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Ken Levine, the smartest writer in video games, gave an interview to Through the Looking Glass fansite SShock2.com about Irrational's upcoming "art deco underwater utopia participant-evolution inspired civil war" survival horror FPS, Bioshock. Subjects cover the evolution of Bioshock's story, art deco game design, the themes of horror in games, and morality in gaming.
On the latter subject Levine cites the typical moral choice of an RPG: a one-dimensional choice between good and evil.
What always bugs me about this is that it ignores the key component of what compels people to do nasty things: need. In BioShock, we put you in a terrible world that has exploited the weakest members of that world in horrible ways. Then we put you in a situation in which, in order to survive, it's pretty damn tempting to exploit the weak yourself. And there's no moral authority telling you what to do, what's right and wrong.The people who exploited the Little Sisters in Rapture were motivated by ideology and their survival instincts. Any player who plays BioShock is going to be very tempted to exploit the Little Sisters, too, because now it's their life on the line. That's going to lead, I hope, to an understanding of how terrible things happen. It brings the player into the process of evil, and maybe makes them understand how terrible things happen, even when basically good people are involved.
Which is all very eloquently said, but ignores two aspects of what makes moral choices in games so paltry. Games simply are not dynamic enough to extrapolate those choices into subtle, pervasive, non-scripted consequences. Moreover, a player chooses to be good or evil because, ultimately, it's the same thing when you're the only sentient being amongst automotons. Moral choices in games do cover need: I need that +5 Vorpal Sword, so I'm going to kill that beatific monk.
Games can put the player in someone else's body, but until the worlds are filled with a more dynamic artificial intelligence in the non-player characters around you, they can't infuse you with that person's game world conscience. Which is why even the nicest of us simply weigh pros-versus-cons when murdering a Resistance fighter in Half-Life 2 for his shotgun. It sounds like Levine is looking to correct that with meaningful NPC AI, though. Let's see if he succeeds.
Irrational Games Interview July 2006 [SShock2.com]
