Moral Choices

I know, I know, I have a tendency to pretty much reblog every feature story from Gamasutra, but hey, they do have a talent to pick out the really interesting questions.

Like morality in games. In an interview with Jordan Thomas and Emil Pagliarulo who worked on BioShock, Oblivion and FallOut 3, they explore what happens when players are given moral choices, how they can be elevated from a simple good/evil scheme, and how players react.

While Thomas is probably correct that few players will say they want to be all good all the time, the feedback on moral choices in games might suggest otherwise. In short, although many games offer up the option to be diabolically evil, most players want to be good. "Interestingly, when we looked at the actual stats for Fallout 3 we learned that a really staggering majority of people chose to play the game as the good guy," says Pagliarulo. "So it's really interesting to me that even though we gave players the choice to be evil, to be the jerk -- most of them chose not to."

Interesting in this article are the comments. A comment by Andrew Vanden Bossche reads:

I want a game that presents me with fun and interesting options, not one that judges me. If evil isn't interesting to players, maybe it's time for a different duality.

Another one argues that sometimes games can evoke that murky moral playground without even offering choice and cites Shadow of the Colossus as one example.