Morality in Games

Morality systems in games can be lacklustre at times, certain games give the player weight to their actions but some can be questionable, such as fable 2 which allowed the player to eat Tofu to build up his morality metre on the side of good enough to compensate for the act of murder.

Regardless of certain blunders in mechanics, both good and bad choices tend to have certain rewards for their paths. Evil play styles tend to have the game character give a more demonic appearance and utilising more extravagant moves, an example of this is the Sith in various Star Wars games, which have the player slowly transforming into a more evil looking appearance and using moves such as force lightning.

For morality to work and to have a lasting impact on the player, the choices have to be of the quality that make the player stop and really think about the coming decision and how it will affect the coming experience.

Rowan Kaiser wrote this in an article about game morality on Joystiq.com:

“In order for a moral choice to have weight, it needs to have two components. First, meaningful choices have to cause the player to lose something in order to gain power. Something has to change, or be expected to change, within the game in order for the decision to matter.” (Kaiser, 2012)

Many people will side with a darker route purely for the aesthetic look of their avatar. 

if video games can begin to give weight to the choices then players can have more involvement with the game, making a generally hard decision would entice the player more than hollow choices. It could also be used to affect society, by this i mean that challenging the way a player thinks could change the way that they treat people in real life. in the same way that films have messages and morales that have us siding with unlikely heroes or sympathising with villains, video games could have the player walk away at the end of the day seeing life slightly differently. Whether it changes the way they think about the environment, the economy or just their manners, Video games could begin to change the world.

This brings up a real world morality dilemma that if games get to this point, is it the duty of the developer to include a message that actively changes the world for the better and will developers be persecuted for the content, more so than they are now?

Kaiser, Rowan (2012) Dark Side ‘Cause It Looks Cool: The Failings of Moral Choice In Games.

Available from: http://www.joystiq.com/2012/02/10/dark-side-cause-it-looks-cool-the-failings-of-moral-choice-in/  [Accessed 11th may 2012]