Epic Mickey Offers No Choice

[The_root_of_all_evil]

I'm reminded of the game Alien 3.

You could do anything you wanted, but Ripley never died.

Sure, she could fall to the ground with a slavering alien over her, but she could never die.

Reason: Trademark Damage.

Now, Mickey? Mickey is the epitome of the Disney Corporation, and you want M.I.C. - K.E.Y. to do something actually bad? You may as well ask Ronald McDonald to shoot the Burger King in the face.

We all know he wants to, but there's no way they'll do it.

Moral Choices are limited because they are in real life. Don't like Christmas? YOU SCROOGE!!

It's one of those dreams we have where we can alter our own destiny, but it's something that's FAR too scary for games managers, who just want the nice profitable dopamine feelings rushing through us.

Now, you imagine Shock and Awe if you're the one that ultimately launched that nuke. Frankly I'm surprised Faux News hasn't already cut it to pieces, but the media outcry would be horrific. How dare we let our children choose to do bad things? Won't someone think of the children!!!!!!!

Yes.

Won't someone think OF the children, rather than AS the children.

 

[Mrsoupcup]

My father honestly thinks The Legion is the best option in New Vegas.
He is republican.

Wat? Really? REALLY? there just evil for evils sake... NCR or House seems for more logical. I would say Wild card but that is basically the Mr. House ending.

 

[moretimethansense]

Would you rescue one baby or five old people?

I read an interesting story about that once actually, you are standing near a switch, there is a train coming in, on one set of rails is fat man, on the other there are 5 people, if you pull the switch the fat man dies, if you don't the 5 people die.

edit: 5am posting isn't good for clarity.

Most people say they would pull the switch, 5 for 1 and all that jazz.

Now same situation, only there is no switch, and the only way to stop the train from hitting the 5 people is to throw the fat man in front of it (just roll with it).

Would you still do it? Most people say no, but morally it's the exact same choice, trading one life for five, you're hands are just a little dirtier.

And just what the blue fuck does the man's weight have to do with anything?

Objectively nothing, however ask the same question to a group of normal white people in say 1950, substitute fat-man for black-man and people are a lot more comfortable with the choice, we place different values on life, numerically (kill one, save 5), emotionally (my friend is worth X strangers), instinctually (a baby is worth more then an old person), judgementally (a fat person is worth less then a healthy person, because the fat person will die sooner, or a drug addict is worth less then a sober person), etc.

But morally it means nothing, once you concede that you can trade away a human life for any reason it's just a matter of degrees, see the famous George Bernard Shaw story;


George Bernard Shaw once found himself at a dinner party, seated beside an attractive woman. "Madam," he asked, "would you go to bed with me for a thousand pounds?"

The woman blushed and rather indignantly shook her head.

"For ten thousand pounds?" he asked.

"No. I would not."

"Then how about fifty thousand pounds?" he contined.

The colossal sum gave the woman pause, and after further reflection, she coyly replied: "Perhaps."

"And if I were to offer you five pounds?" Shaw asked.

"Mr. Shaw!" the woman exclaimed. "What do you take me for!"

"We have already established what you are," Shaw calmly replied. "Now we are merely haggling over the price."

The thing is the question is a simple 1 v 5 choice, the man's weight is completely immaterial to the question at hand and stating a weight is simply an obvious attempt to insult the overweight by7 implying that it makes them less of a human.

To illustrate my point,

You asked what is in essence "Would you kill 1 person to save five?" then adding "The one is fat by the way.", it is completely unnecessary to mention it unless to make the one less valuable, which in a 1 v 5 debate is frankly bullshit.

Were the question a Fat v Not fat question I wouldn't be bringing this up, but the way the hypothetical is phrased you may as well be saying "but the one is fat so you don't need to feel guilty!".

If you merely copied this verbatim from another source then I apologize for my vitriol, but if you composed this yourself then I feel I must say on behalf of the overweight and philosophers everywhere, Kindly get stuffed.

 

[Dectilon]

I think it's worth keeping in mind that it's still a Disney game; something meant to be enjoyable for tiny babies too. On the other hand, since that should've been apparent from the beginning, Warren Spector shouldn't have talked it up quite in the way he did, or at least chosen his words a bit better.

A lot of RPGs have a choice here or there where what is 'good' and what is 'evil' is immediately apparent, but they are few and far between. Mass Effect of course eschews that and clearly labels every choice lest someone get confused. It's not a very good system really. It makes future interactions dependent on previous interactions in a nonsensical way. Also, the idea of the Renegade path is often that "sometimes sacrifices has to be made for the greater good". But that's not how it works out most of the time. Instead of the renegade succeeding where the paragon would have failed by making sacrifices the paragon succeeds without having to make any. Or perhaps more accurately, by playing the renegade you are actively planning on sacrificing things/people for no gain.

 

[moosek]

Why does the end comment usually make some statement about my weight? I've been losing weight, and mean comments negate any confidence that I may have gained between now and 22 pounds ago.

 

[tkioz]

Would you rescue one baby or five old people?

I read an interesting story about that once actually, you are standing near a switch, there is a train coming in, on one set of rails is fat man, on the other there are 5 people, if you pull the switch the fat man dies, if you don't the 5 people die.

edit: 5am posting isn't good for clarity.

Most people say they would pull the switch, 5 for 1 and all that jazz.

Now same situation, only there is no switch, and the only way to stop the train from hitting the 5 people is to throw the fat man in front of it (just roll with it).

Would you still do it? Most people say no, but morally it's the exact same choice, trading one life for five, you're hands are just a little dirtier.

And just what the blue fuck does the man's weight have to do with anything?

Objectively nothing, however ask the same question to a group of normal white people in say 1950, substitute fat-man for black-man and people are a lot more comfortable with the choice, we place different values on life, numerically (kill one, save 5), emotionally (my friend is worth X strangers), instinctually (a baby is worth more then an old person), judgementally (a fat person is worth less then a healthy person, because the fat person will die sooner, or a drug addict is worth less then a sober person), etc.

But morally it means nothing, once you concede that you can trade away a human life for any reason it's just a matter of degrees, see the famous George Bernard Shaw story;


George Bernard Shaw once found himself at a dinner party, seated beside an attractive woman. "Madam," he asked, "would you go to bed with me for a thousand pounds?"

The woman blushed and rather indignantly shook her head.

"For ten thousand pounds?" he asked.

"No. I would not."

"Then how about fifty thousand pounds?" he contined.

The colossal sum gave the woman pause, and after further reflection, she coyly replied: "Perhaps."

"And if I were to offer you five pounds?" Shaw asked.

"Mr. Shaw!" the woman exclaimed. "What do you take me for!"

"We have already established what you are," Shaw calmly replied. "Now we are merely haggling over the price."

The thing is the question is a simple 1 v 5 choice, the man's weight is completely immaterial to the question at hand and stating a weight is simply an obvious attempt to insult the overweight by7 implying that it makes them less of a human.

To illustrate my point,

You asked what is in essence "Would you kill 1 person to save five?" then adding "The one is fat by the way.", it is completely unnecessary to mention it unless to make the one less valuable, which in a 1 v 5 debate is frankly bullshit.

Were the question a Fat v Not fat question I wouldn't be bringing this up, but the way the hypothetical is phrased you may as well be saying "but the one is fat so you don't need to feel guilty!".

If you merely copied this verbatim from another source then I apologize for my vitriol, but if you composed this yourself then I feel I must say on behalf of the overweight and philosophers everywhere, Kindly get stuffed.

A) Fat myself

B) Example was paraphrased from a book I read a fair while ago, and it was a fat-man in that example so I used it here.

C) Oh get over it, if I had used "drug addict" or "terrorist" as an example would you have cared?

 

[Pontus Hashis]

Would you rescue one baby or five old people? That makes me think of a moral choice in inFAMOUS... one of my favorit moral choices evur acctualy.

 

[TheMadDoctorsCat]

Interesting article. I'll probably never play "Epic Mickey" on account of I don't own a console, but it's an interesting point of untapped potential in a game.

Makes me think of Fallout 3, where you have three choices: neutral (do an equal number of dastardly and divine deeds), evil (routinely slaughter and/or enslave defenceless innocents), or good (save baskets of kittens from fiery apocalypse). It's a points-based system, which means that you can quite easily blow up an entire town, but you only lose five hundred "points" by doing it, which is easily balanced by doing a few other quest-related good deeds. Nobody seems to remember your good / bad deeds once you're bad / good respectively (although if you blow up Megaton, you do get attacked by refugees afterwards occasionally).

And of course, there's Bioshock's classic "murder little girls / save little girls" system, which I thought would've worked much better if you could choose one option at the start, and then just keep doing it until the point about two-thirds through where you meet Tenenbaum, at which point you're given the option to change your mind. Four endings: one for starts evil, stays evil; one for starts evil but redeems; one for starts good but becomes corrupted; and one for starts good stays incorruptible.

 

[WaderiAAA]

Coke is indeed better than Pepsi.

Hope games will evolve when it comes to integrating moral choice.

 

[Vegedus]

I'm not kidding in the slightest when I say I wish I could spend christmas like Yahtzee. The awkward family reunions are really the words part of christmas.

 

[GeneticallyModifiedDucks]

that was pretty interesting, but in all honesty, was anyone expecting boundary pushing human experience art from DISNEY?

No, but people expected it from Warren Spector. That's why people were disappointed. At least that's why I was.

 

[EmperorZuma]

As much as Yahtzee will probably hate me for it the best moral choice system I have ever experienced was in Fable III. Most of the choices that game gives you have no right answer and it can be very stressful when you want to do the absolute best thing for everyone and realize that you simply cannot.

I disagree, the game falters on that point because it makes the decisions economical. If you want to be the paragon of all humanity all you have to do is buy basically every property in sight. Thus allowing you to make the costly "good" choices without having to worry about the treasury because you can constantly refill it with your ever-growing personal account.

 

[moretimethansense]

snip

snip

snipity

snip again

snip me baby one more time!

A) Fat myself

B) Example was paraphrased from a book I read a fair while ago, and it was a fat-man in that example so I used it here.

C) Oh get over it, if I had used "drug addict" or "terrorist" as an example would you have cared?

A) Likewise, join the club we have... well we had cookies.

B) Fair enough though my pint still stands

C.1) I'd rather not get over it and neither should you, I see far too much casual fat bashing in my day to day life (even on this very forum) and the fact that people see it as somehow okay pisses me right off, it's this casual attitude that led to my several year long reclusion, not to mention my deep depression and severe anger issues that continue to this day.
I am, thanks to the sever bullying that I suffered in school, almost completley incapable of leaving my house by myself, I missed out on higher education, I can't deal with people on an inter-personal level and I am utterly incapable of finding and holding a job.

I apologize for the rant, as you can imagine this is a sore spot for me.

C.2)(The drug addict or terrorist bit) Yes actually, partly because I have a cousin that was a drug addict and it took an OD and hospital visit to get him to stop, partly because I hate the way Americans use the word "Terrorist" as though it wins them any argument by default, but mostly because my point would still be valid.

 

[Grahav]

To drop or not drop the nuke? That's the question.

 

[Motiv_]

Snip

The comment about the man's weight was only meant to be said for the final choice, as his weight was supposed to be enough to halt the train. As utterly un-realistic as this is, there really isn't any other way a single person could be sacrificed to stop a moving train.

Hope this helps explain.

 

[moretimethansense]

Snip

The comment about the man's weight was only meant to be said for the final choice, as his weight was supposed to be enough to halt the train. As utterly un-realistic as this is, there really isn't any other way a single person could be sacrificed to stop a moving train.

Hope this helps explain.

It does a bit but wouldn't it make more sense for the one man to be rigged with explosives by whoever set up this bizarre morality play?
That way the mans life is equal to the life of one of the others and personal bias doesn't come in to it.

And before you say "but that would kill the passengers!" at no point were passengers (or even a driver) mentioned, for this bizarre test someone would have had to set this up in advance, otherwise what's stopping the driver from putting on the brakes?
For this to work the only factors should be 1 life vs 5, and obviously, if you do nothing five will die, if you kill this one the same five will live.

In the infinitely unlikely situation this happened during the train's normal running schedule I'd let the five die, no sense in making all those people late!

 

[Canid117]

To drop or not drop the nuke? That's the question.

drop it

 

[Caiti Voltaire]

Using creation juice would "fix" the monsters and turn them good again with no apparent ill effects. So there was absolutely no reason not to do that.

Yes because turning a giant creature that can fling you half-way across the room into a good guy to deal with the rest of the constantly respawning shock troops throwing thinner at you during the final level while you tear the main villain's vital organs to kingdom fuck is not a good reason. Bet you had real fun at that point in the game, Croshaw.

It's a game about a cartoon mouse with 90 years of history. You shouldn't expect THAT high a level of complexity from it's moral choice system from a game like that. You should expect that kind of quality from a moral choice system in a game with a T or M rating. Which is why Yahtzee should've waited until Infamous 2 or something like that was released to do an Extra Punctuation on this topic.

Also as much as I like some Yahtzee's ideas for game design, I can't help but think some of them, in this case, his ideas on a moral choice system, would take too much programming time and be too big a hassle to accomplish with current technology.

We were doing better in the 1980s with text adventure games. So no, its not above modern technology.

That's oversimplifying to a great deal, but so very few game developoers these days care to develop a compelling story element to their game at all, even a linear on. And why should they, when flashy tripe with the depth of a spoon makes millions of dollars? As much as people bereave Bioware's usually pretty eh stories, they're making a hell of a lot more effort than the average game.

The real problem here is that making a good story is HARD. Good graphics? There's tons of free engines that give shiny glitz these days. Good models and such? Okay that's a little harder but its not terribly hard to hire a good modeller. But story? It takes a great deal of creativity to break the mold with storytelling these days, and it can very easily break a game for people if the story becomes contrived, hard to follow, or they have difficulty to it.

The real difficulty is keeping it accessible and fresh while at the same time entertaining. Moral choice systems complicate that all the more. It's not something that is easily done, and many companies get cold feet about staking their profits on it.

But let me reiterate: with the technology and RAD style programming languages we have these days - technology is not our limitation.

 

[iamultraman]

The best morality system I've encountered was that of Infamous, primarily because it didn't infringe on the player's sense of morality; it was based on Cole's. I know, this is retreading on old ground ("It's like caring for a brick because his brick children don't call"), but forget, for an instant--a difficult instant I will grant you--that Cole was meant to be a projection of the player and cast him as an individual. It works pretty well! Cole is nothing, he is insignificant in societal status, he's like Oliver Twist, and then he gets electro-powers (Oliver Twist skating on power lines is a great idea, get to it Sucker Punch). The good-evil aspect is nothing but what society perceives Cole to be, which is a fascist or a saint. It is really well done because he's Cole, he's not you; that's why karma in Fallout 3 was lacking, due to it inherently telling what the player what his/her moral alignment was. Cole's position is clear-cut; do you want to lash out primordially against your societal oppressors, or do you want all the attention and fame from your fellow peers like some kind of tool? It's a wonderful exploration into the human psyche during the attaination of power (quite like Macbeth, actually, as he frets over the consequences of becoming the King of Scotland) if you read too hard into it.
However if the game industry is so set on morality systems know this: no significant writer in our lifetime has fret about good or bad so intensely; rather their stories are built around morality, instead of implementing it. So if nothing else know this: it is much better to create a good story than to fiddle around with antiquated moral values. Then maybe I can play a game that features me eating babies and no one will be snarky about it.

 

[Optimystic]

I LOVED the Samesh Bhatia choice from ME1, especially since you could get Renegade or Paragon points for either resolution (get the body back or leave it with the military.)