Moral choices & Shooting Civilians

There is a very interesting post on Rock Paper Shotgun right now.

In there, we have the executive producer for Battlefield 3 saying that you cannot shoot civilians in the game since the developers of the game will get blamed for it.
Specifically, he says:




Regardless if you agree with the actions they have taken (removing the choice), I think they do have a point. Looking back at any randomly chosen media hypes against video games - and sadly, there are plenty to chose from - it's very easy why it can be dangerous to add such choices for the developer. Because, yeah, they do get blamed for it. How dare they add the option to kill children! Never mind it was the player who decided to do it, and never mention there are consequences for this action as well*.

Ironically, games as a medium won't be able to grow up if they cannot add meaning to themselves. But what if we cannot do that for exactly this reason, being afraid of the actual consequences doing that would entail? That is a scary thought.


Finally, how come "moral choices" boil down to "SHOOT CIVILIAN" (or even "shoot child") these days? Those are barely even moral choices, for they present absolutely no grey area. It's incredibly obvious what is the right and what is the wrong thing to do.
How about moral choices that do not involve killing in any way? Sometimes, I can chose which faction in a game I want to join, and I suppose this might come closer, but it's still not quite there.

This post is all over the place, and I apologize. In essence, here are two questions for you that I'd like to hear your take on.
One, Do you agree with the decision (and the reasons behind it) for removing the 'moral choice' of killing civilians?. Two, What games have presented you with real moral choices - those that felt difficult to make, and where you were unsure what the correct choice is?

Those can't all be in some sub-genre, where stories are easier told, right? (Visual Novels? I have never played any of them, apart from the very nice, lovely written Digital, though that one does not really present even a choice to begin with. Still very worth your time, so check it out if you haven't, or read this about it!)



* Alright, of course, the consequences ingame can never even come close to being, feeling "real". This is obvious. And as long as the "consequences" are an additional line of dialog saying how awful you are, it's hard to call it a consequence at all. Come to think of it, only very few games actually have consequences for these kind of actions that even come close to being of a level (intensity?) that would seem appropiate, in the fiction and context of the game.

I have posted this in Morbius and not in "Gameplay & Game Design", or any other forum, since the topic of this basically invites itself to go to many different places. While I started the discussion with a game-focus, I think it would be worthwhile to explore the issue in context of other mediums. How do movies approach it? Of course, they can only ever be about a choice, and not about putting you in a position where you HAVE the choice yourself.


I apologize for this double post, and I realize this is very bad form. But my previous post was already very incoherent, and I am fearing that any more would destroy it completely, therefore I chose to add this in an additional post, in a desperate and possibly fruitless attempt to make things understandable


Looking forward to hearing your opinions!


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To add some more content - feel free to ignore this and just reply to the above - Cliff Harris recently blogged about a somewhat related observation, mainly, that most of the "drama" and conflict in video games is of a violent nature.
Conflict refused in dialogs is rarely seen. He mentions a few examples, and some are more suited for games than others, but it's a neat thought-experiment to try and come up with gameplay mechanics about them.

The first one, for instance - a hostage situation - by it's very nature would be incredibly exciting. There is so much on the line here! But if you vow to not resolve it by violent conflict - and for the sake of argument, let us assume a direct confrontation using guns is impossible - then how would it play?

Just an elaborate dialog tree? Negotiating the situation in this case would make for a very unique game, that's for sure. Even more so, I'd absolutely love to try it. But how to do it? Writing billions of lines seems impractical. Some automated approach, in which you enter the lines yourself, similar to Facade?

Or do you know of a different way to handle this?
I wish I had the time, then I'd love to have a contest on this. Lots of people trying to make an interesting hostage-situation-game. The concept is exciting and promising, there's a clear structure out there - but no one having any clue how to do the gameplay. Should end up with lots of different ways to play, many dialog trees, and possibly some surprises. Or no one will enter.

This is just an "initial reaction" post without a lot of thought in it. So, please, take it in that light.

I don't think that these games really provide me with a moral choice at all. Why? Because I realize that I am playing a game, after all. And, frankly, in a game I can many times do things that I cannot in real life. I can fly a space ship, I can jump amazing distances, I can run and never tire, I can carry more weapons than I ever could in real life, etc. None of this bothers me because its a game. And, so, if I kill someone (anyone) in a game, I don't feel I am making a moral choice at all. Instead, I am doing yet something else that I cannot do in real life. To me, this doesn't matter if the one being shot by me is a civilian, a soldier, a monster or even a child. If you play BioShock then you get to make a choice about killing a child there ... or helping the child. It all depends on how you want to proceed WITH THE GAME.

Now, to the questions you asked:



Frankly, I don't really know if this is why someone cannot shoot civilians or not in the game mentioned. I've not played it. However, their first consideration probably was not moral. It was probably to keep the game running smoothly and to focus game play. Then, when someone asked why you can't shoot civilians, instead of telling you that, they adapted the "moral" idea in order to cause people to see them as "good guys" despite making a shoot-em-up game. I may be way off, but that was my first impression upon reading your post about this.



As mentioned above, BioShock allowed you to take the life of a child by harvesting ADAM from them or to help the child (thus receiving less of the necessary resource). And how you conducted yourself throughout the game determined the cinematic that played at the end of the game. For me, it was not a moral dilemma. I made my choice based on how I wanted to play the game and what I was trying to achieve. Even so, I did "feel better" about helping the children than by simply harvesting the ADAM and, thus, killing them.

Having said that, I remember playing Half Life 2 and wishing, at times, I could shoot certain civilians in the game, especially on a second or third time through so that I could see if this would affect the game in any way. Of course, you can only shoot the enemy.

Going way back, I remember playing the original Unreal. You could shoot any creature there (even the birds in the sky). There were these four armed beings that often helped you to find hidden objects. However, if you shot one of them, then they all became afraid of you and ran from you instead of helping you. That was very cool, in my opinion.

So, once again, I think these are not really "moral" decisions ... not for someone that fully realized that they are playing again (no more so than someone enjoying a horror film realizes that they are not actually enjoying someone getting killed).

for me, a moral choice in any game is NEVER a moral choice at all, because i always act as the character i am portraying. for example in any given spider-man game, i would always act like spider-man would. in any given war scenario game, i would always act like i think the soldier i play would act. if i play a jack bauer type of guy i would always act like jack bauer would. the moral choice is not mine to make, but the one of the character i play. jack bauer would NEVER shoot children. he would rather die. yet, he would not abandon his mission either.

and that is the point for me. if we want to grow as a medium, we have to get past moral choice as a device to kill or kill not. there are more moral chices we can explore in any given genre of any given game.

LOST captured that quite right at the endo of season 5. the moral choice there was simple: undo the plane crash and everybody who died will live, or let it happen so that those who live and those who love, the children born will continue.

moral choice is needed for us to grow that is true. but there has to be another way than just kill or kill not. it is a moral choice to chose career over family. it is a moral choice to put the needs of the many over the needs of the few. it is even a moral choice to spend your five bucks on some homeless stranger or another cold beer in a bar.

my call is it for game companies to explore moral choices in everyday life games. have choices and consequences in the sims. in the tycoon games. fire that one employee because he is sick or dotn fire him. dont fire him and you lose money but he returns a profit when he is better. fire him and save money but lose profit when he joins your competition. this also is moral choice with a clear cut for what you do ingame.

i think this is an important topic. as for the decision, since i have never played battlefield i dont know what the game is all about, but i agree with the decision that they did what they did. i however do not agree with the reasoning. becaus it was EA who organized people to scream and shout against one of their games for advertising purpouses. it was ea who promoted adult themed games to kids with the slogan so brutal your mother will hate it. they are full of it and this is a hypocritical move and a PR stunt. they should have never considered it in the first place because its not a moral choice. a moral choice is it to have kids in there and decide to save them/not save them. but not kill them/not kill them. what sick being would consider that anyay?

I found a definition of Morality in Wikipedia. Here is the first sentence.

"Morality (from the Latin moralitas "manner, character, proper behavior") is a sense of behavioral conduct that differentiates intentions, decisions, and actions between those that are good (or right) and bad (or wrong)."

It also describes, that morality depends on religion, culture, philosophy ect.

I would even go so far and say it even depends on your point of view. People who shoot the government are called terrorists, rebels, freedom fighters and much more. It all depends on the point of view and it depends who is the winner, who writes history in the end.

As an example, I could never enjoy any world war game. I had to shoot Germans, people like my grandfather. I often have to play a heroic American. In games I have to shoot terrorists who could be rebels or freedom fighters for others.
It is hard to draw a line between good and evil. So morality is often just a relative and theoretical construction.

But there is some kind of genetic morality code that we all share. Most of the time we dont like to kill our own race except for defending ourselves / our families. Because of that we dont like to kill innocent people in games. That makes sense and will always be a source for discussions like that. It might be interesting to some gamers to try it out, because it is just a game, but most people will try to avoid it.
A game as well as a movie always gives us strong and very "evil" reasons to hate and to kill the "evil" human opponents. Often games even try to get around by just offering (un)dead enemies. Zombies like that can be found in almost every game to replace humans and to get around this moral dilemma.

I think this is not that interesting and not really new. But the more interesting question is: why do we enjoy killing of so much virtual life in so many games? Most games are killer games, even kids games like Zelda or Mario are about killing enemies. Do we really miss our primal rage that much? Is it a more challenging replace for our hunting instinct? Wouldn't it be better to do real-life fighting sports instead, to come closer to the primal instincts?

I mean, a Battlefield 3 game is not about war, about a story to tell how horrible and how cruel war is. It does not teach morality. It is only to enjoy the killing at a Battlefield, to get incentives, achievements and honors to kill people and to defend some flag points. As you can see, our morality is weak, when it comes to follow the urge of our primal needs. We call it "fun" today, but there is something behind this "fun".

Oh, I forgot to reply to your questions.


I remember a lot of games who allow to kill innocents and let you deal with consequences. In Mafia or Elite the police did hunt you. In Morrowind they not only hunt you, they also put you in prison. Other games simply let you die or end the game if you do something like that.

In the case of the BF3 SP campaign it is hard to say. What should be a consequence? Your squad leader could talk bad about you. Maybe better: You had to go home and stand in front of a military court. Maybe the game ends instantly with a video or an image of the military court.
But without a consequence like this it is really easy to just remove this game feature. Both would be a possible option.


The best games (and the best books) here are the ones around the Witcher Geralt. I remember the books were a monster often proved to be more human than the humans hunting it. There is no black and white and thus it is difficult to make the "right" decision just because there is NO right decision. There are only consequences in the Witcher's world. Probably the same applies to our real world when we invade other countries like Libya. The people on both sides can be seen as heroes or as terrorists.

I also carry disdain over this as well. The way Call of Duty and Medal of Honor portray the German soldiers as total "bad guys" is very unbelievable. I actually wish more World War II games took place on the Eastern front (germans vs. russians). Removing the typical "good guy" Americans from the mix would make the question of morality a much bigger one, especially if you let players play on both sides. The eastern front is where most of the fighting and killing took place anyway.


I vaguely remember something like this in America's Army. Disobeying orders, killing squadmates, and harming civilians would earn the player "Jail time." If the player logged into the game during this time, he could do nothing more than walk around in his virtual cell. It was an interesting mechanic that defined a hard moral line for the player to follow.


In human terms, this is absolutely true. But at the same time, this is also where the line gets fuzzy. If you are an atheist who believes there is no higher being who governs us and enforces the rules, then morality is nothing more than a theoretical code of conduct which is different to everyone. But if you believe in a god who defines a strict code of conduct by which we are all accountable, then there is no question over what is right or wrong; to those people that believe in such a thing, of course.

This is a tangent, but it's my belief that this is exactly where wars come from. If you define religion as just being someone's point of view, then nearly every war that we have ever fought has been a religious war, whether or not it comes under the pretense of a war fought under religious terms like God, Christianity, Islam, etc. Occasionally wars have been the spawn of misunderstanding, like the war between Britain and America in the War of 1812. But it's my understanding that such things are rare. Ask any person who's ever started/entered a war, and he'll always say he was doing what he thought was right.

This is exactly why the Taliban are fighting us now. In their own eyes, they are not terrorists. Their intention is to unite all of humanity under Allah by force. And no amount of arguing or talking will convince them that they are wrong.

Yes, I agree with their decision. It certainly depends on the style of game, but once someone decides they're going to shoot up some civvies, they likely don't care about the in-game consequences because they're breaking character. Or, the consequences might be their reward: The player realises they can do something different by doing something as terrible as shooting civilians. If the player's allies turn on him/her, then the player is rewarded with a survival mode and bragging rights -- "In the base-camp level I shot up a translator, and managed to kill seven soldiers before I was gunned down!" While actual mundane punishments (prison time that must be actively played) will inevitably be perceived as unfair treatment, especially when a player accidentally kills a civilian thinking they were an enemy, or the player lets their friend play for a bit.

Players put up videos of the littlest things in games all the time -- especially big games. If a player puts up a compilation video of himself shooting up civilians throughout the game, much of the bad press would get put on BF3.

I disagree with the "keep the game running smoothly and focus on gameplay" argument. In a first person shooter (or any game where the player's objective is already to shoot up humanoids), having civilians die properly would be extremely easy to add, as would having no consequences for such an action.
The endings in the first two Deus Ex games. I think part of what made the decisions strictly moral was that there were no real consequences -- I'd see a cool ending cinematic which would inevitably paint my decision in a positive light, because any of the options had pros and cons. I wouldn't have to worry about how it affected later decisions in the game.

When there are consequences, a matter can only be kept "grey" if the consequences are equal but different. If I'm presented with a tough decision in a game and discover that one decision has strictly bad consequences, or the other has strictly good consequences, the decision will be black and white on my next playthrough.

Mass Effect 2 was awful at this. I remember getting Renegade points (that is, evil points) for saying the Genophage was a good thing, or Paragon points (which is an utterly stupid name for "good", because one could easily be the paragon of evil) for saying it was a bad thing. But the arguments are presented as being a grey area, and they truly are (in this case, the Genophage is "bad" because it's meant to just feel wrong, but it's good because of historical reasons that make sense -- since when was "feeling" the decider on good and bad!?). Elsewhere in the game, I'd choose what I thought the game would think was right, even if I felt differently, because I knew the game rewarded what it decided was good, and punished (or at least withheld good things from) those that did what the game considered bad.

Jibb