The morality conundrum in Videogames

Let me ask you ----”what is the one element that hasn't changed much or at all in videogames for 20 years or since it's inception?”

The answer is : An overly simplistic approach towards conflict & resolution in both gameplay & narrative.

Take a series such as Call of Duty. The main villain or bad guy is one man/terrorist that needs to be stopped/killed/eliminated. To do that, the games sets the player on a path to killing millions of soldiers/terrorists across different parts of the globe (read: levels). On the very last level, the player gets to put an end to the bad guy in a scripted moment or an in your face, slow-mo cutscene.

Now compare this structure with older 8bit games. There's a big bad boss & he sends all his minions to fight you. You fight wave after wave of enemies across different levels. At the end you face the boss in a pattern based fight and beat him. End credits.

The main difference in both these variants of games is little more than a higher degree of presentation & interactivity. The framework is strikingly similar.

One of the fundamental aspects of morality is the distinction between the evil men & the evil in men. It's the invisible line between justice & revenge. Videogames as a medium have evolved in interactivity & presentation techniques, perhaps even in public perception but pretty much remains grounded when it comes to vision. To be more specific, when it comes to conflict & resolution.

Most videogames are simply content with engaging the player in a path littered with 'kill-or-be-killed' encounters. Sometimes they give the players a bigger arsenal of options to kill their targets or more navigational freedom in the environment, but still pushes them down the same road. Instead of letting them choose their own resolution towards the conflict, the majority of videogames just drop the player right into the conflict & propel them towards a path of singular resolution. For the most cases, the resolution arrives at the player's trigger finger than a well thought out decision. Morality exists mostly as an external layer, a binary choice. 

Evil choices take it's toll

Many Videogames tend to show an undercurrent of the battle between good & evil in their depictions of a conflict. But to be brutally honest, there's nothing 'heroic' about the actions of the proverbial 'good guy' or the protagonist. Sometimes their actions, which generally results in mass murder when seen in a bigger picture, makes you wonder on which side you really are. Conflicts in videogames rarely end without him/her slaying their way through. Even games that offer multiple paths does it mostly to add variety to the kill & rarely stray from the formula. In the end, the protagonist is just another bad guy who happens to be much better at killing his/her enemies & fulfilling objectives.

The resolution part of the conflict is not even taken seriously in most Videogames' circumstances. The player is more defined by his/her acquired perks or the amount of levels gained than whether he/she made the world a better or a worse place. The First person shooter (FPS) genre is a prime victim of this sort of bland depiction. Kill 5000 people in order to stop one terrorist, really? The bad guy decides to kill millions of people to prove his point & you, the player is given orders to kill millions of people to prove him wrong. Ok, that was an oversimplification but the only way to deal with conflict is to simply obliterate it by becoming better at the same things the 'enemy' does. What's the point of complex, realistic characters in narratives when the majority of the player's time is spent putting a bullet through people? Most of the experiences of a player comes from real gameplay moments, not from elaborately designed cutscenes.

The total absence of “an other way” towards conflicts rightly justify the accusation that most videogames are little more than an indulgent of the player's power fantasies. Although the power of personal choice exists, almost none of them lets the player go out with clean hands. I know the whole black & white logic sounds a bit irrelevant when it comes to videogames. After all, 'real world' situations are the primary source of inspiration for many videogames, where a morally ambiguous approach is considered appropriate. Whether in medieval times or in this 21^st century, any serious form of conflict rarely ends without resorting to morally questionable deeds. Morality hardly comes into play in the harsh reality. That's why one would be hard pressed to find a videogame protagonist who's not morally ambiguous.

But here's the thing----the essential element in Videogames as a medium is imagination. Is it really that hard to envision a conflict where besides the usual gray approach, a different, morally correct path can be made viable? Must always the player has to enter a hostile zone with guns blazing? I know that there are several games that offers a non violent or stealthier approach but the existence of those games mostly serves as a deviation from a broadly accepted rule than the introduction to a whole new frontier. I am not against the fact that Videogames can't have violence in them cause it's real hard to make a game mostly about talking.

Instead I am of the opinion that the violence factor & it's implementation has gone totally off the charts. Remember back when Modern Warfare 2 put the player in the shoes of real world terrorists & depicted a mass murder in an airport or Modern Warfare 3 blowing up a little girl in front of the player, just to show the extremes of real-world terrorism? These moments are basically exploitative of our real-world fears than actually adding depth to the conflict or giving any sense of meaning to the lives lost. 

Shock without awe

The contextual aspect of a videogame serves a major purpose in depicting morality. Games such as the Hitman series or the GTA series lets you experience the world through the eyes of a bad guy. When you are playing as someone already established as an unapologetically bad person or a hired killer, you are expected to do bad things. In the same way, in the Batman games the player can't kill cause Batman doesn't. From this perspective games like COD or Battlefield are more 'war simulators' than anything else. But look at Farcry 3 where the only way out is to turn into a ruthless killer from a sensitive & ethical person. The game simply doesn't provide any other way. Although there is a bow, the game doesn't have sleep darts, only explosive & flaming arrows. It forces the player to embark on a violent path that only escalates as the game progresses & ends with a binary choice that allows the player to simply wash their bloodied hands.

On the other hand, the morality system in the Mass Effect series suits itself just fine. It runs deep & doesn't let the player get away without facing the consequences of their own actions. Although the Paragon/ Renegade based system presents a difference in means to the same end than lead towards different ends altogether, it still establishes the truth that it takes more than weapons & fleets to save the galaxy.

The only game in this generation (that I've played) that faithfully shows the difference between Justice & Revenge is Dishonored. Having played the game first in my usual bloodthirsty ways, my expectations of a 'non-lethal' second playthrough wasn't very high. I was mostly expecting a different ending & a lengthier experience. Maybe a few different cutscenes here & there. But after playing through in it's entirety, I was blown away. It was so satisfying, so fulfilling to witness the big picture of the City that I had just made a better place through my actions. It was so easy to turn into a monster in a plague infested World filled with monsters, abominations & treacherous people. But I showed mercy & didn't lose sight of what's truly important and the World was all the better for it. All the bad guys were punished & shamed, the plague eradicated & a Golden age was ushered. Of course, it all came without a single loss of Life. There couldn't be any happier ending.

Now of course the narrative framework of Dishonored created a World where it's pretty logical why simply butchering through guards, soldiers & npc's (non playable characters) would result in a terrible & ultimately defeating ending. But at the same time, certain npc's & the game itself (through the last mission) lauded the player as a hero. The game acknowledged that the player's non-lethal action didn't come from a place of avoidance of further trouble but from a sense of doing the right thing. Dishonored absolutely nailed the distinction between a hero & a killer. It showed that the means are as important as the end itself.

The non-lethal route in Dishonored wasn't in any way less challenging than the usual “kill-anything-that moves” route either. The game proved that not only a morality centered direction towards conflict is possible, it can be as satisfying.

Now why can't the majority of Videogames take such directions towards conflict-resolution? Must always an end have to arrive through the barrels of a weapon? I know it's how most things work in the real world. But if Videogames as a medium has to evolve from a commercialized entertainment to objects of art worthy of serious study, they have to break away from the parallelisms of the real & the fictional without losing relevance. Art can be as realistic as it wants, but shouldn't be limited to being a mere photograph of real Life.