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The Moral Responsibility of Game Creators
Gamasutra.com has reactions from another provocative question of the week. The topic this time was "Do game creators have any moral responsibilities in teaching values to their audience?" There were many responses on both sides of the issue. From the article: "A resounding NO. Do writers have that same responsibility? Actors? What other limitations would we put on them and our freedom of expression, in order to accomplish that lofty goal? Just ask Jerry Falwell, or the embittered ghost of Senator McCarthy for your answer... NO. Leave the morality lessons to the parents and the priests. They are quite good at their jobs. -Anonymous"
Do artists have a moral responsibility?
Do authors have a moral responsibility?
Do writers have a moral responsibility?
They do if they choose to have one. Period. End of story.
The game creators have the same moral responsibility as any other media, which is nearly none except to the "market". That means whatever moral code (or lack thereof) will be reflected in the product they product. It is up to the market to the determine the worth of the product in the greater context. If the game has moral value *and* provides a worthwhile experience it will do well with specific market segments. A game with no moral compass but a good game experience will do well, albeit in a different market segment. If the game provides no value as a game, it should fail. Why do people expect this to be any different from book, film, music or the more traditional arts? From what I have seen there are quite a few successful games that I won't bring into my home. As there are with books, films and music. (Both from a "too harsh" to "too preachy" standpoint). If people go to such extremes that they cater to an incredibly narrow market segment they will still potentially be successful in the niche they choose.
What I think this question is really trying to say: "Do we (for some hypothetical 'we') have the power to cause game developers to bend to our moral values and force them to teach what we believe." I hope the answer is a resounding no to that, no matter who is chosen for 'we'.
Sig under construction since 1998.
I think everyone who contributes something to the general society/culture needs to consider the effect that contribution might have. I think parents and priests work on a smaller but more intimate scale then artists, sports stars, etc.
It take more faith to believe in evolution than it takes to believe in God
Leave the morality lessons to the parents because they do a good job? I'd say that really depends on the parent, and a fair number don't do a good job. That doesn't give the government a free pass to define morality, though.
If you get nervous, just remember that there are a few billion other people who don't really give a damn.
forced morality has always driven me nuts. some people, particularly those in high power, think they have the right to tell me and others what is and isn't wrong. quite frankly it makes me sick, because the people who force morality upon others are slimy hypocrites. what if i became president and deemed that christianity was morally wrong, then enlisted the pocket senators to enact laws banning the practice of that religion.
look, fuckers, we fled england for a reason. we wanted freedom, and force morality is just another form of shackles regardless of the end. the means are simply not just.
- tristan
A label that lets a concerned parent make a choice pretty much covers the moral responsibility. Even if we were to hold games to the same standards that movies and television are held to we can't expect any more than that.
[Set Cain on fire and steal his lute.]
I, personally, have obtained nearly all of my morals from video games, especially playing RPGs
Wow.. Just Wow..
I don't have any morals, you insensitive clod!
Now excuse me, I'm busy playing GTA, drinking tequila, calling a 1-900 number while a hardcore porn movie is playing in the background.
It is improper to ask if game designers should be conveying moral values through their games, because they can not avoid doing so. Every game, be it Duke Nukem or Myst, orginates from the morality of its designers. They can not avoid it because they must make choices about the plot and player's possible decisions that can not be made in any other way.
You can ask if which moral values are appropriate to include in games, and the answer would be that it is not possible to make any restrictions in this area without total censorship of all games produced. It is already being done in part through the ratings system. Whether it would be possible to impose further restrictions is somewhat doubtful. (though becoming less so every year)
This is hardly news
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Do they have a MORAL responsibility? Oh man there's a can of worms! The problem is whose moral standard are we talking about?
:-)
I like what Francis Schaeffer had to say "Art reflects culture". Art is a better reflector of culture more than history books, marketing campaigns or clever political speeches.
So that begs the question: does art LEAD culture? I think most people here would like to say no because it would imply moral responsibiliy. But it's like trying to nail Jello to a tree, once you say someone is morally reponsible, if they don't want the responsibility they can slip away without a whole lot of effort.
Okay moderators, mod me down
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Who is to define Morality for the masses? The last time someone tried to put a hold on how people lived, and should live, ended up shooting himself with a luger during a board meeting. but calling them nazi's is kinda trolling, so in all fairness, while they dont have any real responsibility for teaching children to do things that they should know/have been told they shouldnt do, they should consider what could happen.
Soap box, Ballot box, Jury box, Ammo box. Use in that order.
Games that are explicitly targeted at the education market/for young children should teach good values. Of course, the flipside of this is that parents have a responsibility to only buy those types of games.
Myself, I'll take Grand Theft Auto, where the only thing I've learned is that flamethrowers are joyful.
Give a man fire, and you warm him for the night. Set a man on fire, and you warm him for the rest of his life.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
Ideally, we all have a moral obligation to uphold and to further positive moral values. Obviously, people disagree widely about these values, especially in the particulars. Furthermore, it ought be understood as a moral obligation, and not a legal one. Not because you can't legislate morality (in fact, we can, do, should, and must if law is to be meaningful), but because not all morality ought be legislated.
Canthros
Yes, everyone has a moral responsibility to themselves and those around them. But it's not government's duty to enforce the responsibility we all have.
Let's allow society to figure it out. I am very picky about what games and movies and TV shows I watch. I only choose entertainment from those who understand their moral responsibilities. Everyone else is kept out of my home and out of my head.
I'm going to advocate that people should be morally responsible, but it is morally IRRESPONSIBLE for me to enforce my viewpoints at the point of a gun. That's not the way Jesus worked.
So let's keep government out of this, because we can all handle it on our own.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
depends on the target audience. does rockstar ahve to worry about that when they work on gta4? no
does a company working with a seasme street license have to worry about that? very much so
-I want freedom of speech... but I don't want to be responsible for the effect my words and deeds have on others-.
lets be realistic with rights come responsibilities. If you want to reach a mass public audience, you could at least have the decency to consider the impact your ideas and products would have. Do you have some sort of incredible obligation to only make your games or art or whatever a certain way so as to satisfy some traditional moral standard? of course not.... But let's try consider the good of the world when we do things (not that video games necessarily should be designed to be good for the world). I don't think manhunt or BMXXX really did the world any good (more than that, they are frightening examples of what bad things human beings are capable of doing or making when they set there mind to it). They certainly have "the right" to make games like that, but wouldn't some moral considerations be nice? I get just as angry about the bible-toting, video-game-banning, harry-potter-is-of-the-devil-shouting mobs of people as anyone does. They turn questions of intent and desire into dogma. Into right and wrong. and that is stupid. however, People, lets at least realize what we do affects others and consider it when making art or music or games. You have the privellege of free speech, maybe you could balance that out with some healthy responsibility. Moral lessons? probably not, but.... RESPONSIBILITY.
p.s. please don't accuse me of thinking doom or quake caused school shootings etc. that is not what I am getting at. we could benefit from a further ingrained, accurate sense of right and wrong in our society.
Do the creators of these games have it? No.
But here's who SHOULD: editors.
Let the creators create wonderful (and awful) things. Then, we can choose to either consumer those wonderful (and awful) things by making those judgements ourselves, or by enlisting the services of an editorial staff to do the majority of filtering.
You don't like violent games? There should be someone out there maintaining a list of games that are not violent, that you can choose to refer to if desired.
But that's just my take.
The government, that is who. All legislation ends up legislating morality.
"The last time someone tried to put a hold on how people lived, and should live, ended up shooting himself with a luger during a board meeting."
Sorry, that is what EVERY government does when you think about it. Not just that german with the silly 1/4-comb mustache you are thinking of. Go to your local law library and you will find shelves full of record of how government puts a hold on how people live. That is what government is all about. Is all government "Hitlers"? No. Does government legislate action limit how people live and legislate morality? Just about always.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Perhaps it doesn't matter if game writers are moral, but whether or not the games are bought by a moral consumer.
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So I expect hard rock & caffeine. If the Bible Belt want to teach their morals, more power to them if anyone plays the games they program. But compelling people to accept and teach morals that are not theirs is utterly unAmerican and degrading of universal human rights
Don't take the absence of any moral obligation as prohibition.
In other words, just because a game designer/movie director/author/actor/... is not obligated to place any moral values into their story does not mean they should be prohibited from doing so if they so choose.
For example - I like the Myth series by Robert Lynn Asprin, precisely because RLA does put good "life lessions" into the stories.
Too many slashbots will jump on this story saying "Yeah, those bastards ought not be allowed to put their morality into their work!"
When the real point is "They ought not be REQUIRED to put SOMEBODY ELSE'S morality into their work."
www.eFax.com are spammers
Leave the morality lessons to the parents and the priests. They are quite good at their jobs.
well, some of them are. some of them are not.
censorship imposed by the law is wrong. but that does not mean self-censorship imposed by moral concerns is wrong. some children have proper guidance, others do not. the question is, which is more important: catering to/reveling in the lowest common denominator, or not contributing to the negative inputs morally disadvantaged children receive. a pointless question in this society, where money is the deciding factor in all things, but.
Ultimately, everyone is responsible for their influence on every single individual they come into contact with. That is why every individual should do their best to live up to a high moral code. After all, we're all created in the image of God and were created to live up to His example of righteous living and sinless nature. We just failed in the process, but it need not always be thus. :) We can overcome. In the meantime there is grace, and always room for improvement, but never room to shirk our duty or responsibility to be a good example to others.
:)
OK, how's that for an answer? You asked for my opinion.
Plato would agrue yes, as well as writers, actors, and poets.
Not that I agree with him, but he does make a good point as to why.
Games are a part of culture and as such reflect all kinds of aspects of that culture. That includes the representation of concepts of morality, renderings that run contrary to the accepted value system, as well as work that exists outside of any recognizable morality system. Games reflect the interests and desires of our culture.
Because games are both the "output" of our creative people, as well as a kind of cultural "input" for all people, they should effectively considered to be in the same category as literature or art.
Does an artist or writer have a moral obligation to reinforce the value system of her society? Does she have an obligation to teach people about critical thoughts of that system? No, there are not, and must not, be any moral or ($entity forbid) legal obligations for a content creator to take a specific stance toward accepted social values.
Seriously, who comes up with stuff like this? If you don't like the content that's out there, create your own and see how many fans you get. This is a frigging free society, or is it - ?
Buwahahah! Scuse me while I wipe the coffee off my keyboard and monitor... Did the person saying that bother reading the paper, current events, or oh - follow history, even a little bit? You know, pesky things like the Crusades, the Inquisition, Salem, ad naseum... Sure there's priests with good intentions, but to leave morality in hands of people who ignore science, the fossil record, the laws of physics, and believe in magic (virgin births, coming back from the dead, walking on water?), and are highly vested in their own organization's power, is folly.
As for people who think morality only stems from religion, esp Christianity -- you need to go back and read the pre-Socratics for starters.
This is not flamebait, I'm being completely serious. I am utterly annoyed with the notion that morality is somehow owned by priests and organized religion, or that it didn't exist before the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity & Islam)
'The unexamined life is not worth living' - Socrates
At one time morality was both predicted by the media, and upheld by the media. The masses would not tolerate it otherwise. This has naturally declined as with all things. Both the media and the masses have been sliding down the moral slope over the years. This has happened both in the secularly and religiously, not to mention within public education.
Media has given up moral responsibility in the name of "art" and "freedom of speech", forgeting that "freedom of speech" holds responsibility for that speech, i.e. my right to punch you in the nose stops at your nose.
Government does not have the right to dictate morality, other than where it preserves the basic rights of a people, say the right not to be murdered, the right not to have your things stolen, the right to speak freely, the right to religious freedom.
The problem is that gradually U.S. (and other) government has begun dictating morality, using legislation to falsly create a moral structure within our culture, often a moral standing very different than the one of the people.
If more people, including game developers, writers, and major media, would take a moral stand, not with an agenda but rather a basic morality as shown in our constitution, we would find that our culture would move the line of morality gradually up to a more tolerable level, without the need of more laws and legislation.
That is what ALL government legislators do when they pass laws. Laws are nothing more than government telling you what is and what is not wrong.
"we fled england for a reason. we wanted freedom, and force morality "
Are you an anarchist? I don't think the pilgrims were.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Absolutely, game creators do. I, personally, have obtained nearly all of my morals from video games, especially playing RPGs.
WTF?
Shhh. He thinks the Puritans were revolutionary libertarians who shocked old England with their loose ways. Don't bother him with reality.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
The file sharer may be evil for other reasons, but not because he is stealing. It is technically, legally, and morally imposssible to steal by duplicating files.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Too many people here are failing to distinguish between, "Is it moral to create games that teach bad values?" and "Should the government make it illegal to teach bad values?" I would answer that it is immoral, but that the government shouldn't be the enforcer of my particular view of morality.
Basically, the immorality of an act is often much less than the immorality of stopping people from doing it. Jaywalking might be immoral, as the jaywalker recklessly disregards the safety of himself and those around him. But no sane person would say it was moral to punish the jaywalker with ten years imprisonment. Similarly, copying an album off the Internet might be immoral, but no sane person would say that the action warrants a $150,000/song fine. Okay, bad example.
There might be a few limited cases where it would be appropriate for the government to enforce "morality" in video games, but they would be patterned after the lines already drawn by the Supreme Court. For example, a game that is basically child porn should be illegal, and a game that seems to incite real-life violence against real people might be subject to review as well. But when the benefits to society don't outweigh the limitation on free speech (and they very seldom do), the government should stand aside and let people make up their own minds.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
Wait a second..aren't you making a moral judgement upon Falwell and McCarthy?
I think that even the author of that comment would have a hard time claiming that the results of McCarthy's actions (if not the man himself) werre morally wrong.
The answer to the question depends on your own sense of morality. Game developers have no more of a moral requirement than we all do when living our daily lives.
So let's keep Jesus out of this, because we can all handle it on our own.
Well if it wasn't for Johnathan Swift I never would have skinned and eaten my first baby. I think it used to be called personal responsability. But maybe we should forget about that, have a nice little theocracy and go build some pyramids (I call Foreman!).
Long ago, in an Internet far, far away (Compuserve), a game company that sold an air combat simulator floated the idea of allowing all human figures to be "strafe-able" (e.g., noncombatant civilian vacationers on a beach). The overwhelming response from the players was "That's sick! Don't you dare!" These days I hear that capping innocents is one of the hilarious features of programs like GTA. How times change...
to anyone except the game buyer, and possibly their bosses. If you have the brain of a fruitfly, it is hardly their business to guide you in the right direction. The role of games isn't to be good role models. Games generally sell well because they allow you to do something you can't do in real life, and more often than not it's because they let you do something bad (by society's standards). It is the job of the parents to, basically, shape a kid's sense of morality. Not even the church's, I find it despicable that religion is forced upon children. My mom let me buy GTA3 + VC when I could prove that I was mature enough to handle it. Was I 18? No. Am I more mature than someone who is 18? In many ways, yes. I've seen some drunk adults, and lemme tell you, I'm not sure that all of them can tell the difference between a video game and reality.
how come making people to play gta or mercenaries is not teaching some form of morality or some form of value system? i think we should ban all kinds of games, whatever is designed or created will be pushing for one or the other. then why not push for the good instead of bad? games, hollywood, best sellers, popular culture etc are opiums of masses. It is such a bad idea to let parents to decide best opium for their kids
Doesn't everyone have a moral responsibility for everything they do?
I believe game developers (and anyone else for that matter) have a moral responsibility to not teach children (or anyone else) "bad" values. Having said that, I find it unlikely that any games I've seen, even violent ones, teach "bad" values. I think people are pretty good about separating fantasy from reality.
I could, however, imagine a game that, especially if targeted at young children, would at least confuse the understanding of right and wrong. I believe it would be immoral to release such a game.
On the other hand, I do not believe that game developers have a moral obligation to teach/promote "good" values, although its great if they do so. Parents, other relatives, teachers, civic leaders, etc. do have that obligation, though.
BTW, I believe that there are universal goods and universal bads. I also believe that there is plenty that falls in a gray area in between.
Telling != Force.
Various parties are out to brainwash you whether you like it or not. Hollywood, MTV, RIAA, MPAA, McD, The Corporates, NeoCons, Governments etc. They've all got their agendas.
Example: Hollywood regular snips violent/mature movies enough so that they can sell them to kids and "that's OK". And then they pretend to wonder why it doesn't sell as well, blame pirates etc.
Doh it's like watering down whisky enough so you can sell it to kids. The whiskey drinkers sure won't like it.
Sure shows me they have some sort of agenda. The other film industries (Hong Kong, Bollywood) are more market oriented in comparison - their agenda is profit.
Face it, you're going to be shackled/brainwashed anyway. Pick your shackles whilst/if you can.
At least Christianity has a significant amount of positive stuff in it. Especially when compared to the others trying to brainwash you to their version of what is right and what is wrong.
1. Use the force, Luke!
2. Don't shoot food!
3: Run! Run!
4: Pizza Time!
5: Finish Him!
0- Eamonman Proud member of DNRC
Each new generation will try to find their own way in life. This is nothing new. What is new that each new generation in the last two centuries has some amazing new toys to do it with. Before the technology of the father was the same as of the son and for that matter the same as that of the grandfather.
Nowadays there are huge differences. My parents age had computers but they were like power stations. Used somewhere to do very important work but not something you ever expected to be working with. The idea that a major part of your freetime would be spend with it is alien to them. Same as say being glued to the tv was to their grandparents. Then again we can't see why our grandparents went to the movies to watch the news.
Different generations. Different technologies. Different ways of spending our free time.
The problem is that apart from not being able to see the value in the others generation toy is that each of the toys also has different morals.
A feature film can do with just 1 murder and last 1.5 hours. TV you then already got 2 programs so 2 murders. A session of half-life or whatever and 1.5 hours will get you a body count that would shock a WW2 veteran.
There are problems in the world but the world has always had problems. Youth gangs are nothing new but that doesn't make for gripping headlines. The media has for more influence in making us scared of loss of morals then in installing any morals.
So do I think game creators should apply morals to their games?
Well yes. I would dearly love to play RPG's were your moral choices really affected the game. An evil character will find progress easier and faster but pay the price of being hunted by the goverment and generally not being trusted by either lawfull and unlawfull people. But also were being a good character is HARD. Real hard. Of course this requires rpg's to get a decent economy first but lets make being good be something more then giving a few credits to some random npc when you are swimming in cash (my playstyle means I never spend on med packs and sell the med packs I find).
But as a final note I do remember on recent racing game that was set in cities in wich civilians could be run over. Not for points or anything just that they were impossible to avoid. That I found totally ammoral. It also just ruined any fun. Sure it was a console port but wouldn't the game have been more fun if you had to swerve to avoid hitting people. Maybe that level of driving is to hard with a gamepad.
But no. Games can't teach people morals. At a fundamental level I don't think morals can be thought unless at a very young age. Either you have learned that hurting other people is bad as a small child or you haven't.
Then again we are all immoral anyway. We are here wasting resources on meaningless drivel about games while childeren are starving. How moral is that.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
When will this generation of lazy parents start actually teaching morals to their kids? It's rather poor of them to expect games developers to do it for them. And even if developers started adding morals to games, I'm sure parents would still sue them when their kids go on killing sprees by saying they didn't teach the "right" morals.
An interesting story about that in the same book was about one of the rooms in a dungeon. Due to the engine, all creatures in a dungeon were enemies: you couldn't converse with them. Garriot had 256 special rooms, each taking op one screen. While filling these rooms, he was looking for interesting sprites to use. He had already filled two-hundred rooms with demons, zombies, dragons, and other critters, when he noticed a sprite he used in the villages, of a child. So he created a dungeon room consisting of cells, with a child in each cell. The player could simply walk through the room, not being bothered by the cells, but he had the ability to pull a lever and open the cell doors. The thing is, that after the player did that, the children were released and would attack the player -- they were monsters, because the game could only have monsters in dungeons.
When the game was betatested, one beta-tester found this room, and was outraged. He sent angry letters that Garriott's new game required the killing of children. He even approached Garriott's parents, asking them if they could talk to their son, which they did. Garriott argued that the game didn't require killing children at all: you didn't need to go through this room, you didn't need to open the cells, and even if you did, you didn't need to kill the children -- you could put them to sleep, or just ignore them. His parents argued that it was just one room, and it wasn't important, so why wouldn't he take it out. But that only convinced Garriott more that the room should stay in. He knew many players wouldn't care, and would happily kill the children, but a few might be facing a moral dilemma, where they were hindered by the children, but didn't want to kill them. And that was exactly what Garriott wanted to achieve with Ultima IV, that players would THINK about their actions.
All in the 1980s...
My opinion is that the a game designer shouldn't consider morality, because there are as many moral codes as there are people. It is a loaded question which means different things to different people. Instead, they need to make the game content match the game goals. If nothing is gratuitous in the game, based on the designed content, the game is properly labeled "game."
So, if the game is meant to be an over-the-top pseudo-realistic gang warfare simulation aimed to allow the player to vicariously experience things that real life disallows, the inclusion of "Winners Don't Use Drugs" (WDUD) messages is gratuitous. If there's a mission to destroy all of the WDUD billboards, the message isn't gratuitous.
If a game is meant to teach a certain set of moral values, then it should stay true to those values. If a Christian-themed game has you shooting anything at people, even if it's spitwads or Exorcising Energy (TM), it's clearly gratuitous.
Finally, if a game isn't meant to consider morals at all, then the moment the designers start pushing towards specific ethical values, they need to consider if that's the direction the game should go or if it's a gratuitous waste of code.
A quick google search on "evolution is not science" will provide you with hours of reading material from both sides of the arguement.
It take more faith to believe in evolution than it takes to believe in God
About 110 comments in and not one person really has a good concept of what morality really is. I'm currently writing a book about the subject, so I have a good idea what I'm talking about.
Real morality, is how what you do affects other people. Simple as that. (And that is modified by your intentions.)
Game design, like all art, is a VERY amoral activity. Amoral isn't necessarly a bad thing. It just means that it's fairly neutral. Because what you do on screen doesn't really affect other people, it's not intended to. The intention of GTA isn't for you to go out and kill people, for example. It simply is.
There is pieces of art that ARE intended to have such an affect on people. Usually this takes the form of overtly racist propaganda. This is the sort of thing you can judge on a moral basis, but to say that game designers have a moral responsibility?
No, they don't. It's nice when games have a good moral message, of course. But to be frank, in today's day and age, being morally neutral puts you ahead of the pack.
The question should therefore not be "do they *HAVE* a moral responsibility" but rather "How should that moral responsibility influence their actions?" Violence and sex have become a crutch upon which developers have leaned when they are too lazy or uncreative to come up with a compelling story. Perhaps redirecting efforts away from realistic blood spatters towards strong narrative is one way that a moral responsibility can influence a developer. I would suggest that the game rating system used by the ESRB is a good start. Parents are ultimately the ones responsible for the moral development of their children, and need a concise way to know what they are getting.
The consequences of shrugging off this moral responsibility are severe. Chuck D would argue that the Black Community in America is in the position that it is in because of the lack of moral responsibility of those in the media spotlight. The individuals that -visibly- got ahead financially did so by being sleazy. This has been glamorized by popular culture and compunded by the fact that you CAN in fact make a lot of money if you are a bad person.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
He knew many players wouldn't care, and would happily kill the children, but a few might be facing a moral dilemma, where they were hindered by the children, but didn't want to kill them. And that was exactly what Garriott wanted to achieve with Ultima IV, that players would THINK about their actions.
That reminds me of Fallout. The game in North America featured a lot of towns that had kids running around. If you wanted to, you could just start wasting them. This of course, would cause Bad Things to happen, like the whole town trying to kill you. But it was possible. But someone in the UK must have thought this was bad to give gamers a moral CHOICE and they required that Interplay remove all the children from the game. This of course led to some bugs where a child was involved in a quest... but hey, anything to prevent someone from making moral choices in a game, right?
What a bunch of knee-jerk reactions!
First point: Moral responsibility is not the same thing as moral requirement. To ask if someone has a moral responsibility has nothing to do with "enforced morality," unless one is such a sorry sack that one must be "forced" to behave ethically. If you are such a sorry sack, I'd suggest resolving any issues you have with your parents before the next time you vote.
Second point: Everyone who draws breath has an ethical responsibility. Amazingly, this includes *everyone*, even writers, lawyers, and doctors. To deny this in the name of "freedom of expression" is absurd. Look at it this way: let's say I'm a writer. I have two things:
1) The freedom to write what I want to write.
2) An ethical responsibility to my fellow humans.
How I balance these things defines me as a human. To take away my freedom of expression takes away my very ability to make ethical distinctions, and is thus demeaning and degrading to the human spirit. To deny ethics is just plain strange: remember, Freedom of expression *came* from an ethical responsibility that was met some several hundred years ago in the US and in most countries (Australia excepted).
Third point: [In general], "enforced morality" (which doesn't work) is attempted when the majority feel that people aren't living up to their responsibilities. The surest route to such a failed attempt is to do what most posters are doing here: denying any responsibility at all.
how come they can teach morals to others? maybe they can teach murals, but not morals obviously here is a wonderful game about american morals http://www.kumawar.com/
Two ways to end the war: (1) Kill all the Southerners. (2) Allow slavery to exist. Unfortunately, diplomacy is not a part of either.
Nice post on Ultima IV. Great game. I've never heard that story before.
Ultima IV had solid morals in addition to great gameplay. The eight virtues of the game are: Compassion, Justice, Humility, Honesty, Sacrifice, Valor, Honor and Spirituality. I was about twelve when I started to play and the game made me think about these issues.
One great example was at the beginning of the game, you were asked questions in which one virtue was pitted against another: do you honestly claim your reward (for a good deed) or compassionatly allow another (more needy) person to claim it (what if they really think they did it first?) etc. (Note: I know this is not bulletproof - nor are the ones in the game - it is the actual thinking required which makes it noteworthey).
The values are pretty solid and general. Contrast with Ultima VII in which every little detail is examined for some kind of "moral" element: I recall one character specifically mentioning the statues of females in the city didn't have enough clothes on them. It became rather preachy in a "politically correct" sort of direction and was just annoying.
If there are game programmers out there interested in introducing some kind of morality within their games, the contract between how these two Ultimas handeled the issue may be of interest.
a war on terrorism? How can we end a war on a method?
So since morals are relative game developers do not have an obligation to teach values. Their only obligation if any is to accurately describe the contents of said game so people who would be offended by its contents can avoid it.
There are 11 types of people, those who know unary and those who don't.
That statement sure makes your sig seem pretty hypocritical.
The values are pretty solid and general. Contrast with Ultima VII in which every little detail is examined for some kind of "moral" element: I recall one character specifically mentioning the statues of females in the city didn't have enough clothes on them. It became rather preachy in a "politically correct" sort of direction and was just annoying.
IMHO, that was more cultural and political satire than anything else. Also, the three games after Ultima IV show the evolution of Brittanian society after the establishment of the eight virtues. For example, in the game world's timeline VII takes place centuries after IV. Also recall that the "Fellowship" was intended to be a charactiture of the worst aspects of evangelicalism and puratanism.
Creating games with very well-developed moral messages is a challenge. More to the point - it is an extra challenge over the challenges of putting together a good game in the first place. It involves working the philosophy into the engine and the gameplay - a task far beyond the kind of "morality infusion" that movies get. In a film, all you have to do is have a character say, "Killing is wrong." In a game if, for example, you tell the player "killing is wrong" and then reward him for being a generally nasty guy (as is the case in Fable and every single other game that has tried to implement a "morality system" for figuring out if the player's character is good or bad), well gee, the morality there kind of seems like lip service, doesn't it?
What Richard Gariott described is a real instance of morality in a game - your actions determine what happens. No one is going to punish you for being bad or reward you for being good, it's just you and your actions. You can claim that the game "forced" you to do it, but if you play the game over you'll find that you actually can take a moral high ground. The problem with interactive morality is though, it's very hard to see if you're not actually playing the game.
Video games are very high concept, complex, and abstract works of art. But, at present they are more like architecture than poetry or painting. Their first priority is to build an interesting structure for interaction. (See, for instance, the wonderful Katamari Damacy, which uses a real-ish context as icing on the interactive cake.) Morality is often meaningless in these situations simply because the game is so much girders and drywall - that is, so much code and interaction - that the engine itself is the game. You could make the game "about" anything - just like you can make a version of Tetris that is "about" Monty Python or the Parting of the Red Sea, but it's still Tetris. Real-world morality finds itself wandering into the picture when someone sees an engine-based game like the original DOOM and thinks that it somehow means shooting people. In most cases they will never realize that the meaning of the game is in reality the interface itself.
Of course, I would love to see some more deep philosophy in games, as well as better writing in games in general. I myself am a fan of storytelling games (i.e. Grim Fandango, Shadow of Destiny), which are much heavier on the morals because they are nearly identical to film. But I also want to see more games like Katamari Damacy that know they're pure interaction and ignore the morality issue completely in favor of interesting gameplay. I think there's room in the market for both.
A strain of paranoid prevention can be worse than the disease, whate'er the intention.