Разница в этических и моральных вопросах в видео-играх

пятница, 21 ноября 2014

14:39

Разница в этических и моральных вопросах в видео-играх

Planewalker

Дракон Белквинита.

I think the main differences between PS:T and most games that try to “give hard choices” to players, is that PS:T asks questions aimed at ethics and other games deal in morals.

There’s a big difference between morals and ethics. Morals are judging the *results* of actions based on public good\opinions. If people are happy, it was a good decision. If people are sad (or dead) it was a bad decision. So the most “hard” questions these games can come up with look like “if you do A then first group of people will be happy and the second group will be unhappy. if you do B, then… it will be the other way! What do you do??? ”

Ethics is way more complicated, because they judge *intentions* based on person’s own worldview\code\principles\etc. When people say that PS:T, Kotor2, Mask of the Betrayer are centered around personal journeys, it means that these games ask questions aimed at ethics, not public opinions. These questions are much more intricate and diverse and they may sound differently for different people depending on their worldviews. Also, everyone dealt with morals in their lives, but not everyone has ethics - or developed ethics for that matter. You can’t not notice moral questions, but you can easily miss ethical ones if the subject isn’t included in your own set of principles.

That’s why these games are subtle and that’s why the mystical beast of “grey morality” that, say, bioware tries to catch for years, actually works for them.

You *can* have decisions that raise both moral and ethical questions. Fallout New Vegas did it, and Fallout series in general is good in this (excluding F3 because Bethesda). The game asks you questions that are ethical in nature, but your reputation - people’s opinion of you - changes depending on your actions. And different groups have different opinions based on their own agenda.

To have both morals and ethics is actually pretty hard, because for most people, they are not even connected. As in, what you expect from yourself is in no way depends on what you demand from other people. To have both ethics and morals in the game means you have to devise a function, something that makes correlation between two variables.

f(x)=y, where x - ethical choice, y - moral (public good\opinion) consequences.

As I said, FNV did it. Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines kinda tried but didn't really manage the morals feedback part.

Dishonored did it too, though in much more simplified form, because there were only two choices for x.

Most of Kreia’s questions and speeches in Kotor2 are aimed at trying to help player make this correlation, this bridge between his ethics and morals. The most obvious example is her dialog\speech about helping a beggar.

The whole of PS:T is a story of how personal (ethical) choices can affect the whole universe.

Mask of The Betrayer puts you in the position of a victim of OTHERS ethical choices and asks you which of these you will forgive, how you’ll deal with consequences and what choices you will make yourself. (I can elaborate if anyone wants me to on these three, but idk you have to play it to get it)

Dragon Age 2 is a sad example of trying to do f(x)=y without understanding that (x) is a variable. Dragonfall on the contrary, is a great example at how you succeed at putting players in a position of "Champion" and face them with ethical choices that will affect people they feel responsible for.

@темы: игрища, лекции хаоситекта