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Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Moral Decisions in Games

Good and bad and decisions are a popular subject in all art forms though very few pieces of work portray it well. Games are not an exception to this. I’ve played countless games in which the decision of becoming either good or evil is a selling point printed on the back of the box in bold letters, but it’s something that never contributes to my purchase because I know it’s not going to be done in a very effective or meaningful way.

Moral decisions and life in general are more complicated than just lumping things into the two extremes of good and evil and I think that games don’t often consider this. I’m using Bioshock as an example here. In my opinion the game was a bit of a disappointment considering what was promised, especially in terms of throwing you in some sort of moral dilemma. I was expecting a less linear experience both in terms of game play and layout, and in terms of decisions concerning good and evil and the consequences that come with them. Instead the game had its one moral decision, whether to rescue or harvest the little sisters. This was a blunt decision between being good or bad and had none of the subtlety or mystery I was hoping for. Add to the fact that this single moral choice decides one of only two endings and it’s clear that there’s less to the moral aspect of things than there should have been.

Something which intrigued me whilst I was riding the hype train prior to its release and looking for bits of information was the decision to censor the controversial player controlled murder of the little sisters with their weapon of choice, in favour of the more ambiguous “harvest” scene. I can understand how this came about as I don’t think murdering children with wrenches has any place in a game, but again, it’s something else which causes the game to lose that moral impact it should have had and helps to distance the player. If you were forced to kill the defenceless girl instead of a video-initiating button press that does it for you, then it would mess with your morals much more.

Because of reasons like these I’ve never enjoyed the “good or bad” decisions in games as they never reflect real-life situations. However, after finding out that Fallout 3 is going to have over 200 endings- that is a lot of endings!- maybe moral decisions could finally be represented more accurately in a game. Can’t wait for that one, if you somehow haven’t seen the trailer already then check it out:

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/20238.html

For the record, I usually play the good guy in these types of gam

es. Even though it was reduced to just pressing X, I still couldn’t kill the little sisters. How about you guys, we got any heartless lil’ sis killers here or did you all do the right thing and rescue?

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