Ethics 101: Designing Morality in Games

This article discusses morality systems in games and includes an interview with Bethseda’s Emil Paglairulo and 2K Marin’s Jordon Thomas, discussing ethical building gameplay. The interview attempts to examine how to design moral choices which are both intellectually stimulating as well as fun to play. Referencing in creating The Eldar Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Fallout 3 and Bioshock 2. Morality systems have grown more common as games have become more complex. The majority of morality systems in games are still ‘black and white’ though, while some others try to offer more variety in choices, making the player experiment with different ethical stances. Interesting points made are that a morality system comes down to two requirements: engaging world for the player and creating choices with moral weight, while obvious a lot of games don’t offer both, but rather create choices which have no impact on narrative/gameplay. Players have to connect with the characters, Bethseda’s Pagliarulo “ I think Heavy Rain has proven this better than any game in recent memory. In order for a developer to provide moral choices that matter, the player has to be convinced that those choices are going to have some kind of effect on the characters in the game, and more believable those characters, the stronger the emotional impact.” Adding morality can stop player’s cruising through the same types of games they’ve gotten used to. Pagliarulo states that “Shooting the bad guy’ becomes ‘shooting the guy who may or may not be bad,’ and that in itself adds a unique twist to the gameplay”

Link: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/5324/ethics_101_designing_morality_in_.php