It seems to me that what you’re suggesting could be implemented by allowing the player to make their moral choice at the beginning of the game and have to suffer (or enjoy) the consequences of their decision through the rest of the game. Then the problem becomes making the negative/bad/”wrong” moral choice compelling to play through while at the same time delivering the message that the choice was bad. If the end result is that you’ve become an evil, soulless MFer, well. From my own experience this might be seen as a reward to many game players. On the other hand, if you come to the end of the game along the “negative” track and find out that (for example) everything you’ve done has left you with zero reward, I think most people will find this resolution unsatisfying and three hours after your game is published forums the internet over will be flooded with posters saying “don’t bother playing the bad guy, the end is lame.”

On the other hand, I think if you approach the game as a series of moral choices that eventually lead to a series of different moral conclusions you will end up with a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure-like morass of confusion that will ultimately be unplayable.

From what I understand of what you’re saying, you might need to re-define the concept of “game”. I’ll use the example of football. When two teams of football players take the field, each looks upon themselves as the “good guys” and the opposing team as the “bad guys”. I somehow doubt that at the end of a game, the players on a team are wondering if they’ve done the right thing by crushing their opponents dreams of moving on to the championship by winning the game for themselves. Now I realize that may be a poor comparison, as the video game milieu obviously contains narrative structure that isn’t present in football, but I think it illustrates my point in that “game” has certain connotations that might not fit with your concepts and would probably need to be challenged.

As I think about it… what about a reputation? I know this system is present in games like WoW and Oblivion. The actions you take in certain areas and with certain people improve your reputation with them, but other actions (like stealing) can earn you a negative reputation which can have bad consequences down the road (such as not being able to buy items from vendors). The further you go down that negative path would lead to being run out of every town you come to, being forced into stealing just so you can eat, and so on. This would still provide challenging gameplay, in that the player will be forced to carefully consider his choices and if he comes too far down the negative path, he will have to work hard to improve his reputation so he can “win” the game and arrive at the correct moral choice you are presenting.

This was a lot longer than I anticipated and although it makes sense to me after a re-read, may seem like gibberish to you. If so, I’ll be happy to clarify after I’ve had a couple more cups of coffee.

Mr, Crick was awesome, he wore the small black gloves indoors because he got frostbite as a kid. And he took out a knife while reciting Macbeth. That was ace.

Who’s to say what players want or not? I hope I didn’t imply that I think all players will absolutely love games with Moral Premises, but I’m sure there’s room for a game to be built from the ground up using one. Much like there’s room in any art form for different experiences and expressions.

No, the world isn’t black and white. “One mans terrorist is another’s freedom fighter.” There’s a TED presentation about moral values, particularly between democrats and conservatives. Neither are right or wrong. Each have value in a society to keep it in balance, like the yin and yang. Too much liberal ideology leads to chaos, too much conservative ideology leads to dictatorships. They both have something to offer and help maintain balance.

Regarding your comment that good things don’t always turn out well. That can be true and a game could feature that. Don’t see how that invalidates a game with a progressive Moral Premise though.

I will Netflix Downfall for sure.

You’re definitely right about Bioshock, but I think that the issue with the Little Sisters isn’t always a moral one. Some people play and want all the best powers – so they’ll harvest all the Adam they can get. They just like to be superman. I played through on the “good” path and you do get some encouragement for helping them. They give you some gifts, and thank you, and the visual/audio when you save them vs. harvesting them is clearly meant to direct you as to which was morally correct. There’s never an argument in a player’s head as to whether what you’re doing is right or wrong – you know from the start, and you chose based on your play style.

Which brings me to point number two… trying to always do good doesn’t always result in good. To stick with Bioshock – who’s to say that saving all the Little Sisters shouldn’t have resulted in you ending up with not enough Adam, and you get completely annihilated by the end boss? Everyone in the game was sure to point out that saving the Little Sisters would mean you would end up much less powerful. I was expecting to have a hard time at the end, at least, or to have a character give me some sort of extra help for saving all the little sisters. But you win without a problem, based on your moral fortitude? I don’t think so.

To take an example from a book I read in high school, “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien. I’m not sure if you read it or not, I had Mr. Crick… you should if you didn’t, it’s an intense book and enlightening in many ways.

Anyway, there’s a part in there where he talks about reality. You have a group of soldiers, and they’re walking a path in the jungle. All of the sudden, a grenade rolls out in front of them!! One sees it, and realizes nobody will get away in time – so he jumps on it to save the others. What a brave, noble thing to do. Of course, it’s as likely as not that the grenade’ll just blow straight through his body and kill the rest of the guys anyway. Brave, noble – dead.

Sure, an ending like that doesn’t make for the best ratings. Nobody wants to play a game to find out that their character just gets eaten by the monster. But even the best of intentions never results in a perfect outcome, and games shouldn’t present it that way. Like in Shadow of the Colossus. You saved the princess? Does that really make you the good guy?

One other thing, before “too long” becomes “ridiculously too long.” Sometimes, continued moral decline can be interesting! Go watch the movie “Downfall” and tell me you could write a better game!