Where are the moral/ethical lines in interactive fiction?

Game Development Writing and Content
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@HomingPidgeon
"You’re arguing in favor of a hypothetical that I don’t disagree with, and that I don’t think anyone does, but the problem is that it is just a hypothetical. Most people aren’t going to get the education that you’re describing, "

So you’re saying I’m an exception? I guess that’s where the problem lies then… up until now I have always believed the way I grew up (with parents that actually did their earnest to teach me right) was the standard and correct way (because it is) and that anyone else was an exception rather than the rule. Man, that’s depressing.

I’m aware that media can be very influential to young, unprepared minds but I guess I’m was (still am) a tad lucky in that aspect. I’m pretty brain dead when it comes to subliminal messages. That whole male dominance trend? Never really noticed it, not because I’ve grown to accept it (I’m in favor of equality) but because I never take movies seriously or deep enough to pay attention to those details. Same thing with games, books and ads.

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I think just saying that people these days learn immoral things through the media they consume is oversimplifying things a bit

Yes, that does happen, but people also consume media that (they believe) reinforces beliefs they already have. I can’t think of specific examples at the moment, though I know there are a lot, but if someone reads/watches/listens to something that involves themes or events in favor of rape/racism/homophobia/etc, chances are, that person already held those views

Chances are they’ll also assume that those views are correct and/or that everyone else is the same. Then not only would they go on to pass those thoughts on to friends/siblings/children (which is a problem in itself), they go and cause violence toward other people (whether it’s physical/verbal or online/in person) because they think they’re right to do so, and if they keep consuming media that agrees with them and the people around agrees with them (whether it’s friends, family, colleagues, etc), who’s going to stop them? While not media related, this was already proven to be true when race related violence increased in the UK immediately following Brexit and then in the US after the presidential election

Also, despite being treated like it’s a different thing entirely, pop culture is a part of the surrounding culture. It doesn’t exist in a bubble. It’s going to both influence what people think (whether it’s teaching what’s right and wrong or reaffirming what’s right and wrong) and echo what people are already thinking

Edit: I got distracted and completely forgot a point I was gonna make. People are also probably going to misinterpret things regardless of the original intent, like how Lolita is often mistaken for a romance when it’s actually condemning pedophilia. That doesn’t make the creator wrong and the message would get through to the right audience, however people are going to twist things to suit their own desires. As a creator, I think touchy subjects such as that should be handled with care and in a serious manner and not just to add shock value with “but this thing is bad in real life, don’t do it” tacked on the end

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I think the media can be used to convince people of things that are wrong like having a diet ad that is photoshopped or with different before and after people. People can’t really be blamed when false/ unrealistic info is presented as the truth and they believe it. But games and some entertainment are presented as fiction. If a person has had any type of close relationship with other people, they should understand the concept of no means no. If no doesn’t mean no, then at least some other safe word means no.

I think IF and stories can be used to show moral messages, but it has to be entertaining (people play games to be entertained) and relevant to the main plot. It’s very hard to do justice writing about bad topics and it might just be better to leave some things out, if possible. The reader wants choices and agency and even trying to show a good relationship by forcing a player to like a character can be not liked by a reader. NPC actions may be better suited for that.

While games and movies can have moral messages, they’re probably not the best choice to get your morals from. That’s probably more suited to a news or documentary type program where you have to worry less about - is this fun with meaningful choices. Maybe a law change or one of those billboards that tell you about meaningful laws when you enter the state or even one’s own actions by setting a good example would be better and more credible.

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I personally think games can be much better at facilitating moral learning than other forms of media simply because they can involve a player’s agency. I know I’ve had more visceral reactions to my own actions, beliefs and the consequences thereof in interactive media than I’ve ever had, say, watching the news.

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This thread is more dealing with the philosophy of game design then the original thread which was dealing with a specific WiP.

The moral/ethical properties of art has been debated for centuries, if not eons. There is always a tension between the originator and the receiver of the art … is the person funding the work responsible for what it represents or is it the person making the project responsible for what it says or is the person reading/viewing that art responsible for their interpretation of what they see?

With games, this is further complicated by the simple fact that agency is exercised by the player. So, we as game designers and writers can, as said in the other thread, describe the mindset of any character but we also put the gamer into the situation where they can experience the mindset themselves through actions they take.

Choices are the vehicle that we, as game designers allow our readers or gamers such agencies.

I’m going to create my own term here called: “mecha-narrative dilemma” which means describing games as: mechanics plus narrative creating a moral dilemma that the gamer/reader must resolve.

A classical trope that creates mecha-narrative dilemma is the sacrifice of a few people to save a greater number of people. In books and class discussions this sometimes goes as follows: a tram is speeding out of control down a hill towards a large crowd of people, certain to kill many in that crowd, unless you throw a switch and divert the tram to a side track where a family is picnicking. The question then is: do you take the action to save the many while sacrificing the few?

A game takes this one step further and allows the designer to place the reader/gamer in that mindset directly and allows the gamer to take the action one way or another and suffer the consequences. The bridging devise between philosophical argument in a classroom and the actual experiment of throwing a person into the situation is our mechanics.

This is why mechanics are so important - strong mechanics make taking the action a heartfelt and weighty decision, one that facilitates the reader’s thinking or engaging the gamer’s own morality and ethics.

The choice command in our games is only powerful if the choices are consequential, if they matter and if they promote utilitarianism - briefly, the view that actions are right if they promote the happiness of a majority.

Edit - for clarity. The choice body itself promoting utilitarianism is different then the entire mechanics system doing so. The choice mechanic loses its effectiveness as an individual mechanic if it promotes non-utilitarian choices. The entire mechanic system itself can promote utilitarianism but is not exclusively limited(or shouldn’t be limited) to that purpose.

As game designers our morality and ethical responsibility to create strong mechanics and a strong narrative that provides mecha-narrative dilemma which leads to utilitarianism or that provokes learning of one nature or another.

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I like the emotion and passion in people’s personal narratives and stories. When I am playing a game, I don’t want to make stupid or bad decisions and this could lead to me missing out on some moral conflict or just not agreeing or believing my character’s role and actions in the game world. Visual novels are better at convincing me of things because I play an already established character, but I don’t see being dynamic as realistic unless some important event happened that caused the main character to change.

In @Eiwynn 's example, I wouldn’t care too much about either decision if I don’t know any of the people or the deaths aren’t appropriately gruesome. The narrative would have to be sufficiently strong enough to make me care. This also reminds me of the moral machine, and due to its random generation, sometimes produced more silly that morally grey scenarios.

like cats being able to read traffic signals. http://moralmachine.mit.edu

The Walking Dead Game caused me to really feel for the human deaths, because the narrative was good and immersive, even though if I was a child, I definitely wouldn’t handle the zombie apocalypse as well as Clem and AJ. Autopilot on r/nosleep was a good story, but I don’t know if I’d believe my character would act the same way. It’s easier to say that my character wouldn’t do something than to deny that a person’s personal tradgedy happened.

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Ludonarrative dissonance is more the conflict between story, narrative and gameplay. For example, if you were to have a game about pacifism but the only way the player could interact would be to kill people. Or Grand Theft Auto 4, where the protagonist laments how he just wants to turn over a new leaf and be a good person while the player has him gun down dozens of people between missions. Starcraft: Brood War, when the player fights to wound the Overmind but not kill it despite having the opportunity and means to do so.

And why is utilitarianism the right thing to promote? There are many, many criticisms one can level at utilitarian thought. Tyranny of the majority, for one.

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It seems I have been misusing a term for several years now. I’ll try to figure out a more appropriate way of saying what I want to and edit it later. Thank you for bringing this to my attention.

Utilitarianism is one of the things to promote that is “right” but not the only. The criticisms would be others - there really is no “one right” thing to promote.

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Can’t agree that a choice is only powerful if it promotes a specific viewpoint.

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If a choice body only promotes the happiness of a few, I’d argue that that choice body is flawed as a mechanic.

Some titles in both CoG libraries are criticized for promoting specific outcomes that sacrifice the happiness of the majority of the readership base.

I edited the original post to try to clarify my thought process - hopefully it helps.

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Surely there’s a world of difference between your behavior being temporarily affected by media after consuming it and deciding that a video game is a how to guide on personal interactions?

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You’re still saying that all games should (at least with part of their body) push a viewpoint you happen to believe in. And I think that that’s a flawed statement - one could write a valid and powerful choice mechanic where one is rewarded for adhering to deontological morality even in the face of unhappiness for all. I may disagree with Piers Anthony’s position on honoring one’s word, for example (which is emphatically not utilitarian; a Piers Anthony hero sticks to his word even if it just makes everyone miserable because That’s The Right Thing To Do), but I don’t consider his position a priori unworthy of examination or promotion.

With all this said, this brings me to a related conundrum: how to make a “powerful” choicegame at all without pissing off the audience in a bad way. The conundrum is this:

As Rich Burlew once said, “There’s no purpose to a story with a theme with which the entire expected audience agrees.” (If any CoG author gets heavy-handed about promoting “gay is good!” in a Choice of Games game, I’m going to grab my hardback of The Last Herald-Mage Trilogy and beat them over the head with it for wasting all of our time.) Conversely, however, if the body of choices forces an outcome with a moral that the entire expected audience does not agree with, they will rightly complain that their moral decisions were invalidated and that they were railroaded (in the sense that that’s a bad thing).

My first conclusion is that a choice-game needs to be very careful with stating a moral outright or “pushing” their agenda, to avoid falling into either mindless pap or nullifying player choice.

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Define temporary. Everything in this world is temporary.

No one believes in the second part of your statement. I doubt there is a single person who, like a mind-controlled zombie, plays a game then goes out and repeats it like some automaton. As I said, that argument is a strawman argument and it is, unfortunately, one that has been bandied about by both conservatives and progressives (which should be more than enough evidence that it is an argument made from rhetoric and not logic).

See, when you see an ad for Coke, you don’t immediately go out and buy one (although I’m sure this is what advertisers would want!) But you might buy one without really thinking about it when you go to a restaurant or visit a supermarket. That’s how the media works. It isn’t outright control, it’s influence.

For example, studies about violence in interactive media have found that an interest in violent video games doesn’t tend to also involve an interest in violent acts. What they have found, however, is an increase in aggression and hyper-vigilance. Is it really a surprise that games that reward both of those things result in an increase of those behaviors, in that level of thinking, among the people who play them?

The brain is very easily fooled. Everything you watch, read and listen to affects the workings of your brain.

Really, I always think of this study about cybersex that demonstrated that the brain responds the same way to reading textual sex as it does to actually experiencing physical sex. The brain is very easily fooled.

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In the end it all comes down to choice. That is the unique nature of this writing format. Many beloved novels feature wayyyy worse stuff than the sort of thing that might get banned for publication here, but it is more impactful because IF actually makes you _do_those things. It might just be me, but I would be more offended by a CoG game that forced me to shoplift something I didn’t need than one that gave an option to murder an innocent in cold blood, because it defeats the purpose of the medium to have choice taken away. The presence of the choice should not be offensive in and of itself. Technically, we all have the choice to steal, injure and murder every day. The fact that only a microscopic portion of the populace chooses it does not make its existence as an option any less real. And aren’t realistic choices something we usually strive for?

Still, we can all agree that line of reasoning can only go so far, as zero censorship brings nothing but chaos and pain. I am the first to admit I am desensisitized, and there are plenty of others out there for whom just seeing a choice could be damaging.

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@HomingPidgeon

USING CRACKED AS SOURCE ?
okay now way i can take this seriously.

Anyway lets be honest, Do you really believe in scrupulously altertering and controling you work so that you ensure that there is nothing that could be taken as problematic by anybody, just because certain depiction doesnt fit with the depiction society would want doesnt mean it somehow leads to people doing evil things, And no going against the societal convection is not somehow immoral or evil. I mean Civil rights act was against the societal convenction of its time.
And it was Good Thing. So here is that.

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@Ramidel

Perfectly said Imho

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@anon86661845

You know i played game where you literally play Officer in charge of Barbarossa.
And i didnt become nazi from it. I mean You cant Argue that somebody who plays Demon summoner in DnD is satanist in real life. And that is exactly the line that argument takes, so yeah im fully in agrement with you

@IvoryOwl
Actually no you are not exception i believe Homing pigeon is the expection and his argument come pretty close to what was heard from moral guardians.
In my opinion and experience a lot of Those “Moral” “Guardians” are pushing rhetoric like this to make people feel guilty and to get people to self censor based on societal preasure anything That Chalanges or defies societal assumption. Im sorry if im misrepresenting the Pigeon here but it comes out as if you depict rape You condone it, which is frankly not true. Depiction does not mean endorsement and to argue it is frankly dishonest, nobody for example tries to argue that Holocaust documents Endorse holocaust, yet somehow its okay for Games which is just Different Art medium to be marked as such ? imho this comes out from what is Frankly a bigotry again nerds, as there is perception of people playing the videogames Being “Icky” @HomingPidgeon Furthermore You are Frankly being manipulative with Enthustiastic consent. While consent indeed needs to be affirmivative and direct and clear No you Cant retroactively revoke it and sue the guy for rape. And term enthustiastic consent comes of as if you need to loudly give the Consent every five minutes during the sex or its rape.

Furthermore Before anyone accuses me of inserting words into people mounths (it happened to me several times) i will point out that im merely saying what i perceive as implications.
While there might be some hyperbole. Hyperbole is accepted rhetorical device.

@HomingPidgeon
Furthermore i would like to ask how many women get rapped during their life.
If you can provide statistics to back the rape culture bit. Because i dont feel Modern day is worse in relation to women than for exampel the 1960s.

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I’m glad I started this! Lots of great comments.

And here’s something that has always bothered me…how “war” is viewed as more “tasteful” than normal violence. I think someone mentioned how war might more easily pass CoG sensors, as compared to other violence, let’s say random street violence.

I guess because we view war as all “cerebral” with endless discussion of tactics, objectives, and all the political goals driving the action. Perhaps we don’t even view the massacred soldiers as “people.” We just view them as combatants, cogs in the wheel of war. So we harden ourselves to their suffering and deaths? But in the end, it’s violence on a massive scale instead of a smaller one. It just seems illogical to me how many would have no problem with a reader-character getting the option to kill 100s of people, but they might become squirmy if given the chance to become the villain in a Dean Koontz type of story where the bad guy kills just a few people, and perhaps for similar political reason.

I think the intimacy of the second situation makes it seem more ‘real,’ and hence perhaps more upsetting, but to me it seems that building a stronger sense of intimacy with the reader is something to be strived for, whereas letting players guide their rampaging armies across opposing lands usually seems…I would use the word sterile.

And I generally try to avoid sterile.

Another word for this might be ‘stakes.’ When the stakes involve large groups of people (armies, huge global conflicts, etc) I just don’t think you can sock the reader with the same intensity of stakes. It’s not as personal. So again, maybe the emotional disconnect sanitizes the violence to some extent, whereas many readers have a much more intense response to one-on-one violence, where the ‘stakes’ are much more personal. But again, I much prefer those stakes.

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@Rhodeworks.

So you are saying that Violent games shouldnt be allowed or that people shouldnt create them ? Furthermore People are individuals and Saying that Every person will be Impacted in EXACT SAME WAY and it will be negatigve is STRAWMAN.
are you saying that There was no nerd that was bullied that found confidence due to those violent videogames ? people are not machines nor collective. that Responds to Input Variable Output Variable. people are not COG Games.

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I don’t play many purely war games, but you don’t and can’t know anything about all the victims because they are not detailed and fleshed out in the same way you’d want ROs and NPCs to be. Like you know murder, rape, starvation and bad things kill lots of people everyday, but most people don’t care because they don’t see it happening and don’t have a personal relationship with the victims.

Even if a person tries to personalize war, the reader might say why are they a part of a war if they’re passafists, or not play the game.
Unnamed Sci-fi Game- Demo as of 4/5 made me sad when

the crazy cat guy murdered the aliens in front of me, when I could have used my charisma and medical skills to avoid getting anyone killed and I had a chance to talk to the victims before they died. Both of the male ROs were pretty bad, so I probably wouldn’t pay for the finished game because it wouldn’t be fun, unless the plot was strong enough to make up for the lack of ROs .

Even if you try to create a character that the MC likes or feels a certain way for, the reader has the power to think what they want about the character and complain if they don’t like being forced to feel a certain way.

People’s morals they have before a game impact how they see in game situations. I wouldn’t go around serial killing everyone, but if my loved one was a zombie or was on life support and brain dead with zero chance of recovery, I wouldn’t feel too bad in a moral way if I pulled the plug. If you give people the chance to “humainly euthanize” people, you’d also have to give the chance to not do that and make each path interesting.

Having to convince readers that they shouldn’t kill during war or do something they may not agree morally with, without being blunt, can be difficult and the reader may still not care about the victim’s backstory.