely affected gameplay.

The first time I played it through, I was good. It was nice to have the high Reputation, and I know from prior RPG experience that playing a good character is generally quite a bit easier than playing a bad one, mostly due to NPC reactions and general relationships within the party itself. However, I noticed one thing...all those evil characters I couldn't hire sure were tough, and they'd make a great ally...

Henceforth, the second time through I was evil. Not chaotic, just neutral evil, and I was a thief sub-class, so that seemed to fit. Guess what? It was actually more fun playing through the game as the evil character. My allies were tougher and more skilled, and, surprisingly, worked very well with each other. The evil party could have taken down the good party, no problem. There were a few quests that I couldn't attempt due to my alignment, and there were a few quests that I received Reputation points for. As you may or may not know, if you have an evil party and your Reputation gets to a certain high point, your party will not stop bitching at you to "get back on track" and the like. If it gets high enough, they leave the party. So, to keep that stat in check, whenever it got too high, I would go slaughter some random town denizen. It was like a sacrifice. "I want the good items and the experience, therefore an innocent must die." But, like previous posters have pointed out, this was not online, this was single player, so they weren't really NPCs, they weren't people, they were just bits and a method of keeping the party happy and together. That was all I had to do to remain in good, er, evil stead.

I can absolutely see how ruining some other person's gaming experience can make one feel bad, and this is why I don't do it. The only time I go out of my way to make some game a little more hell for someone is if they bring it upon themselves by doing this to others, so it's almost like a "vigilante" point of view. However, I can say that without a doubt, BG2 was more fun to play as an evil character, and I recommend you go through and try it again that way, if you get the urge to play it through again. Single player games afford more freedom in this area, no matter which way you look at it. The only way this would not be true is if there were some kind of unbalance within the game itself, i.e. it being far more difficult to play through as either a good or bad character. That might still be ideal, though, giving players the opportunity to make the game harder or easier on themselves, similar to choices one would have to make in the real world.

Evil does not think it is evil

[wowbagger]

True evil exists in this world, but rarely does true evil believe itself to be evil - rarely do you see an evil person sitting down and saying "What terrible thing shall I do today, MUWHAHAHAHA!"

Consider Saddam and Sons - the things they've done are, by most people's judgement, evil - putting people into a shredder feet first, raping women, killing their opposition. Yet, do you think that Saddam thought to himself, "I'm so EEEVIL - I love being me!". I doubt it - he almost certainly rationalized what he did - "Yes, putting this guy feet-first into this shredder is terrible (although kind of cool), but the pure horror of it will prevent anybody else from doing what he did, and thus will keep order in my country."

Or, consider Anakin/Vader - as we are seeing over the course of the first three movies, his descent into evil was not caused by a desire to do evil, but natural and otherwise good impulses ("These raiders are bad people - they hurt an innocent (my mother). I will remove the threat - I will destroy them.")

Now, consider the game - you say you are having problems "doing evil". Good. Don't "do evil" - roleplay. Say to yourself "I am going to do whatever it takes for my character to advance. Everybody else is going to do whatever they can do do advance, I must do it to them before they do it to me." Get yourself in that mindset, and the evil will come naturally.

Then, after the game, please MEDITATE UPON YOUR ACTIONS, and realize why that sort of attitude should be strictly confined to situations where the harm done is fictional!