Ethical choices within video games: do they exist?

Many of the current generation of games emphasize player choice and the effects thereof on the outcome of the game. Generally, there are various different trajectories a player can take and at its broadest level, you can generally characterize player decisions into a three by three alignment chart defined as good, neutral, evil on one axis and chaotic, neutral, lawful on the other axis. The implication then arises that the player can be good or evil. This can potentially be rephrased as ethical or unethical, moral or immoral. This raises the idea that some decisions within games are ethical and some are not.

In Papers, Please, the player is often confronted with the choice of following the directive of the government or going against those directives in favor of what appears to be a more moral or ethical choice. For example, the player is given the option of allowing in a woman who claims she wants to go visit her son, but does not have the appropriate documentation. One could argue that allowing the mother in would be the morally or ethically good choice, yet this begs the question: do ethical choices exist within video games?

Note: I will avoid discussing what is ethical as this is a topic much too broad for the scope of this blog post. Instead, I will focus on discussing whether ethical decisions exist within games.

A UCSD article defines ethical decisions as requiring three key components. First, commitment to do the right thing regardless of the cost. Second, the ability to act and apply moral convictions consistently. Third, the ability to evaluate all the available information and foresee potential consequences and risks to determine what truly is ethical.

In Papers, Please, the player is given the ability to choose. In some cases, the player could make the ethical choice. For example, if the player lets the woman in to see her son even though they understand they will not get paid for that and will instead receive a citation, this would satisfy the first dimension of an ethical choice as defined above: the commitment to do the right thing regardless of the cost. If the player consistently makes ethical choices throughout the game, for example aiding the revolution when possible, then we could argue that the player does fulfill the second portion of the definition as well: consistent application of morals. The final portion of the above definition is the ability to evaluate the given information and predict outcomes or consequences. This one is somewhat more difficult to find in games. Oftentimes, the outcomes that are built into a game are not the exact same outcomes one would expect in real life, the outcomes that we have been conditioned to expect. Furthermore, it is sometimes the intent of the creator of the game to subvert our expectations and cause our decisions to have unforeseen consequences. However, I would not say this disqualifies the player from making ethical decisions. I think that if the player takes into account all the information they currently have at the time of the decision, then you could say that their decision is ethical.

But what if the player has information from after they make the decision before they have to make it? This then becomes a question of playstyle. In a lot of decision-reliant games, there are several endings. Some would argue that some endings are “better” and some are “worse”, and they depend on which decisions you make throughout the game. So then, a player could feasibly simply research beforehand which decisions are “correct” and make those decisions, thus receiving the “best” outcome without truly having to determine the ethical choice.

This does not implicitly disqualify all decision-making in video games from being ethical. Instead, I believe that depending on the playstyle of the specific player, there could indeed exist ethical decisions within games. As mentioned above, if a game provides the player with the opportunity to fulfill the three steps that define an ethical choice and the player fulfills those steps, then I believe that an ethical choice exists within the game.