Week 10: Journal

Morality

Morality has always been an interesting and… confusing train of thought for me. What interests me the most about morals and ethics is the idea of consequences. I fairly strongly believe that whenever morals and ethics are in question, that one must examine the motivations behind actions. Consider the option of stealing money for one’s own personal gain. In my opinion, if one chooses not to steal the money there are two very distinct possibilities, that they either:

1. Did not steal because stealing is wrong.
2. Did not steal because they were afraid of the consequences.

And the consequences could be anything: from as small as not wanting to feel guilty later, up to not wanting go to jail if they’re caught, or even as far as fearing eternal damnation after judgement. I feel quite strongly that a decision to do or not do something that has been tainted by the consequences of that action ceases to be a “moral” decision. Where things get confusing for me is when I consider that as human beings, in the physical world with lives to lead where essentially every action and decision we make has a consequence, suggests that none of our choices are really moral (except maybe for thought experiments or questions that we ask ourselves) – which just seems hard to accept. I like to think that I obey the law because I believe it is the right thing to do, not because I fear punishment – and I hope that goes for most people too. But can I be sure that I haven’t been tainted? Always in the back of my mind considering the “what ifs?”. I think I settle on the idea that it’s not so black and white: that consequences are inevitable, and as long as they aren’t the deciding factor (e.g. “I would steal if I know I wouldn’t be caught”), then decisions can be considered moral.

Morality in games adds another layer of complexity and confusion for me. I’ve considered two possibilities. My initial thought was that video games provide a sort of barrier against consequences. When faced with decisions in games, the player is often completely disconnected from the consequences, with the actions having no bearing on actual life, and with the characters and situations being simply not real. In this way I concluded that the morality in video games was perhaps more “real” than that in our lives? It made sense that what a player does without fear of consequence to his or her real life would constitute their moral code. This lack, or at least disregard of consequences is what I believe is necessary for a meaningful moral decision.

However, my thinking did not stop there. I decided my logic had a rather large flaw: that choices in games usually do have consequences. Often not in the real world sense, but usually within the game itself. These consequences however are slightly different to real world ones. Consider a situation: choosing between peace or… taking over the world, killing lots of people in the process. In the real world, the consequences would be huge, and the moral decision is a pretty simple one. In a game however, the consequences are far less serious: the “people” aren’t real, and the consequence is simply whether or not the player gets to experience whatever fun experience they might gain from the course of action. And this, at least in all the games I have played, is the general gist of “moral choices” in games: having no real consequences, just offering players different experiences of fun, and as Yahtzee suggests this is usually a fairly distinct path of either enjoying being the hero or enjoying bringing destruction on things (which can be pretty fun, and I certainly don’t think that people who enjoy simulated violence are immoral). The fact that you usually can start again and choose and enjoy the other paths also lessens the actual “moral” side of the choice.

Essentially, I think games are mostly a way to create a “fun” experience for the players – and for games to offer meaningful moral choices it would have to involve moving away from simply offering players a choice between two contrasting experiences into something much more.. serious. Having said that, I don’t think its impossible for games to do this, but I don’t think all games should have to incorporate real moral choices.