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The Moral Responsibility of Game Creators

Posted by Zonk on from the damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't dept.

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"

4 of 161 comments (clear)

  1. Good question. by jericho4.0 · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Yes, to the point that anyone has obligations to society. I would have been proud to have worked on GTA, but not if I knew it was going to be marketed to kids. I know kids will play it, but that shouldn't stop it from being made for adults. Parents have that role.

    --
    "A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
  2. why would it by turbopunk · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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

  3. Game designers have no responsibility... by agraupe · · Score: 1, Interesting

    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.

  4. Ultima IV by Flyboy+Connor · · Score: 2, Interesting
    I read in a book (which I don't have near me now) about Richard Garriott designing the Ultima games. After he did Ultima III, he discovered that some people spent dozens or even hundreds of hours in his games. Then he thought, that in that time, basically, he had an opportunity to shape people's thoughts. By that, he did not mean that he could brainwash people into becoming his slaves, but that he should carefully consider what he would put in the game. He then designed Ultima IV, which is, as the slightly older gaming-generation knows, a game that centers around the concept of virtues.

    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...