Interesting read, and I agree with you that the bit in Mass Effect 2 is not well written. However at the same time I'm not entirely sure if I consider "looting" during a crisis situation where most of the property owners are dead to be wrong. The dead don't need their stuff anymore, and you dying (from whatever the threat is) is kind of pointless. If there was a Zombie apocolypse or something on that level, I'd have no qualms about looting whatever supplies I need from unoccupied stores or whatever.
One of the problems with dealing with any kind of morality system is that while some thing are absolutly right or wrong, there are plenty of moral standards that are entirely soicetally based and have to do with context. Things like a prohibation against slavery exist for a reason in today's society, but then again we're not living in a climate of constant warfare where we need to find a way to deal with defeated populations that we can't warehouse as prisoners forever. Assuming the war was nessicary for whatever reason, and your sitting there with the choices of enslaving them or putting them all to the sword and committing mass murder at the best, or genocide at the worst...
To be honest I don't think that the evil path is less well travelled in RPGs and the like. In part because in many cases it simply results in a much more powerful character. RPGs tend to be dominated by offense and in most cases when you see a stereotypical definition of good magic being defensive and healing, and evil magic being offensive... well the evil path tends to be more satisfying and easy to use. Not to mention the fact that it's very easy to reward evil behavior... loot, money, power, etc... however in a fantasy game which is supposed to get away from the way things work in reality, and good is supposed to defeat evil, it's far more difficult to reward it.
Heck, in MMORPGs also look at what happened with "Warhammer Online" with the destruction faction which wound up outnumbering the good guys before the game ever launched (we saw it coming with "Road To War"), the same thing is going on with "Old Republic Online" where we are in the grips of Sith-Mania. This is to say nothing of all the Everquest Necromancers, WoW Warlocks and Shadow Priests, and other popular sorts of characters that have a definate edge.
Speaking from a narrative perspective though, a lot of the evil storylines seem to be lacking because it generally comes down to malevolence for the sake of malevolence. 99% of the time in a game with a morality system I don't feel any real temptation in the actions presented, and actually most of it comes accross as being a dumb thug, or someone who is being a puppy kicking jerk for the simple sake of being a puppy kicking jerk.
Though admittedly I think a lot of it has to do with game companies not having the guts to create a real 'evil' set of actions. In part because I think they fear an AO rating and won't fight for proper definitions.
Since you mentioned virginity in your article, I'll get on one of the big motivators for immoral behavior in real life: sex (for an example). Look at games like "Rapelay" and the like and you can see some pretty disturbing stuff that people are obviously attracted to in numbers large enough to make games like that known to society in general. For all the outcry, games like that are shoveled out by the thousands, as people indulge their darker, more base instincts in private... and yes this includes girls. Not only do they consume nasty porn (despite what people might think), but I'd argue they are worse than guys, and honestly some of the subtexts involved in the "paranormal romance" genere are probably more disturbing in their own way than the worst of the H-games.
Before you misunderstand what I'm saying, and before I go much further, I will say that "Rapelay" and H-games are "AO", and deservingly so. However that's because games like this include penetration shots and such, as various erotic thrillers and horror movies have shown you can cover a lot of the same "material" in an "R" rating, you just don't use any direct money shots.
What I'm getting at here is that sexual morality exists for a reason, there are reasons why you don't just violate any attractive person of the gender your interested in just because you can. There are reasons why "jailbait" is off limits. However the temptations exist and games like the ones I mention (and various movies) exist as a way of embracing the dark side and indulging those whims both guiltily and vicariously.
You toss something into a game that allows an evil character to take advantage of a young girl that depends on him/her and then dispose of them (not nessicarly murderously) or whatever and there is an undeniably evil payoff, that people will probably go after, because it's the exact same thing most of them do with other kinds of games.
Despite that long multi-paragraph rant, I'm not all that fixated on the sexual aspects of this, it's just one example of the kinds of things you can do. Basically to do wrong the "right way" you need to violate societal taboos, because that's what being bad is. When games are fixated on "being evil, but only in a way that isn't likely to offend anyone" it turns it into a giant joke, and really all that's left with the desicians is of course the statistical benefits.
Whether it's sex, violence, or offensive political/ethical stances, the bottom line is that to do it right, it has to be accepted that your going to offend someone, and your going to have to push the envelope. To really do evil storylines well the game industry is pretty much going to have to fight to ensure things that groups like the ESRB and watchdog groups think should be "AO", are allowed with an "M" rating.
Whether it's taking advantage of girls, enslaving people for fun and profit, or casually committing genocide in pursuit of a goal or numerous other things, that's the kind of stuff you need to see...
The odd thing is that in all of the above examples it's pretty obvious what the rewards are generally going to be (sex, money, power, gratification). The writing is hard. In comparison (as I pointed out) it's easy to write and provide options for a good guy, but much harder to come up with viable rewards.
Oh yes and one final note: while plenty of people play evil, I do notice a lot of people are turned off from that path because for whatever reason game developers typically decide that being bad should be horribly disfiguring. KOTOR and Fable are paticularly bad examples here. Of course it can be argued that Peter Molyneux seems to really be fixated on human ugliness since his games have ranged from having the hero turn into walking star tissue, to a deformed Jabba-The-Hutt type fatboy... and even good guys don't get off, since in Fable 2 to remain good you need to voluntarily have yourself turned (permanantly) into an old geezer. The bad guy at this same point can get by without that, but since he's a deformed waddling ball of fat it's hardly nessicary.
