[MUD-Dev] Re: Morality in Game Design (was: Logical MUD Areas)

[John Buehler]

Scion Altera writes:
> Sunday, May 06, 2001, 12:12:03 AM, John Buehler wrote:

>> players should not be encouraged to kill things that they are also
>> encouraged to empathize with.

> Agreed. I'd feel like I was helping to form a new generation of
> serial killers if my game did that, and therefore be forced by my
> conscience to shut my game down.

>> Do we also go in and kill goblin children?

> Well... we allow it.

Um, how should I reconcile these two responses?  I generally empathize
with children, goblin or not.

>> To go to an extreme, do we want to produce screams of children as
>> they're killed?

> Absolutely. Then, we leave the player to stand there and ponder what
> he/she has just done.

Well, I don't believe it.  Anyone who needs to experiment in order to
ponder the consequences of killing of children should be under adult
supervision.  Kids who play these games are not.  Adults who play
these games won't be killing the goblin children unless they're either
malicious or completely uninterested in the fiction of the game.  As a
result, I wouldn't even bother implementing the scenario.

Also, there's the problem of presenting enough realistic consequences.
If the sound of screaming children bothers you, turn your speakers
down.  Certainly the fear in the eyes of the children isn't going to
be presented to the player.  It's all a fairly ghastly endeavor and it
seems to only end in negative effects.

> Finally, we leave it up to the other players to let this misguided
> person know that if he/she had attempted to trade with the goblins
> rather than kill their children, he/she would have been able to earn
> some money and make some friends. As it stands from the game's
> perspective, this player simply has to watch out for vengeful
> goblins now.

Which is exactly what the player wants: some action.  Let's get those
goblins hunting me.  I'm tired of trading with the goblins and making
money.  I want to kill something!

> For the sake of argument, the player may be playing the part of an
> evil bandit who likes to kill innocent children. The player may be
> playing the part of a soldier in a human army that has been ordered
> to wage war agains the goblins. The player may be playing the part
> of an elf whose parents were killed by goblins, and now has an
> irrational hatred of them. These are all roleplaying opportunities I
> would not want to prevent, despite the fact that I might personally
> feel that the act of killing children is immoral.

Well, I guess I don't consider roleplaying homocidal people to be
particularly redeeming from a social standpoint.

> I do not feel that it is my responsibility as the creator of a game
> to filter the game's content based on the possibility that someone
> might be influenced to act immorally in real life as a result of
> playing my game. I do expect a certain level of maturity from the
> people who play my game, as well as at least some grasp of the
> difference between a text based game and real life. I do not want to
> limit everyone's experience so that I can be the moral judge for a
> very few who may have skewed moral compasses. I believe this would
> be throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

If you believe if your moral standpoint, then I would assume that you
would back it up with appropriate actions.  It's one thing to give
people rope and have them hang themselves with it.  It's another to
give them rope with a hangman's knot already fashioned.

> The argument that comes to mind that seems the most similar to this
> one revolves around the Columbine school shooting. The argument made
> was that since the killers played computer games such as Doom and
> listened to music such as Rammstein, the Doom and the Rammstein were
> to blame for their violent behavior.

Yeah, and I don't believe that they were to *blame*.  They were
reinforcing influences, however.  Those children were looking for
weeds and they found them.  If they had been looking for roses, they
would have skipped over Doom and Rammstein.

> The obvious counter-example is, of course, me. Among others, I
> listen to Rammstein and Nine Inch Nails. I played Doom, and Quake
> II, and now play Unreal Tournament. I wore a black trenchcoat to
> school throughout all of my junior year. I have also been a Quaker
> (the religion, not the computer game) and also a pacifist for my
> whole life. I am not angry, do not own any weapons, and have
> absolutely no desire to hurt anybody in real life. However, I simply
> don't see the value in installing artificial restrictions that would
> (in my opinion) limit the scope of the game I am working on.

I see value because the benefit of entertaining ourselves is
outweighed by the negative consequences on the 'weed seekers' out
there.

> I do see value your point of view, however, as it pertains to games
> with strong senses of good and evil. If you intend for your players
> to be good, and their enemies to be evil... then you should surely
> reward good behavior and punish evil behavior. You should also not
> "humanize" the enemies, or you run the risk of people thinking you
> condone murder.

As I'm not trying to immerse players or get them to care a whole bunch
about their characters, etc, I don't have to rely on hardcore drama to
entertain players.  So I don't want to present moral dilemmas.
Children are not equal to them.  Shoot, many adults don't seem to be.

> In a game where the good and evil aren't so well defined, then all
> sides must either be humanized or dehumanized equally, as players
> may come in on any of them. Each side will have good and evil
> aspects, and while conflict between them is inevitable, it should be
> portrayed accurately as something hurtful to all participants and
> destructive in nature. War is costly, in all senses of the word and
> to all those involved. The fun part of the game should be
> constructive, but the destructive aspect should not be eliminated
> either.

I can't really argue this point.  But it does presuppose a certain
intensity of game entertainment.  An intensity that I'm trying to
avoid.

> If you assume that everybody sees themselves as being on the side of
> good, then you should be able to see where I am coming from.

I think I see where you're coming from, but I have difficulty
imagining a game that can pull it off.  If we had The Matrix, where
children always had adult supervision, and where no player was
permitted to play for more than a couple hours, I might be able to see
it.  Sort of a very intense Hollywood experience.  But an unsupervised
game that attempts to make the experiences intense without all of the
attendant consequences ultimately makes me nervous.

JB

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