Wicked Problems in SOMA

Created by half the development team behind Amnesia: The Dark Descent, SOMA is a horror stealth game and a narratively intense experience. This is due to the wicked problems it presents to the player, many of which excellently illustrate Sicart's ideas on how to construct successful moral dilemmas. This will be spoiler heavy and I do recommend you play the game (~8-9 hours long, or at least the first 2 hours for some of the early impactful moments). You should also watch the fantastic live action shorts they produced before release, even if you do play or plan to play. They do not spoil anything and are great atmospheric science fiction pieces in their own right.

Trailer(Don't watch if you plan on playing): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZTfi1jv-EE

One of many shorts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eytOzwyfiCA

A bit of background is necessary to understand the moral problems given to the player. You play as Simon, a man who has his brain scanned in the present day in order to find a treatment for his terminal illness. As the scanner lifts up he finds himself suddenly transported to a terrifying underwater research facility compromised by some sort of malicious, mechanical infection. Eventually, you learn that you are really just an instantiated brain scan of yourself, now a century into the future. Additionally, mankind has recently been annihilated by a comet, leaving the now deceased scientists of the facility as the only remnants of mankind. Recognizing the hopelessness of his situation Simon and a disembodied brain scan of one of the scientists struggle to finish a project to scan and launch their simulations into space.

One of the most impactful moral dilemmas of the game is when you must transfer into a new body in order to survive the journey deeper into the ocean. However, "transfer" is a misnomer that Simon and many players struggle with accepting the full ramifications of at multiple junctures. Really your scan is simply uploaded into a new body and your old one is left in the chair you sat down in, sedated and softly breathing. You are now confronted with a choice, power down and kill your own self or leave him to wake up in what is essentially a dead end, trapped in a hellish world.

I agonized over this decision for what felt like a very long time when I encountered it. I had to weigh my moral compunctions against murder (albeit fictional) with the misery that I would be confining myself to if I left him (me?) alive. This wasn't a scenario myself or Simon planned for. Is the person in the chair still me? Or is it a new being? Would I be killing myself or someone else? Would that change the stakes of the question? Sicart would be proud of the cross cutting motivations and impulses presented by this scenario. Ultimately, I decided to power old Simon off, my mind made up by the relentlessly bleak aesthetic of the game.

Here another element is present that satisfies Sicart's theory of good moral dilemmas, there is no replaying. That is not to say that there is no save function or that the game cannot be played over. SOMA instead removes the ability to replay by divorcing the consequences of moral gameplay from the game state. The only effect that my decision had on the world was that old Simon stopped breathing and his mechanical eyes powered down. The rest was entirely psychological and abstract. There is no reason for me to replay because the game state would remain functionally the same and I have gained no new information that would change my decision. The purpose of the moral gameplay, for me to confront my own morality, has been accomplished.

Other choices in the game can be more subtle, to the point that I missed some of them or did not even consider them choices. For example, the player finds numerous inactive brain scans of sentient life on computer systems throughout the game. Implicitly there is always the choice to delete them. I never even thought about doing so, the preservationist urge in me imagining that one day, perhaps aliens or something new could find and revive them. Other players did see this as a moral problem that troubled them, as their preservationist instincts were pitted against fears that the scans could instead be abused in the future. Again, the success of these dilemmas comes from the lack of change to the game state.

I believe there is one example of a choice that the game clearly wants to poise as a moral dilemma, but falls flat due to gameplay implementation. During the game the player learns that the monstrosities they must hide from are the product of the WAU, which is deforming organic life, but possibly restoring something new to the world devastated by the comet. At the end, you are given the choice of killing the WAU, ending great suffering and also any chance of new life, or letting it live to possibly save life on earth, but also dooming the consciousnesses absorbed by to unending torment. However, the way this choice is presented was so muddled that I did not know I had the option of not killing the WAU due to the graphical chaos of the scene and the antagonist who presented it to me. I didn't even know that the action I thought I had to do to progress, sticking my arm into the WAU's core, would kill it. I believe this was bad design. While moral problems should be ill-defined, that first presupposes that the player is aware that they even have a choice in the scenario.

What I find interesting about all this is how many players online were upset that there was not an explicit "karma" system or different game ending cinematic based on choices. However, it is my contention that it is exactly those deficits that gave the gameplay ethical weight. In Kantian ethics the meaningfulness of morality comes from how it is divorced from consequences. When we do not steal because it is illegal or do not kill old Simon because we want the "good ending" we are not acting morally, but instrumentally. Though this may frustrate game designers who often think more is better and that ethical decisions mean that player choice should influence story, appearance, or the game world, sometimes the best game design decision is to leave out such trappings in favor of simplicity.

Used as a reference to jog my memory and see other player's opinions:

https://www.reddit.com/r/soma/comments/3mvp0s/spoilers_complete_list_of_choices/