Designing Ethical Dilemmas

Manveer Heir

Wed., June 10, 3:30–4:30, Browsing Library (2nd floor, West Central)

Games have long posed ethical dilemmas to players through player choice. By utilizing choice through design, games have the ability to let players experience making ethical decisions that they may not normally encounter in real life. This proceduralization of ethics into game play gives games the ability to create the same emotional impact in players as a real ethical decision, allowing the game to expand the mind, experiences, and perspective of its players. This presentation focuses on how games pose ethical decisions to players and improvements in ways to think about and implement ethical decisions into games from a practical standpoint, coming from the perspective of a professional in the gaming industry working on AAA titles such as Raven Software’s Wolfenstein.

The presentation will start off with a brief examination of current ethical models. From the “black and white” ethics that games such as Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic tout, to “gray ethics” of games such as Fallout 3, the presentation will define different ways ethics are presented in game and discuss what works and doesn't work about the models.

The focus of the presentation will then turn to how we can improve the way we drive ethical design in games from a mechanics and narrative standpoint. The discussion will include the need to create emotional investment in the player character and world, the need of decisions to have meaningful consequences, and the need for those consequences to be lasting. Mechanics such as player sacrifice, limited time to make decisions, save games, and choosing sides will be discussed in terms of how they can have positive or negative impacts on the ability of a game to provide the player with an actual ethical dilemma.

Additionally, this section of the presentation will revolve around the need for narrative and game mechanics to converge into one. Without the narrative constantly tied with game play, there is little hope of player investment into the world. Without investment in the world, the impact of the ethical decision is often relegated to a purely selfish decision of what benefits the player the most, which makes the choice one driven by mechanics not ethics.

This presentation aims to teach the audience about the current implementation of ethics in games today and give practical steps on how the medium can move forward to better give players a true ethical dilemma in games. It examines the game mechanics and narrative that control ethical decisions and attempts to show how some changes in the way we design both can allow us to achieve something greater.