To avoid player becoming “the moral agent as a mere input provider,” (106) to engage players morally, Sicart proposes designing these sorts of problems. He is attempting to create games that will provide players with an environment to express their moral values. How could we not just elicit moral decision but teach players lessons about morality that they would use outside of the game? Moral decision-making can only be taught in by a body of games that emphasize moral values together.
Let us take the example of a game that involves mercy. For example, in the story-driven game The Wolf Among Us by Telltale Games :’( you fight another character in a bar. The difficulty of the minigame encourages the player to be angry or frustrated. When the player defeats their opponent, the player is still given the option to continue to fight, which will eventually cause the player’s character to tear off their opponent’s arm gruesomely. The NPC’s in the bar react in shock and disgust, and the opponent, who becomes an ally later in the story, bears the wound for the rest of the game. The player, confronted with the aftereffects of their own actions, is taught the value of mercy in the game.
But how would we take this from the game into other contexts? As we’ve learned from discussing the definition of games, games are somehow removed from the normal flow of life and from each other. Players enter each game by accepting the game’s individual systems, which can be related to each other, but the systems can be changed while preserving the game’s enjoyment and genre. Bioshock is one such example: its twist hits us with the narrative revelation that comments on its genre, but its gameplay still appeals to players who enjoy shooters. Some games rely on this knowledge: for example, games that do not present the player with instructions usually rely on a player’s collected body of knowledge of how to control games based on their genre and appearance (WASD and Mouse for first-person PC games, arrow keys or WASD for platformers). A player’s experience in games builds the basis for how that player approaches new games.
The value of mercy is also important in Undertale, The Witcher 3, Papers, Please, and Bioshock. As players learn that in each of these games, mercy is important, they build up their body of moral experience in games. Therefore, the more game designers create moral games, the more players will learn to approach new games with moral thinking. In order for this to be effective, designers must continue to make wicked game with a focus on morality.
Our next question is whether this moral thinking would translate into everyday actions. Could a game teach a real-life bully to consider the moral value of mercy towards their victim? That would be the next step.
Ouch, that's a good way to guilt trip the players. Thanks for your post! I generally agree with what you say but I must admit that Sicart's parameters for wicked games are pretty severe as other games have elicited many strong emotional responses that made me question my morals. I have a few questions though, do you believe that Bioshock's shooter game-play creates a discrepancy with the moral message of the narrative and do you think that after being accustomed that the morally good choices in games generally give the best rewards, we are then using instrumental thinking when making those decisions?