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On the Moral Consequences of Gaming
N'Gai Croal and the LevelUp blog are collaborating with the popular UK games magazine Edge, and late last month we discussed the emotional impact of games. Or, more realistically, the lack thereof. This week N'Gai has been exploring what could be done to reinforce that emotional impact, and perhaps take those choices to a moral level. "What if developers attempted to bring social sanction into the experience? What if your Gamertag were designated 'Child Killer' for having murdered [Bioshock's] Little Sisters--or 'Good Samaritan' for having saved them? Microsoft recently announced its plans to add the Facebook and MySpace-inspired feature of allowing you to browse your friends' Friends Lists; what if everyone on your Friends List were notified each time you killed a Little Sister--or every time you rescued one--like the Status Updates on Facebook?"
It's a video game. Your actions don't have ANY important reaction because IT'S NOT REAL. That makes those tags WORTHLESS. Maybe if you were an actual child killer it would matter, but since no one is hurt or helped in the process of slaying a little ghost girl, the title loses all possible moral meaning.
If I thought I was being judged on moral grounds when I played a game I wouldn't play. There would be no point.
I believe I am ethical and moral in my real life, why the fuck would I want to be that way when playing a game? Isn't the point of a game to do things you would not ordinarily do.
And yeah, I killed some of the Little Sisters; after fighting a Big Daddy and getting my ass handed to me on a silver platter over and over again I figured they deserved it.
yes, its true, some people will go to the 'dark side' in various games because they like that aspect. though, sometimes, its a completely utilitarian view. sometimes the abilities afforded the player vary depending on how 'good' or 'bad' they are. sometimes a player might like playing a certain way and the abilities afforded to the bad side just play to his/her strengths better. some people look at it as a moral choice, others look at it as a challenge, some look at it as total game completion (yea, i finished the game saving the little sisters, now i gotta play it and not save them), or in the same idea, just changing the game so its less boring (i saved 'em all last time, i want the game to be different, so i'll kill them every now and then when it suits me).
Honestly, if they do it, instead of giving negative names to bad choices and positive names to good choices, it should just be names biased to that side. like on the good side, you'd have titles like protector, savior, etc. and on the bad side you'd have names that people wouldn't mind having or that are 'cool' like dark lord or some ish.
The reason we can choose in games is so we can get a more interesting experience, not so we can be embarrassed by it.
I like to role play in bed. Usually I just imagine there's a girl next to me.
When I was just a baby my mama told me 'son always be a good boy, don't ever play with guns'
But I shot a man in Bioshock just to watch him die. When I hear that whistle blowin' I hang my head and cry.
I have nothing compelling to say
The single most important problem with games that try to include consequences for "moral decisions" is that virtually no one knows that there can be more than one idea of what constitutes morality. Most people in the U.S. who talk about morality take it as given that the Judeo-Christian ethos *is* morality. Not just one option, not just a view, it is the entirety of the subject. People take as given that self-sacrifice is good, self-interest is bad, "spirituality" is superior to "materialism", etc.
That is why these morality games will and must fail. There are no real moral issues explored, only a scorecard of how well you've conformed to the designer's idea of what morality is.
Games might very well become more immersive and emotionally involving. They will *not* become real-world moral laboratories. If the player's view of morality differs in any way from the designer's then that disconnect will destroy the entire illusion.
One man's religion is another man's belly-laugh. - LL