"Bereft of good and evil are games without morality"?

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Re: "Bereft of good and evil are games without morality"?

Post by Endoperez » Sun Mar 14, 2010 8:01 am

tokage wrote:This would mean ethics are more a set of general rules, that won't change, and moral value systems are specific rules derived from ethics in specific contexts.
I took a few philosophy classes 3 or 4 years ago, and we had to study several ethical theories. Ethics change too, no way around that.

Just jump to wikipedia and compare hedonism ("the principle ethic is maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain") to stoicism ("Peace of mind, or Apatheia, was of the highest value; self-mastery over one's desires and emotions leads to spiritual peace") to consequentialism ("a morally right action is one that produces a good outcome, or consequence" or "ends justify the means"), or deontology (where ethics IS more or less a set of general rules), and then there's David Hoy's "post-critique model", basically saying that ethics is only relevant when there are no rules and that once there are laws and rules, an issue is no more an ethical problem, just a moral question. "For example, should animal experimentation become illegal in a society, it will no longer be an ethical issue" although it would still be a moral concern.

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Re: "Bereft of good and evil are games without morality"?

Post by tokage » Sun Mar 14, 2010 8:13 am

Ok, maybe I should have worded that clearer. Of course there is not a single "absolute truth" ethic. What I meant is, that a given ethic doesn't have to change to cope with a changed world, because the rules are general, while a moral value system runs into problems as soon as the circumstances change, because there is no connection to the consequences of the forbidden or enforced actions.
Of course, this is still a bit generalized.

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Re: "Bereft of good and evil are games without morality"?

Post by Endoperez » Mon Mar 15, 2010 8:12 am

Hmm, okay.

If the world has changed, even if the ethical system hasn't, applying that ethic to a problem may end up giving a different result. To quote your example about pre-marital sex: But at some point in history, there probably was a good ethical reason to put up that rule (maybe it had to do with the problems a single mother has to face;

I kind of want to argue that if the results change, then the ethical system has also, to an extent, changed. That's just semantics, though, and I pretty much agree with the other definition you gave:
For me the main difference would be, that ethics focus on the effects your action will have on other people(or you and the world in general) while morality is more a comparison of the actions against a codex of morals (often defined by a religion or authority), where the actual effects are of secondary concern.

So let's get back to the original topic:

What does that mean for computer games? In games, "morality" must be defined by a designer or programmer, and that's easy. If you lie and steal and kill, you lack morals. It's been done many times over. However, that should be different from the actual effects your actions have on the world? A morally right action may cause a bad result. Is an action that's good in the short term but bad on the long term, good or bad?

Is it INSTANTLY good or INSTANTLY bad, even if you had no way to know that giving the beggar money will end up having him killed in a bar brawl?
Or is it only bad once the bad things actually happen, so that you may get "bad karma!" event while you're elsewhere?
Or even, things are only bad if YOU learn about them. "Oops, there goes the town water reserves, better not see what happened because I want to become a better person."

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Re: "Bereft of good and evil are games without morality"?

Post by Wilbefast » Mon Mar 15, 2010 2:09 pm

endoperez wrote:If you lie and steal and kill, you lack morals. It's been done many times over. However, that should be different from the actual effects your actions have on the world?
Whenever I play Fallout or Oblivion kleptomania sets in big-time, but I don't think it's because I know I won't be arrested and put in jail. Did you know that people are more worried about killing someone while drink-driving than of killing themselves? This is why anti-drink-driving adverts almost always involve the death of others, and the survival of the guilty party.





What does this mean? Perhaps if stealing anything not nailed-down actually caused people to lose their lively-hoods I wouldn't do it, but I know that it's a game, and all their gear isn't really theirs: it just happens to be in their house. Whether I still it or not won't make any difference to them, only to be. Thus it doesn't seem at all immoral to rob everyone I meet, and I'm almost shocked when they start making a fuss if they catch me.

Unless you're a psychopath you naturally empathise with those around you, and so being considerate of others (pretty much the heart of all ethics and morality) comes very naturally. Giving people a "karma" score is pointless: if you want people to learn anything from the experience, you need to get them to give themselves a karma score.

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Re: "Bereft of good and evil are games without morality"?

Post by Endoperez » Mon Mar 15, 2010 3:02 pm

Simulating economics is hard enough, and simulating NPCs' reactions to a merchant's sudden lack of money and goods, or to a blacksmith suddenly getting few tons' worth of iron and steel in the form of metal weapons and armour, is currently impossible.

There's not enough people to write the dialogue, and new games even have the habit of getting all the dialogue spoken. I have no trouble with voice-acting, as long as the devs don't expect to record EVERYTHING in an epic RPG. It costs next to nothing to give a group of villagers something to say about a plot event, but having to hire voice-actors and getting them a studio and all that is definitely not free. If an RPG promises that everything is spoken aloud, I don't find that a good thing.

What could be done is an invisible morality or karma score, and a local crime rate score. Thieving could get you down to "suspicious" or so.
"Hey, new guy! How come you came to town looking like you hadn't seen civilization for a month, but had enough money to buy everything off the apothecary, eh? That's mighty suspicious there, and you know what else is suspicious? Someone broke down to the mayor's house last night and stole his silverware, his mother's silverware his collection of antique silverware, and his dog's clay bowl. You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you?"

The reputation should follow you to other cities given enough time, and there should also be local adjustments. Killing some farmers in the starting town wouldn't mean squat once you've saved the capital, but if you ever returned to the town, even if they weren't sure it was you, well, they couldn't be sure it was NOT you either. I'm not sure of the details, but Thomas Biskup (of ADOM fame) planned something like that for JADE.

So local reputation spreads, becomes a wordwide reputation score, and the local reputation in a new place starts at the general reputation score. It could even be made into a sidequest about catching the thief (you) that's been traveling around the country. You'd either have to find a scapegoat, or start getting rid of the other thieves so that the overall rate of crime would go down. You might even arrive into a town and find out someone's been inspired and already stole everything.

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Re: "Bereft of good and evil are games without morality"?

Post by Wilbefast » Mon Mar 15, 2010 3:23 pm

endoperez wrote:What could be done is an invisible morality or karma score, and a local crime rate score. Thieving could get you down to "suspicious" or so.
But this is just the standard Bethesda mechanic for creating dynamic difficulty curves (future "heists" are harder). Since players like a challenge, you're really just encouraging amorality, and as I just explained the thought of being punished, especially if it's in a game, is nowhere near as powerful as seeing the negative effects of your actions.

In other words, if you screw the player over when they do something "wrong", they'll just start seeing the world as an enemy. If, however, the world passively suffers because of their actions, the player might actually take pity on it, and try to set things right.

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Re: "Bereft of good and evil are games without morality"?

Post by Freshbite » Mon Mar 15, 2010 3:29 pm

I'm sorry I can't contribute with a lengthy and well-informative post, but I just wanted to let you guys know that I admire your discussions and that you drive me into playing RPG's again.

Fallout 3, Dragon Age and Divinity II, here I come!

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Re: "Bereft of good and evil are games without morality"?

Post by Endoperez » Mon Mar 15, 2010 4:27 pm

Wilbefast wrote:But this is just the standard Bethesda mechanic for creating dynamic difficulty curves (future "heists" are harder). Since players like a challenge, you're really just encouraging amorality, and as I just explained the thought of being punished, especially if it's in a game, is nowhere near as powerful as seeing the negative effects of your actions.
Did I mention that is should be hidden? Consider the weapon discussion from the SPF. A sword may be faster than a different sword. Showing the numerical value, the "how much faster" may make the decisions easier for the player, but it may take away something of the experience. Karma systems aren't perfect, but they could be done better.

Do Bethesda NPCs actually react to what you steal? To the number of thefts in the area? I thought their system was "if you're caught stealing, guards everywhere will charge you" with no bad effects if you aren't caught.

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Re: "Bereft of good and evil are games without morality"?

Post by tokage » Mon Mar 15, 2010 7:33 pm

Hmm it would be awesome if a hidden suspicion system would be believable and kind of transparently implemented. But I don't see that happening. I think what is important is simplicity, the player has to at least make the connection between his actions and the consequences in the game world. If the system is too complex and he just gets hated out of nowhere, without knowing the reason why, he may be just confused or think the game is doing this for story purposes anyway. But what this kind of morality system really wants to achieve is, that he should think about his actions and how they influence the game world. The balance would be hard to pull of.

I too have this urge to just steal everything I can get in the RPG. I think it is also a trained reflex. It is what you do in all computer games(not only RPGs) and just comes off naturally. When you think about it there aren't many games that don't reward you for taking as much as possible. Another aspect may be that it is still too easy because you just could load a quicksave, if you get caught. Stealing has no consequences.
I would say one way to counter it, when having a Karma system is having it affect directly.
Coming back to Kotor, it just doesn't really make sense that you can take almost everything you want without being affected in your light/dark side balance. What Jedi could do that? (Only Qui-Gon Jinn could, I guess). It would be much more logical if a real karma system(like the alignment of a Jedi) would be instantly adjusted for everything you do. Of course, that's not so easy to balance either, because doing good things is way harder than doing bad things.

That's also why I said that it was pulled of better in Baldur's gate. There you have an alignment that doesn't change(AFAIK) and a reputation, that reflects how you are seen by the world, which also influences the reactions of people to you. Reputation and alignment can also conflict and lead to consequences for certain character classes(e.g. fallen paladin).

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Re: "Bereft of good and evil are games without morality"?

Post by Renegade_Turner » Mon Mar 15, 2010 8:29 pm

tokage wrote:I too have this urge to just steal everything I can get in the RPG. I think it is also a trained reflex. It is what you do in all computer games(not only RPGs) and just comes off naturally. When you think about it there aren't many games that don't reward you for taking as much as possible. Another aspect may be that it is still too easy because you just could load a quicksave, if you get caught. Stealing has no consequences.
Yes, I found myself doing such things when I played Fallout 3, and just when I play RPG games in general. It doesn't even feel like stealing until the game developers implement a feature for recognising it as stealing. If Fallout 3 didn't have a command going "Steal" and no one reprimanded you for doing so, then it wouldn't even occur to most people that taking something from someone's house without asking is wrong.

Of course, I only took the useful stuff. Plates and cups were useful at the start of the game. Steal all the plates in Megaton and then sell them off for like...10 bottlecaps. Later on I just took ammo and weapons and stuff.

It's just ingrained in gamers, as you said, to assume everything in the game in a container is theirs for the taking. JRPG's like Final Fantasy and Breath Of Fire are to blame for a lot of this trend. Stupid Cloud Strike going around opening all those treasure chests.

I never really got the whole treasure chest thing either. As if normal people store things like pirates would. Walk into some suburban house in Final Fantasy 7 and some schmuck will have a helmet in a treasure chest.

However, I think my point about the developers feeling they have to specifically implement functions that will let you know you're "bad" still stands. It makes sense in a way, considering that the average person won't feel negative moral repurcussions from choosing to kill someone in a video game. Only hardcore gamers who immerse themselves in the game as a whole will. So they feel they must implement some kind of function in the game that will remind players that these are people too (kind of) and that wronging them is morally repugnant.

At the same time, is forcing someone to feel the moral repurcussions of an action the right way to do things? Obviously not, since then you're only forcing one person's conscience onto another person. It's like only finding out that it's wrong to take from the cookie jar because your mother caught you.

Nevertheless, the act of implementing morality choices with black and white paths that are summed up by "Good and Evil" or "Right and Wrong" or "Light and Dark" or "Paragon and Renegade" makes about as much sense as the church telling people that they're evil for consummating a relationship before marriage.

Sometimes making serious points is fun.

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Re: "Bereft of good and evil are games without morality"?

Post by Endoperez » Tue Mar 16, 2010 1:14 am

tokage wrote:That's also why I said that it was pulled of better in Baldur's gate. There you have an alignment that doesn't change(AFAIK) and a reputation, that reflects how you are seen by the world, which also influences the reactions of people to you. Reputation and alignment can also conflict and lead to consequences for certain character classes(e.g. fallen paladin).
I sneaked into a shopkeeper's shop, stole everything including his masterwork swords and spears, and sold them back to him no problem. I didn't expect to get guards summoned to the house when I was inside, alone, stealing stuff... but I did expect the other characters (Good ones, at that) to protest at the blatant stealing, or the shopkeeper to protest at a stranger selling him all kinds of things he made himself.

The stealing system in Baldur's Gate has so many problems is shouldn't be used in a good, modern RPG for more than the very lightest inspiration.
Tomb of Elemental Evil had "party aligment" that you had to choose at character creation, that affected the starting scenario and possibly the ending too. It also had character alignments, but they didn't really do anything since the game was hack and slash any way, although a paladin could still fall. From drinking beer with evil people.

But any way, the party alignment was pretty nice way to do things. Something like that should work better than "character alignment vs reputation".

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Re: "Bereft of good and evil are games without morality"?

Post by tokage » Tue Mar 16, 2010 4:33 am

Renegade_Turner wrote: It's just ingrained in gamers, as you said, to assume everything in the game in a container is theirs for the taking. JRPG's like Final Fantasy and Breath Of Fire are to blame for a lot of this trend. Stupid Cloud Strike going around opening all those treasure chests.
I think the trend itself could be even traced back to the coins in Super Mario or the dots in Pac Man.
Endoperez wrote:The stealing system in Baldur's Gate has so many problems is shouldn't be used in a good, modern RPG for more than the very lightest inspiration.

Yepp, you are right. I was just making the comparison between the "inner karma" alignment and the "outer world" reputation system, where it just makes more sense, that it is only influenced when you are caught stealing and not by the act of stealing itself. The problem that both systems still have is that the triggers for karma/reputation variable change are limited to too few specific occurrences. There is a sharp boundary for actions that are good/bad and actions that don't matter at all and players can recognize that. Then once they figured it out the players will judge actions that won't matter based not on morality, but on the advantage they get for completing the game(more money usually helps). It is only a game after all.

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Re: "Bereft of good and evil are games without morality"?

Post by Wilbefast » Tue Mar 16, 2010 5:39 am

Good post Ren. Let's think about the "Cookie Jar" example mentioned: when you're very young, you take as many cookies as you can get away with, and your only fear is of being punished. Unless the punishment is extremely gruesome this isn't really going to dissuade you, and even if it *is* gruesome you'll still *want* to still the cookies, but you won't do it - because of fear.

Fear of punishment is not the same as ethics - it's like people giving to charity because they want to go to Heaven: it's all about the carrot and the stick, not the decision itself or its consequences. A paedophile might spend years telling himself that being attracted to children is "evil", but if he never thinks about the child then he'll never understand what "evil" actually means. To him, "evil" will just be a hollow word meaning "something that must not be done, or you will go to Hell".
What I'm trying to say is: you can teach people to ACT in an ethical manner by punishing bad behaviour and rewarding good behaviour, but you can't teach them to THINK in an ethical manner.

The only way of doing this is to press upon them the effects of their actions on others: that their actions will make others happy or miserable. For as long as they've been children, children have been selfish and capricious - not out of spite but simply because humanity is acquired, not innate - one must *learn* to consider others.
Luckily children are very fast learners, and how do they learn? By playing games of course! Word games to learn vocabulary, sport to learn coordination, counting games, board games, any kind of game imaginable is about learning or perfecting a skill.
So what about learning ethics? I think games have a responsibility to show realistic consequences, because if they don't they're encouraging amorality (not to be confused with "immorality").
Telling the player that they're being "bad" or "good" will, at best, encourage them to act in a more sociable manner, but the root of the problem will remain.

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Re: "Bereft of good and evil are games without morality"?

Post by Endoperez » Tue Mar 16, 2010 6:06 am

Wilbefast wrote:you can teach people to ACT in an ethical manner by punishing bad behaviour and rewarding good behaviour, but you can't teach them to THINK in an ethical manner.

So what about learning ethics? I think games have a responsibility to show realistic consequences, because if they don't they're encouraging amorality (not to be confused with "immorality").
You're thinking of classical conditioning there, all kinds of exercise that teach you think differently also go under teaching.

Semantics aside, games and game designers don't have any more responsibility than movie makers and cartoonists. There are games that teach, and games that don't, just as there are stories that have a moral and those that don't. You can't say it's a responsibility to make educational games, because all games shouldn't be forced to be educational and it would be unfair to force only some game developers to make educational games while giving others a free ride. Promoting the making of educational games could be good. You could probably get sponsors for games like that from EU projects or various bureaus or organizations that sponsor various things that are thought to be good for the general public in various ways.

It would probably be hard to do a game that's designed to be educational, and at the same time is so fun to play that it reaches a large part of the target audience. Still, an interesting idea...

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Re: "Bereft of good and evil are games without morality"?

Post by Wilbefast » Tue Mar 16, 2010 6:40 am

You can often give alternatives to killing without greatly altering gameplay - contrary to what you might think, I *don't* actually like "educational" games, any more than I like "art" games. But I do think it would be good to have a more meaningful and a more educational side to our games/

It's worth noting that art and entertainment are very closely related to teaching, something we tend to forget these days: Greek tragedies were supposed to encourage "Catharsis", a purging of passions, in other words they were a form of civic education, art and entertainment combined. To this day I think separating the three is a bad idea, or rather that the most meaningful messages are most often those that manage to entertain AND teach AND move.

Think about the best teacher you've ever had: chances are they were a pleasant person, had a good sense of humour and knew their subject reasonably well. Few people like teachers who ONLY know their subject or ONLY have a good sense of humour.

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