This week's Rev Rant is about the implementation of morality systems in games like Fable or BioShock or InFamous (though I recorded this before playing the latter, getting 2/3 of the way through it has done nothing to change the basic points I make in the rest of the video).
This is probably the ugliest of the Rev Rants thus far -- for some reason, Final Cut Pro thought it'd be adorable to make everything look jaggy, randomly make parts of my shirt disappear, and do this weird thing where my voice keeps going while my mouth stops moving until the next shot starts. Also, I'm smarmier than usual.
Either way, the basic ideas are there. Hit the jump to watch the rant, then feel free to comment below.
Background footage came from the following videos:
There is also the problem with good and evil being drawn as comic book style extremes in a lot of games with "morality" systems in them. The day that we get a game with complex moral choices with serious gameplay and story implications should be interesting.
Interesting points made there. I think one moral system that DOSNT work is the karma system in Fallout 3. Opening the wrong door or picking up an object that belongs to someone else is automatic bad karma. And you can turn your karma around really easily buy giving water to the bum outside megaton.
You make some good points. But in addition to that I would like to see more choices. Normally there is one good and one bad and one neutral. They could expand on that, say, in the way that Dungeons and Dragons does. They could have a Lawful Good choice, Chaotic Good, Neutral, all the way to Chaotic Evil. Each having it's own costs and benefits.
I liked the way The Witcher approached this, or at leas the concept it used - Presenting you with a seemingly innocent choice (at first) and later showing what effects your actions had.
Finding out through a cutscene that a decision made long ago, namely NOT murdering a bunch of elves who were stealing supplies to aid their wounded etc later got an innocent character killed, as the supplies also contained weapons (unknown to you).
The first time this happened, I was in genuine shock. But later on, you could spot the hidden choices a mile away and also predict the outcome.
But still, the initial suprise was what I liked about it.
Well I think infamous never claims to be a great moral choice game. Its pretty on or off with its morals and doesn't try to play it off like its some monumental thing.
I'm fine with it because the whole game treats its self like it is a video game, with the missions showing you how much experience and how much evil/good you did.
If it tried to hide the fact that its so binary then it would be a lot more annoying.
As it stands its a fun video game that doesn't lie to itself.
A good few moral choices are just opinions. In Fable and Mass Effect, there were points where it was all opinion. Apparantly, ruining a guy trying to help human rights by giving him a sedative is good, while giving him a drug to keep him alert is bad. I can see why and all, but I still say it should be the other way around.
Random, non-moral related point: I think you may like Dear Esther, Rev. HL2 mod, small and has a surprisingly large replay value due to some mechanics.
"Moral Choice" in games is one of the largest mistakes in game design, and it's a pity it's used so often now. Designers are so focused on making the protagonist in every game YOU, so they can advertise that YOU make choices with consequences, that affect the world. The disconnect between character and player is so discernible that any real choices you make are never hard choices, they're just methods of game progression, rather than measurable emotional choices.
Design instead needs to focus on creating endearing, real protagonists, that players can empathize with. When you do that, the designer can now make choices for the player, and then make the player play out that choice. Not only does that eliminate the development time of making every in-game action have multiple methods of completion, but ultimately provides a deeper, meaningful gameplay experience.
I remember playing through Jade Empire (such an awesome game) for the first time in which there is a moral system of sorts. It pretty much amounts to the same thing as Fable & KOTOR in that there is a "way of the open palm" (good) and "way of the closed fist"(evil). Although there is some pretty cool philosophy backing each way, it is sadly so dumbed down in the gameplay. Interestingly, the game made it really easy to change your alignment with each way. Which brings up two points about morality in games.
1) There needs to be a middle ground of some sort. Morality isn't black and white. There needs to be a level of complexity.
2) How easy should it be to change your "side"? If your evil, does one good deed make you good? Vice-versa for good.
Someone explain why, when i play little king story, a person dies, i am notified, but no real consequence exists. Even though i am responsible for that persons death. It's like, they want me to care, but i can't, because they are nothing more then canon fodder.
I think it is fine to be given simple choices, and simple consiquenses, like we have it now, however, i do want something bad to happen if i am at fault for 40 peoples deaths. But that is just me.
Before meaningful moral choices, I would appreciate a real (normal) choice to start off. As it stands almost all of those 'choices' are actually problems (i.e. they have an optimal solution).
At the moment I consider a moral system something that makes me run the game multiple times to see everything.
I wonder what's next. Religion maybe? At least that would be an enhancement to morality as it stands in games by granting benefits for choosing a side on the moral compass and giving tribute to a certain deity.
It would also fit in the 'total character customization' idea we see a lot.
I want a choice where there is no apparent difference in benefit and cost between the two. Something that would greatly change a part of the game that I could not begin to speculate on. Too bad that only works once though...
The problem with current games is that they don't have a complex morality system. I remember decades ago in Ultima 4 I was faced with the dilemma of balancing multiple virtues of good. For example, I faced a group of snakes in the game and the virtue of Justice dictated that I not kill creatures that were not inherently evil (the the game animals were considered neutral. On the opposite side the virtue of Valor dictated that I never run away from a battle. To solve the problem I had to wound the snakes until they ran away from me. Ultima 4 was difficult but fun because of the complexity of the morality system, 8 virtues and all of your actions effect your progress in those virtues. Why have games simplified morality to all these actions are "good" and all these actions are "bad" and not more complex actions such as this action is "compassionate but unjust" or this action is "honest but dishonorable" then you could be playing a character with a more complex morality (i.e. a charcter who is full of valor but lacks compassion).
I was under the impression that if you saved all of the Little Sisters in Bioshock you actually ended up better off than if you harvested them all. You'd have more ADAM, and you have access to plasmids that you wouldn't have otherwise. From a morality in games standpoint, that is totally bunk.
Great rant Rev. I found the whole concept of inFamous pretty awesome, included the moral choice, but since i don't have a PS3 i'm looking forward to Prototype. For what i understand, Prototype doesn't have the usual moral choices, you can help the army and the infected, but there isn't a definition of "good" and "evil". That's what i'm looking forward to.
As I see it, the problem with these games is that the moral choices are too explicit and gimmicky, and they have known consequences. No matter what the situation, realism and immersion isn't possible if the user knows exactly what his or her actions will result in.
It's even worse if these choices don't have consequences. I played fable 2 as an evil character because I couldn't stand the NPCs. Whenever anyone either said something rude to me or hit on me, I killed them on the spot. However, instead of running in fear at the sight of me, the NPCs then followed me around with hearts over their heads. Whether you are good or evil has nothing to do with how people treat you, other than the sound clips that play when you're around them.
A good implementation of moral choice for me would be Mei Ling in the Hitman series. She appears once in each game except Blood Money. In 1 and 3, she has information about the mission you're currently on. If you help her escape, she will give you the code to some safe. An easier solution, however, is shooting her in the face and taking the code off her body. This is a choice that is pertinent to the game, has real (albeit known) consequences, but most importantly, is implicit. There is no "Press X to save; Y to shoot in the face and laugh" message; the player must submit the heinous act as a valid shortcut.
In Hitman 2, she is chilling in this dudes castle and you can rescue her if you want.
Also, "karma", "paragon/renegade", etc. points are freaking annoying because player actions shouldn't be that shallow. (Unless there are Force powers around (go KotoR!))
@Burch: I believe it was an Indie Nation where you led people to a game called Execution. Although I wouldn't consider it a morality system in the sense that you've considered it for this rant, it was chilling nonetheless...
Another problem is that most games reward moral extremism. I don't mean that the individual choices are extreme (though they usually are) but rather that extreme dedication to one moral alignment is often the best strategy. If you ALWAYS do the good thing, then by the end of the game you'll have crazy healing abilities and some holy spells. If you ALWAYS do the bad thing, then you'll get awesome offensive lightning magic. But if you do a little of both, then at the end of the game you end up being able to heal yourself for 10% of your life and cast level-1 fire. It's the worst of both worlds.
My favorite thing in inFAMOUS is how the people respond to you when you play Good or Evil. As an Evil character, people boo you and yell at you, and hang up horrifying pictures of you that then get defaced. As a Good character, those same people will call their mothers to tell them they're hanging out "with a superhero," and also pick up rocks to throw at your enemies.
What is annoying is that (pseudo-spoiler) the TV fucker will always hate you, no matter how "good" you are.
I do find the moral choices to be a cut-above, however. I remember one time (pseudo-spoiler again) I had the choice to tell a guy his wife died or to knock him out and go past him. I decided to tell him but, given the nature of the game, I thought he was going to go ape-shit Reaper style. The main character also generally has justifications for his actions: Do I fuck myself over or save a few people? Do I feed my friends for what could be a long time between food, or do I give food to everyone?
I really love the game. I don't think its morality system is "rev"olutionary in the way that the video proposes, but its solid videogame stuff.
Spelunky is fantastic, but I didn't really get any sense of morality from it. Everything I did in that game felt like it was going to lead to either lots of profit, or a little profit, without affecting anyone. Even stealing from shopkeepers.
I disagree, at least in my case. I enjoy playing games like Fallout 3, Oblivion, KOTOR, and others on both sides of the moral compass. I find it stimulating to get into a role and experience the 'bad guy' content.
I do generally prefer the 'bad guy' content to be either shaded with moral ambiguity/pragmatism (some of the Fallout stuff) or connected to a long term goal (KOTOR's sith path). It is a waste of everybody's time if it is just a matter of kicking puppies and snuffing minor NPC's without any real depth to being the bad guy.
Also, Bioshock should have been harder as a good guy for sure.
I don't really want to delve too much into Philosophy(mainly, cuz I suck at it), but it seems too me that before we can make really deep moral choices between outright good and evil, we need to find a way to present the differences between good and lesser good(or evils, depending on the story).
For example, say your mission is to an alien mutant virus from taking over and escaping a space station. Instead of presenting the choice of doing your job or joining the aliens, maybe, present the choice of stopping the outbreak by locking down/evacuating the station and running a purge system or just blowing the whole thing up.
To an extent, this is what I liked about Mass Deff..er...Mass Effect. It wasn't really a choice between good or evil, but rather...how you conduct yourself. Do you show sympathy to those needing your help, or do you just do the task you were assigned and tell them to take care of it themselves.
I also felt that Bioshock was good in this way too the first time I played through it. It wasn't about saving or taking over Rapture. It was about trying to survive and escape, and the choice lied in if you tried to seek the aid of those there to help get out, or do you step on everyone else thinking only about yourself. Of course, the more the story went on, the less that feeling stayed(and the endings totally kill that feeling too).
Anyhow, I'm just rambling at this point, so I think I'll shut up now as long post is long.
The middle child of the Phoenix Wright DS trilogy has a really great "do the right thing and your partner dies" verses "do the wrong thing and an inconsequential person suffers, save your partner, preserve your record" moment at the end of it. the consequences are not played out in the narrative (it's the same path no matter which choice you make) but the call back to reflect on your decision does strike me as powerful case of a "Gotcha" morals check without a clear "good" or "evil" distinction.
Definitely agree with you here. The moral choices in games seems to be more or less bullshit. I'm holding my judgement on inFAMOUS until I've played through as an evil bastard on my second go-round, and I look forward to seeing the crowds throw shit at me, get sicker, and just see the game generally get more depressing rather than more upbeat as I go along, which, if done well could be a good example of a game which sorta gets the moral choices and their impact on the world done correctly... but it might just drop the ball and focus on being fun either way you play it.
I think we are definitely starting to see a move towards using moral choices in a good way however. FarCry 2, even though moral choices weren't really a factor in the game, did make you question how you did stuff just because there were so many innocents around and the situation does feel so real (bc shit like that is actually going on). And the KOTOR titles seemed to be great for their time, since the path you chose limited your powers and abilities, but, once again, it was more of an aesthetic rather than a deciding factor in the story/plot/world.
Seeing where we've come from to where we are, I just can't wait the next title that handles moral choices seriously, because it seems to only be improving with time and experience.
I'm also with Stahlbrand. I always thought that the "evil" choice was the more attractive option. Especcially when you get bonuses to your force lightning and choke powers.
Wow. That was brilliant man. I've been "working" on a game idea of my own (read: tossing some ideas around my head until I know enough about the Vietnam war and then write a c-blog about my concept) and I'm going to use this rant as a basis of the game. Good stuff man, seriously.
anyway when I played Oblivion I was a good character for the most part (helping people and shit), but I would also try to steal people's stuff allot too, so I guess I was more in the gray zone in that game
Very interesting squire. To extrapolate the question further, and maybe in a retarded direction, what do peoples choices, morally, say about them on a psychological level? Maybe they could progam in some basic psychology, er, 'bots' into games that when youve completed the game, details to you your psychological profile, or warns you if you are a little, erm, 'disturbed', and all the places inbetween, based on the sub-total of your various moral decisions throughout the game. Could be fun. Or maybe thats a dumb-ass idea. But for me, i would feel more that a little strange if i forced myself to play through a game only making the morally murky/'bad' choices. I`d find that hard to do. So what does that say about me? Game psychological profile would read: pussy. Maybe.
Maybe it shouldnt be ultimately a psychological profile, but an experiment in cataloguing the various psychological styles of gamers, or whatever. Which would be of interest to no one probably! I digress....
Moral choices in games all tend to default to binary "good" vs "evil" choices, and more often than not, the consequences of these choices tend to be strictly cosmetic in nature: NPCs and the environment react differently to you, your appearance changes, you see a different version of the game spectacle when you choose. Not only that, but there generally seems to be more "payoff" when you are as good as can be or as bad as can be.
I think these things are all utter bull for pretty obvious reasons, but the single biggest misstep modern games make when attempting to introduce morality is that, well, you can't make a moral choice in a video game. You just can't. Regardless of how convincing a game looks or feels, you the player are separated utterly from the gameworld by the frame of the TV, the volume of the audio, the methods of input - there's an undeniable distance between the player and the player character. When you make a "moral" choice, you're acting upon a supposed, faked moral compass instead of your actual moral compass, because the consequences involved do not apply to YOU - they're only feedback, another part of the spectacle that rewards the player for playing. You play a certain way and you get a different number or different pretty colour to look at, maybe a different challenge or two. The game is harder or it isn't. The point is that the player is likely making a decision based on gameplay factors and not actual moral choices. There's no real moral choice system in games, only a branching path system. Calling it 'moral' is bullcrap. When you can just play the game again and choose the other path, all actual morality falls to pieces.
The only way you can make these choices genuinely compelling is by making these choices relevant to the fundamental rules of gameplay, and even then, you can make a statement about morality without having to involve choice. I think bioshock would have been a genuine game if you got no ADAM whatsoever for saving a little sister, ever. Being totally good would have required you to completely forego plasmids, thus drastically changing the game experience. And if you did just one little sister in because you knew you'd need it to survive, you'd get the bad ending and have to actually live (or die) with being a CHILD KILLER. I think Infamous could have been made more interesting if the population of the city began to react negatively to you regardless of your actions.
Sometimes moral choices get me so stuck. Like in FO3: the pitt. I can't decide whether to help the slaves or the slavers, basically because I found the baby and mother, listened to her, and it properly muddied the morals. I saved just before talking to the head of the Pitt, switched it off, and haven't played it since. What should I do? And why do I think it matters?
really, only 1% played evil on fable?? I played it evil as shit one of my favorite things to do was to slay young women in their homes and steal their undergarments and parade about town with them on.... nothing is funnier than a giant horned bearded demon in lace panties running around town trying to gain fame
Good rant again. I really found the idea of making either the evil choice safe and the good choice more punishing (or the vice-versa) interesting, and wonder if it shows some of the game developers world view on right and wrong.
I think if developers continue to put moral choices in the game they need to complete remove any alignment bars and, as many have said, make the choices far more gray. That way, the player can decided for him or herself whether this is good or bad.
As for npc's reacting to the players escapades, I think one would almost have to give each NPC a sense of their own morality. You may not have thought what you did was evil, but the preacher from the church of megaton might not see it that way. Of course that's a daunting task, and the npc's morality could be just as a black & white. Almost moving the alignment bar from a menu screen to an in game representation.
This all being said, I think bluexy is really on to something by actually removing these moral choices and putting players into the role of a certain character, making them deal with the choices they make.
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Contest:
2:20 PM on 05.28.2009
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Great rant as usual.
Finding out through a cutscene that a decision made long ago, namely NOT murdering a bunch of elves who were stealing supplies to aid their wounded etc later got an innocent character killed, as the supplies also contained weapons (unknown to you).
The first time this happened, I was in genuine shock. But later on, you could spot the hidden choices a mile away and also predict the outcome.
But still, the initial suprise was what I liked about it.
video = borked?
I'm fine with it because the whole game treats its self like it is a video game, with the missions showing you how much experience and how much evil/good you did.
If it tried to hide the fact that its so binary then it would be a lot more annoying.
As it stands its a fun video game that doesn't lie to itself.
Random, non-moral related point: I think you may like Dear Esther, Rev. HL2 mod, small and has a surprisingly large replay value due to some mechanics.
Design instead needs to focus on creating endearing, real protagonists, that players can empathize with. When you do that, the designer can now make choices for the player, and then make the player play out that choice. Not only does that eliminate the development time of making every in-game action have multiple methods of completion, but ultimately provides a deeper, meaningful gameplay experience.
1) There needs to be a middle ground of some sort. Morality isn't black and white. There needs to be a level of complexity.
2) How easy should it be to change your "side"? If your evil, does one good deed make you good? Vice-versa for good.
I think it is fine to be given simple choices, and simple consiquenses, like we have it now, however, i do want something bad to happen if i am at fault for 40 peoples deaths. But that is just me.
Sound argument Anthony.
At the moment I consider a moral system something that makes me run the game multiple times to see everything.
I wonder what's next. Religion maybe? At least that would be an enhancement to morality as it stands in games by granting benefits for choosing a side on the moral compass and giving tribute to a certain deity.
It would also fit in the 'total character customization' idea we see a lot.
I want a choice where there is no apparent difference in benefit and cost between the two. Something that would greatly change a part of the game that I could not begin to speculate on. Too bad that only works once though...
PS: What happened to the beard?
It's even worse if these choices don't have consequences. I played fable 2 as an evil character because I couldn't stand the NPCs. Whenever anyone either said something rude to me or hit on me, I killed them on the spot. However, instead of running in fear at the sight of me, the NPCs then followed me around with hearts over their heads. Whether you are good or evil has nothing to do with how people treat you, other than the sound clips that play when you're around them.
A good implementation of moral choice for me would be Mei Ling in the Hitman series. She appears once in each game except Blood Money. In 1 and 3, she has information about the mission you're currently on. If you help her escape, she will give you the code to some safe. An easier solution, however, is shooting her in the face and taking the code off her body. This is a choice that is pertinent to the game, has real (albeit known) consequences, but most importantly, is implicit. There is no "Press X to save; Y to shoot in the face and laugh" message; the player must submit the heinous act as a valid shortcut.
In Hitman 2, she is chilling in this dudes castle and you can rescue her if you want.
Also, "karma", "paragon/renegade", etc. points are freaking annoying because player actions shouldn't be that shallow. (Unless there are Force powers around (go KotoR!))
Those are my thoughts.
What is annoying is that (pseudo-spoiler) the TV fucker will always hate you, no matter how "good" you are.
I do find the moral choices to be a cut-above, however. I remember one time (pseudo-spoiler again) I had the choice to tell a guy his wife died or to knock him out and go past him. I decided to tell him but, given the nature of the game, I thought he was going to go ape-shit Reaper style. The main character also generally has justifications for his actions: Do I fuck myself over or save a few people? Do I feed my friends for what could be a long time between food, or do I give food to everyone?
I really love the game. I don't think its morality system is "rev"olutionary in the way that the video proposes, but its solid videogame stuff.
I do generally prefer the 'bad guy' content to be either shaded with moral ambiguity/pragmatism (some of the Fallout stuff) or connected to a long term goal (KOTOR's sith path). It is a waste of everybody's time if it is just a matter of kicking puppies and snuffing minor NPC's without any real depth to being the bad guy.
Also, Bioshock should have been harder as a good guy for sure.
For example, say your mission is to an alien mutant virus from taking over and escaping a space station. Instead of presenting the choice of doing your job or joining the aliens, maybe, present the choice of stopping the outbreak by locking down/evacuating the station and running a purge system or just blowing the whole thing up.
To an extent, this is what I liked about Mass Deff..er...Mass Effect. It wasn't really a choice between good or evil, but rather...how you conduct yourself. Do you show sympathy to those needing your help, or do you just do the task you were assigned and tell them to take care of it themselves.
I also felt that Bioshock was good in this way too the first time I played through it. It wasn't about saving or taking over Rapture. It was about trying to survive and escape, and the choice lied in if you tried to seek the aid of those there to help get out, or do you step on everyone else thinking only about yourself. Of course, the more the story went on, the less that feeling stayed(and the endings totally kill that feeling too).
Anyhow, I'm just rambling at this point, so I think I'll shut up now as long post is long.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlOXAtPvMDk
The middle child of the Phoenix Wright DS trilogy has a really great "do the right thing and your partner dies" verses "do the wrong thing and an inconsequential person suffers, save your partner, preserve your record" moment at the end of it. the consequences are not played out in the narrative (it's the same path no matter which choice you make) but the call back to reflect on your decision does strike me as powerful case of a "Gotcha" morals check without a clear "good" or "evil" distinction.
I think we are definitely starting to see a move towards using moral choices in a good way however. FarCry 2, even though moral choices weren't really a factor in the game, did make you question how you did stuff just because there were so many innocents around and the situation does feel so real (bc shit like that is actually going on). And the KOTOR titles seemed to be great for their time, since the path you chose limited your powers and abilities, but, once again, it was more of an aesthetic rather than a deciding factor in the story/plot/world.
Seeing where we've come from to where we are, I just can't wait the next title that handles moral choices seriously, because it seems to only be improving with time and experience.
what's a matter? not INDIE enough for you? :P
anyway when I played Oblivion I was a good character for the most part (helping people and shit), but I would also try to steal people's stuff allot too, so I guess I was more in the gray zone in that game
i love these rev rants because you're incredibly handsome but your editing style is just so strange.
Maybe it shouldnt be ultimately a psychological profile, but an experiment in cataloguing the various psychological styles of gamers, or whatever. Which would be of interest to no one probably! I digress....
I think these things are all utter bull for pretty obvious reasons, but the single biggest misstep modern games make when attempting to introduce morality is that, well, you can't make a moral choice in a video game. You just can't. Regardless of how convincing a game looks or feels, you the player are separated utterly from the gameworld by the frame of the TV, the volume of the audio, the methods of input - there's an undeniable distance between the player and the player character. When you make a "moral" choice, you're acting upon a supposed, faked moral compass instead of your actual moral compass, because the consequences involved do not apply to YOU - they're only feedback, another part of the spectacle that rewards the player for playing. You play a certain way and you get a different number or different pretty colour to look at, maybe a different challenge or two. The game is harder or it isn't. The point is that the player is likely making a decision based on gameplay factors and not actual moral choices. There's no real moral choice system in games, only a branching path system. Calling it 'moral' is bullcrap. When you can just play the game again and choose the other path, all actual morality falls to pieces.
The only way you can make these choices genuinely compelling is by making these choices relevant to the fundamental rules of gameplay, and even then, you can make a statement about morality without having to involve choice. I think bioshock would have been a genuine game if you got no ADAM whatsoever for saving a little sister, ever. Being totally good would have required you to completely forego plasmids, thus drastically changing the game experience. And if you did just one little sister in because you knew you'd need it to survive, you'd get the bad ending and have to actually live (or die) with being a CHILD KILLER. I think Infamous could have been made more interesting if the population of the city began to react negatively to you regardless of your actions.
iunno, jus' sayin.
I think if developers continue to put moral choices in the game they need to complete remove any alignment bars and, as many have said, make the choices far more gray. That way, the player can decided for him or herself whether this is good or bad.
As for npc's reacting to the players escapades, I think one would almost have to give each NPC a sense of their own morality. You may not have thought what you did was evil, but the preacher from the church of megaton might not see it that way. Of course that's a daunting task, and the npc's morality could be just as a black & white. Almost moving the alignment bar from a menu screen to an in game representation.
This all being said, I think bluexy is really on to something by actually removing these moral choices and putting players into the role of a certain character, making them deal with the choices they make.
He probably means choosing to steal from the shops, and choosing to sacrifice shopkeepers and damsels on the Kali altars.