Tag: moralsPage 1 of 3

Does Morality In Video Games Matter?

On 09/04/2015

There are games out there that claim to have the player make moral decisions – and that the decisions will change the game in dramatic ways. I’ve always been let down by these games because they promise so much and don’t fully deliver. It’s very rare to find a game that brings moral issues to the forefront of the player’s experience.

It’s too easy to put the moral aspects of play in a cutscene and that does very little. This may have something to do with how some game makers learn about morals and ethics in games.

Take a look at this tutorial on karma and moral decision making. The way that moral decisions are discussed is to frame them in the context of what moral decision system to use (relating to interface and not ideology) instead of what makes for a good moral question.

Too often the moral decisions are made for the players by the virtue of the design of the game. It’s not about what’s morally “correct” but what’s best to “win”. I’ve done horrible things in video games because they get me to win, but these horrible things are actions I’ll never consider outside of game play.

By crafting moral decisions into our game a priori the played experience we are not giving the player a decision.

As designers, if we focus on crafting good questions we can get good moral exploration in games. It’s of the utmost importance that we embody this in the gameplay and not just in a single character or a cutscene.

The moral quandary must transcend the game!

How do we create this feeling that transcends the game? We can do so by invoking aspects of the player’s life or by incorporating an open question around meta-ethics. By looking at meta-ethics we can start thinking about really good questions that will get players thinking in new ways. Philosophy Now has a good podcast episode on meta-ethics.

A recent Guardian article on guilt in video games touched on getting the player to feel moral issues. In fact, the article is a good summary with issues around morals in games today.

Which is why guilt is so fascinating as a game component – it can exist both inside and outside of the mechanics, and it can permeate the whole experience. In the sci-fi strategy game XCOM, players can name the characters themselves, and many of us choose to use the names of friends and relatives. Almost by accident, this brings to the game an almost unconscious guilt mechanic – you feel bad about endangering the character named after your boyfriend, or pet dog, or mum; maybe you even protect that character, placing them at the back of the pack.

If you find all of this too heavy, take a break and listen to this interview on morality and humour with Noël Carroll.

Violence In Video Games – Not Bad For People

by Adam Clare

On 26/03/2015

In Psychology

Time for some good news about violence in video games!

I bet you didn’t expect this, but here are three recent discoveries about the use of violence in games.

First, an international research team from the USA and Canada found that by playing a game together we can change attitudes of players towards others. They had people kill zombies with someone who the player thought was from the States (and in the USA they thought they were playing with a Canadian).

The research concluded that having people play with someone they thought was from another country increased player’s opinion of people from said country.

Participants were asked how they felt about a variety of different social groups both before and after playing the game. Those who were told they were playing with an American reported more positive feelings about people from that country after playing.
Paul Adachi, a PhD candidate at Brock and the study’s lead author, says video games are good tool to set up experiments and study real-world psychological phenomena.

That quote is from this article and you can read Brock University’s press release.

I’m not clear why the researchers picked a violent game though. I assume you would get similar results with any cooperative game regardless of violence.

The second neat thing about game violence is that despite the rise of violent games actual crime has decreased. Hopefully this recent study will put to bed the myth that violent games cause people to be more violent.

Focusing on video game violence, Ferguson used the Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB) to determine the violent content for the most popular video games between 1996 and 2011. Federal data on youth violence during the same time period was compared to ESRB-estimated violence content. Violent content in the most popular video games during these years was associated with a drop in youth violence. Ferguson stressed that this decline in youth violence was most likely by chance and not directly related to video game violence.

Finally, there is another new study suggests violent video games improve moral behaviour.

Led by Matthew Grizzard, an assistant professor at the University at Buffalo, and co-authored by researchers at Michigan State University and the University of Texas, this new study suggests that being bad in video games can lead players to think more about their real-life actions.
“Rather than leading players to become less moral, this research suggests that violent video-game play may actually lead to increased moral sensitivity,” says Grizzard. “This may, as it does in real life, provoke players to engage in voluntary behavior that benefits others.”

One reason I think it’s inportant to tackle issues around violence and video games is that educators and parents are worried about gaming in education as a result. So this research is good for all of us.

It’s all good news considering games are the future of education.