Good For Good Reasons
Good For Good Reasons
Playing from a Kantian perspective…
Continued…
Like many players, I approached the level knowing what was coming – it was hard not to with all the hype. Seconds into it, I tried killing one of the terrorists, the action I figured was the only choice given the situation. The game promptly told me that it was vital that I not break my cover, but given how I get shot at the end of the mission, the whole thing ended up feeling worthless and void. Nonetheless, after that, I decided to not kill any of the civilians – not that this in itself made much difference, given the terrorists’ proficiency at dispatching every single one.
But in not killing any of the civilians, was I performing a selfless act? As I held my fire, I pondered on that while hoping the terrorists around me wouldn’t suspect something fishy. Surely my looking convincing was an important part of this mission going through? It’s important to distinguish here between the immediate morality and the more longstanding morality of a decision, and Kant was more interested in the former.
Then it dawned on me: morality wasn’t the only factor in my holding fire. Like others I’ve spoken to, I wondered as I made my way through the bloodshed if I was going to unlock an Achievement for not killing any civilians. Sure, it might have been a tactless achievement, but it was still a possibility, and certainly offered an incentive outside moral value for my actions.
So that invalidates it as a truly selfless act, right? Well, it’s a bit of a grey area in many ways, not least because it’s contentious whether something that exists outside of the game world – an Achievement – is allowed to be considered as an influence on in-game actions. Even so, the ulterior motive presented by the satisfying chime of accumulated GamerScore does underline a feature of videogames that often fuels our desire to be morally good in them: rewards.
As an interactive medium, cause and effect has been at the crux of videogame design, both inherently (press A to fire) and deeper (fight baddies to save the princess). Early adventure games used this as a platform for scenarios that promotes morals, with choices and outcomes similar to those in choose-your-own-adventure books. The morally wrong path would impede progress, ranging from loss of inventory to your character’s untimely death. Some may argue that this educates players about morals and underlines their value, but Kant 
would argue that the motive of progress disqualifies the intentions from being pure. Again, we can’t really know each player’s motives, but from a design standpoint it’s interesting to consider how games sway our intentions. These early adventure games followed a Karmic philosophy rather than a Kantian one.
Playing by the meter
Many years on, Western RPGs in particular have accommodated for the player’s right to be good or evil. Recent games like Fallout 3 and Fable II offer far deeper moral systems than those of early adventures. Both feature morality meters, with every action and interaction potentially swinging the meter towards good or evil. There are still rewards for good actions, but there are also rewards for evil ones. So does this negate the motive of reward for morally good actions?
There are many arguments against this. For one, as Adam Bishop points out in his Gamasutra blog post on morality in videogames, each of these games equates violence with morally good actions, which would seem to undermine their presentation of a truly morally good route. Secondly, each game imposes strong good-or-evil choices upon you that sway you on your moral journey, most notably Fallout 3 with its famous choice between blowing up and saving the town of Megaton. One could argue that you could just walk away from these scenarios, as you can with Megaton, but walking away from the majority of them would be walking away from the majority of the game itself. And sometimes, as in the case of Fable II’s closing stages, walking away is not an option. These imposed choices force your moral hand.
Great article.
I think The Witcher had some great spots where you were presented with choices where nothing seemed like the right choice, and the consequences would show up much later in the game in unexpected ways. I appreciated that as a contrast to the “You can kill this kitten and gain evil points, which will let you shoot lightning, or you can put the kitten through college and gain healing spells” thing that more traditional design tends to equate to moral choice.
Of course, The Witcher had plenty of clumsy writing too, not to mention a huge amount of misogyny.
I wrote an article about Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory last month for GSW. Its title? “No Morality Meter”. I talk in general, non philosophical terms – it’s more NGJ than your piece.
[http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2010/04/column_unnatural_selection_on_2.php]
Kant would have been chuffed with me, probably, because after a certain stage I didn’t kill at all. “If the end is to save the world, threaten then knock-out those in your way” seems universalisable, even if some would argue it’s not general enough or a little too utilitarian. Kant would be interested in computers, I think; does an artificial intelligence have any personhood? In other words, would some kind of consequentialist morality make killing in virtual worlds permissible? Or rather, would the existence of a virtual world populated by semi-autonomous but programmed and relatively unintelligent agents open the door for consequentialism to Kant? That said, I’d argue that such rigid deontological ethical thinking is too narrow in the first place.
The Resident Evil 4 example was a good one, but it amused me because Kant was famously indifferent to animals; to him they didn’t qualify as persons and therefore didn’t matter much.
Providing binary choices in games can be effective sometimes, but these scenarios are often substitutes for proper decision-making (I’m a determinist, but talk in these terms because it’s pertinent to do so). To be fair, though, most games are simply “murder funnels”, and there’s no space to act or think in moral terms unless you simply fire up the game and never move forward. In the case of both explicit and implicit morality, problems certainly come into play in terms of “reward”, but in Splinter Cell I felt motivated to act because I did, and it often made the game far more difficult. Whether this was in service of my own ego or guilt is another matter, but we can assume, I think, that I was motivated more by selfish means than duty. The context matters, however. In Modern Warfare 2 I had no qualms about killing all of the enemies because that’s what I was conditioned to do. It’s much more of a murder funnel than something non-linear like Chaos Theory, and because the enemies lacked any superficial attributes of personhood I was able to kill them easily and arguably indulged in the killing.
Great article, there’s certainly a lot to mull over. One of the biggest roadblocks to real ethical decision-making in games is players themselves. They want to kill guys because it’s fun, but will only act morally if motivated by aforementioned arbitrary rewards. Even diegetic, explicit “rewards” are often meaningless – new clothes or weapons etc. – but players respond to these as well as absolutely meaningless Gamerscore or art unlocks. Most don’t view the experience in itself as the reward, which is sad.
Also, play Far Cry 2!
One important distinction that I believe isn’t highlighted enough in these discussions is the difference between game morality as a role-playing tool and game morality as a challenge for the player. I tend to role-play may way through RPGs (funny, that) and it’s rare that I have to pause and chew over a weighty moral decision; any given Fallout 3 character I play is either that kind of person who is happy to destroy a whole town for money or they’re not. My decision is a way of expressing the personality of my character. Even for players who aren’t as interested in getting inside their character’s heads, the situation is so extreme and the results so clear that it’s not hard to choose which way to turn.
More interesting to discuss, I feel, are situations where the player has a genuine quandary on their hands. Maybe it isn’t obvious what the right choice is, maybe the consequences aren’t clear or the decision is between the greater of two goods or the lesser of two evils. It’s all to easy to go into a game with clear intentions of being good or evil and it’s very rare that those ideas are challenged.
*Spoiler warning for those who haven’t played the Pitt DLC for Fallout 3 and intend to.*
The best example I’ve seen of this in a long time, possibly ever, was in the Pitt DLC for Fallout 3. Most of the choices in FO3 are pretty clear cut, but the one you’re presented with at the end of the Pitt made my brain hurt. You’re recruited to infiltrate the slave community of the Pitt, with the intention of bringing down the warlord who is running the show. You discover that he may have the cure for the particular form of mutation that affects all who are born there or stay too long. You work your way up, eventually winning a gladiatorial contest that earns you your freedom and an audience with the warlord
The first indication of things not being quite as they seem is when you speak to one of the raiders that guard the place on your way up to see the boss. He tells you that the workers have it easy; they have food, water, clothing, shelter and, short of the occasional industrial accident, safety. The raiders, on the other hand, are the ones who have to go out into the wasteland and find the food, water and other resources that everyone needs, risking their lives fighting the mutated denizens of the waste in the process.
With everything you’ve experienced in your travels around the Capitol Wasteland, you have to admit that he has a point.
On confronting the guy behind all this, you realise that there is more to the situation than meets the eye. He’s ex-Brotherhood of Steel and choose to stay behind after the Brotherhood abandoned the area after stripping it of any valuable tech. He deeply regrets the current situation, but he sees it as necessary to maintaining order and stability while the cure, which is being developed by his wife, is completed. He’s happy for you to look for yourself so, naturally, you do so. Then the real sucker punch hits you:
The source of the cure is his own baby daughter.
Her mother tells you how she was born completely free of mutation and that they’re close to a breakthrough that could help everyone in the area. She’s clearly a highly ethical woman, she’s sure progress could have been much quicker, but she’s not going to risk harming her baby. You’re pretty certain that the rebels would have no such qualms.
That’s the choice you’re presented with. You can free the slaves of the Pitt, but it means snatching a baby from two loving parents who have dedicated their whole lives to the stability and reconstruction of the area. In a game that has “slavery=bad” as one of its most common recurring themes, it’s a real bast of a decision that you have to make. I had to make that decision for the first time about two weeks ago and I’m still not sure I made the right one.