Games, Choices, Morality?
Reading the news at lunch today, I spotted what seemed to me like an interesting article in the Toronto Star, raising quite an amount of questions regarding moral choices in games:
Her husband notices you watching his tryst. He begs you not to tell his wife, and offers you cash to keep his secret. So, what do you do? More than that, what is the right thing to do in this situation? The “good” thing to do? Do you tell the wife, destroy the marriage, and leave just as broke as you were before? Or do you take the money in exchange for your silence? Is that right?
Yup, it’s a scene from Fable, and it’s a choice that indeed is to be taken in the game. What would a player do? What is the right choice? The wrong one? Sure, it’s “only a game”, yet it still calls at some sense of morality that everyone is supposed to have. People want less linear games, games in which we’d really be able to change the course of events through our own choices, and not by simply following the directions set by the developers; when they get it – or as close to it as technically possible – they’re faced with the fact that doing whatever they want necessarily implies that our choices can also be the wrong ones (not as in making them fail to solve game puzzles or quests – “wrong” as in “morally questionable”, sort of).Read More