Morality in games

[Raven28256]

Morality in gaming begs the question of whether one would commit evil deeds if there were some kind of long-lasting consequence that wasn't dodged by turning off your system.

Some games with moral choices have tried this.

In The Witcher, your choices will usually have a consequence at some point...But they often don't appear until much later, so the only way to dodge it is if you keep hundreds of saved games.

Case in point: One choice I made in Chapter 1 had a consequence towards the middle of Chapter 2...A good twelve or thirteen hours later.

However, this is balanced out by the fact that The Witcher really doesn't HAVE any "good" or "evil" choices. It is usually more a choice between "gray" and "gray again."

 

[Good morning blues]

As a guy who develops amateur video games as a hobby, I realize that it would be extremely difficult to implement, but I think that a game where your evil deeds came back to bite you in the ass if you weren't good enough at covering them up would be awesome. Say you murder someone in a hotel room near the beginning. There would be a bunch of different ways to do it and to clean the area up, but you'd have to leave eventually. Inevitably, the body is found. Based on what evidence you've left behind, the cops start to track you. You, having moved on in the game, start seeing solicitations for witnesses, news reports about the killing, or, if you weren't very careful, descriptions of yourself with requests to call the police if you're seen.

Not really morality stuff, but it does fit in with the consequences thing.

 

[adrenalinq]

Ultimate morale in video games:

War sucks because you got one 1 life and shots and bombs are so random.

 

[skoomaeater]

there is no such thing as morals

says the guy with the darth sidious avatar - how appropriate har har har