…wherein I react, in a somewhat roundabout way, to a discussion of moral choice in gaming. Unfortunately you don’t get to see the original discussion, because it was held in-class; my apologies. If you’re okay with it, though, I’ll try to recall things as best I can.
Gee's book, bane of Dean's class
For those of you who have never taken a course taught by Dean O’Donnell, it’s worth noting that the man runs some fairly awesome classrooms. I’ve been ridiculed many a time for coming off a little too fanboyish of WPI’s resident storytelling professor, but one could do worse in finding a career mentor. Dean is unabashedly foul-mouthed, brutally honest, and surprisingly outgoing, and he commands the hearts and minds of his students because of it.
Among his repertoire, the Professor teaches a course called Social Issues in Interactive Media and Games. It shares a requirement with another social/ethics course in WPI’s IMGD program, but everyone goes to Dean’s class if they can. The discussions themselves are worth the price of tuition, and his periodical tangents are just an added bonus.
The topic of today’s discussion seemed, at first glance, fairly ho-hum. The assigned reading by James Paul Gee — whom ludologists and unhappy IMGD majors will recognize as the author of What Videogames Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy – covered one of the book’s latter chapters on cultural models. As a lead into a broader discussion of the ways we tend to perceive behavior, Gee takes the time to put on paper something us gamers have long known, but rarely thought about: that depending on the game in question, a player can approach gameplay choices in one of two ways:
- The player can base his gameplay decisions on the moral and ethical rules laid down by society, or
- he can base them on the moral and ethical rules implied by the game itself.
Now, a BioWare game like Mass Effect is unquestionably an Option 1 game. Players can choose to become either ‘paragons’ or ‘renegades’ by applying their own moral compasses to decision-making. Sure, a person who is inherently good can still have fun playing an evil character, but doing so triggers the same compass. We are given moral choices, we select from among them. Decisions, decisions.
On the other hand, some games don’t provide such obvious forks in the road. The example that came up in-class was Bullfrog’s Dungeon Keeper, in which the moral rules implied by the game place you squarely in the shoes of an evil protagonist. If I were to follow Option 1 and decide to uphold my personal ethics, I’d be forced to quit — a road less travelled, to be sure, but not particularly entertaining. All I can do is make decisions that benefit the protagonist so I can keep going, making Dungeon Keeper an Option 2 game.
At least, that’s the Gee perspective.
Naturally, being a place where discussion is encouraged, Dean’s classroom couldn’t help but chime in. One student in particular brought up the fact that the choices provided in BioWare games (and those like them, of course) don’t actually result in a significant change to the game experience. As he put it (and I’m paraphrasing), “I can either be a good bad-ass or an evil bad-ass, but I’m still a bad-ass.” The player still kills almost everything in sight. The level of violence in the game doesn’t change just because you choose to go one way or the other, and paragons experience the exact same gameplay content as renegades, with only (relatively) minor shifts in conversations and cutscenes between them.
The student was finding it fairly difficult to articulate his thoughts, and even Dean was having a hard time trying to see what his point was. I’ve been thinking about it for a while, and I think (though I obviously can’t be 100% sure) I’ve nailed it down to this: Games that ostensibly provide the player with ethical choices do nothing of the sort, because there’s no long-term consequence. There’s no meaningful moral decision to be made in an Option 1 game, so Option 1 games, as defined by Gee, don’t really exist.
In case you hadn’t guessed yet: Yes, I’m about to argue the exact opposite.
Being someone that refuses to play a renegade in Mass Effect or a Dark Jedi in KOTOR, it goes without saying that I don’t agree with the student’s perspective. I choose the path of righteousness every time, because I can’t help but see my moral values mapped onto virtual sprites and polygons. What’s more, I’ll play Dungeon Keeper gleefully. But when given the choice, I’ll always take the high road.
Yeah, I know, it's DK2. It's prettier to look at, you know.
And therein lies the rub. I will still play Dungeon Keeper. I will still cull Stratholme as Arthas in Warcraft III. I have no problem doing so, because at those points in time, the bad guy is the protagonist, and I’m doing what I need to do to complete the game and win. Here’s the thing, though: in Dungeon Keeper, I’ll do my best to keep my imps well-fed with poultry sacrifices. I’ll do my damndest to keep all my ghoul minions in Stratholme alive.
Despite the fact that the protagonist is evil, I’ll still overlay my moral values onto the situation, doing what I can to support and protect those for whom I am directly responsible.
From my perspective, I can’t help but see all games as Option 1 games. The fact that we play the protagonist does not force us to play from their moral perspective; on the contrary, it forces us to overlay our own moral perspectives onto their situations, ‘good’ or ‘evil’. We don’t play an evil dungeon keeper in because that’s the role we’re given; we play it because we map our moral code onto the keeper’s situation, finding the true good in his work. We’re not killing heroes because they’re the good guys; we’re killing them because they’re trying to drive us from our home.
Let’s be clear: I’m not trying to shove my foot up Gee’s rear-end. In fact, Gee’s a surprisingly smart guy, he makes a heck of a lot of keen observations, and there’s a reason he’s required reading in Dean’s class. My point is that our moral values come into play in every situation we encounter in life, including games where we’re playing the ‘bad guy’ protagonist. It’s worth remembering, because eventually our actions in games start to affect other people — and when that happens, morality isn’t just something worth pondering. It becomes every bit as important in games as it is in real life, because the consequences of our actions are just as dire.
But that’s a discussion for next time.
Tags: Dean O'Donnell, Dungeon Keeper, IMGD, James Paul Gee, Mass Effect, Social Issues, WPI