Morality in Games

Now as most people might now, I’m a pretty heavy gamer. I play a LOT of games. Many games now a days allows the players to make choices when it comes to important decisions in the life of the characters. It forces the player to live with the consequences of their actions. Now I also have spent a great deal of time watching other people play games and in turn the choices they make in game. Even though I know I am playing a game, I find it hard to force myself to make selfish or immoral choices in games however I know a few people who are more than willing to make those choices mostly just because its amusing to watch your character torture innocent people (and perhaps have a easier run through the game). Some might call me soft but perhaps its because I grew up being pushed around myself and perhaps its also because I am a christian but I find it incredibly difficult to harm an unarmed opponent that has no intention of fighting or hurting me. In real life I train in kung fu and most of the time cannot visualise myself fighting with a bladed weapon capable of killing my opponent unintentionally, I can only see myself using blunt weapons where I can control the amount of damage I inflict.

In the past when I play games I’ve only been able to make choices that are of high moral grounds or at lowest, relatively neutral choices. Many games like Baldur’s gate, Neverwinter’s Night, Knights of the Old Republic I & II, etc. etc.  RPG games in general I find myself constantly playing similar characters because I cannot seem to make “evil” choices.

Recently I was playing a game called Bioshock 2, its a very sweet but extremely twisted story. There are these little girls in the game that gather some kind of medium for hosting genetically engineered organisms that give you special powers. Sci-Fi dystopian story blah blah blah. whatever. anyways, you get a choice to save them from their enslaved, drugged up existence or you can choose to harvest their bodies of the medium which you need yourself, essentially killing the girl in process. I played the entire game without harvesting a single one of them mainly because I couldn’t bring myself to doing something like that. Perhaps some would call me soft but hey..

Anyways yeah, I dunno what the point was for writing this but I guess I find is a lot more difficult to make “immoral/mean” choices that other people don’t seem to have any trouble making.