Morality in video games, how can we improve it?

[Jepix]

First thing: Thrash the morality meter. It's bollocks that I would magically turn evil becuase I did something evil, shouldn't I be that eil already to perform that act?
KOtor made it work by making the character remember himself, and I think among the best ways is either in Fallout, where it is not you aalignment the game keeps track of, it's what people think of you.
It's perfect sense that people see you as an vilain if you kill a kitten, but you are just as evil/good as before.
Also, with that in mind, I would like to see a system were trust is a factor. If 10 people trust their lifes to you and you screw them over, you should be considered evil.

Examples of working gameplay:

"John the paladin is a good man that saves the day all the time, but when the king wants to greet the hero of kw... the burnt down city, John kills the bugger. The people goes bananas and John is despised and considered a traitor. John wanted to kill the king all along"

"Sneaky-Pete is a masterthief, he has stolen a fortune and backstabbed a dozen, but has never been caught. He occasionally lends money to baggers and is considered a good man"

 

[ldwater]

Personally I dont think we have the technology to be able to provide an authentic experiance of morality in games.

1) Games need an 'exact' action that is categoried 'good' or 'evil.

If you have shades of grey is makes it alot more difficult to program those sort of actions and therefore most developers take the easy option.

Also games can't read your mind and know that your doing something for the greater good (or evil) and needs to reflect based on your current actions.

2) Players want instant gratification

If you had a game where you were evil for a whole bunch of missions you would want to see that evil played out? But what happens if you were being evil (or good) in order to do something greater good (or evil)?

For example, in Fallout 3 you nuke the village. Now its seen as evil because you've killed alot of people; but what if YOU see it as good because its saving them from a lifetime of pain and misery in the wastes..

If you had the game give the reward too late it makes the game appear slow. Too early and too easy the game seems shallow.

3) Games need to have a much larger scope to cope.

If in a game you were a well known murderer (in say Oblivion); you can't go within 10 feet of anyone without being chased away by guards (or killing them )

But by doing that you've also deprived yourself of all that game content that towns / cities provide; access to shops, equipment, quests and everything else which is no longer available to you because of your 'choice'.

Now alot of people would say "Tough - you made that decision", but alot of other whiny players will say "Its ruined the game, I can't buy / sell anything anymore etc etc".

This means that the devs will then have to write content to cope with ALL of your choices (ie, assassins guilds, thieves guilds etc) that are happy with your life choices - but even then the amount of content is greatly slimmed down and would be seen as a game restriction.

4) The game shouldn't allow for a 'bad' decision

Basically any sort of consequence within the game because of a player choice will need to be balanced before its accused of being biased to one play style or another.

Its similar to this 'compainion' system in TOR; they say you can annoy your other half so much that they leave. Great if you want to play a lone wolf, but at the same time you have HALVED your combat output because of this, which players will complain about as being imbalance towards their choice.

If the game got too hard, or too easy because of a decision made then people would complain.

What this really means is that NONE of the choices are espeically good or bad; they cancel out any benifit because of the required balance.

5) Games are NOT real life

At a very basic level people play games to escape real life, if anything to disconnect from the human race for a while.

When they are given the chance to slaugher the orphange or save them the only real consequence is the way the game reflects your choice. It can't be 'bad' or make the game harder as ive stated above, and also players wont feel any emotional changes (like guilt) because they know deep down its a game, its all fiction and the people in the game suffer no pain or guilt themselves - because they dont exist.

6) No real world consequence

MMO's people are happy to Ninja loot, grief, gank and all sorts of actions towards their 'fellow man' because of the 'invisiable wall' between them and their subject.

Its this wall that prevents them from feeling any sort of guilt because the player is invisible - and the person (victim) at the other end of the screen can't come around their house, knock on their door and punch their teeth in.

The same thing happens with driving; you will see alot of people being very aggressive on the road, swearing the pushing into traffic etc - simply because they know the chances of them meeting the person they have pushed into is stupidly small. Where as if they bumped into someone in the supermarket they would probably apologise, because they are personally exposed to any sort of repercussions (ie, being punched!)


So in short morality in games is nothing short than just another gameplay gimmic saying "You can either be the good guy or the bad guy" because REAL morality would require actual human interaction, and consequence that would extend further than most games are willing to go because it would destory the popularity of the game, and the real reason the game is made: TO MAKE MONEY!!

 

[Drakulla]

Boishock did a better job of giving you a moral dilemma to deal with in harvesting the Little Sisters or not. Infamous wasn't even close in the whole good or bad situation. Both actions resulted in the same outcome. KOTOR also did that very well.

 

[ldwater]

First thing: Thrash the morality meter. It's bollocks that I would magically turn evil becuase I did something evil, shouldn't I be that eil already to perform that act?
KOtor made it work by making the character remember himself, and I think among the best ways is either in Fallout, where it is not you aalignment the game keeps track of, it's what people think of you.
It's perfect sense that people see you as an vilain if you kill a kitten, but you are just as evil/good as before.
Also, with that in mind, I would like to see a system were trust is a factor. If 10 people trust their lifes to you and you screw them over, you should be considered evil.

Examples of working gameplay:

"John the paladin is a good man that saves the day all the time, but when the king wants to greet the hero of kw... the burnt down city, John kills the bugger. The people goes bananas and John is despised and considered a traitor. John wanted to kill the king all along"

"Sneaky-Pete is a masterthief, he has stolen a fortune and backstabbed a dozen, but has never been caught. He occasionally lends money to baggers and is considered a good man"

I think the problem is knowing the AMOUNT of evil (good)?

If I had a group of friends and killed them all that would be considered really evil..

But if I had a group of friends and stole a small amount of money off them because I was short for food is that still considered bad but a smaller amount? And if it IS a smaller amount how would the game KNOW that you we're short and NEEDED the money? You could have loads of money and only steal a small amount? Even if you didn't have any money could could have befriended all the people JUST so you can steal money off them..

As for your 'John the Paladin' example, the game would have a real hard time 'knowing' that your intention the whole time was to 'kill the king', unless it was some sort of quest where the whole point of the mission was to kill the king.

You could just assassinate him in public, or even in private without any witnesses. So even if your actions are evil and have been all along, of no one sees an 'evil deed' then surely people SHOULD consider you good?

Then we have a whole new game mechanism on 'perception' where you could 'BE' evil, but 'perceived' as good.

As people its easy for us to 'define' the morality of situations - but even that is down to personal experiance and personal opinion. This means that if its tough for US to decide, its going to be almost impossible for a computer (that requires exact logic) to determine how 'good' or 'evil' something is.

 

[hermes]

- Don't make the options obvious, like inFamous were the game pauses and an inner voice tells you what to do to be bad or evil.
- Don't make it binary. In games you are either good or evil, when in reality you have a lot of grey.
- Don't make it volatile. Keep track of your actions permanently and make those actions matter all the time. Games were you kill someone and they hate you, next you save a kitten and everybody loves you again feels broken.
- Don't make it matter just at specific points, like Jedi Academy or Force Unleashed, where you could use force lightning and force grip, killing both siths and jedis on sight the entire game and if you choose the right path in the only point that matters, you would still get the good ending.

 

[Frenger]

What you think is right or wrong is entierly up to you, however, others may have objections to what you have done or is about to do. Some seem to forget that, even though just scripted/programmed responses, "they" decide what you have done is right or wrong. Never forget that.

And yeah, the morality choices that vary between donating all your gold to charity or eat babies, it gets kinda silly if you ask me. Might as well skip it altogether.

 

[dietpeachsnapple]

Tiered impetus systems.

Conspicuous action - saving the child

Subtext action - endearing oneself to the public

Agenda/Intent action - acquire influence to propel one's own desires (hegemonic domination? truth and justice? benevolent dictatorship? Chaotic Evil let's blow up the entire planet?)

 

[KiKiweaky]

By making games that are more like Deus Ex.

Exact same thing came to my mind haha

 

[Shoqiyqa]

How come so many religions agree on so much and disagree on so much? Well, how about throwing that in a gamer's face? You can be a good Anima-worshipping vegetarian pacifist, a good honourable warrior true to your word, a holy warrior smiting evil, a devious son of a gun or a devastatingly effective single-minded mission-finisher. Choose one.

Not all games touch on religion, though, so pulling that into it can be irrelavent.

If we're leaving religion out of it, who's defining morality? Me? You? Jim-Bob Johnson? The public? Whoever it is,

How come so many people agree on so much and disagree on so much? Well, how about throwing that in a gamer's face? You can be a good vegetarian pacifist, a good honourable warrior true to your word, a warrior guided by a book smiting people who act in ways contrary to the rules in the book, a devious son of a gun or a devastatingly effective single-minded mission-finisher. Choose one.

The basic premise is the same: multi-dimensional "morality" rather than the linear "good / bad".

 

[Mad Maniac with axe-firing chainsaw]

Maybe go with some kind of reputation system?

If you help someone, they may have cause to love you to bits, but that doesn't mean everyone else on the planet is going to suddenly worship the ground you walk on. Saving traders would make you more liked by traders. Stealing from houses may make you unpopular among upstanding citizens, but may make you an admirable figure among criminal elements. Working hard at a smith may improve your reputation (and pay) and saving children will endear you to everyone, but especially to their family, and to any schools they may attend. (Handy if you're raising a kid yourself and need reduced fee's for their schooling.)

A system like this requires a very highly developed game world where you can interact with the environment with almost total realism... but there's no reason not to include it in the general evolution of RPG titles with a mind towards realism and total interaction with the environment.

 

[Harrow]

I like the multi tiered systems.
Public veiw: How the public reacts to your actions. Are you attacked in the streets, or do random people shower you with gifts for saving their lives half a dozen times?

Personal Veiw: Some way to justiify things to yourself. This would proably be more dialogue based than action, and I believe should be rather obvious. I just saved a burning orphanage: because the orphans look so cute OR : because they would look so less cute mounted on my wall after they had been set on fire. The first option, all good, the second, good front, secretly evil.

I also like having more than just the two options. say having

Completely evil: HitlerXNopoleon+Satan

Moderatly Evil: You go out of your way to hurt people

Midly evil: You bend the rules now and again, simply because you can

Active Neutral: You go out and hurt somebody, then give money to a beggar

Inactive Neutral: You do your best to do nothing either way

Repaying Neutral: You steal from a beggar, then give it back to him, or give to him then kill him. Always undoing your actions, sometimes in secret to keep a certain front.

Mildy Good: You go out of your way to not hurt people

Moderatly good: help people on a regular basis

Completely good: You find a cure for cancer that comes from adopting orphans.

 

[shwnbob]

Make it a little more spread out you know. Not just a completly evil path or a completly good path. Maybe make an ending where your evil but you still don't kill everyone or something like that you know what I'm trying to get at?

 

[Katana314]

Braid, in my opinion, did the Good/Evil thing perfectly. I won't give spoilers, but it doesn't ever really give you a "choice". Instead, you do something because it's really the only logical thing to do, and your mind just tells you to do it. Afterwards, the game points at your actions and says "LOOK AT WHAT YOU DID" while putting it in a completely different viewpoint. The result is pretty spectacular.

Games are underappreciated as a way of focusing on the audience for morality. Films make statements about groups of people all the time, but the audience never takes that lesson upon themselves. Games are the only medium that includes the audience, and I think that's underrated.

 

[squid5580]

I don't think it can be done with today's current technology. The only way it would work is for it to mimic real life. If I went from one city to the next odds are they won't know I was some vicious serial killer especially if I didn't get caught. Yet somehow the guards from city 2 know exactly who I am and what I have done. The only way we will ever see a good working morality system is when they design a Skynet type AI. But then we will be fighting our robot overlords and won't have any time for games.

 

[fulcran]

Make it so NPC's only judge you by things you get caught for. One of the things about Oblivion that used to drive me up the wall was that when someone annoyed me on my 'evil' character, I would take the time to bait them into a back alley or something similar where no one could see, slaughter them nice and quietly, and yet somehow my infamy would still spike. At the same time, I think that having a public rep as a 'bad' character should give you more access to shadier character, i.e. Jericho from Fallout 3, who you can hire on as a minion type person if you are 'bad' enough. But once again, NPC's should only ever know about things that someone else witnesses. Like killing a half dozen guards in the middle of the street, in broad daylight, with half the town watching.

 

[squid5580]

Make it so NPC's only judge you by things you get caught for. One of the things about Oblivion that used to drive me up the wall was that when someone annoyed me on my 'evil' character, I would take the time to bait them into a back alley or something similar where no one could see, slaughter them nice and quietly, and yet somehow my infamy would still spike. At the same time, I think that having a public rep as a 'bad' character should give you more access to shadier character, i.e. Jericho from Fallout 3, who you can hire on as a minion type person if you are 'bad' enough. But once again, NPC's should only ever know about things that someone else witnesses. Like killing a half dozen guards in the middle of the street, in broad daylight, with half the town watching.

Or how about breaking into someone's house, killing the owner completely unnoticed, hanging out there for a bit. Then you try and steal a candlestick but because you weren't in sneak mode the guards are bustin down the door.