Morality compatibility

Oolala · 2013-09-08T01:33:00

How important is it for the player to be easily able to relate to the morality of the characters in a game? If you present players with a morality that is highly incompatible with their own morality, does it end up being intriguing or does it just make a player feel uncomfortable and alienated? Is it important to couple a radically different morality with a character that the player can identify as being an 'other'? Just to create a concrete example, say a game contains a culture in which it was viewed as entirely normal to, say discard children if the parents think they've messed them up, or something equally ridiculous from the perspective of our culture. Like anytime before the kids 5th birthday, the parents can call a do-over. The player could be walking around a grocery story, and a kid throws a tantrum, and the parent just rolls their eyes, stick them with a syringe, and throws them in the garbage, and everyone around just looks at it as perfectly acceptable and understandable. I'm assuming that this would at the very least make the player uncomfortable in the immediate sense. Can it be expected though that the player would make an attempt to acclimate to this different morality, or will they just be revolted? Do most players have any interest in assuming a different morality, or do players mostly hope to take their existing personality & morality and project it onto a new world? Would it make a difference if this culture was that of a race of weird looking bug-aliens instead of people, where a player would identify it as being an okay moral code for those gross things, but not for people?

Game Design and Theory Game Design

Started by Oolala August 12, 2013 12:37 PM

27 comments, last by AngleWyrm 10 years, 7 months ago

wintertime

4,154

September 05, 2013 09:26 AM

You put all those as if they were hard rules, but you could probably make games where you include these. It would just be stupid because you would severely constrain your audience and normally people want as much audience as possible.

There is also not a single group of "we". There are some examples of such groups:

- Of those playing games I think the majority wants fun and finds being forced to watch or even do such things not fun even though they know its not real.

- Some other people playing games similarly would know its not real and thats why they use them to try out things they would never want to do in real.

- Of people not playing games I guess the silent majority is just not interested in them and doesnt speak out.

- But sure there are some vocal people wanting to protect children(or even all people) from having to see disgusting things and thats why movies, games get labeled with an appropriate age and people producing them surely try to not loose customers by including inappropriate stuff and then being restricted to selling to a smaller group or getting bad press.

BarefootPhilospher

250

September 05, 2013 09:46 AM

An interesting subject Oolala.

It relates well to my recent experience playing Red Dead Redemption by Rockstar Studios. Its a great game by any account, but I found its pragmatic morality to be a little disturbing. The issue I came across was in the chapter of the game when you cross the border into Mexico in search of a former outlaw compatriot that in the past you had a falling out with for some undisclosed reason. Mexico at the time period in which the game is set, was mired in a civil war between the despotic government ruled by settler aristocracy and the downtrodden indigenous peasantry. The narrative is well written and the conflict is well fleshed out by the entertaining cutscenes. There was no ambiguity involved in knowing which side which you should sympathize with and which you should support.

The problem being is that part of the narrative is that the outlaw the player is supposed to track down and bring to justice maybe hiding with rebels and the main character which you play needs the assistance of government soldiers to track him down. The player has no choice but to follow the narrative and accept missions from government officials which involve killing rebels and destroying their homes, which are justifying purely by personal expedience. In order to pursue your personal goals you have to act contrary to your personal preference. Even when in other narrative branches you're actually helping the rebels and meet NPCs which encourage you to identify with the rebels plight and sympathize with them on a personal level. Due to the narrative, the player has absolutely no choice. This really grates on me and reduces my enjoyment of the game.

I don't know if anyone else has this problem playing.

Dodopod

700

September 05, 2013 04:03 PM

I haven't played RDR personally, but I believe that it's a GTA-style sandbox game (it is developed by Rockstar, after all). Do you think that you would have had as much of a problem if it were more strictly linear? Also, if it were less linear and gave you a more difficult but more ethical route, would you take it?

AngleWyrm

554

September 06, 2013 02:43 AM

- Of those playing games I think the majority wants fun and finds being forced to watch or even do such things not fun even though they know its not real.

In Borderlands 2, about half-way through the campaign, the player is given missions that make it clear that the player is nothing more than a crude hired murderer, and the chores that he performs are brutal and unnecessary. Here's the interesting part: Did you do them anyway?

The one moment I remember from Fallout 3 is deciding if everyone would be better off having a friend named 'Bob.' Being presented with that choice, and what it meant for the world around me, was quite fun.

In The Last Of Us, the player becomes accustomed to slaughter, and that path leads to some surprises along the way. Who did you kill? But unfortunately it's presented as not optional, and only after the fact do you learn more about those you've killed. Which kinda detracts from the interest level for me.

--"I'm not at home right now, but" = lights on, but no ones home

wodinoneeye

1,691

September 06, 2013 06:15 PM

Social mechanism example : In Medieval Europe (and probably many other places and times) when a person commited a sufficiently heineous crime (or pattern of crime) and wasnt caught&punished , they were declared 'Outlaw' - someone who by their actions puts themselves outside of recognizing and following the common laws. A critical aspectg is that by putting yourself outside the law, you also negate your implied protection by the same (system of) law. An Outlaw could be killed by any man without penalty, and anyone who helped the outlaw was subject to severe penalties (thus depriving the 'outlaw' of the society the laws make possible). A decent repercussion/loose punishment , particularly in a world where organized lawmen were far between.

How do you implement a system like that in a game? A whole lot of behaviors supporting that system need to be created, quite general and versatile for all the things a player might do if allowed to largely 'do what they want'. Large parts of your simulated society would have to react 'appropriately'. You can abstract it some and subset it within the parts/aspects of society/ecosystem the game will simulate. We have a game industry universe where so much (still) has to be pre-canned/heavily choreographed, and the least little AI generality is touted as a major advance (ie- Half-life, a game generation ago) due to the combinatoric explosion of appropriate handling logic (to simulate 'morality' or social conventions) for any kind of game complexity (even trivial human simulation). Its no wonder the game industry is largely stuck and can give us few opportunities for real (cohesive) morality decisions in the games.

"Sorry you cant do that" for the least divergance will be with us for quite a while yet.

Of course the OP was asking about games having 'compatible' morality and the effects of not being compatible , but do we yet even have the ability to handle anything more than a prefabricated (staged) 'act' (the player is allowed to do) and a corresponding completely choreographed response/reaction?

Meanwhile 'safe' (not subject to morality based repercussions) filler is served up to keep the player busy.

--------------------------------------------[size="1"]Ratings are Opinion, not Fact

AngleWyrm

554

September 06, 2013 10:52 PM

Of course the OP was asking about games having 'compatible' morality and the effects of not being compatible , but do we yet even have the ability to handle anything more than a prefabricated (staged) 'act' (the player is allowed to do) and a corresponding completely choreographed response/reaction?

Yes, but only if we are willing to peek behind the curtain, and analyze what makes morals moral. If "Morals" only refer to remembered morals, as socially agreed upon in the real world, then only those pre-set morals that have already been identified and classified as morals are allowed to be in the set of all morals. So there can be no further development or engineering.

What are the component pieces that make up morals? Why is one action "moral" and another action "immoral"? In our culture, murder and racism is considered immoral. But in video games, murder and racism are normal behaviors of a player.

---

Age of Conan implemented an "outlaw" status; if the player committed game-defined crimes, their access to NPC vendors changed, city guards would attack them on site, and other PvP players were awarded prizes for slaying them. The PvP players who performed those game-defined crimes screamed bloody murder on the forums, saying they didn't want to be penalized for playing the game their way. The outlaw status then went through a few patch changes and modifications.

Space Rangers 2 also has an outlaw status of a sort, in that the player may choose the life of a pirate wherein they rob and pillage civilian space ships. But the consequences are light, with police not particularly threatening, and the ability to buy off most politicians quickly and easily, and benefits of access to pirate bases.

--"I'm not at home right now, but" = lights on, but no ones home

wodinoneeye

1,691

September 07, 2013 01:36 PM

Racism being normal ...

Trying to think of a game where its not wrapped into the normal 'slaughter everyone on that side'. with no particular actions expressing racism overtly

In some places in the world its perfectly acceptable to kill members of 'that tribe' or ethnic group (is that racism when you are killing them because they are 'the enemy' ) also the religionism (sectarianism) similarly

Lord of The RIngs -- the heroes there could probably all say 'the only good Orc is a dead Orc"

Now the whole outside goals of the confict may originate in racism ("we are the superior race and we deserve to rule them and any who dont like it and resist we should kill...") But players arent given a chance to modify the whole setting of the game to change that.

----

I recall in Ultima Online they had 'red' marked characters (killers of NPCs or Players) who would be attacked by guards in town, but it was so easy to have a seperate 'gopher' char to do everything in town you needed so it wasnt such a great penalty. Also getting away was very easy allowing chronic ambushes of newbies by griefers and them running if anyone 'hunting a red' turned up . They (the company) eventually spilt the entire world into 2 near duplicate maps with one being no PVP at all allowed (before that heavy handed change, they tried some very byzantine rules dealing with when you turned 'red' and how long it lasted and such -- which never stopped the mentally ill newbie killers from getting their jollies.).

---

As for morals being implemented variably (different from our normal society or also different from place to place within the game) then the player has to figure out how far they can go (or what is acceptable0. Some places where it might be as limited as simply insulting someone leads to them wanting to kill you and places where there is also noone to stop them from carrying it out. That still calls for alot more complex/detailed social interactions than we normally get (without it being a staged/choregraphed scene you are led thru by the nose).

Imagine a social etiquette tutorial (or series of them) players would have to be given to understand some exotic society, particularly if repercussions in the game are costly to the player for breaches of 'expected' behavior.

--------------------------------------------[size="1"]Ratings are Opinion, not Fact

Dodopod

700

September 07, 2013 09:05 PM

As far as implementing morality, etiquette, laws, etc. in a game go, there are several possibilities:

It is possible for the player to choose to follow or break convention at any time, but the consequences are either immediate or minor.
Obeying social convention (or not) becomes the central focus of the game. If your system of etiquette/morality has any complexity or consequence to it, this is almost inevitable.
The player is given one or more branches in the plot where they can make a moral choice. All the big games these days have this, and it's fashionable for the game to stay nominally neutral on the choice.
The player is given some freedom, but they are forced to break the rules when the game tells them to. Some games resort to misrepresenting what the player is actually doing to make them go along with it. This never works after the first playthrough, and it's arguably more to explain the character's actions than the player's. Despite the fact that this is clearly coercive, it's probably the best way to make to make the player feel guilty about their actions.
The player is made to break with convention only at certain points in the plot without any choice, and without initiating it (like in a cutscene). Only do this if the PC is under mind control or otherwise forced to.
The issue of the PC actually having to consciously follow unfamiliar rules is completely ignored. If the PC has been living in your society for years, that society's mores and conventions should be ingrained in their minds, and they should be following them automatically. I think it would be more fitting and less frustrating if the player didn't need to think about them either.
NPCs will follow or break convention but the player has no choice.
Characters in the game fuss about having to follow convention, but this is as far as the issue is taken.

There are probably more that I didn't think of (I sure seem to like to itemize things, don't I).

One thing I thought of while writing this was, don't MUDs, MMOs and the like usually have taboos and obligations that are alien to the greater world? I mean, most of this happens because of the idiosyncrasies and relationships of the players, but there's probably some way to engineer it. Maybe by appealing (or advertising) to specific groups who you know will behave certain ways (when brought together), and by using the mechanics to encourage behaviors.

AngleWyrm

554

September 08, 2013 01:33 AM

is that racism when you are killing them because they are 'the enemy'

My definition of racism is a strong correlation between racial differences and enemy status. If the player can say "it's an alien, therefore it's an enemy" then I see that as a case of racism. In XCOM:Enemy Unknown, the player kills anyone who is an alien. But in Starcraft, it's insufficient to make a snap judgement that all Zerg must die.

--"I'm not at home right now, but" = lights on, but no ones home

Morality compatibility

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Morality compatibility

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