Does Your Voice Matter? Discussing Choices in Video Games
Will you kill a man and take his food, or will you go your way? Game developers have fallen in love with moral choices, but if you play enough games, you may start to feel that they have little to do with choosing, and even less with morality.
Table of Contents
- Does Your Voice Matter? Discussing Choices in Video Games
- 1A – what's the difference between a good choice and a bad one
- 2A – an example of poor moral choice
- 3A – how to make a moral choice more difficult?
- 4A – how I invented moral choices
- 5A – why choices have little impact?
- 6A – impersonal summary
1A – what's the difference between a good choice and a bad one
ON THIS PAGE YOU'LL FIND
Moral choice is a decision influenced by more than just the gameplay mechanics of the game, producing different rewards and otherwise. A good moral choice is one that isn't obvious. We recently learned that as many as 92% of players took the paragon path in Mass Effect trilogy. Does this goes to prove that people are fundamentally good and don't like to hurt others? I think not – I think this only proves that, by and large, choices in Mass Effectwere superficial, and in many cases, the renegade decisions were pretty daft for an interstellar marine.
We'll talk about it more extensively, but first, make a decision:
- Want to know an example of a misguided moral choice? Go to Part 2A on page 3.
- Want to know an example of a well-conceived moral choice? Go to part 2B on page 3.
1B – two words about me
I am the author of two mediocre novels, which were, of course, entirely linear. Later, however, I worked on two computer games, one of which was ultimately published. It's We. The Revolution, a game full of moral choices, for which I came up with a whole series of court hearings, which the player had to settle as a judge during the time of the French Revolution.
I am currently co-creating table-top games, writing a storyline for them. I have worked on two expansions of the table-top This War of Mine – Tales From the Ruined City and Days of the Siege, and I am now co-writing the second edition of Waste Knights. I come up with stories that have a lot in common with the so-called paragraph stories.
Now I could ask you if you prefer to continue reading about me, or if you'd rather go back to the article itself. As a creator, however, I made the decision not to. The text will follow a linear path because I find this thread to be less important. I'll also send you to a section you didn't read, because it's important.
- Go to Part 1A on this page.
