Today I wrote a short story that followed the reflection of a wretched individual who believed he could bring about the rise of a utopia by killing everyone, describing that humans got a great view of perfection from the point of no return. In the spirit of wanting to turn every story I come up with in a Half Life 2 mod, I went about devising a way in which I could place the player convincingly within the boots of the character, whilst letting them bring about their own interpretation of a narrative.
The situation goes that you walk into a train station, narration wafting overhead. You’re armed only with a pistol, yet you haven’t been told what you must do, you must rely only on your inner monologue to shape your interpretation of the character, but from there on in, your actions are entirely of your volition. You leave, or everyone dies.
Then it hit me. So often have games shoe-horned you into contrived moral divisions whilst stripping you of your own input. While you may have to choose whether someone lives, or someone dies, it’s still a choice that is given to you, and the moral struggle really ends with the character.
Putting a player into a situation where we are aware of the character’s ideologies, yet you are unaware of what you must accomplish, forces the player to make their own decision, instead of choosing one the game presents (even if it is ultimately a binary choice)
Everyone lives or everyone dies. It’s a simple scenario, but if a game is presenting a serious and mature tone (ie not Grand Theft Auto), then the impact of such situations is guaranteed to be a great deal higher, than those in which the game gives you a pat on the back, and hand you a menu.
Also, it seems like I’m going to be trapped in the form of short articles on my errant rantings for a while. But so what, the ideas are fresh off the press. Also, seems like Jack is planning a couple of pieces for the not too distant future.
Nice job breaking it, hero.
If I’m reading this correctly (and forgive me if I’m not), it sounds like you’re giving the player a gun, telling them to save the world, and then punishing them for connecting the dots in the lazy kill-em-all tradition of gaming justice. This could be cool. I would dearly love to see something that effectively challenges this sort of violent assumption, so long as it’s not too heavy-handed.
The problem occurs when you consider how shooting people (presumably) came to be the go-to method of problem solving in the first place. The action of pulling a trigger on somebody is much more easily represented in a videogame than any nonviolent option (press X to organize a letter-writing campaign?), and the most complicated option of all—speech—is often the bedrock of any nonviolent actions.
Bioware—bless them—have made an admirable attempt of implementing this, but it’s still a wide gap between clicking options in a dialog tree and actually stringing together your own arguments for maximum effect. I recall one example in Dragon Age (the landsmeet) that was an exercise in complex diplomacy, but no matter what dialog options I chose everything ended up falling apart. Granted, this sometimes happens in real life, but it shouldn’t have here: I genuinely believe that I could have salvaged everything if I’d had complete freedom to speak however I wished. Instead, things ended in bloodshed because I simply wasn’t given enough dialog options.
Like I said above, this could be really interesting, but I think developers tend to “strip you of your own input” out of necessity, not laziness. Unless, again, I’ve just horribly misread your point.
You’re definitely right in that a game context requires more depth and development. But alas, if I didn’t have license to go off of crazy, impractical tangents then I’d hardly have a blog.
I think the problem with the situation I’ve set up, as you said, is that people are inevitably going to try to shoot something to solve the problem before they even consider an alternative. Hell, if I’m stuck in a game, I’ll probably just spray randomly to vent some frustration. What I was getting at with this hypothetical situation is making the player feel powerless and confused. The narrative alludes to the character’s ideologies, (a utopia cannot exist with humans), and feels as if they are bitterly complying with the character’s wishes, and finally realising that they blood spilt was entirely of their own volition. A bit like No Russian, except, you know, meaningful.
Actually, you know what? Forget it. I don’t mean anything, and that is the point.
I’d much rather give a player a bizarre situation, with just enough character/situation exposition to bring them to action, the gauge THEIR response, instead of contriving a set response from them. That’s what it should be about.
In this light, I’d kind of like to make a series of games putting people in unusual, challenging settings, and seeing what people would make of it. Problem is, shock value rarely extends beyond “Innocent bystander A nervously approaches and kills raving maniac B to save life of Cowering Damsel C”. Regardless, I shall give it some thought. And thanks for your comment; I couldn’t keep up a sane standard if I didn’t have some good minds picking at my works.
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I know that my reply is dated, especially given the new blogpost that I can’t yet to read (Bioshock2 spoiler? ‘fraid I don’t love anyone’s blog enough to do that), may I also link the short indie game Execution (http://gmc.yoyogames.com/index.php?showtopic=375097) to say that yes, this is why I agree with Veret and this is why I think the game Execution was a failure.
Moral activity within a game should be treated as a valid option in order to place the weight of the situation onto the players. If the entire set up is heavily hinting that we are expected to do the brutal way, then the brutal way is the default. By frustrating the gamers with the lack of choice, it could be fully emotionally impacting but it deviates from the morality angle and goes into the autonomy one.
For me, nothing beats a moral dilemma as if it was set out right in the beginning, clearly, that the choices are clear and it’s up to me. Having said that, I would imagine that it’s also a largely individual thing as many have said they thought Execution was a clever powerful game.
Alright, I’ll give it a shot later.
And that’s pretty well what I’m getting at. Moral decisions are feeling more and more contrived, and game-like, and putting less emphasis on the player’s choice, which leads you down somewhat disappointing paths. Paths that you never feel you had any impact in. In regard to this, there are a few games I need to finish, and maybe some that you might be interested in too. Fahrenheit, Pathologic and Deus Ex. Within these games I’ve either been promised that my impact will resound with strength and realism throughout the game, or that you’ve been put in real, stressful and tough environments.
Also, consider them more gameplay spoilers, in Bioshock 2, but I don’t want to give anything away. So I’ll summarise them here.
pros
– The game takes some time to educate you on the moral choice you are going to make
cons
-The moral choices are somewhat arbitrary, repetitive, and give no hint as toward their impact
-The game punishes you for performing seemingly “good” deeds.
I hope this doesn’t put you off, it’s not bad, it’s just not Bioshock.
THIS HAS GIVEN ME AN AMAZING IDEA
MOST EXCELLENT.
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