On the Moral Consequences of Gaming

N'Gai Croal and the LevelUp blog are collaborating with the popular UK games magazine Edge, and late last month we discussed the emotional impact of games. Or, more realistically, the lack thereof. This week N'Gai has been exploring what could be done to reinforce that emotional impact, and perhaps take those choices to a moral level. "What if developers attempted to bring social sanction into the experience? What if your Gamertag were designated 'Child Killer' for having murdered [Bioshock's] Little Sisters--or 'Good Samaritan' for having saved them? Microsoft recently announced its plans to add the Facebook and MySpace-inspired feature of allowing you to browse your friends' Friends Lists; what if everyone on your Friends List were notified each time you killed a Little Sister--or every time you rescued one--like the Status Updates on Facebook?"

Re:Sounds like an extension of 'Achievements'

[hansamurai]

Speaking of Valve, they just released a ton of player stats on Episode 2, pointing out how long people played, where they died, etc. This was all in very broad terms, but imagine if they did something similar to moral decisions. Say in Episode 3 you have the choice to save Alyx but something else really bad happens to a lot more people, or you save the world but Alyx has to die. Now Valve would keep track of whether or not you saved Alyx the first time through, and then release the stats to everyone. I think this would be very interesting to look at.

Games desensitize.

[SharpFang]

Defcon being a prime example.

The first time I played it, a pirated version shortly after the release, I was genuinely touched. When my first nukes fell on Warsaw and Wienna, I was quite shaken. My friends live there. The music, the crying woman in the background, this all added to the game experience immensely. My conscience at work was quite strong. "Yeah, that's just a game", I'd rationalize, but I still felt for the virtual humanity.

Yesterday I got the original Defcon and played it for the first time in a long time again. I launched a mass attack. Tokyo, Cairo, New York, Mexico, London. And when they broke through the defences, I'd go like "Wow! Yeah!", I enjoyed the huge score and didn't feel the least bit sorry. I knew the counter-strike would wipe my country entirely, but cool calculation was "I have 100 mln people at -1 per million, I can lose at most 100 points. There's +2 for each million of enemy people I kill, so if I get to strike the biggest cities first, I'll reap enough points no loss at a later time will outweight. Screw all the defense, attack all big cities ASAP, hard." I won with over 300 points with the next best player getting just above 100 points. Considering the losses this translates to gameplay murder of about 400 millions people in the game. Yeah, the game was fun.

Re:Why allow the action if it will have consequenc

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I agree with you and all that crap. No one should force a set of morals on someone and then enforce those morals by socially "branding" you because of a fictitious action.
But I think your objection brings up a good point - namely that Life does not come with an instruction book. We get the basic "thou shalt not" crap but in reality we are able to do anything. If we aren't caught then no one makes us restart or punishes us in any way. That goes for the big stuff like killing or rape or invading middle-eastern countries without a reason, and it goes for the little things like stiffing a waitress on a tip or surfing at work instead of actually working. The consequences of our actions are part of our moral code, but we choose what we want to do despite that code.
It would be interesting in a theoretical way to see how the moral 'branding' would change game play.