Playing games with morality

In the past, videogames have often been blood-thirsty and amoral, but a new generation of popular games are asking players to consider the moral consequences of their actions, writes JOE GRIFFIN

HOW FAR would you go to save your child’s life? Would you kill somebody? How about on a broader scale – would you be able to stand by and watch a terrorist attack if it meant saving more lives?

These are scenarios from two of the highest profile videogames of the past year, respectively Heavy Rainand Modern Warfare II,but difficult ethical decisions are becoming more and more common in games.

This trend is not tied to one game type, but spreads to genres as diverse as interactive dramas ( Heavy Rain), first-person military shooters ( Modern Warfare II), and even to fantasy role-playing (the Fableseries) and horror (the Bioshockand Left 4 Deadgames ).

In Heavy Rain, players are constantly asked to make difficult moral decisions. Apart from the central story of a man racing to find his missing son, gamers are asked if they could walk past a robbery or assault without intervening. Every one of these decisions has a consequence and affects the finale of the game.

Guillaume De Fondaumiere is chief executive of Quantic Dream, the developers of Heavy Rain.

“Games can be much more than toys and be a true form of cultural expression,” he says. “We wanted an interactive experience with real emotions at its core: change the story based on [characters’] actions. The most important thing for us was to trigger emotions. We wanted gamers who, like us, played games for 20 years or so, and were a little bit tired of killing the same zombies in the same dark corridors.

“I can share a movie or a book with my wife or friends or parents, but I can’t share my experiences on videogames because the themes that games deal with are not interesting to them. They’re quite narrow.”

It's interesting that this ambition also extends (albeit to a lesser extent) to combat games. Modern Warfare II, one of the biggest-selling games of all time, was a controversial affair. Even before it was released, one scene, set in an airport, had generated a wave of negative responses. In the scene, you play an undercover US soldier in a Russian terrorist group. Moments after the airport setting is established, the Russians start firing their machine guns, laying waste to dozens of civilians in the terminal. You have to choose whether to participate in the killing, stand aside, or attack the terrorists. In other words, can you sacrifice dozens of lives to potentially save millions more?

Out of context, footage of this scene is deeply disturbing, and the game was damned (including by many who hadn’t played it) for promoting or belittling the slaughter of civilians. But others have argued that it highlights the atrocities that soldiers have to witness and the difficult decisions they are often faced with. Also, it’s possible to pass the contentious level without firing a single shot. In other words, if you’re skilful enough, you can fulfil your duty with a relatively clear conscience.

The makers of Fablepride themselves on the series' morality and ambiguity. Indeed, in one of the early scenes of the forthcoming Fable III, players choose who gets executed; your character's closest friend, or a group of innocent peasants. Later, you must make decisions relating to distribution of wealth. For example, should it go to the hungry, or be used to fight tyranny?

"When it comes to morality in Fable, when we started the franchise, every choice had a consequence," says Josh Atkins, the game's lead designer. "It's still a key phrase for us. But moving forward, morality as its own thing and very black-and-white decisions, that gets old for us. There are lots of shades of grey in between. What we wanted to do with Fable IIIwas to ask questions which weren't so straightforward and really made you think.

"When it comes to morality, yes you'll have some decisions that are [clearly] good and bad," he says, "but then we really want to have ones that make you ask 'well, what is the right one to do? What is moral?' We hit you on the head with that at the start of the game. I think that's a very interesting question as a player, as opposed to [just] good verses bad." Since most games are objective-based, this is a logical next step for the industry. And so far, gamers are welcoming the new direction. With the exception of Fable III, which will be released in October, all of the games discussed here have had healthy sales.

What's more, this newfound moral complexity need not impede on the visceral thrills of game-play. Yes, when telling a story nuance is often sacrificed for pace, but even some of the more primal games have room for difficult decisions. In the grizzly zombie apocalypse game, Left 4 Dead 2, gamers can play as a co-operative team, and cowardice and selfishness are not encouraged. In fact, it's common for fans of the game to replay certain segments repeatedly to ensure that every team member survives. In another horror series, Bioshock, you can choose to rescue or 'harvest' innocent children, and your moral decisions have an outcome on the game's narrative.

With competition in the industry so high and standards in both technology and artistry climbing every month, it makes sense that game developers will strive to offer more depth than their competitors. While there will probably always be room for shallow and amoral games, it’s a welcome development to see gamers increasingly being asked to think before they press a button or pull the trigger.