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My main
complaint with morality choices in games is that they seem to be a
collection of random situations that the developers hope players will
find engaging. But they are unconnected and don’t contribute to any
sort of analysis of what the whole gaming experience means.
Cultures thousands of years ago first used values to help influence
behaviors and decisions among their people. Values have been so
fundamental to the evolution of civilizations that they have helped
spawn legal and religious systems that continue to this day.
The strength of a society is often derived from how strongly the
public defends its core values. If its people do not strongly protect
their values, then it is deemed to fall eventually, as those in power
subvert their own laws once deemed inconvenient. It’s worth considering
creating games based on values, since values have served an important
purpose for thousands of years and will continue to do so.
Rev.
Dr. Martin Luther King once said, “How long? Not long, because the arc
of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
If we agree that games with a narrative have a moral universe, full
of characters that follow their own moral values and gameplay choices
made by the player following their own moral values, then do games have
an arc in their moral universe? Do characters go through a moral arc?
Does the player?
Too often the main character does not go through a moral arc. The
ideal is that the player also goes through the very same moral arc as
the player character. However, this depends on the structure of the
game. A game may have a linear narrative progression that players
simply go along for the ride, whether they agree with their character’s
pre-authored moral arc progression or not.
The other option is for the game to react to the player’s choices,
interpret where they stand on the moral arc and reflect that back
through a slightly non-linear, though heavily guided narrative. This is
where the dialog possibilities in games lie, as I mentioned previously
in my blog article titled, “Dialog in Games”.
This article proposes a framework that can help establish a game’s
and character’s moral arc and how to make sure the gameplay and
narrative are in sync.
Creating a Moral Premise
A lot of what I’m going to talk about is heavily borrowed and adapted
from the concept of a Moral Premise which is covered in the book, “The
Moral Premise: Harnessing Virtue and Vice for Box Office Success” by
Stanley D. Williams, Ph.D. Williams makes clear in the book that he
isn’t the originator of this idea either, rather it was something he
observed as existing in many popular and successful films. The idea of
a Moral Premise being central to a story is derived from many past
writers such as Aristole’s concept of a “controlling idea” and Lajos
Egri’s concept of a “premise” in stage plays. While reading the
Williams’s book, it struck me that the concept may work in videogames
even better than in other art forms such as theater, novels and films.
As stated by Stanley D. Williams, “The Moral Premise is at the heart
of all successful storytelling from ancient history right up to the
modern day. We find its controlling nature in the writings of Plato,
the Bible, and Aesop.” (p.XXII) The Moral Premise serves to describe a
story’s moral meaning. It is the practical lesson of the story and the
moral does not refer to only what is right, but both what is right and
wrong. The juxtaposition of both right and wrong leads to conflict of
values, which all good stories require.
Before we can begin creating moral premises for games, we need to look at its structure. The moral premise has four parts to it.
- Virtue
- Success
- Vice
- Failure
The designer
or writer chooses a virtue that they personally believe in and includes
its opposite, the vice. Then, using the two, virtue and vice, they
construct a statement that they believe to be true. Or coming up with
the statement first and then figuring out which values are involved can
form the Moral Premise.
For example, say I want to make a game about the virtue trust and
therefore I include its opposite, the vice suspicion. Next I formulate
a statement that I think is true about trust and suspicion that I wish
to use during my dialog with the player through gameplay and narrative.
“Trusting others leads to cooperation and success,
but misplaced suspicion of others leads to mutiny and failure.”
Notice there
are two parts to this statement. Part one says, “Trusting others leads
to cooperation and success.” Part two says, “Misplaced suspicion of
others leads to mutiny and failure.” The game mechanics must be
constructed in such a way that through play, the player experiences the
truth of either side. Think of it as two sides of a coin, they are
inseparable, but a player might only bare witness to one side
throughout their play, depending on their choices.
The use of a Moral Premise naturally leads to games that allow
multiple play paths. A player could have the following moral arcs
through a game:
- At start: trusting others. At end: trusting others even more.
- At start: misplaced suspicion of others. At end: learns how to trust others.
- At start: trusting others. At end: is suspicious of others for no reason.
- At start: misplaced suspicion of others. At end: has greater misplaced suspicion of others.
Path 1shows
how people can achieve greater heights of their potential if they work
hard enough. Path 2 is the ideal narrative path showing dramatic change
in the player and their character from harmful actions to helpful
actions. Path 3 is a tragic tale of falling from grace. Path 4 is
another variant on the tragic tale but potentially more tragic as we
see someone who can’t escape flawed past actions and falls deeper into
suspicion of others.
The nice
thing about this concept of using a Moral Premise to make a statement
about values is that it can be implemented in purely game systems form
or it can be skinned with a narrative to give it context.
Examples of a Moral Premise
As an example, in the purely game mechanics form, imagine a 2D topdown
game where you have to escape a maze, but must ask for others to help
you. Asking another NPC blob is done with a simple button press and
represents entrusting another person with a task to help everyone
escape the maze.
However, if you follow behind too closely or ask a specific NPC blob
repeatedly, the NPC blobs interpret this as suspicion towards them and
they are likely to not cooperate. Mechanically, the player needs to ask
once and leave the NPC blobs alone to do their thing, to trust them.
While this isn’t deep, hopefully it illustrates the potential.
The problem with a purely system driven game like this is that it’s
too abstract. Players won’t know the game is really about the value of
trust in society. It won’t come across as a dialog either because it
will be hard to tell which questions are being asked, if any at all.
To help with this, the game mechanics of a Moral Premise can be
coupled with a narrative to give the Moral Premise context, making it
easier for players to understand and reflect upon the moral lesson.
This is why stories have been so powerful in cultures over thousands of
years. People can relate to them and internalize their meanings.
If we take the above Moral Premise and put it in the context of the
player as a captain of a pirate ship with gold treasure, then we can
see more clearly the truth of the statement. If players put trust in
their shipmates, then at the climax in the narrative when the ship
springs a leak, the crew valiantly plugs the hole long enough to reach
shore. If players don’t trust his or her crew, everyone fends for
himself or herself and you are left alone on the sinking ship.
Without trust that everyone will get an equal share, everything
breaks down into a last man standing sword fight, where everyone kills
each other and there is no happy resolution. The pirate ships’
treasures sink to the bottom of the ocean, metaphorically representing
the group’s morals.
To engage in a dialog, the game designer can use the Moral Premise
in story and gameplay to setup situations and characters that ask the
player questions. Perhaps something like, “Is it OK to spy on others to
protect the groups interests?” The player can answer through a dialog
response if it’s posed via character conversation. The game notes the
player’s answer and then presents a gameplay situation that tracks the
player’s commitment to it. Based on player responses and behaviors and
the designer’s own point of view, the game can present counter-points
that hopefully persuade the player to reconsider their beliefs if
needed or encourage their current viewpoint.
The dialog topics you can have with players are endless. You can
have a dialog with players about the right of mankind to serve only
their own interests and no one else’s. Doesn’t that sound familiar? In
fact, it sounds a lot like the ideas presented in BioShock. Upon a
closer look, BioShock already uses the concept of a Moral Premise,
though, not as well as I think it could have.
Examination of BioShock’s Moral Premise
BioShock’s Moral Premise is:
“Extreme selfishness and greed leads to destruction,
but selflessness and generosity leads to creation.”
We can see
that “Selfishness and greed leads to destruction” is true when one
player harvests all of the little sisters for their own gain and they
get the bad ending[4]. In that ending the player destroys the lives of
the little sisters and escapes with them to bring his brutality upon
the world outside of rapture.
If the player acts selfless and generously by rescuing all of the
little sisters, they get the good ending[5]. In the good ending, years
later on the player character’s deathbed a family of little sisters
surrounds him. His selfless actions to rescue them all created a loving
family.
Implementation Issues of the Moral Premise in BioShock
However, there are several issues in BioShock regarding the application of its Moral Premise.
- There is a Ludonarrative Dissonance.
- Players can embrace the vice and still “win” the game.
- Harvesting vs. Rescuing doesn’t make the Moral Premise clear until the very end.
Clint
Hocking wrote a great critique on BioShock[6], explaining that the
gameplay mechanics allow the player to be selfish and greedy through
harvesting the little sisters, yet narratively, they have no choice and
are forced to be generous in helping another character, Atlas and his
family to escape.
A solution and one that applies to all games that use the Moral
Premise on purpose is to allow multiple narrative paths that match the
multiple gameplay paths. Perhaps players are given the explicit overall
goal to escape Rapture and presented with the choice early on to go it
alone (selfish track) or to help Atlas and his family (generous track).
On either track, the player’s own moral values are tested constantly,
in progressively more complex ways that are more difficult to deal with.
In the end, if the player defeats the final boss while on the
selfish track, narratively, they do not succeed in escaping Rapture.
They are stuck there forever, to live out the rest of their lives as a
brutal selfish and greedy dictator. If they finish on the selfless
(generous) track, they escape with the little sisters to start a new
life and family.
Related to the above issue, in BioShock’s current state, players at
the beginning of the game are given the goal to escape Rapture and even
if they embrace the vice of the Moral Premise (selfishness) they still
“succeed” in their overall goal. This creates a false Moral Premise
that says,
“Selfishness and greed leads to freedom and destruction,
but selflessness and generosity leads to freedom and creation.”
Seflishness
and greed does not create freedom. People who live by those values
become prisoners of their own behavior, or in the case of people like
Bernie Madoff, prisoners in the flesh.
The third issue with BioShock’s implementation of the Moral Premise,
is that Players who choose either side of the Moral Premise don’t know
what effect their choices have until they witness the end cinematic,
which is good if they rescue or bad if they harvest. This is not really
fair to players because they should have more immediate and frequent
feedback based on their behavior. This will allow them to self-correct
their path if they decide they don’t like where things are headed.
Film typically shows the main character who has flawed values making
poor choices and their consequences early on because they are embracing
the vice side of the Moral Premise. At many junction points through out
the film they are given a chance to switch sides and are shown the
possibilities of living life another way.
This is the personal psychological struggle they go through as they
decide how to approach the problem they are trying to solve. Often
another character will offer them a chance to embrace the virtue of the
Moral Premise but the main character needs to see the value of it own
their own. They need to come to an epiphany in which they realize what
they believed in the past has been wrong and to be successful they must
change their behavior.
Examination of Mirror's Edge’s Moral Premise
Mirror’s Edge also features a Moral Premise, but it is strictly in the
narrative and not within the gameplay mechanics. This is the exact
opposite of BioShock’s application of the Moral Premise. The Moral
Premise for Mirrors Edge can be stated as:
“Running from someone’s problem leads to them becoming your own,
but running towards other people’s problems leads to solutions for everyone.”
The gameplay
is about running, usually by running away from your attackers. Other
times you may choose to run towards them to engage in close combat.
With notable exceptions in the latter part of the game, the gameplay
mechanics don’t lead to negative consequences if you run away. Running
towards enemies can lead to either good or bad consequences, depending
on the skill of the player. There is no consistent message within the
gameplay.
The narrative on the other hand is quite clear. At 4:20 mark in this
video[7], the player character (Faith) talks to her sister (Kate) a
police officer about the murder of an old friend and a candidate for
mayor. Faith in the cinematic expresses her value of running by trying
to get Kate to run away from the scene of the crime with her. Faith
says, “Come on, come with me. I’ll take you somewhere safe.” Kate
refuses to act in such ways, “This isn’t the time to run! I’m not like
you. Running will just make me look guilty.”
Kate pleads for Faith’s help and Faith says, “I can’t get involved
in this.” But the refusal of Kate’s call doesn’t last long as Faith
agrees to help before leaving the scene in a rush to avoid the police.
In the ensuing gameplay sequence, Faith must outrun police and is now
running towards various leads to uncover the mystery of the murder of
Robert Pope and clear her sister’s name. By trying to solve the
mystery, Faith helps her sister escape police custody, which could
represent the imprisonment of the citizens of the city.
The city is a totalitarian society where the government controls
information and spies to get even more. The citizens have given up
their freedoms to live under a false sense of security (hello Patriot
Act). At the end of the game, players can destroy government computer
servers that collect all the communication data of the citizens, thus
freeing them, temporarily from their government’s watchful eyes.
The narrative of Mirror’s Edge seems to say that running towards
someone’s problem, in this case, Faith helping Kate’s problem of being
framed for murder, leads to solving a problem for everyone, such as
Faith bringing down an oppressive instrument of a totalitarian
government.
The one but massive improvement for Mirror’s Edge’s use of a Moral
Premise is to allow players to see the consequences of running away
from someone’s problem and the successes that come with running towards
a problem to solve it. Again, an open world like structure works best,
players are introduced to the world, and maybe they see injustices of
oppression by the police, yet do nothing but turn and run away. By
doing that, the problem hits close to home and the player’s sister Kate
gets in trouble.
It is not unlike the beginning of the film Braveheart where William
Wallace wants to stay out of trouble and raise a family in peace.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t happen and he’s forced to fight back.
The Game Universe Bends Towards Meaningful Experiences
In this article, I’ve introduced you to the idea of using a Moral
Premise in games. The benefits are twofold; fuse narrative and gameplay
into a more meaningful, cohesive experience and to engage players in a
dialog. Stories have been used for thousands of years to teach people
within its societies valuable life lessons, morals and profound
insights into the human condition. Through a Moral Premise, there is
potential to engage players in thinking about important ideas on a
variety of subjects that will help them understand the world or their
own lives better.
Also posted at my personal blog, Reiding...