Black or White: Making Moral Choices in Video Games (Research)

by Laura Parker

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"Morality is not a black-and-white concept. Reality is very seldom as simple as a choice between good and evil; the spectrum of moral behaviours is as complicated and consequential as our emotions."

"Instead of mirroring this complexity and including moral choices that lead to genuine in-game consequences, video games often do the opposite--they present a watered-down version of moral choice that ultimately results in players having to choose between good or evil: to harvest or not to harvest (BioShock), to be “paragon” or “renegade” (Mass Effect), to kill innocents or to save them (inFamous), to have a halo or devil horns (Fable II)."

"BioWare writer and designer Mike Laidlaw agrees that morality adds depth to games. He says that even when morality has no long-term impact in the game world, a game with a morality system is better than one without it."

“Even if it doesn’t have a long-term effect, it still forces players to think about those moments." (quote - Mike Laidlaw)

"Besides adding an extra layer to the gameplay, morality systems are supposed to allow players to better identify with their characters and to some extent, begin to better understand their choices and actions in the game."

"While moral conflicts appear interesting in dramatic situations, the simple fact is that day-to-day moral choices are usually very simple and intuitive in normal circumstances. The trouble is, video games don’t involve normal circumstances, which is partly what makes them so fun and what makes the idea of a moral system so intriguing. So perhaps one of the reasons why in-game morality tends to be so simple is that most people, including game developers and players, think about it in simple terms when presented with the abnormal circumstances of most games."

"...killing or saving the Little Sisters in BioShock is promoted as a very weighty and important player decision, when in reality it has little bearing on your character: both paths give you roughly the same amount of ADAM."

"I think developers should make games that mirror real-life moral choices, and games that mirror highly unlikely, super-heroic choices, and games that imagine entirely hypothetical, otherworldly choices. These games might be boring, but I think that games like The Sims and Diner Dash have pretty conclusively shown us that any activity can be fun with the right design.”
(quote - Peter Rauch, Comparative Media Studies graduate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT))

“It is admittedly very difficult to imagine a genuinely fun video game that mirrored the sort of everyday moral choices that most people end up being preoccupied with, e.g. whether to tell off one’s boss, how much to spend on grandma’s birthday gift, or whether to be faithful to your spouse, as opposed to whether or not to nuke eastern Europe or to spray machine gun fire into a crowd of zombies.”
(quote - Jon Cogburn & Mark Slicox - Professors of Philosophy at Louisiana State University)

"Just like Portal helps us look at the laws of physics differently without actually teaching us anything about real-world physics, so too can in-game morality help us look at real-world values and behaviours in a new light."

“Choices without in-game consequences are meaningless. This was part of the debate around BioShock. What difference to the game does it make if you rescue the Little Sisters or not? Arguably, you get more goodies for rescuing them--so are you doing the ‘right’ thing for the ‘right’ reasons?”
(quote - Gene Koo, former fellow at the Berkman Centre for Internet and Society at Harvard University Law School)