How morality should work in video games

[Martini_Enfield]

@thelurkinghorror

[spoiler]Do you say so because either outcome ends in a massacre?

In the context of the game though, slavery=bad, and ending it is the good option. Killing slaves lowers karma, killing slavers either raises it or has no effect. I do like that the head slaver is a proud dad and cares about his slaves, in the sort of paternalistic way. It does add some subtlety.[/spoiler]

That’s one way of looking at it. You’ve also got the issue of the baby- do you take her away from her parents and give her to the other guy, who may or may not be as good a parent as her actual ones? and the realisation that even if You take out the guy in charge, things still aren’t likely to change anyway.

So really, neither outcome can be said to be especially “Good”, but it’s really up to you as a player to decide which one is the lesser of two “Not Goods”.

I assume you are talking about if you kill Three Dog, someone else replaces him, and she’s not a very good DJ. There’s no reason to kill him from a plot point of view. If you do, it is not necessarily and evil act as must as psychopathic. A realistic evil person may kill for money or because it suits them, but not just for laughs. Some of the older Fallouts have FAQs for “Evil” and “Homicidal” playthroughs.

I think he’s referencing The Enclave Radio Station as the “Evil” one, (with John Henry Eden… President; Of Your Heart as the DJ) and GNR as the “Good” one, with Three Dog as the DJ, whose shout-outs change depending whether you’ve been Good or Evil.

[Death_of_Rats]

That is why I like games like GTA and Saint’s Row. These games give you amoral actions that are still the “good” option in the world of your life in the game (I am a gang member, but I am mostly killing the other gang’s members and pimps). Basically I get to be either the least of evils or the most of evils.

It always strikes me as funny when opposing gang members in Saint’s Row will grab a passerby to use as a human shield, like I won’t shoot a ramdom person to get to them.

[smiling_bandit]

Hey Quasi, let me know if you need any more help figuring things out. I can point you to some quests which might help a lot.

[smiling_bandit]

Uh… oops. Heh, sorry, wrong thread.

[fluiddruid]

@Mr.Miskatonic

Fallout 3 is one of those cases where the ‘Good vs. Evil’ thing really falls flat when you try to be evil. Especially when the ‘good’ radio station host calls you a douche (or a hero if you are good) for your actions while the ‘evil’ radio station has bad music and is nothing but pre-recorded tracks that say nothing of your actions.

I disagree. Fallout 3 is a great example of evil being awesome. It’s way easier to mow people down and take their stuff than to help them do whatever. What’s easier and more fun – going into Bigtown and enslaving everyone for cash, or plodding around helping them suck less and listening to their whining? What’s easier – trying to work out the Mechanist/AntAgonizer problem diplomatically, or walking into the Mechanist’s conveniently located hideout, picking the lock and shooting him in the face?

Lots of quests give better rewards for evil play (ahem, Wired Reflexes). Arguably, one of the best rewards for the Wasteland Survivor Guide quest comes from being d-baggy to the quest giver constantly.

I’m doing an evil runthrough and man, it is spectacularly easy when you don’t care about karma. Stealing everything not nailed down is very profitable.

[Mr.Excellent]

@Garula

My problem with morality in games is that the developers tend to treat good and evil as pretty much equivalent. What developers should be doing, in my opinion, is really try to tempt the player into being evil. Basically, I think being evil should be the easy mode and being good should be the hard mode. Years and years of games (primarily RPGs) have instilled a particular mindset into players: if you do the nice thing, you get a better reward in the end. When that old lady asks you to help her cross the road, you may get an option to push her over and take her purse for some quick cash, but more likely than not if you help her across the road you’ll get her enchanted walking stick which is way better than the money. We’ve been so conditioned to expect the best reward from being a goodie goodie that the evil option just seems counter-productive. Unless I just want to be a jerk for the laughs, I’m better off being a good guy.

I think the evil option should really tempt me. Offer me stat gains, cash, and bright shiny baubles for compromising my morality. If the local crime lord offers me a permanent stat upgrade to kill some innocents, well, that’s hard to refuse. When the poor family asks for my help, have my reward be a heartfelt thank you, not some random heirloom they happen to have that just happens to be magical. And then when the ending comes, remind me what I did. If I sacrificed a lot to do the right thing, then I’ll feel like I really earned the good ending. If I screwed over everyone I met for the rewards, remind me what I jerk I was while I sit in my golden flying chariot wielding a world destroying sword.

Dragon Age does a very, very good job of this. Without going into spoilers, the game gives you many opportunities to betray your allies (and even party members), and also gives you excellent reasons to do so. Stabbing an ally in the back can get you a stats boost, or money, or simply let you avoid a difficult fight.

[Phatlewt]

Maybe Fallout 3 just wasn’t hard enough to make life difficult for the good guy. I’ve played both good and evil paths in Fallout 3 and I didn’t find life any more difficult in the here and now for a good character.

Wired Reflexes is an excellent evil reward, but you don’t actually need to be evil to get it.
You can obtain it as well as the good reward and get a neutral karma score.

[spoiler]The game allowed you to obtain Wired Reflexes as well as the A3-21 Plasma Rifle, if you simply told The Commonwealth scientist about Harkness to get the Wired Reflexes reward, then killed him. I always found it appropriate to use AR-21’s plasma rifle to goo-ify Dr. Zimmer and his bodyguard with my newly enhanced V.A.T.S. accuracy.

You could also get both rewards by simply betraying Harkness after he gives you the rifle, which would have been a great temptation had they not given you an easy way to get the same thing and still get to be the good guy.[/spoiler]

I can’t think of a reward for being evil that was sufficiently tempting. As I recall you could generally get what you wanted by being good. Most evil actions simply gave caps, which were meaningless by level 10.

As of now, morality in games has simply been a matter of flavor. I like the taste of good. It’s familiar and makes me feel happy. It generally represents what I’d like to think I would do in the character’s shoes. If a game developer wants me to try out a taste of evil, I’m going to need some motivation.

[thelurkinghorror]

@Martini_Enfield

I think he’s referencing The Enclave Radio Station as the “Evil” one, (with John Henry Eden… President; Of Your Heart as the DJ) and GNR as the “Good” one, with Three Dog as the DJ, whose shout-outs change depending whether you’ve been Good or Evil.

Ah, that makes sense, I guess they’re more evil. Still, the Enclave will still shoot at you even if you slaughtered everyone in Megaton. Just because you are both villains does not mean that you’re friends.

The thing about GTA is that they go out of their way to make the protagonist have a conscience, at least during the plot. They will always refuse drugs when offered (perhaps also so the moral police don’t get (more) up in arms). Niko will have hilarious monologues about how he is shamed when you visit prostitutes. I just started TLAD, and Johnny yells at his boss for smashing an unarmed man in the face with a hammer. All of this makes it as if the hero is forced into escalating criminality, and gives the player more empathy.

The game Arcanum had interesting morality. For most of the game, it simply affects how people react, and some NPCs will or will not join you based on morality. Your sidekick’s score is directly related to your own, and his voice will change dramatically as he becomes evil. At some point, the evil storyline diverges drastically, and your main quest changes. I think the ultimate ending is unfortunately the same, and you can make the same decisions at the end no matter what.

[Manduck]

@thelurkinghorror

The thing about GTA is that they go out of their way to make the protagonist have a conscience,

This is especially hilarious since your main mode of travel is vehicular homicide:)

[smiling_bandit]

@fluiddruid

I disagree. Fallout 3 is a great example of evil being awesome. It’s way easier to mow people down and take their stuff than to help them do whatever. What’s easier and more fun – going into Bigtown and enslaving everyone for cash, or plodding around helping them suck less and listening to their whining? What’s easier – trying to work out the Mechanist/AntAgonizer problem diplomatically, or walking into the Mechanist’s conveniently located hideout, picking the lock and shooting him in the face

You confuse evil with psychopathy, along with Bioware (parts of Dragon Age side). Most games offer you no real chance to be evil, but rather an opportuinioty to play a spree killer with a lot hitpoints. They are not the same.

Despite this, Palooka is heavily, heavily wrong. I really do make decisions based on my character’s morality. I do, however, really hate being railroaded into the fake-choice options of doormat and a loon. That’s not a choice, it’s a joke.

Let me take Jade Empire as an example. I liked the game. Despite this, I never finished it and never will. See, I wanted to play as the Way of CLosed Fist. This is a stand-on-your-own-feet, fate-is-for-suckers ideology. The interesting thing is that I couldn’t. The game advertises it but fails to allow you that choice. Eventually, you get to choose between being a doormat and a murderer. You should, even by what it claims in-game, be able to act to build up other people and help them solve their own problems. Mostly you can’t, and the designers Epic Failed to use their own morality system.

You should be able to act as the “Open Palm” route as a murderous conquerer willing to put others in their place - the rabble will lay their problems at your feet and you will generously aid them in exchange for them showering you with wealth and power while the enemies of the state (or enemies of you, anyway) are crushed. But you can’t, you can only be a doormat.

The villains get to do it right. But you don’t.

[mlees]

Knights of the Old Republic rates your choices on a “light-side” and “dark-side” scale, which can affect some of your force powers. (Some powers, like force lightning, only work for Dark-side leaning characters.)

[thelurkinghorror]

The Dark Side gets all the cool ones.

[mlees]

@thelurkinghorror

The Dark Side gets all the cool ones.

Yes, but HK-47 gets all the cool lines.

[Lynn_Bodoni]

The game Arcanum had interesting morality. For most of the game, it simply affects how people react, and some NPCs will or will not join you based on morality. Your sidekick’s score is directly related to your own, and his voice will change dramatically as he becomes evil. At some point, the evil storyline diverges drastically, and your main quest changes. I think the ultimate ending is unfortunately the same, and you can make the same decisions at the end no matter what.

Well, Virgil’s score will mirror the player’s score. The other NPCs will stay the same, no matter what the player does.

Not related to morality, but try playing Arcanum with a stupid character, or with a half-ogre Idiot Savant (who will talk like a stupid character). Virgil will practically cry in frustration and outrage as you keep mispronouncing his name, and Magnus will speak kindly to you, but refuse to join you. He’ll also hope that the gods will put you out of your misery. Of course, you won’t be able to do a lot of the quests…but it’s good for a laugh.

[BigT]

@Mijin

I don’t really agree; it’s almost as though you’re defining morality as “things that can have long term repercussions”.

Sure in the real world, you can make poor decisions that sit with you for a lifetime. But video games can ignore realism where it would spoil the game.

If you make the choice as vivid as possible (e.g. scared child sheltering right next to the bad guy’s HQ), I’m sure that gamers will feel that sense of right and wrong. If they blow up the HQ, and kill the kid, they may regret it.
If people can care about the long-term consequences, they can care about the immediate ones.

I’m not saying that long term consequences are required for morality. I’m saying that, if you know going in that anything you do is going to matter in the end, you lose a very large motivation in actually caring about your character’s morality. Sure, you can pull some tear-jerking story telling to make them care about the kid, but, ultimately, if their character can go on and act as if nothing happened, they’re gonna forget. And after a few of those, you’re gonna lose the motivation to care.

Most players I’ve seen really don’t RP. They aren’t playing their character in regard to that character’s morality. The reason they care about the morality at all is specifically because it alters the game. Take that away, and only the die-hard fans who always play on ultrahard mode will care to choose the other option. There has to be some lasting consequence, even if it’s insignificant.

I guess you might be able to pull off the game you want if that’s the ONLY choice. That way there wouldn’t be any moral fatigue that isn’t offset by reward. But if you have to make moral decisions all the time (which is what I think of as a morality game), then I think you’ll find that most people won’t bother weighing the choices.

It really boils down to my philosophy of people in general. I think that, absent some sort of religious reason, most people tend to be good because of the rewards, and choose not to be evil because of the punishment. Put them in a game, and this tendency becomes even stronger. I think most people will choose either to save or not to save the kid, not based on any morality, but on whether thy want the game to be easier or harder.

[Mijin]

@BigT

Most players I’ve seen really don’t RP. They aren’t playing their character in regard to that character’s morality. The reason they care about the morality at all is specifically because it alters the game.

I agree with you, but what I’m saying is that if you make a game compelling enough, and you suspend disbelief long enough, people do actually step into the role of their character somewhat. They do care about what happens to their character and care about the inhabitants of that game world.
If people don’t care about the characters, then sure, making the gamer make a genuine moral decision is next to impossible.

What I was then going on to say, is that most decisions should be reversible to some extent. If I murder someone then you can make it as dramatic in game as you like, but either it shouldn’t matter in the long-term, or the option of undoing it should be there, unlike real life. This is just so that the game is not frustrating, and also so the gamer feels like they have a free choice each and every time.

I think that, absent some sort of religious reason, most people tend to be good because of the rewards, and choose not to be evil because of the punishment.

I disagree with this, though.

Firstly, religious reasons often are reward based.

But more importantly, I don’t think people just do good for rewards.

Trivial example: a parent looking after their child. From some selfish gene point of view this benefits their genes. But no part of the parent’s mind, conscious or otherwise, is actually thinking this. It’s just a simple instinct, like being scared of heights.

Personally, my ideal reality includes me being moral. In other words, moral action is an end in itself, rather than a means to an end.
For that reason, when I play a game like Bioshock, I play it the moral way first, whether or not there are rewards, because that is most natural for me.
Then I see what it would have been like to be evil.

(Note that neither of these points is about compassion – right now I’m just trying to refute the suggestion that people do A to get B).

[Kobal2]

@Mijin

Sometimes being good should be bad
e.g. You figure an old lady must be a civilian and then she fires on your troops.

You know, this has always bugged me in video games. Being “good” *should *net worse material results than the morally dubious choices, as happens in real life. The reason there aren’t that many good people out there is that always being good is fricking hard.

Being selfless means you don’t keep the good stuff for yourself. Being honest means getting screwed over time and again when one’s honesty is taken advantage of. Self-sacrificing should cost you something, else it’s not sacrificing at all (this comment brought to you by Captain Obvious).
Being good should be a long, hard, unrewarding road - yet be its own reward on purely moral grounds and repercussions. I.e. NPCs reunited with their loved ones, towns flourishing, everyone being that little bit happier as you ride into the sunset, that sort of thing.

If being good *also *nets your the +30 sword of buttkicking, then there’s little point in not being good, is there ? Besides wanting to give the Dark Side a spin for the evulz, of course.

Yet in most games, that paradigm is completely reversed : being a self serving asshole generally nets you either just as much and often *even less *stuff than being Sir Rainbow Puppylover, not to mention ignoring some urchin’s famished plea (and the QUEST!! he gives) also sets you back experience-wise. Thus, bastards are inherently punished by the game. That ain’t right.

The paradigm should, generally, be thus : be a nice bloke and get fuck all gameplay/monetary/lewt advantage during the game BUT get the nicer endings, touching scenes & closure ; or be a douche, get lotsa toys and a generally easier way but end with the crummy karma-bites endings.

Being good (or evil) should generally not have long-term repercussions
Maybe you get a medikit. Or maybe nothing happens at all. But many of your choices shouldn’t affect the rest of your game.
Just so you don’t get the phenomenon of having to make consistently good or evil choices.

On the contrary ! Choices should affect things long term, preferably in unpredictable ways. If the big moral dilemma you face during a quest/mission lies solely within the confines of the NPCs involved and the immediate rewards of that quest, then it’s not much of a dilemma, is it ? All you have to do is save, solve the quest each and every way, check the rewards, reload, pick whichever option hands out the one you want, go on your merry way.

This is what I loved about* The Witcher* : each chapter of the story featured a couple of non-obvious (at least the first time around) decision nodes which triggered some unforeseen result much later down the road. And not fluffy results, either : for example, going down one early path kills off a major quest giver out of nowhere in the next chapter, while going down the other means you’ll have to wait much longer before you can upgrade your weapons.
The end result is that you weigh your options and agonize over your decisions that much harder, because you know that, good or bad, any of your deeds can bite you in the ass some day.
Finally, karma meters have got to go. They’re asinine, they get in the way of role-playing, and I’ve yet to see a game where they accomplish anything besides strong-arming the player to go all out one way or the other, thus becoming silly caricatures.

[mlees]

@Kobal2

Finally, karma meters have got to go. They’re asinine, they get in the way of role-playing, and I’ve yet to see a game where they accomplish anything besides strong-arming the player to go all out one way or the other, thus becoming silly caricatures.

I don’t agree. You can ignore the meter if you don’t want to use it, but it provides info for the player.

Example: In Dragon Age: Origins, there is a relationship meter that shows the degree of loyalty between the various NPC party members and the main (player) character. If you get the relationship maxed out, you have a chance of indulging in some (cut away) romance.

Without the meter, you can’t know if you can’t sleep with so-and-so because the loyalty score isn’t high enough, or if there is some other plot device that is required.

A discrete number (a kharma meter) helps to guide the player towards achieving a (usually self selected) goal, usually unlocking dialog/plot options, quests, phat lewt, or abilities.

[Mr.Excellent]

@Kobal2

The end result is that you weigh your options and agonize over your decisions that much harder, because you know that, good or bad, any of your deeds can bite you in the ass some day.

The Mass Effect series does this brilliantly. You can load your saved game from Mass Effect into Mass Effect 2 after you beat the first game, and all your decisions carry over. I made some bad decisions in the first game, and they certainly changed the way Mass Effect 2 played out. As a result, there were quite a few points in the second game where I really thought about the decisions I was making, because I fully expect them to come back and bite me when Mass Effect 3 comes out - in two years or so.

A game that makes you think “I’m really going to regret this decision in a couple years if I screw it up” has basically won at sucking you into its moral dilemmas.

[Kobal2]

@mlees

I don’t agree. You can ignore the meter if you don’t want to use it, but it provides info for the player.

Really hard to do when 1) maxing out the meter one way or the other gets you stuff, glorious glorious STUFF!, be it greatly reduced mana cost on Force powers, or access to special schools of martial arts, or increased stats etc… and 2) it’s in your face the entire game (The karma meter just lost 1 point of influence with you !!)

Example: In Dragon Age: Origins, there is a relationship meter that shows the degree of loyalty between the various NPC party members and the main (player) character. If you get the relationship maxed out, you have a chance of indulging in some (cut away) romance.

Without the meter, you can’t know if you can’t sleep with so-and-so because the loyalty score isn’t high enough, or if there is some other plot device that is required.

Heh. Yeah. And that feels so cool, intuitive and realistic, right ?! Come to think about it, I should ask my girlfriend to keep and update our relationship score.

But seriously, Morrigan Approves +5 (yeah, like you’re ever going to see that! :p) in your face all the time takes you away from any sense of immersion whatsoever, and the opposite kind of says “What the hell is wrong with you ! Don’t play like that ! You want to get in her pants, do it right you idiot !” over and over.

By comparison, Mass Effect 1&2 relied on a much cruder flag system to determine whether or not you get in so and so’s pants or whether the big crocodile man shoves a shotgun up your butt. Complete a couple of quests, bam, it’s on. Skip them, no nookie for you. But because it’s not shown, it works and feels natural to me, even though the dialogue itself is arguably more “on rails” and less compelling than Dragon Age’s.

Besides, morality (and relationships) is not and should not be as obvious as that. You rarely get a straight “That was NICE !” or “I’ve been BAD…” feeling when you make a difficult choice, nor do you know instantly whether or not you’ve just lost or gained respect with someone by doing or saying something (unless she immediately slaps you in the gob. That’s a good hint, right there).
Displaying your karma/relationship score stops you from wondering at all. Which I guess is cool if you’re in full gamey mode but again, from an immersion point of view, not so hot.