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ThunderPeel2001

Peter Molyneux and 'emotional' gaming...

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I've just written this lengthy piece for my blog... It's not great, but I was wondering what people think of the points I raise:

http://thunderpeel2001.blogspot.com/2007/03/peter-molyneuxs-emotional-stuff.html

(It's a little easier on the eyes in the link above.)

Peter Molyneux and 'emotional' gaming...

Good old Peter Molyneux. Maverick genius. Gaming god. Someone who is always pushing the bar higher and higher. His company, Lionhead, has recently worked hard attempting to take gaming to new levels by giving a player the freedom to make moral decisions with their in-game avatar, and so shape their future into one of either "good" or "evil". The idea is that by allowing a player to decide how to react to a situation, Molyneux hopes that they will become more emotionally involved and perhaps even learn something about themselves in the process.

It's a great ambition, but in my opinion, the morally ambiguous Syndicate (1993) offered the player more moral freedom than Black & White (2001) or Fable (2004), despite these more recent games being designed specifically to offer this new type of gameplay. Is Peter Molyneux moving in the wrong direction, or am I just talking rubbish?

In Syndicate, yes, you were working for a heartless, futuristic megacorp, taking out its competitors using the most underhanded and unscrupulous methods imaginable, but at least you were free to complete your missions in any way you saw fit. Meaning you could wait for the car to pass, or blow it up and cross the road immediately without fear of recrimination, losing "good" points or growing "devil" horns.

Ok, it's not a great example of a moral dilemma, but at least the player was free to do what they wanted (provided they could handle the police response), without actually being judged for their actions. You see, as soon as you think there's some all-knowing, all-seeing deity watching over your every move, judging you, you start acting in a way to please them, instead of yourself.

The idea of being watched and judged is the very foundation of control not freedom.

It really irked me that Black & White's tag line was "Find out who you really are", as if the designers had created a flawless personality test that would reveal the truth about people. The truth is, you can't truly make an honest decision if you think the game is going to judge you for it. What if I don't feel like helping that villager right now..... Well if I don't, my "good" rating will decrease, so I guess I better had. It's not really eliciting the 'emotional response' Molyneux has talked about, or providing a decent moral quandary, but instead turning "morality" into a "points based" system, and therefore a conscious decision to play the game a particular way.

What's worse is that Black & White's two advisory characters, The Voices of "Good" and "Evil", have very explicit and self-conscious ideas about "right" and "wrong", when they really don't need to. "Evil" doesn't really exist in a real-world sense; it is usually apathy or fear or some other negative emotion that leads to actions that are later judged as wrong, rather than someone making a conscious and premeditated attempt at doing something bad.

So, instead of Black & White's The Voice of Evil saying, "Let the villagers burn, why should you care about those little creatures... you're a god!" (paraphrase), he should say, in a fed-up tone of voice, "Ohhh, do we have to help them? I'm sure they'll be able to sort it out themselves. Afterall, they survived long enough before we arrived. Why do we need to interfere for every little thing? There's such a thing as nature, afterall." Ie. Create a justifiable argument that might convince the player to do something arguably "bad". Even altering the scenarios so that players are tempted with a "fast reward" for doing something quick but not necessarily "good", would have tested a player's apathy and seen how prepared they were to do the "right" thing. Even so, the game shouldn't really recognise "good" and "bad" actions, which unfortunately, it does: Play "bad" and your citadel turns "evil" looking, play "good" and it grows wings and a halo, and sprouts a rainbow, or something.

Similarly, in Fable the player should have only been judged by individual NPCs or communities of NPCs, instead of a "universal", unseen right and wrong, which then alters your character's appearance.

Neither game should have used this visual gimmick, if they wanted the player to be truly honest with themselves. Instead, if such a thing was going to be used, it would have been more interesting and true to life if it changed depending on how the NPC you were talking to viewed you (at least in Fable). For example, kill a NPC's husband and the next time you speak to her you will look "evil". Stop talking to her and you will look neutral again. Go talk to a father of the boy you saved and you will appear "angelic". If the people of a village hear of your misdeeds, you appear menacing when you enter the village, and normal again when you leave.

(If Peter Molyneux feels strongly about certain moral decisions and wants to foist his opinion of them onto the player, then he should appear as a villager in the game and give his judgment that way, just like everyone else!)

Removing the idea of being judged and rewarded altogether would be best, though. It would create an infinitely more interesting, mature and ultimately more emotional experience for the player. Doing so would also allow the designers to create more complex quandaries, leaving the user to make up their own mind about the "right" decision, and experience the resulting consequences.

Imagine having to seriously think about your character's reaction, rather than just making a simple, cartoony decision to play as "good" or "evil"; it could be very addictive and inspiring!

Friends and online communities might well begin arguing the "correct" action for a particular scenario in such a game, and with no-one to step in and play god, telling them who is right and wrong, we would all probably learn a lot more about ourselves in the process of discussing and justifying our decisions. The early moral quandries might be simple, but as your progress into the game, they become more and more of a "grey" area and hence more difficult to decide about.

I can imagine a future where games could really excel in something like this, in a way in which other mediums really can't compete.

Of course, this shouldn't all be laid as Molyneux's feet, as if he's to blame for the lack of such a game existing! If anything I should be praising him for pushing games towards such lofty ideas, and poking at other gaming companies for not even trying to do anything new.

Who knows what the future of such games is, but fingers crossed Molyneux (or some other talented designer) will take all the ideas that Lionhead have injected into the gaming world and turn them into something even more revolutionary.

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That's cool, but it doesn't actually make any difference to my article. The only reason I mentioned Molyneux is because he's the one trying to make these things happen in games at the moment.

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You have very compelling ideas on how to improve Fable's design. Good job.

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Give that man a frontpage link! (since we're a blogroll now).

There are a couple of counter-arguments that I can think of with this (for the sake of devils advocate).

One is that in the absence of moral judgment most players will choose the quickest route. And it may not even be the route you thought of. Players are like water, flowing along the most economical path. In this mindset they won't even stop to think about the moral implications of, say, using a civilian as a human shield, if it means they still win at the end. In the absence of any moral judment by the game they can perform this action and still think of themselves as the good guy.

Secondly a lot of people in the industry are slowly starting to admit that games do need to take a moral stance. If you design a game world in which there are no real consequences for killing civilians - even if you didn't mean to (eg there is police response but players have found a way to easily escape it) - then you might have cause to question you own ethics for releasing such a game to children. This in turn does not look good to the non-gaming public. All other media exist in an ethical landscape - games alone claim to exist in moral vacuum.

But I do agree with you. The depiction of moral dilemmas in games is so heavy handed at the moment that it is beyond abstraction.

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So Molyneux should Will Wright himself up a tad? Keep the freedom, but remove the judging? Honestly, sounds pretty good. A very nice post, and Dan's right about putting you on the blogroll. It'd make for some good reading when I boot up my computer in the morning.

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You make some good points, but I think it's 50/50: There are the value judgements in the game, and how much you buy into them.

I don't particularly care if a game tells me off; the game world is there to let me do what I want with it regardless of other people's opinions. Like Dan says, many people will have no problem using a civilian as a shield in a game, and as the review of Bible Adventures on Thumbs way back pointed out, any moral judgements put into a game can easily be flouted by the player.

I played Fable TLC twice, once to be as good as possible and once to be as bad as possible. It didn't really make much difference to the story, the main ones were aesthetic and the biggest was just owning more property as an evil bastard who'd murder people for their houses. I didn't feel bad or good on either run through, I just looked it. Both plays were just an interesting poke at an interactive system.

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You make some good points, but I think it's 50/50: There are the value judgements in the game, and how much you buy into them.

I don't particularly care if a game tells me off; the game world is there to let me do what I want with it regardless of other people's opinions. Like Dan says, many people will have no problem using a civilian as a shield in a game, and as the review of Bible Adventures on Thumbs way back pointed out, any moral judgements put into a game can easily be flouted by the player.

I played Fable TLC twice, once to be as good as possible and once to be as bad as possible. It didn't really make much difference to the story, the main ones were aesthetic and the biggest was just owning more property as an evil bastard who'd murder people for their houses. I didn't feel bad or good on either run through, I just looked it. Both plays were just an interesting poke at an interactive system.

Yep, I think you've just solidified by point, somewhat. Ie. The "good" and "bad" aspects of Fable didn't really add anything for you, and certainly didn't create any emotional ties to the game. It's a shame!

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Basically what we're saying is that moral judgments should be done as in the early parts of Deus Ex?

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The only problem is that video games, as an interactive medium, need feedback. B&W and Fable were games marketed around the fact that you could be good or evil. If they couldn't demo the "good or evil gameplay mechanic" it would be a pretty hard sell, both to publishers and to the press.

But yeah, definitely a good point though, and one that I agree with.

SiN

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Basically what we're saying is that moral judgments should be done as in the early parts of Deus Ex?

One of the things I thought Invisible War did even better than the first game was how the three factions you could work for had philosophies that weren't good/bad, they were different. (Although I do recall the templars getting increasingly insane as the game progressed, but that may just have been me). I also liked how renouncing all three philosophies at the end of the game (there was something unpalatable about them all) led to global nuclear war with only the cyborg chaps surviving. It was a real "Shit, that was totally irresponsible" moment; the game was totally rejecting the 'renegade who plays by his own rules' as a hero, and forcing you to make a choice. In Invisible War, you can't save the world through indecision. I think that's the time I've really been made to think, and hard, about a choice I've made in a game. I remember procrastinating for about 20 minutes trying to decide which course of action was the more moral.

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One of the things I thought Invisible War did even better than the first game was how the three factions you could work for had philosophies that weren't good/bad, they were different. (Although I do recall the templars getting increasingly insane as the game progressed, but that may just have been me). I also liked how renouncing all three philosophies at the end of the game (there was something unpalatable about them all) led to global nuclear war with only the cyborg chaps surviving. It was a real "Shit, that was totally irresponsible" moment; the game was totally rejecting the 'renegade who plays by his own rules' as a hero, and forcing you to make a choice. In Invisible War, you can't save the world through indecision. I think that's the time I've really been made to think, and hard, about a choice I've made in a game. I remember procrastinating for about 20 minutes trying to decide which course of action was the more moral.

Wow! That sounds absolutely amazing! I think I should pick that game up, I really loved the first one, but the second one seemed to get middling reviews... Looks like I should have stuck with my instincts and bought it.

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Not shit, still above average, just not as good. This has been covered in another thread though. My problem with the choices that they gave you in Invisible War was that they really only seemed to matter at times like you mentioned. Otherwise, you could assasinate an official from one group under orders from another, then head to that group for your next mission like nothing happened. At worst, they'd scold you a bit. Seemed a tad silly to me. Still, if you can suspend your disbelief and make yourself think that they're pissed off with you, thus avoiding them anyway, it can still be quite immersive.

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Not shit, still above average, just not as good. This has been covered in another thread though. My problem with the choices that they gave you in Invisible War was that they really only seemed to matter at times like you mentioned. Otherwise, you could assasinate an official from one group under orders from another, then head to that group for your next mission like nothing happened. At worst, they'd scold you a bit. Seemed a tad silly to me. Still, if you can suspend your disbelief and make yourself think that they're pissed off with you, thus avoiding them anyway, it can still be quite immersive.

I'll agree that this could have been handled a lot better, but it's worth noting that any game that wants the player to make moral choices without obvious rewards for doing so is going to have to rely on them suspending disbelief. This worked with the first Deus Ex for me - I only realised on the second run through the game that none of the choices I made actually had any impact on how the game progresses, and I'm sure the game would've been reduced if I'd realised this first time through. I sometimes wonder if one of the things that held back the second game is that people already knew that this was going to be the case, because they'd played the first game.

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