loocas
May 11, 2008, 10:11 PM
I was reading an excellent book called Mortal Engines (http://www.amazon.com/Mortal-Engines-Hungry-City-Chronicles/dp/0060082097/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1210138396&sr=8-1) by Philip Reeve and it got me thinking about the role of the reader as moral agent, and then that of the player as moral agent in games. Civ 4 is an example of this working, and Fall from Heaven expands on those aspects. I started thinking about this, then it turned into a discussion with my wife. I hope this isn't too gratuitously long:
I’m not talking about videogames destroying children’s morality (bullplop), or about suspending one’s morality in first-person shooters—I mean games that put the player at a moral crossroads, where the only issues determining playstyle aren’t strategy or limitations in the way the game is written. The obvious first example is D&D, the paper version. The moral issue is what makes it a true role-playing game and what makes nearly all so-called RPG videogames not RPGs at all (I’m lookin’ at you, Squaresoft). There are videogames that work very well as RPGs, however, such as Morrowind.
This issue of moral agency comes when a storyteller asks the observer to take sides. Authors first have to entice the observer to care about either side of the conflict, and then have to present both sides sufficiently to avoid a good guy/bad guy scenario. In the case of Philip Reeve’s book, I found myself nearly scrambling to determine who is right in his post-apocalyptic Municipal Darwinian scenario. In real life, honest morals—wisdom—come from being able to imagine possible effects of decisions, or so I’m claiming right now. I’m talkin’ purely consequential ethics here, none of that “ought” stuff. In videogames the player first needs to be given a real choice, which is hard to do when everything is scripted and the world itself is limiting. This is where the issue of agency arises. In the same way that people claim that animals are not moral agents because, for example, the lion doesn’t choose to eat the antelope, most videogame players do not choose the path the videogame takes. In order for a game to grant the player moral agency the game must change, or at the very least give the illusion of changing, based on the player’s actions.
Morals as foreseeing effects doesn’t apply as much in games since the choices usually lead toward the same end, but the issue is how the player goes about reaching those ends. In Morrowind, you can steal or you can earn; you can kill or you can act diplomatically (or kill diplomatically if you want).
Videogames relate to the taking sides issue in a couple ways: You could say that because the player is more involved than the reader, the player has more at stake in whose side they choose in the conflict, and so they are less free to choose, limiting their moral agency; or perhaps because they affect the conflict they have greater moral agency.
Still, the game forces the player to choose, or else nothing will happen. The quintessential moment of the player’s morals coming into play is in Silent Hill 2 (FfH comes later—I promise this is only 85% off topic):
Quickly: Silent Hill is a lakeside resort town engulfed in an albedo/nigredo duality. It has manifested through a young girl’s hate after a demonic cult tried to birth their god through her and then burned her alive. The main character of SH2 is James, who has received a letter from his dead wife beckoning him to Silent Hill. The player, as James, searches for his wife while fighting monsters and being chased by a giant cheese grater (http://youtube.com/watch?v=vprETGvyShM).
At the end of the game it’s revealed to the player, as well as to James (because he forced himself to forget), that he killed his wife on her sickbed because her illness was ruining his own life. Suddenly the player, who has made it so far through the nightmare town, learns that the “hero” is a womanizing, selfish man who has been brought here for punishment. Then the player is prompted to fight the last boss—a demonic manifestation of James’s wife. What’s the player to do? Help James survive despite his crime? Seek poetic justice in the Game Over screen? Most players will probably play through just to get to the end and see what they’ve unlocked, but who couldn’t judge him? If they choose to let James die, they get a Game Over screen, but have they really failed? What does winning matter when moral superiority is at stake?
The Civ games do a good job of giving the player a moral consideration with each decision. It could be as simple as war vs. peace, but also how they treat the people. When I play the Civ games I often find myself factoring morals into my playstyle along with strategy. I’ll think, “Catherine’s got Resource X, I should take it. But, I’m Mansa Musa, I can trade for it…” Or, “Oh, Monty’s here. I should attack him just to get it over with…” Kind of flaky examples, I know. You wanna know how many vanilla games I’ve finished? One. Space race as Wang Kon. For players like me the end of the game matters very very little. “Moral superiority” is abstract, and “winning” is just a calculation, but the point is that in Civilization the choice exists.
Actually, the Moral issue is the point of the multiple victory possibilities. When a player decides “I am going to convince the rest of the world that peace is the way,” they can go for a Diplomacy victory and, if successful, receive a little number at the end telling them how well they did. The strategy-only version of this is the “Total Victory” modification (which was implemented into a FfH modmod at one point), which factors all the victory conditions into one total score at the end of the game.
I’m an RPer, so I’m looking for that aspect other than pure strategy, in hopes that every replay isn’t exactly the same. That’s where Fall from Heaven comes in, which brings good, evil, and Armageddon into the mix. Now I’m a neutral civilization and I want to go heavy on the research, but do I really want to build Stigmata of the Unborn if it means bumping up the AC that much? As Varn I hesitate to adopt Slavery even though I have tons of food but no production. In FfH the win-vs.-moral-superiority bit is amplified. My civ’s in the middle of the scoreboard, but dang it, I’m gonna protect these holy relics. The game is ultimately an every-civ-for-itself game, so as far as choosing sides in the conflict goes, exactly how far I’ll go on a moral scale will depend on which civ I’m playing. If I understand correctly, this was the major idea behind FfH as a Civ4 mod, and to that I’d like to say, “yay.”
I’m not talking about videogames destroying children’s morality (bullplop), or about suspending one’s morality in first-person shooters—I mean games that put the player at a moral crossroads, where the only issues determining playstyle aren’t strategy or limitations in the way the game is written. The obvious first example is D&D, the paper version. The moral issue is what makes it a true role-playing game and what makes nearly all so-called RPG videogames not RPGs at all (I’m lookin’ at you, Squaresoft). There are videogames that work very well as RPGs, however, such as Morrowind.
This issue of moral agency comes when a storyteller asks the observer to take sides. Authors first have to entice the observer to care about either side of the conflict, and then have to present both sides sufficiently to avoid a good guy/bad guy scenario. In the case of Philip Reeve’s book, I found myself nearly scrambling to determine who is right in his post-apocalyptic Municipal Darwinian scenario. In real life, honest morals—wisdom—come from being able to imagine possible effects of decisions, or so I’m claiming right now. I’m talkin’ purely consequential ethics here, none of that “ought” stuff. In videogames the player first needs to be given a real choice, which is hard to do when everything is scripted and the world itself is limiting. This is where the issue of agency arises. In the same way that people claim that animals are not moral agents because, for example, the lion doesn’t choose to eat the antelope, most videogame players do not choose the path the videogame takes. In order for a game to grant the player moral agency the game must change, or at the very least give the illusion of changing, based on the player’s actions.
Morals as foreseeing effects doesn’t apply as much in games since the choices usually lead toward the same end, but the issue is how the player goes about reaching those ends. In Morrowind, you can steal or you can earn; you can kill or you can act diplomatically (or kill diplomatically if you want).
Videogames relate to the taking sides issue in a couple ways: You could say that because the player is more involved than the reader, the player has more at stake in whose side they choose in the conflict, and so they are less free to choose, limiting their moral agency; or perhaps because they affect the conflict they have greater moral agency.
Still, the game forces the player to choose, or else nothing will happen. The quintessential moment of the player’s morals coming into play is in Silent Hill 2 (FfH comes later—I promise this is only 85% off topic):
Quickly: Silent Hill is a lakeside resort town engulfed in an albedo/nigredo duality. It has manifested through a young girl’s hate after a demonic cult tried to birth their god through her and then burned her alive. The main character of SH2 is James, who has received a letter from his dead wife beckoning him to Silent Hill. The player, as James, searches for his wife while fighting monsters and being chased by a giant cheese grater (http://youtube.com/watch?v=vprETGvyShM).
At the end of the game it’s revealed to the player, as well as to James (because he forced himself to forget), that he killed his wife on her sickbed because her illness was ruining his own life. Suddenly the player, who has made it so far through the nightmare town, learns that the “hero” is a womanizing, selfish man who has been brought here for punishment. Then the player is prompted to fight the last boss—a demonic manifestation of James’s wife. What’s the player to do? Help James survive despite his crime? Seek poetic justice in the Game Over screen? Most players will probably play through just to get to the end and see what they’ve unlocked, but who couldn’t judge him? If they choose to let James die, they get a Game Over screen, but have they really failed? What does winning matter when moral superiority is at stake?
The Civ games do a good job of giving the player a moral consideration with each decision. It could be as simple as war vs. peace, but also how they treat the people. When I play the Civ games I often find myself factoring morals into my playstyle along with strategy. I’ll think, “Catherine’s got Resource X, I should take it. But, I’m Mansa Musa, I can trade for it…” Or, “Oh, Monty’s here. I should attack him just to get it over with…” Kind of flaky examples, I know. You wanna know how many vanilla games I’ve finished? One. Space race as Wang Kon. For players like me the end of the game matters very very little. “Moral superiority” is abstract, and “winning” is just a calculation, but the point is that in Civilization the choice exists.
Actually, the Moral issue is the point of the multiple victory possibilities. When a player decides “I am going to convince the rest of the world that peace is the way,” they can go for a Diplomacy victory and, if successful, receive a little number at the end telling them how well they did. The strategy-only version of this is the “Total Victory” modification (which was implemented into a FfH modmod at one point), which factors all the victory conditions into one total score at the end of the game.
I’m an RPer, so I’m looking for that aspect other than pure strategy, in hopes that every replay isn’t exactly the same. That’s where Fall from Heaven comes in, which brings good, evil, and Armageddon into the mix. Now I’m a neutral civilization and I want to go heavy on the research, but do I really want to build Stigmata of the Unborn if it means bumping up the AC that much? As Varn I hesitate to adopt Slavery even though I have tons of food but no production. In FfH the win-vs.-moral-superiority bit is amplified. My civ’s in the middle of the scoreboard, but dang it, I’m gonna protect these holy relics. The game is ultimately an every-civ-for-itself game, so as far as choosing sides in the conflict goes, exactly how far I’ll go on a moral scale will depend on which civ I’m playing. If I understand correctly, this was the major idea behind FfH as a Civ4 mod, and to that I’d like to say, “yay.”