Good and bad examples of ethics in video Poki games
Poki games are systems of rules within which the gamer has the right to do whatever he pleases. On the other hand, it is also an art that can influence human souls - it is not surprising that many developers, when modeling worlds, try to encourage some actions in them and discourage others, so that the player thinks about the ethics of their actions. However, not all such mechanics are equally good - and in this text I will try to explain why popular solutions like bans and karma scales are bad, and give better alternatives.
Direct bans don't work
In XIII ("The Thirteenth"), you control a man who, before he lost his memory, worked as a hired killer. In search of your own past, you first shoot the gangsters who came to your soul, and then unintentionally set off an explosion in a bank vault. The guards open fire on you, and you have to flee from the bank, but with one condition - all its employees must stay alive. Otherwise, the game will show the message "You killed an innocent" and throw you into the menu.
In order not to be shot at, you can take a hostage - this game allows. Knocking people out by smashing chairs on their heads is also possible without restrictions.
This ban is not really justified. The Thirteenth cannot get out of the water dry: in the bank, in addition to the guards, mercenaries shoot at him, and it is allowed to kill them, and on the street the hero is arrested by the FBI in any case. The game does not mention any principles, because of which he refuses to raise his hand against law enforcement officers - in the original comic of the Thirteenth, and even in the first issue, he is blackmailed by a corrupt policeman. "Gameover" also looks as ridiculous as possible: the game world does not change in any way, the protagonist does not reflect on the murder of an innocent, does not give up, does not lay hands on himself - morality, zeroing out part of the progress, reads the game algorithm itself. It's like without him I don't know it's wrong to kill.
All outright bans, even if they don't result in a loss of progress, are very clumsy narrative design tools that go against the very core of the game. For example, in Half-Life 2 , Freeman lowers his weapon if a civilian of City-17 gets into the crosshairs: the game believes that it knows better than we do what Gordon is capable of and what he is not (although in the first part, killing Black Mesa personnel is nothing to him did not interfere), and, supposedly giving us control over the hero, in fact, it assigns only a limited role.
Why are karma scales bad?
There is a character in Fallout 3 known as Mr. Burke. He lives in a saloon in Megaton and, upon meeting, asks the main character for a favor: would he not be so kind to destroy the city by detonating an atomic bomb? Of course, this act will have consequences: almost all the inhabitants of the city will die, refugees will begin to appear in the Wasteland, and the game world will react with strong condemnation - your reputation will decrease by a thousand points.
Game karma, however, can always be raised, no matter how colossal evil you have committed. If you reach another city and donate a thousand caps to the local church, the world will become neutral towards you. Another thousand - and now you already have a halo over your head, and no one will remember the blown up Megaton, except for the direct victims.
This example demonstrates the main weakness of karma scales. When the "correctness" of each act can be expressed by a number, the moral dimension disappears, turning into an accounting report: the killing of a good character in the same Fallout 3 is reset to zero by two donated bottles of water or the destruction of someone evil. The question "Am I doing good or bad?" is transformed into a purely pragmatic “What will happen to me for this?”. A mechanic that at first glance seems ethical is actually nothing more than a gateway to this or that content.
The game that best emphasized the absurdity of the universal reputation (it is not known whether it was intentional or not) was Fable . Divorcing your wife there is several times “angrier” than sacrificing her, and you can compensate for this not only with monetary donations, but also, for example, with special food. At the beginning of your journey, you will meet a homeless man who is mocked by a bully - you can drive the villain away and earn 20 karma points, or you can hack the victim with a sword with him and lose ... the same 20 points.
Red or blue
The Little Sisters roam the ruins of the city of Rapture in BioShock , collecting ADAM, a valuable resource that Jack, the protagonist, can use to buy upgrades. Each girl is assigned a guard, Big Daddy, and after killing him, the player can either save Big Daddy, or destroy her and take ADAM. This choice is presented as a moral one: save someone else's life or strengthen yourself?
Sounds interesting, if not for two circumstances. Firstly, the summon in BioShock is zero by default: after death, you instantly respawn in the nearest vita-chamber (they can be turned off in the settings, though), so the value of pumping is small. Secondly, after every third rescued Little Sister, one of the characters in the game generously rewards Jack, in fact compensating him for all the lost ADAM. When the player understands this, the choice loses its meaning: its only consequence, in addition to the above, is that you will see a good or bad ending after defeating the final boss. Why play the villain when you can be kind?
At one time, the developers of Mass Effect also made this discovery : one of them, John Ebenger (John Ebenger), complained on Twitter that approximately 92% of the players became paragons, although a lot of work was also invested in the renegade content in BioWare . If the path of good does not involve sacrifice, then even in environments that are safe for experiments like video Poki games, the vast majority of people are inclined towards it - my faith in humanity is based on this knowledge.
And who are the judges?
Moral dilemmas work much more interesting when the ethics of game actions are determined not by dry numbers, but by the characters themselves. In The Walking Dead , after the player made a choice, the words “Such and such a hero will remember this” sometimes appeared on the screen, which many liked because it looked like a real relationship between people: in reality, one carelessly thrown phrase can just as well change to attitude, but you can't please everyone. Zombies, however, usually ate the characters after a couple of scenes after they memorized something, so the dialogues did not affect anything globally. But the effect of this inscription produced an excellent.
The less the choice focuses on itself, the more ethical it often turns out to be. An interesting example is Silent Hill: Shattered Memories , a very loose remake of the first part. Harry Mason is still looking for his daughter Cheryl in Silent Hill throughout the game. The game seems to be completely linear, but in fact, many of its details determine the decisions that the player makes unconsciously as he progresses: for example, the ending where you are shown what kind of father Harry was will depend on whether you looked at the breasts of female characters during dialogues and how often attention was paid to bottles of alcoholic beverages.
Look what you've done
“ Genghis Khan , Hitler , Stalin , Pol Pot are the greatest rulers, because they had the guts to do what no one else dared ,” Zoran Lazarevic, the antagonist of Uncharted 2 , reasoned before putting a bullet in the forehead of one of his henchmen; for no particular reason, just to demonstrate his philosophy to the protagonist. “You think I'm a monster, but you're just like me ,” he grinned at the end. - How many people have you killed? Everything is correct! No mercy, no mercy! Finish me too!”
Such a scene may impress someone, but in fact this comparison is not very fair. First, all Drake's kills are formally self-defense - if Lazarevich's mercenaries had not attacked first, Nathan would have reached the Chintamani stone peacefully. Secondly, he never once spoke of Hitler with approval - as, I hope, most of the players do. Thirdly, and most importantly, the game system itself does not allow you to complete the passage without a single kill. The triggers needed to progress through the story are tied to the deaths of opponents.
Metal Gear Solid 3 uses a similar technique in a much more interesting way. When meeting the boss The Sorrow ("Sorrow"), Snake sees the ghosts of all the enemies he has killed so far - they wander towards him, holding out their hands and screaming that they are in pain. “They are real ,” says the boss. “ They live inside you .It's a tough scene, and it gets longer the more corpses you leave behind.
Both an opportunity and a hindrance
Philosopher Miguel Sicart - author of The Ethics of Computer Games, which inspired me to write this article - loves GTAIV very much and calls it an ethical masterpiece. Niko Bellic, the protagonist, moves to Liberty City and declares that he wants to forget about the war and live peacefully, but whenever the player presses the buttons, Niko obeys unquestioningly, although instead of violence, we could force him to help people by driving a taxi.
Sicard has something to say, but in any case, there is one interesting ethical mechanic in the GTA series - wanted stars. When you kill someone in front of a policeman or, say, rob a store, the game makes it clear that such actions are not welcome in its world: cops begin to appear around, capable of shooting or arresting the main character. An increased wanted level can be both a hindrance and an opportunity: getting five or six stars and fending off helicopters is quite fun. If the activation of the "survival mode" is not included in your plans, then it is usually easy to break away from one or two wanted stars - and then the game will forget about the crime forever.
However, there are situations when even a minor police interest becomes a serious danger: for example, in Vice City there is a mission where you need to sell 50 servings of “ice cream” in one go while driving a van, but every sixth adds one wanted star - and this is a problem , because the car accelerates slowly, you can’t get out of it, and trading requires you to constantly stop. We understand that for a serious violation of the law, the game will try to punish us; it also provides an opportunity to turn punishment avoidance into a source of fun, but sometimes we still want to prioritize differently.
Evil for survival
A sure way to make the player think about good and evil is to put him in the shoes of a "little man", a "cog in a system" that suppresses manifestations of humanism. Such a hero does not resist the bureaucratic machine, he is simply trying to survive and feed his loved ones, but his work involves constant deals with conscience.
In Papers, Please, we play as a border guard who, by checking people's documents, must choose whether to let them into the country or not. For each correct decision, he is given money, and for each incorrect decision, he is taken away, and the well-being of the hero's family depends on the final earnings.
But what are "correct" and "incorrect" decisions? Here we have a girl who, according to the rules, cannot be allowed into the country: one of her certificates is overdue for several days, but she begs her to let her through, explaining that it is dangerous for her to return to her homeland. Whether this is true is impossible to know, because you will not meet this girl again, no matter what decision you make. It would be humanly correct to let her cross the border, but in this case, you and your family will receive less money - and the salary of a border guard is barely enough to survive anyway. To compensate for the shortage, you can break the rules again - for example, let someone in for a bribe. It is up to the player to decide what is acceptable and what is not.
A short film based on Papers, Please was made.
In Beholder, keeping a clear conscience is even more difficult: we play as a house manager, who is immediately instructed by our native Party to install cameras in apartments in order to monitor the residents. Whether the main character believes in state propaganda is of no importance: if he is a bad spy, he and his family will be thrown out into the street, and he will not find a new apartment. He becomes an informer for the sake of survival, and not of his own free will.
A little time passes, and the state moloch points to a new victim: the former owner, Klaus Shimmer, needs to be kicked out of the house. There is a reason for this: if you climb into his apartment while he is not at home, you can find forbidden books, report it to the right place and admire how the old man is beaten by the police. (You can later tell his wife that you had no choice.) If such a prospect terrifies you, you can try to help Shimmer leave the house on your own - you will have to work hard, and you will not be given money for the voluntary departure of the tenant, but your conscience will be clearer. Doing nothing will not work - if Klaus does not leave the house, you will be evicted from there.
At the same time, the repressive machine does not even think of stopping: today it orders the destruction of apples, tomorrow reading will be banned. Are you ready to accuse people of violating these directives, no matter how wrong they may seem to you? And if you convict your family of a crime? How much humanity are you willing to give up for your own survival?
Another game, This War of Mine, poses the same question point- blank . In it, you control a group of people trying to survive in a besieged city. Products and materials for crafting are needed like air, but there is nowhere to buy them, and there is nothing to exchange for, so at night the main characters have to search the surrounding houses in search of supplies. The most valuable stocks are protected, and while the watchmen are alive, it will not work to profit from someone else's good. For example, you can still justify looting by circumstances, but murder?
Utopia of rules
Mor. Utopia is perhaps one of the most ethical Poki games ever made. She sends you to a steppe town, where, shortly after your arrival, an epidemic of a deadly disease begins, similar to the plague, and says that it is in your power to stop it. However, it is extremely difficult to do this (in the menu with the difficulty setting of the remake of the game , the developers write that its gameplay “should be barely bearable”), and you cannot demand a feat from a person, so after a short mandatory program at the beginning, you have the right to buy food and spend everything 12 gaming days lying on the bed, leaving the city to be torn apart by the plague. None of the NPCs will even think to reproach you.
That's exactly what speedrunners do.
The protagonists of Pestilence. Utopia” four intertwined motivations. They want:
survive;
find out where the disease came from;
understand how to defeat it, and establish the production of medicines;
help infected people.
All this is reflected in the quests: you receive a letter with an order and do what is asked of you, but instead of a reward, you are often satisfied with only verbal gratitude, and some tasks are completely performed at a loss. If you want, of course - in the "Sea" you can ignore almost anything.
A good example is the House of the Living quest. One of the townspeople has created a shelter for those who have not yet had time to get infected, and in order to provide these people with food, she gives the main character money and a shopping list. During the night, however, all the prices in the shops have risen tenfold, so when you go into the store, you understand that the coins issued are not nearly enough. You can go to bow to the powers that be and ask them for more - they will give, but even after that you will have to add from your own. At any time, you are allowed to pocket finances (the world will not react to this in any way - even your karma will not suffer!), but you can buy all the necessary products, take them to the House of the Living and find something unpleasant there:
So what is the best way for Poki games to embody ethics? From the above examples, we can draw the following conclusion: principles only matter when you have to sacrifice something for them. In life, the path of virtue is thorny, and Poki games, “sequences of interesting decisions,” can illustrate this well. If there is no choice and something is directly forbidden to us (like Call of Duty ) or, on the contrary, we are accused of what we did without an alternative (like Uncharted ), then there is no need to talk about morality.
