Good vs. Evil

[Sewblon]

I agree with much of what you say, but you didn't solve all of the problems. What if you are in a burning building, see a small child trapped under a collapsed beam and have the option to either be selfish and exit the building immediately or be altruistic and save the child first, but if you save the child he grows up to be a serial killer or a terrorist. So being selfish was arguably the moral thing to do in that scenario. The biggest problem is, the designer is just a person, what gives him/her the authority to say what is right and what is wrong, a completely ambiguous story and world would interest me more.

 

[Grampy_bone]

I think many developers would love to make their ethics systems intricate and morally grey; the question is cost effectiveness in terms of implementation. No one can afford to make a game with two completely separate plot paths, each with 4 sub-variations based on your character's exact temperament; and also have state-of-the-art graphics, polished gameplay, and an acceptable length. It's just not going to happen. Most games now with karma meters represent a compromise in terms of choice and implementability.

Personally I feel that blank-slate characters like those in Kotor and Mass Effect are the true culprit. If you play a generic character, how can he be anything other than generically good or generically evil? GTA4's story is superb in large part because the character of Niko Bellic is not totally player-defined. That is what allows such a subtle and effective manipulation of his ethical code.

 

[Akaros]

There is not, and never will be, good or evil.

The concept itself is ridiculous; countless implications have done nothing but help my argument.

That's true, if you look at it as an absolute measure.

However, society tends to see things as good or evil acts, and thus creates this spectrum, which means that while psychologically, there is no good or evil, there is socially. That's why I think Tynes' idea is good, because it does create a non-relative method of evaluating morality. However, I wonder if perhaps games should embrace the idea of social good and evil spectrums instead.

The easiest way to imagine this is a sci-fi game, with multiple alien races. Each one has a different moral code, though they may agree in broad strokes (such as murder is wrong, though who knows?) Thus, by slaughtering a colony of creatures, the race you're doing it for may appreciate it, but one that places a heavy emphasis on nature will dislike you.

The Witcher has this idea embedded in the Scoiatel/Order war, as well as various other situations with shades of gray. Though alignment is not actually coded into the game, you see people view your actions as just or wrong, which amounts to a nuanced version of the same thing.

Edit: Actually the greater problem with games is that there's rarely a neutral path to begin with, and if there is, there's no point to it. Consider Mass Effect. Often, dialogues have three options, good, neutral, and bad. Good and bad choices lead to Renegade and Paragon points, which gives you discounts and speech options. What do you get if you follow the neutral options when possible? Zip. No speech options means restricting your options throughout the game, as well as missing out of the (admittedly) small discounts. It doesn't acknowledge that not everyone wants to be selfless or ruthless the entire time.

 

[civver]

Good ideas here. Also, I would like to add that there should be "real" in-world consequences that actually change gameplay and the experience, as in getting exiled and having different allies and enemies that actually interact with you in concrete, significant ways. There should also be a distinction between short-term, medium-term, and long-term consequences.

 

[Ororon19]

great article, cant wait to see more from ya, and i wouldnt mind givin a game like ya described a shot

 

[Fenixius]

So, after reading this thread, it seems to me that most of you guys here think that the only two reasons that such a game hasn't been made are because of money; it'd cost too much to make, and it wouldn't sell well enough.

It's too expensive to make, because that's an incredible amount of writing, mission construction, etc, that needs to be done to see it happen. There are effectively 8 paths through the game, and any combination thereof; if I made my character Selfish, Peaceable, Manipulative and Modest, that's going to play completely, totally differently than Selfless, Vicious, Plainspoken, and Modest. Even though they share extreme traits (Modesty in both cases), you're going to end up with ridiculously different outcomes. Which means lots of mission. Lots, and lots of missions. All with multiple outcomes. Even having 2 outcomes per mission may be insufficient. And then they'd have to chain together, to build a cohesive narratave. It's a massive undertaking as far as design and writing go. And that's on TOP of whatever other production costs there are.

The other inhibiting factor is that it wouldn't do well at retail. It's a (relatively) complex way to have game. You'd need a serious manual to go with, explaining how it all works, explaining the character and story. You wouldn't be able to easily throw up a tutorial section that takes not a second more than 15 minutes, and get the players going; doing however they choose in this world you've built for 'em. That means that a lot of players will skip over it; likely few who visit here, but try releasing this on the Wii? You'd never do serious revenue from that console and its audience.

So, it seems to me that we have a problem. Awesome, awesome game, and noone to make it. So... why not pitch this to Indie developers instead? This seems like the -perfect- game for an Indie PC developer. They aren't as hamstringed by the production costs for making vast worlds, because they don't have to draw and render a million, billion polygons with every game. Heaps of Indie games are two dimensional, or sprite-based. Which seems to me like a great way to do it. That, or have a procedural map-maker built into the game for random missions, which has been done before in professional games; it shouldn't be so difficult to port that over to 2D for a developer who's clever. Look at things like Nethack or Dwarf Fortress; in terms of procedural programming, they work well. So... with graphics out of the way as a time vampire, we can get to work.

Someone should definitely be working on this system. I'm likely going to be incorporating such ideas as moral-magnetism and multiple scales into the next DnD campaign I run; someone should surely make a game out of it.

 

[John Scott Tynes]

Thanks for the comments, folks. It's great to see the discussion!

I wanted to mention that if anyone has suggestions for future Hard Problems, I'm all ears. if there's a promising but unrealized feature in games that really bugs you, lemme know. While this installment dealt with moral storytelling, I also intend to tackle more mechanical topics like balancing content for a variety of character levels. So anything is fair game.

Anyway, thanks for reading and discussing. I'll be around to join in.

 

[SharPhoe]

Brilliant. Seriously, contact Bioware with this, I would so play a game like that.

I didn't even have to read through the whole article to know that I agree with you. heck, that might be the reason I can never bring myself to be evil in games: It doesn't strike me as being evil so much as it just makes me feel like a douche.

 

[Doug]

Spoiler: Snipped for space

So, after reading this thread, it seems to me that most of you guys here think that the only two reasons that such a game hasn't been made are because of money; it'd cost too much to make, and it wouldn't sell well enough.

It's too expensive to make, because that's an incredible amount of writing, mission construction, etc, that needs to be done to see it happen. There are effectively 8 paths through the game, and any combination thereof; if I made my character Selfish, Peaceable, Manipulative and Modest, that's going to play completely, totally differently than Selfless, Vicious, Plainspoken, and Modest. Even though they share extreme traits (Modesty in both cases), you're going to end up with ridiculously different outcomes. Which means lots of mission. Lots, and lots of missions. All with multiple outcomes. Even having 2 outcomes per mission may be insufficient. And then they'd have to chain together, to build a cohesive narratave. It's a massive undertaking as far as design and writing go. And that's on TOP of whatever other production costs there are.

The other inhibiting factor is that it wouldn't do well at retail. It's a (relatively) complex way to have game. You'd need a serious manual to go with, explaining how it all works, explaining the character and story. You wouldn't be able to easily throw up a tutorial section that takes not a second more than 15 minutes, and get the players going; doing however they choose in this world you've built for 'em. That means that a lot of players will skip over it; likely few who visit here, but try releasing this on the Wii? You'd never do serious revenue from that console and its audience.

So, it seems to me that we have a problem. Awesome, awesome game, and noone to make it. So... why not pitch this to Indie developers instead? This seems like the -perfect- game for an Indie PC developer. They aren't as hamstringed by the production costs for making vast worlds, because they don't have to draw and render a million, billion polygons with every game. Heaps of Indie games are two dimensional, or sprite-based. Which seems to me like a great way to do it. That, or have a procedural map-maker built into the game for random missions, which has been done before in professional games; it shouldn't be so difficult to port that over to 2D for a developer who's clever. Look at things like Nethack or Dwarf Fortress; in terms of procedural programming, they work well. So... with graphics out of the way as a time vampire, we can get to work.

Someone should definitely be working on this system. I'm likely going to be incorporating such ideas as moral-magnetism and multiple scales into the next DnD campaign I run; someone should surely make a game out of it.

An indie developer could in theory develop something like this, to be sure, but I think that the problem is most indie games aren't about huge amounts of content, there about novel gameplay, etc. World of Goo I loved, but its short - a lack of content, or rather, a lack of content as I got through the puzzles fairly quickly.

 

[Sahm]

"What kind of person is so vague that he's capable of flipping between such extremes?"

I thought this was an interesting point. I believe that there is a difference between games kind of like Fallout 3 and Mass Effect in terms of making choices. In Fallout 3, the options to be a good or bad person are really addressing the player, not the character. When playing the game, you don't believe that the character is considering all the options you are reading. The player already has crafted a personality for their character, and in the player's mind, the character has already made the choice; they have their own morals. The player is simply selecting the correct response that corresponds to what they know their character will already say. That's how I felt when playing Fallout, anyway. I played Mass Effect differently, and the way it presented conversations was definitely one of the reasons why. I felt more like the character was actually having to choose between the options. Of course, there are many exceptions and these different styles of immersion did cross over.

I do agree that morality in games should take a further step towards the game idea in the article. I'd love to personalise my shades of grey.

 

[Schnippshly]

I was just thinking about "good vs evil" in games today! For the first time ever, I played Red Faction 2 from beginning to end in one sitting (seven years ago, I only saw some other people playing a little bit of it). I had noticed that, although the game would always progress the same no matter how many times you played it, you could either kill all of your teammates, and all of the innocent civilians, or you could let them live.
If you killed lots of friendlies, you'd get a bad ending cursing your character as an evil villain and a mass murderer. If you killed few (perhaps by accident in the crossfire of a battle) or killed none at all, you'd get a good ending praising your character as a hero.
But it makes no sense. Whether you kill your teammates or not, you're still the same guy, out to defeat the evil overlord and triumph over evil. You can't finish the game unless you bring down the regime once and for all! So why would this hero kill his friends, and innocent civilians, and then defeat the badguy? He still gets the ending where the people he helped by defeating the evil overlord suddenly chastize him and say he needs to be executed. It's just dumb.

And look at Half-Life 1. In Half-Life 1, you could kill friendly scientists and security guards for no reason, and lots of crazy, sadistic, mentally unstable players did, crowbarring every friendly face throughout the game, no doubt laughing maniacally as they did. The player would only be punished if he killed a friendly that needed to be alive for him to progress. But in the end, you still killed the evil alien in an attempt to stop their invasion of Earth. Why does everyone think you're a hero in Half-Life 2 if, in Half-Life 1, you were a psycho that killed everybody? In Half-Life 2, killing teammates isn't even possible, making sense of Gordon Freeman's heroism.

I think my point deviated from the whole "good vs evil" thing.

I am also bothered that no World War 2 game lets you play as the "badguys" in the single player storyline. Never are you put in a position that the player might find questionable. It's always "hardcore goodguy kills mindless Nazi drones". What about a game where you play as a regular German soldier, and he has friends and feelings? Wouldn't that spice up the load of World War 2 games people are always complaining about?

John Scott Tynes, you simply must write more articles pointing out glaring flaws in the personality of video games. And the gameplay.

 

[Go on]

First of all congratulations on your new column and i gotta say you should contact bioware because i can se you really have thought about this

 

[Kevvers]

I agree with much of what you say, but you didn't solve all of the problems. What if you are in a burning building, see a small child trapped under a collapsed beam and have the option to either be selfish and exit the building immediately or be altruistic and save the child first, but if you save the child he grows up to be a serial killer or a terrorist. So being selfish was arguably the moral thing to do in that scenario. The biggest problem is, the designer is just a person, what gives him/her the authority to say what is right and what is wrong, a completely ambiguous story and world would interest me more.

Um.. OK I see what you're saying to an extent, BUT.. how the heck could you as the player possibly know that the kid would grow up into a serial killer. What kind've person would refuse to save the kid citing that 'he might grow up into a serial killer'. If a game ever pulled a stunt like that I'd be pretty unimpressed. I'm all for a degree of moral ambiguity, but please don't make me as a player feel guilty for rescuing trapped children from burning buildings.

 

[Leviathan902]

I agree with much of what you say, but you didn't solve all of the problems. What if you are in a burning building, see a small child trapped under a collapsed beam and have the option to either be selfish and exit the building immediately or be altruistic and save the child first, but if you save the child he grows up to be a serial killer or a terrorist. So being selfish was arguably the moral thing to do in that scenario. The biggest problem is, the designer is just a person, what gives him/her the authority to say what is right and what is wrong, a completely ambiguous story and world would interest me more.

Um.. OK I see what you're saying to an extent, BUT.. how the heck could you as the player possibly know that the kid would grow up into a serial killer. What kind've person would refuse to save the kid citing that 'he might grow up into a serial killer'. If a game ever pulled a stunt like that I'd be pretty unimpressed. I'm all for a degree of moral ambiguity, but please don't make me as a player feel guilty for rescuing trapped children from burning buildings.

This.

I was going to make a comment about this in regards to the Tenpenny Tower situation in Fallout 3, but Kevvers said it all perfectly.

Anyway, the concern I have for Mr. Tynes' game is that there is a better-than-decent chance it would devolve into 30 hours of mini-quests a la the standard MMO format. You know the type:

"Mr Sheriff, I have rats in my basement!"
Quest accepted: Kill 30 rats

or

"Mr. Sheriff, The postmaster broke his leg!"
Quest accepted: Deliver 10 letters

This is especially concerning in regards to "Act 1" where you're performing inconsequential tasks to begin establishing who your character is. I believe it to be extremely important to provide compelling content to the player early on, lest you lose their interest.

Of course, it's up to the developer to ensure that they don't get lazy and fall into those trappings, but that's the first thing that came to my head when I read that you had to complete specific storyline missions AND achieve certain scores in at least 2 measures to advance. In addition it could result in one of those scenarios like the following example:

Ending mission of Main Quest for Act 1:
A gang of bandits attacks the village. It's in the best interest of yourself, the townspeople, and the rancher to repel the assault (don't want to make too difficult of a choice yet, it's still early). You can resolve in any number of ways affecting all variables. You complete the mission and save the day! But you can't move on because you have one last thing to take care of. Next order of business...

"Mr. Sherriff! My cat is caught in a tree, can you go save it?"
Quest Accepted: Get cat down from tree (+5 to selflesness)

 

[Wolfrug]

Honestly, in many games a shade of moral gray could easily be achieved by a few choices here and there that do not involve an insane amount of extra coding and script writing, yet give the game replayability and the player a sense of having made an important choice. However, those choices would have to be very well written.

Example 1: Deus Ex. Sure, at the point when the first act in NY is over and you're ferried to Hong Kong, the game turns more linear, but everyone remembers the part before that. You know, when you were given the choice of either being a good UNATCO soldier or to follow your dear brother's advice (kill all rebels - tranquilize all rebels!). Everything culminates in the point where you either help JCs brother fight off the MIBs or you run away. It's a wonderfully constructed narrative and leaves you with a sense of having made real choices - without actually requiring THAT much extra work (you get cuddles from your brother and reprimands from Manderley and your robotic sidekicks).

Example 2: Mafia. Mafia is a lovely game. Entirely linear (you can choose to do some side missions if you want), but with all the potential of the same kinds of choices as made in Deus Ex. In Mafia you play a cab driver seduced into the deadly world of the mafioso. From harmlessly wrecking some cars with molotov cocktails and a baseball bat, you are suddenly gunning down policemen by the dozens and hunting down your former friends and allies. The game could easily offer you some choices and consequences of the truly morally grey type, although it doesn't: do you or do you not kill the 'whore' who ratted on you? Do you or do you not kill Frank? Take the latter: Frank is your friend, he's tried to teach you an important lesson, he has a family, and he's really just doing the same thing your character does at the start of the game (escape by cutting a deal with the police). BUT, he's also broken the omerta, he's a traitor, and he put you all into danger. By the laws of your little group, his life is forfeit. I really would have wanted to make that choice, and then hear my character (whose voice acting, incidentally, I thought was very good) explain his choices to the detective. Letting these choices have an impact on the end would be quite easy, once again.

These are both FPSes (well, an First-person sneaker/RPG and a GTA-esque carFPS), and the storyline in both naturally offer the player choices that are morally grey. THIS, I think, is what is more important than a four-point system or even a two-point system or any point system: good, solid storytelling that offers the player choices that at least on the surface SEEM meaningful (and that hopefully are). I too am tired of the "chaotic stupid/paragorn of the wastes" dichotomy: but the solution isn't a set of numbers counting back and forth, unless you're going for truly epic amounts of script. Just write your main storyline really well, sprinkle in a few ambigous "damned if I do damned if I don't" situations, and have the whole cavalcade matter in the end. Somehow.

But I'd still play the sheriff game.

 

[PedroSteckecilo]

Like it was mentioned in the closing comment of this article, a Star Wars game where you get to play a Grey Jedi would be brilliant, in my opinion: using whatever Force powers you like, and not having the game tell you you've fallen to the Dark Side because you like to use Lightning. What if you used it to fry a Sith Lord? Surely that would make you good, even though you used an "evil" power? Whether you're good or evil doesn't depend on what you do, but on why you do it.

But force lightning is unleashing your hate and anger to maim and kill your enemy in the most painful way imaginable. There really isn't a more "evil" power in all of Star Wars except maybe for the "Dark Side Life Suck" that a few of the big bads can do.

I see where your coming from, really, but Force Lightning is the worst example, considering it basically amounts to...

"I will now kill you with PURE EVIL ENERGY generated by my hate and rage!"

 

[hamster mk 4]

This was a very insightful article with an excellent idea for a game/story dynamic. I hope your column continues to meet the high bar you have set with this article.

As for what was said in the article it makes a lot of sense, especially the part about the four trait system. I think most developers are scared of going beyond the Good/Evil dichotomy because the amount of content increases logarithmically with each new trait. After all how would one tailor a mission to a player that was both selfish and peaceable? Also what would be the point of generating content that players would only see 1/4 of the time. Your solution to this makes a lot of sense. By restricting access to missions based on one attribute, you ensure a user sees at least 1/2 the content that was developed on their first play through, while still maintaining a greater illusion of agency.

You could further expand on the complexity by NPC?s who are friendly, hostile or dead. For example in that posy/assassination mission you described, all your prior missions could contribute to how it plays out. If in the second act you were arresting/killing the posy?s members, the sub climax mission would be easier to defend the innocent family. Where as if you had been letting the posy get away with terrorizing the family; the family would be severely weakened during the battle.

I hope some one takes this concept and runs with it. Such a game would dramatically expand the definition of what a video game is.

 

[Sewblon]

I agree with much of what you say, but you didn't solve all of the problems. What if you are in a burning building, see a small child trapped under a collapsed beam and have the option to either be selfish and exit the building immediately or be altruistic and save the child first, but if you save the child he grows up to be a serial killer or a terrorist. So being selfish was arguably the moral thing to do in that scenario. The biggest problem is, the designer is just a person, what gives him/her the authority to say what is right and what is wrong, a completely ambiguous story and world would interest me more.

Um.. OK I see what you're saying to an extent, BUT.. how the heck could you as the player possibly know that the kid would grow up into a serial killer. What kind've person would refuse to save the kid citing that 'he might grow up into a serial killer'. If a game ever pulled a stunt like that I'd be pretty unimpressed. I'm all for a degree of moral ambiguity, but please don't make me as a player feel guilty for rescuing trapped children from burning buildings.

It would probably only happen if I ever design a game. But if I do, it will happen with every moral situation.

 

[Anachronism]

But force lightning is unleashing your hate and anger to maim and kill your enemy in the most painful way imaginable. There really isn't a more "evil" power in all of Star Wars except maybe for the "Dark Side Life Suck" that a few of the big bads can do.

I see where your coming from, really, but Force Lightning is the worst example, considering it basically amounts to...

"I will now kill you with PURE EVIL ENERGY generated by my hate and rage!"

I see your point, but I still argue that it can be used for good. Like the Dark Side as a whole, it's fuelled by the wielder's emotions. True, it is powered by hate and rage, but if that hate is directed against a Sith because of their previous actions towards you? If you hate someone evil, and use that hate to destroy them, does that make you good or evil?

I'd argue good, but it's obviously subjective. Lightning wasn't, admittedly, the best example, although Light Side characters have been known to use it: Kyle Katarn being the most prominent example, and I believe Luke used it as well. Something like Grip, however, although generally considered a Dark Side power, is definitely more ambiguous than Lightning. Again, it was used by Luke in RotJ; did using an evil power make him evil?

This sort of reinforces why I'd like to play a game where the protagonist is a Grey Jedi. It would leave whether he is good or evil much more open to the player, which would probably result in a great deal more moral ambiguity and blurring of the line between "good" and "bad", which has been far too clearly defined in gaming up till now.

 

[PedroSteckecilo]

SNIP

I see your point, but I still argue that it can be used for good. Like the Dark Side as a whole, it's fuelled by the wielder's emotions. True, it is powered by hate and rage, but if that hate is directed against a Sith because of their previous actions towards you? If you hate someone evil, and use that hate to destroy them, does that make you good or evil?

I'd argue good, but it's obviously subjective. Lightning wasn't, admittedly, the best example, although Light Side characters have been known to use it: Kyle Katarn being the most prominent example, and I believe Luke used it as well. Something like Grip, however, although generally considered a Dark Side power, is definitely more ambiguous than Lightning. Again, it was used by Luke in RotJ; did using an evil power make him evil?

The whole point of The Dark Side corrupting you is exactly that though...

Go ahead, use Force Lightning to kill the Sith Lord...

It's soooo eaaaasy...

And he totally deserves it right...

Yes, use that power, strike him down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!

And the Luke/grip thing... using Grip to subdue is not evil, in fact one could argue that his use of force grip actually PREVENTED him having to kill them, hence making it a better thing to use. Grip hasn't been "evil" in canon for awhile, though killing someone with it still is, it's alot like strangling someone, it's just MEANER than shooting/slashing/stabbing them.