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[G-Flex]

I just wanted to drop a note here: I wouldn't have seen this post if not for the fact that traffic on my blog mysteriously tripled yesterday. 

I would define a "real moral choice" for the purpose of my post to be something on which two players would sincerely disagree on regarding the best course of action. Politics and philosophy are certainly both great sources for these kinds of choices, which are occasionally, but not frequently, seen in games.

Yeah. Some problems I'd list with "moral choices" in games are:

• Too transparent. It's too easy to know when you're making a choice, and often what the effect will be. It's hard to screw up when the game makes it clear when something will have consequences and when they won't, and simply gives you the option instead of letting you try and screw it up anyway.
• Too clear-cut. In real life, what's a good choice and what's an "evil" choice varies depending on the person. A lot of game reviewers (see: Yahtzee) have pointed this out, noting that you're generally given the choice between something very clearly evil and something very clearly good, based on this very culturally-normative and stereotypical model, no matter how bizarre the circumstances.
• Unrealistic/moralizing consequences. Like someone else here pointed out, usually you get rewarded for making the "good" choice anyway. This takes the actual motivation out of being "evil".

Bioshock's situation is a really really good example of what I'm talking about here. You know exactly when you're making a ~MORAL CHOICE~, you know exactly how to be good or be evil, and you get rewarded for being good anyway, albeit a little less in the short-term.


Game developers need to step away from these sort of "PLEASE CHECK BOX: [ ] good  [ ] evil" faux-choices and actually try a bit harder. I'd rather make actual organic choices throughout gameplay that have realistic and potentially-unforeseen consequences than be given this kind of stuff. Seriously, choose-your-own-adventure books have more depth of choice.

Oddly enough, The Pandora Directive (a friggin' Tex Murphy FMV adventure/noir game from around 1995 or something) was an example of what I'd consider good choices, at least for the most part. The game's conversation system gave you three choices for how to respond to people most of the time, and it kept track of how well you were getting along with people. Granted, at the end, the nice-guy players get the good ending, and some choices are a bit obvious, but a lot of the time you aren't really entirely sure what to say in order to be the nice guy in the first place. It takes a bit of actual effort, at least, since you have to ask yourself how to respond to someone in order to not alienate or anger them. There are also a couple of instances in the game where you have to either think outside the box (showing that you genuinely care to do the right thing) or where it's otherwise easy to miss what you're supposed to do. Still a bit black-and-white in terms of morality, but better than most things I've seen.

[Servant Corps]

That's an INCREDIBLY hostile environment for a student! It honestly doesn't matter what they're ethics are, willfully participating in this 'university', taking these people seriously and humoring their fanaticism would, in my opinion, be so damaging to the idea of respect and tolerance that it would be blatantly evil to engage in it at all. Especially since you're doing it for the purpose of good grades! Jesus Christ, how much more selfish can you get? The only correct moral choice, would be to not go to the university at all and let the radicals kill eachother without you.

To be fair, I think I based it off the idea of student radicals.

It's interesting, but you have to make it a little more mainstream. It sounds a little too 'technical' as it is. Like some kind of ethical prototype. Make it appeal more, give a real life situation. "Lie or be partly responsible for someone's death" seems a little extreme.

Alright, thanks for the tip. I think I'll string bring up this idea from time to time, only as a way to explain how I invision a faction system would work, but I'll strongly suggest using some other setting or plot.

I would define a "real moral choice" for the purpose of my post to be something on which two players would sincerely disagree on regarding the best course of action. Politics and philosophy are certainly both great sources for these kinds of choices, which are occasionally, but not frequently, seen in games.

That I can agree with, altough I am a stickler for using words correctly. On another forum, I argued that "meaningful evil" is basically "anything evil that can fool some people into thinking it's good". That might be a similar concept to your "real moral choice", and in fact, is easier to develop than a system with factions...since all you got to do is just hire good writers to justify whatever "evil" action you want. Within reason, of course.

I could sympathize with the ham-handed moralism though, because there is a possiblity that somebody playing the game may end up doing an immoral action and then claim that immoral action is actually the right course of action. I however view games as entertainment, so I am not concerned with the possiblity that people can learn the wrong lessons.

[Armok]

"Save one child or two elderly"

[alfie275]

One dwarf or a billion elves.

[Hawkfrost]

One young dwarf or a billion elderly elves.

[alfie275]

One young dwarf who will give you a million dwarf bucks or a billion elderly elves who will demand you help them go to the toilet.

[chaoticag]

I thought we already agreed that making "good" choices that give better rewards than evil choices are a bad thing.

[JoshuaFH]

One dwarf or a billion elves.

I keep interpretting his question as "Save the life of one dwarf, or kill a billion elves", which probably reflects badly on me somehow.

[Servant Corps]

I just realized Jonathan S. Fox needs to comment on The Witcher's idea of delayed consquences for actions. Of course, that may be because he never actually played it, and neither have I (funnily, due to moral reasons ). But I remember hearing of one ethical delimma.

You walk into a town and there is a conflict between an bunch of Robin-Hood arms smugglers and a hypocritical priest. You decide to support the arm smugglers against the Priest, and the arms smugglers get to heroically smuggle arms throughout the empire.

Later on, you are set to meet up with an important contact for something unrelated...only to find out that guy was killed...by the same weapons the arms smugglers were smuggling. Oops. (What was not mentioned is the consquence of aiding the Priest, but...)

Appearntly, the reason for delayed consquences is to prevent someone from reloading if they don't like a course of action. I don't like that, it rubs me the wrong way, but I can't explain why. (Maybe I want to see what happens if I choose the other path, and I don't want to be denied the ability to experience the full game without having to replay it all over again.)

I am also worried that delayed consquences may end up acting like Kreia's infamous scene on Nar Shadda. There is a beggar. You are given a choice, help the beggar or shoo him away. Either way, Kreia will call you a moron and show you the consquences of such an action.

Spoiler: SUPER SPOILERS! (click to show/hide)

If you give the beggar 5 credits, he'll tell his friend. His friend, greedy for money, will murder him and take the money.

If you shoo the beggar away, his friend will comfort him. The beggar, visibily angry and upset, will murder his friend.

Either way, the consquences of your actions are both negative, and Kreia just keeps on ranting about how you're an stupid, moronic, and evil guy. You can't win with Kreia.

While this idea of "your choices are dumb either way" is good from a storyline prespective, it's horrible from a gameplay prespective. And I don't want delayed consquences to mean negative consquences.

[Mephansteras]

A friend of mine recently brought up a good point in games like this. They like to assume that all actions are 'good' or 'bad', but fail to take into account the 'motive' of the player.

For example, there is a point in Fable 2 where you can give some corrupt politician something good (an artifact, something like that? I can't remember). Anyway, you can give him this thing for 10,000 gold or you can give it to the people of the town. My friend complained that when playing as an evil character he didn't have the option to give it to the town because the politician was an annoying jerk and he didn't care about the money, not because he cared about the townspeople.

Motive, I think, has a lot to do with whether or not you are good or evil. Your actions may have good or bad consequences, but why you make those decisions is as important as what decisions you make.

[qwertyuiopas]

I have a theoretical idea for a flash game, or really two, but one of them fits in this context. However, if I ever get around to making it, I would rather not give a free spoiler of the underlying idea. However, I would design it that some seemingly insignificant choices(not revealed as choices. Imagine if blowing up a rock in a cave to make a shortcut would cause an instability that causes that cave to collapse much farther into the game where you learn of a secret entrance to an underground settlement, and by then learn that it is too late and the collapse will trap them. Then you get an active choice to ignore it, do what you can to support it, possibly getting caught in the eventual collapse unless you do everything right. That kind of choice that is evident after you have seen the possibilities, but is hard to notice until later, or you have played through. Toss onto that well over 10 distinct endings and a lod that only tracks the endings you have seen, and theoretically it would have an emotional impact the first play through a particular choice and then inspire players to experiment. By never telling them if they saw it all or if they have an unexplored choice branch at turning point H, they will explore more of the options. Then add such things as that in the theoretical hidden underground town, a master smith was there that can get you a better weapon for the end-game...) Oh wow, a hypothetical situation that I made up on-the-spot really filled out a single set of brackets. MAybe a have a good programming career ahead :)

[TheNewerMartianEmperor]

A friend of mine recently brought up a good point in games like this. They like to assume that all actions are 'good' or 'bad', but fail to take into account the 'motive' of the player.

For example, there is a point in Fable 2 where you can give some corrupt politician something good (an artifact, something like that? I can't remember). Anyway, you can give him this thing for 10,000 gold or you can give it to the people of the town. My friend complained that when playing as an evil character he didn't have the option to give it to the town because the politician was an annoying jerk and he didn't care about the money, not because he cared about the townspeople.

Motive, I think, has a lot to do with whether or not you are good or evil. Your actions may have good or bad consequences, but why you make those decisions is as important as what decisions you make.

The only game I've seen that has actually had this is Planescape: Torment. The dialogue options actually did work like this, for example: Lie: Or I'll break your neck. Truth: Or I'll break your neck.

[Jonathan S. Fox]

I have not played The Witcher, or even heard of it much. That might sound odd, but I was taking over twenty credits and not paying very much attention to the commercial game market at the time of its release.

A friend of mine recently brought up a good point in games like this. They like to assume that all actions are 'good' or 'bad', but fail to take into account the 'motive' of the player.

For example, there is a point in Fable 2 where you can give some corrupt politician something good (an artifact, something like that? I can't remember). Anyway, you can give him this thing for 10,000 gold or you can give it to the people of the town. My friend complained that when playing as an evil character he didn't have the option to give it to the town because the politician was an annoying jerk and he didn't care about the money, not because he cared about the townspeople.

Motive, I think, has a lot to do with whether or not you are good or evil. Your actions may have good or bad consequences, but why you make those decisions is as important as what decisions you make.

The only game I've seen that has actually had this is Planescape: Torment. The dialogue options actually did work like this, for example: Lie: Or I'll break your neck. Truth: Or I'll break your neck.

I know I've played one or two games with this kind of [lie] and [truth] options for the same dialog choice, but I haven't played Planescape: Torment and I can't think of the names of the games I have played with this feature.

[Fishersalwaysdie]

A Good-Evil scale is stupid, since you can't determine the motive of the player, and there are multiple consequences out of which some are good, and some are bad.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

If you murder a villain you are a bloodthirsty maniac, but he won't hurt anyone. If you don't you are altruistic and merciful, yet he is free to roam. 

If the player is a member of a faction in conflict with other factions, and none of the factions are neither good nor evil, the game might have sense (since good and evil are just in your brain).

[Muz]

Hmm.. I think a good prototype ethical game would be something that has lots of ethical decisions but doesn't actually rate your good/evil for it. That way you could sort of like take notes on what everyone does, and try to decide what actions are good or evil, or just gray.

The idea suggested in the OP would sort of work as a prototype too, perhaps.