Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
In some respects, the morality of a game world is part of its culture and history,
which are part of the environmental dimension, but because the ethical dimension
poses special design problems, it needs a separate discussion. The ethics of most
game worlds deviate somewhat from those of the real world—sometimes they're
entirely reversed. Games allow, even require, you to do things that you can't do in
the real world. The range of actions that the game world permits is typically nar-
rower than in the real world (you can fly your F-15 fighter jet all you want, but you
can't get out of the plane), but often the permitted actions are quite extreme: kill-
ing people, stealing things, and so on.
MORAL DECISION-MAKING
On the whole, most games have simple ethics: clobber the bad guys, protect the
good guys. It's not subtle but it's perfectly functional; that's how you play checkers.
Not many games explore the ethical dimension in any depth. A few include explicit
moral choices, but unfortunately, these tend to be namby-pamby, consistently
rewarding good behavior and punishing bad behavior. Such preachy material turns
off even children, not to mention adults. But you can build a richer, more involv-
ing game by giving the player tough moral choices to make. Ethical ambiguity and
difficult decisions are at the heart of many great stories and, indeed, much of life.
Should you send a platoon of soldiers to certain death to save a battalion of others?
How would you feel if you were in the platoon?
In many role-playing games, you can choose to play as an evil character who steals
and kills indiscriminately, but other characters will refuse to cooperate with you
and might even attack you on sight. It's easier to get money by robbing others than
by working for it, but you may pay a price for that behavior in other ways. Rather
than impose a rule that says, “Immoral behavior is forbidden,” the game imple-
ments a rule that says, “You are free to make your own moral choices, but be
prepared to live with the consequences.” This is a more adult approach to the issue
than simply punishing bad behavior.
You must be sure to explain the ethical dimension of your game clearly in the man-
ual, in introductory material, or in mission briefings. For example, some games that
have hostage-rescue scenarios make the death of a hostage a loss condition: If a
hostage dies, the player loses. This means that the player has to be extra careful not
to kill any hostages, even at the risk of his own avatar's life. In other games, the
only loss condition is the avatar's death. In this case, many players shoot with com-
plete abandon, killing hostages and their captors indiscriminately. In real life, of
course, the truth is somewhere in between. Police officers who accidentally shoot a
hostage are seldom prosecuted unless they've been grossly negligent, but it doesn't
do their careers any good. You can emulate this by penalizing the player somehow.
To be fair to the player, however, you need to make this clear at the outset.
The ethical dimension of multiplayer games, whether online or local, is an enormous
and separate problem. Chapter 21, “Online Games,” discusses this issue at length.
