January 6, 2008
Matthew Devereux has a thought-provoking piece in today's Christian Science Monitor.The former Edge magazine staffer ponders the morality - or what he sees as a lack thereof - in video games:
Most games operate within a moral framework: good versus evil (or vice versa). But what games conspicuously lack is moral consequence. Once you've killed someone, stolen something, or blown up a building, that's usually the end of it – you'll rarely get to see the emotional impact of your actions on the characters around you.
Every bit of mayhem becomes just another item on a video-game to-do list... Unbridled competition combined with no moral consequence eventually leads to a lack of compassion. And without compassion, humanity is lost.
What games risk instilling, not just in kids, but in anyone who plays them, is a kind of sociopathy: a dearth of conscience.
GP: While Devereux raises an interesting issue, he seems to overstate the case a bit. First, his point focuses primarily on violent games, a subset of the overall video game universe. Where's the moral ruthlessness in Mario Galaxy, Madden, Nintendogs and SimCity Societies?
Second, even in games which include violence, advances in artificial intelligence increasingly allow designers to explore just the kind of nuanced, cause-and-effect decision making Devereux claims is missing. Titles like Fable and Elder Scrolls Oblivion, for example, allow players to make moral choices - with consequences. Even that poster child for game violence, the Grand Theft Auto series, will bring the wrath of law enforcement down upon the player under certain circumstances.
Comments
But I do like to see games that display consequences of actions, it adds realism and depth to gamplay, WHEN APPROPRIATE.
Recently played the witcher and that has a good system for laying out how some decision effect the later game.
People are indavendauls and will go where they will and think like they will to say people shouldn't think or be them selfs that individualistic fiction is more troublesome than domination by immature religious "idols" is sad and pathetic.
By the grace of god we are all already saved and we shall never more than sinners unless we are saints, thus in the end we are all simply human waiting for death to take us to the light.
January 6th, 2008 at 2:43 pm
Obviously, Mr. Devereux has never played a BioWare RPG."
Exactly my thought when I read this. Play about an hour of Mass Effect and you'll definitely seen moral decisions with good or bad consequence depending on what you do. Same with either KOTOR.
From what I've experienced, most good RPGs employ this tactic somehow. Fallout is another good (albeit less contemporary) example of this.
Expecting a person ot have played one video game before condemning them as a whole? perish the though!!!
Oh, and Dennis, ya forgot Bioshock.
And as with GTA, also, if you do kill someone, people will run up and be like 'What's the world coming to!?!?" or "Oh my god he's dead!!!"
"Expecting a person ot have played one video game before condemning them as a whole? perish the though!!"
"The former Edge magazine staffer ponders the morality - or what he sees as a lack thereof - in video games"
If an article is too long to read after the third paragraph why bother to respond?
m not sure anyone here actually read the whole piece, which is in no way anti-videogames. The heart of his argument appears in the middle of the second page:
'Unbridled competition combined with no moral consequence eventually leads to a lack of compassion. And without compassion, humanity is lost.'
By the end it's pretty clear that he's not dissing violence in games as much as he is the greater issue of competitiveness and consequence- So, the RPG argument is really moot. Also, he places responsibility pretty squarely on parents on the first page.
Not sure I agree with his conclusion, but it's an interesting line of thought that I haven't really explored before.
He's complaining about the same sorts of issues you see in action movies - it's the "nameless" factor. When something happens or when someone dies it doesn't matter if they're not a named character. There may be more of an emotional connection because it's easier to relate to an actor playing a role then a (relatively) low fidelity virtual version of a human being, but the idea is the same. However created the fiction didn't concern themselves with people who do not matter to the plot.
This "moral compass" will assert itself as games become more realistic and deal with more complex issues. The challenge is going to find a way to work it into gameplay in a meaningful way.
Exactly what I was going to post when I read the article
Your mention of Oblivion and Fable as haveing "moral choices - with consequences" shows you have not played either.
Now for games that DO see Fallout, Fallout 2, Planescape Torment, Arcanum, and The Witcher.
Woops,didn't see that part.
The fact that there is no real cause and effect is BECAUSE IT IS NOT REAL!
http://www.destructoid.com/hideo-kojima-likes-assassin-s-creed-and-viole...
I mostly play Japanese RPGs and the way characters react to violence in those is often a core tenant of character development, particularly at the beginning of the game.
Um, no. There are no "innocent victims" in the game. Everybody in it are either trying to kill you, or they work for the Project and are trying to drug and capture you so they can use you as an assassin. (spoiler warning, don't read anymore if you plan to play the game and care about anything resembling a story) The closest thing to an "innocent victim" is Daniel's wife, but she's killed in a cut scene flashback which may have been implanted. Even then, Daniel is made to feel guilty about that. Especially during the hallucination near the end where you have to bury her to make amends.
Besides, the main premise of the whole game is conscience and the morality of state sponsored killing. Your primary accomplice throughout the game is Leon, but he turns out to be an alternate personality created by the Project brain implant. He's inside your head like a reverse conscience, driving you to kill, even though Daniel doesn't really want to. And, of course, the whole point of the Project was to create a living weapon a la the Manchurian Candidate or MKULTRA. The Clockwork Orange-esque brainwashing video/slide show for the Project seemed to equate such killing with patriotic "duty" as well.
Granted, the story and gameplay don't always sync well because it's like they tried to do too much with the original game's structure. But either way, it's a lot deeper than just killing "innocent victims" or killing for the sake of killing.
"Imagine if that were the moral of every movie and TV show you ever watched. Would the world be a better or worse place? Would you let your children play a game that promoted such a dog-eat-dog mentality?"
People do it EVERY DAY. Have you ever watched a junior league soccer game, Mr. Devereux? Parents screaming at their children and their teammates from the sidelines, coaches who think they're suburbia's answer to Vince Lombardi, kids who are taught that it's NOT how you play the game and that winning is EVERYTHING.
I'm sorry, but it is STILL the parent's responsibility to teach that actions have consequences. The thought that you can leave the complete responsibility of educating your child to anyone or anything else - be it the classroom or a book or a video game - is absurd. Education begins and ends at home.
I'd also be rather hesitant to hold up GTA as something of a paragon of moral virtue. It simply isn't. The police will come after you and attack you but there are cheats that make the wanted system utterly useless (this is the objection the German rating board has with it apparently - hence why the German cheat only lowers wanted levels by one star rather than all the way) and even if you are busted there's no real punishment for it. Just cheat yourself some new guns or buy some.
Further still using things like Biowares RPGs as points of moral complexity just doesn't really pan out when you throw around Gamerpoints. You give a reward to the player (no matter how superficial or inconsequential in the game itself it may be) for being evil and morally corrupt.
Then again what the hell is Moral anyway? That's up to everyone out there to decide on their own.
Actually, i think i might make a distinction between "consequences" and "moral consequences". Things like police officers going after you is a legal consequence of your actions but i wouldn't say its the moral consequences. A moral consequence of such actions, i would imagine, would probably be something more like seeing and feeling the pain you have caused to the victims or the loved ones of the victims... you feel bad for your actions because of the pain you caused not just because you receive some kind of actual physical punishment... Regretting your actions because you hurt others not because you got hurt as a result. i think that's what he might be referring to when he speaks of "moral consequences"
Though i do agree he is still off base in that this only refers to violent video games which make up only a small part of the market and not the larger majority of games.
They have their own agenda, and it is stated in their title. TRUE science has no agenda.
(end rant)
I have to agree with GP, the guy is oversimplifying the problem, and not looking at the ways in which many games allow us to explore moral questions (and especially morally moot situations).
I understand what you're saying, but you're saying it at a site called Gamepolitics. What do you expect to be covered here? If you want to hear about Iraq and Darfur, both admittedly of more immediate importance then video games, there are other places to go for that.
In short, welcome to the niche and don't complain about Gamepolitics.com covering stories that could relate to games and politics.
Great point - there is a massive difference between general consequences and specifically moral consequences - but I think that the issue is that players who show a lack of regard for "moral consequences" are rewarded through practical consequences. Using GTA as an example oftentimes you do something immoral and you get cool stuff.
I think the argument that a lack of consequence erodes morality is simply begging the question. I don't think we need consequence to maintain what many call 'morality'.
Whilst games do exist that explore the consequences of our actions like Mass Effect (for instance by talking to people mourning over someone who was killed by your team claiming the person was 'a good man'), i think moral choices are all the more powerful when they don't and let us think about our actions ourselves. recently when playing the first level of Call of Duty 4 where you shoot the crew members who are asleep in their cabin bunks I really had to stop and think 'did i really just do that', it really affected me!
As a rational being I don't need the constant threat of our omnipresent, vengeful overlord to maintain a feeling of empathy and morality. Of course to accept that idea erodes the standpoint that morality is something that comes from God and not from the evolution of human society.
Mario=when you jumpon/spin attack/shoot little stars at people
Madden=When you tackle that poor helpless dope with the ball
Nintendogs=when you forget to feed the dogs so they resort to cannibalism
SimCity=After creating a large city playing around with the disasters button.
Check and mate videogamers.
But seriously...Video games are hardly ever about senseless killing,Halo is about fighting off a freaking alien invasion and somehow it gets attacked on occasion. But it dosent matter and you know why? because people are idiots who believe what their told no questions asked, they take what they read as fact and dont even bother to look into it and their not likely to change.
But the article's failing point is that it seems to be written by someone who, like most people, is uneducated about video games. People who critique the industry need to do more research and/or this medium needs to become more mainstream so the people viewing game players from the outside don't keep making the same mistakes over and over.
The general point of the article about conscience and morality is one that to me goes without saying, but seems one of those things that needs to be stated over and over again regardless. So basically, read the full thing before you send the writer a hateful email about how there isn't a gamer alive who cares about Manhunt 2 that much anyway.
Oh wait. Your warning level goes up and the cops get more persistent.
Same goes if you drive too recklessly in NFS: Carbon (And although it's quite the rush hearing 'a black mazda' (my car in the game) being the suspect, there's no way in hell I'd attempt that sort of thing in real life... )
They guy isn't a complete tool after all...
and then the bit where "john smith" is killed by the tarmac roller machine thingy and his mates are called at the bar where they say "it was his bachelor party tonight!"
That is the very reason we don't want to think about stuff in fantasy seriously, when I was a kid I took those scenes really seriously! (which was funny as heck now that I think about it) and thought very deeply about the consequences of my actions in GTA III, that lead to a semi-emo - semi buddhist phase, which I soon recovered from, but seriously I think it is probably best if we think about bad guys in movies and games as just that, the only time it should have any real meaning is in GTA story situations such as Asuka's despair over Kenji's death in GTA III or Big Smoke's Epiphany before dying in SA
And then I read the rest of the article and find that although he realises that there is a difference between real and videogame violence he cannot extend this realisation to the difference between morals and consequences in video games and in real life.
I mean this guy realises that just because someone has played Manhunt 2 they aren't going to attack him with a shovel, but he can't understand that someone shooting pedestrians in GTA (lets face it, they're like rats but noisier) realises that to do this in real life would be, not to put to fine a point on it, a bad thing.
Sort of hypocritical really...
"Next week on GP, the mormons and jehovahs witnesses don't like games too."
The Christian Science Monitor is a quite well respected newspaper.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Science_Monitor
@Fesh,
Why is it that whenever some religion hater is banned or leaves we get a new one?
Yeah, we need developers who use more complex questions - questions of morality, society and philosophy - as fundamental gameplay elements. Otherwise it's all just window dressing.