Practically, all video games have an aspect of moral choice, in that the goal of every game is to “win” and players are left with the means to achieve that goal. The matter in which the ultimate goal conflicts with the players make up the foundation to meaningful moral choices. Delivering a powerful moral experience means developers need to understand how players want to experience the game and present experiences in a way that challenges the player to think. More importantly there needs to be an understanding regarding what ‘moral choice’ is. For me a moral choice, at least when it comes to videogames, is made of three parts:

There is no right or wrong answer and each choice has its pros and cons.

There is sacrifice and the decision cannot be undone.

There is a gameplay difference between good and evil.

The problem with morality systems in games is that morality itself is entirely subjective. There is no such thing as something that is inherently right or wrong, and there’s no such thing as a situation that has only two options, one of which is “good” while the other is “evil.” Reality is shrouded in shades of gray.

The reason I wanted to touch on this subject is because new Ubisoft IP ‘Watch Dogs’ has been touted as an experience that will fundamentally explore the ‘gray areas of morality’.

I was really hoping that this was going to be a central theme to the game when I watched the first trailer. I’m glad to see that’s the case. I often enjoy having my beliefs questioned in a gray environment. Forcing me to deal with morally ambiguous situations, and struggling to look inside myself to decide just what the “right” thing to do actually is. Sure it’s just entertainment, and not something to whitewash as just how I deal with day to day life and the choices therein. But, it does leave a mark, a faint mark, but one all the same.

While I do like the idea for murky situations and situations where my beliefs are called into question, I also enjoy games with clear cut black and white morality. Not everything needs to be deep and thought provoking, fun for the sake of fun is often just as important to mental growth as anything thought provoking.

Morality is objective, there’s just a lot of disagreement about what is proper moral action. Reasonable disagreement, not extreme crazy people running around hurting people. You’re talking about the results of actions, so you likely believe that action is good if the results show an improvement. Someone else could say that the results of an action don’t matter, the act itself is virtuous or not. Others would say it’s not the act or the consequences, it’s about obedience to an established rule for right and wrong.

Games are good at rules, so morality systems in games often feel contrived to people who lean more towards consequences or the virtue of the act. The game often doesn’t even allow consequences to occur, you don’t get to see the long term results of your actions because the story is happening now. And even if you could, games want to assign feedback about moral decisions immediately. It can’t wait for the situation to play out and then give you +5 ‘light side’ points when nobody dies and you’re hours away from your choice and no longer feel connected to it, it has to respond at the moment of the choice. Systems focusing more on intent are even worse, because the game can’t know why you’re choosing what you do, they just see the choice. A just action, like being responsible for one’s obligations and seeing the larger picture, is easily conflated with being selfish and narrow-minded.

Truly great games shouldn’t appeal to the lowest common denominator; the ‘every-man’. The greatest books, films and television very rarely take binary, objective stance on morality. Because, of course, such stances are silly and prevent that piece of art from asking any serious questions.

I’m just amazed that non-binary “ethical choice” took this long to become a thing. Since the very concept of a good/bad dividing line is an inherently uninformed, artificial and unimaginative way to interpret/play any system, much less the real world.

-Dagobot

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