Morality: The Problem at the Heart of Choice-Based Games

An Amorality System

Your nimble fingers tap the keys while squinting a stare at the beautifully designed art of your newest choice-based game. You're sat with a choice.

Pet the puppy or kill the puppy?

You pick pet the puppy.

Then you shake your head, since it's not even real, and you tell yourself it's choice based and you want your money's worth.

You play the game a second time.

Again, you have a choice. Pet the puppy or kill the puppy?

You have replayed the game specifically to choose kill the puppy, you tell yourself. You have bought the game specifically for this mechanic and these extra options.

You pick pet the puppy.

What is the problem with this? Good vs Evil?

It's evil (naturally). People aren't evil, the vast majority of people don't want to be evil. The problem is having the choice be one of good or evil in the first place.

In James Bond films, he has to stop a nuke from destroying the world, but before even engaging in the possibility, in a meta sense you know that the film won't end with the nuke going off, because then the James Bond franchise would end and children would be crying in their seats. Parents would be complaining. They literally can't end it having to set up their sci-fi sequel set in an apocalyptic UK (as much as I would absolutely love that).

You have Mad Max in front of you, hanging off the side of a speeding tanker, Furiosa's arm clinging on by a thread... and you shrug. So what? He's not gonna fall.

The stakes and other option is something you actively don't want, and so can't ever root for. This applies to a character's death in film or video games, specifically a protagonist's- and the choice between a good decision in a game (like Until Dawn, live or die?) and the bad one (Ooh! I'm going to kill every character for the super depressing ending, please!).

So don't make it good or evil.

YOU: "Well then if the choice isn't between two extremes, given the player's power fantasy in the story, how can we get players to engage in the dialogue system and feel satisfied having a choice between two things that seem opposite? If the choice is not clear enough, or seemingly drastically impactful enough, will a player want that?"

I think so. I think it can be more impactful.

I think, the more realistic the possibility of the opposite happening, the closer the stakes are to possibly happening, the more invested a person is in whether they will keep the story going after they happen.

As much as everybody wants the perfect run where they choose all the best options, I think by giving people something better, by asking them to humour you for a second and play going for a more interesting playthrough, a playthrough where they did what they personally believed in rather than the easy to see 'right thing', they will be more open to replaying to seeing different options because there will be no bad options. Only more interesting ones.

The good and evil system is based on two superlatives, the fact that they are superlative is the draw, right? Save the Galaxy, or Destroy it! Halos or Horns! You want them as far apart as possible, right? But when you eventually have to bottleneck and taper the player to the same point due to budget restrictions, this often results in false pressure and consequences that the player's reactions will have.

Rather than deal with the central conflict of good and evil- you should instead deal with the central conflict of two things that are closer. Though lacking the superlative draw, you can still say 'Play it your way', and not be deceitful about the choice based system, it is still a choice. And they are two different, even opposing things. For example, selflessness vs the self.

And I don't mean selfishness, I mean the self.

If you had to visualise morality, it wouldn't be as simple as good and evil, it would be more like good and evil on one axis, narcissistic and empathic on another, because a little narcissism isn't evil, in some cases it's self-help and required to keep you alive.

Everyone is a good person- until they have to give away every meal and starve.

Everyone is good... until they have to work and get the job instead of somebody else.

Everybody is good until they have to choose when they've fallen in love with the same person as somebody else.

Suddenly, the choice is about what you want.

The question of morality then becomes more about the overall morality of one person living for themselves compared to others. What do you say to a daughter who's being 'kind' to her father by seeing him every day in the care home, compared to her more over-arching wants to fulfil her dream of going to college or meet someone romantically?

The importance here is that you create choices that have something that is lost if they choose. And as a result, the player has to deal with a more complicated scenario.

And now the player is sweating, because they're finally feeling something. Stakes.

If the choice is instead between two things void of good/evil morality, suddenly the player doesn't really know what they want (Which is good, original and different compared to the rigid structure of good and evil, which for a lot of players I think might be dried up of fun at this point).

With a system free of the ramifications of failing the good choice or accidentally doing the evil one, suddenly take that away, and it's about which of two paths do you use to get through this thing.

Do you take the money, or go after the love interest?

Going after the love interest might result in them betraying you, going after the money might actually be the 'better' choice... until you meet another one down the line. Now, it's about the ethics of planning, the player formulates the plan that will end up with the best outcome-

But you're now pushing them into thinking of being ethical through holding off on the good thing for something eventually better on the promise of getting it, or cutting your losses early and maybe losing out on something better... so you need to reward the player for the cut losses choice somewhere down the line to make it more appealing and have them realise things may not be what they initially seem.

As early as humanly possible, you would want to instil in the player the way that a full choice beginning to end could play out.

You could also have it be the difference between two good choices, each one still good, just talking about how you personally would go about solving a problem, but use that as a jumping off point for an ethical question- that was pre-established through earlier examples of people trying the choice and seeing how their outcome went.

I.e. A cutscene of a character who tried to cheat on a bet get kicked out and beaten up when you yourself are going into a Den specifically tasked with cheating.

Eventually people will metagame, they'll have a meta choice as well. Often in Until Dawn, people will 'roleplay' the characters' in question, playing their own dynamic narrative as much as what the game says is the right choice.

Some people, like myself, will specifically choose things that seem like they'll result in the most interesting cutscenes, or break narrative and offer the most interesting narrative scenarios while still being 'good', just to see if they actually went through with making the more batshit scenario, to see how deep this rabbit hole really goes, metagaming the budget, testing their programming threshold.

Being able to pass this test would do wonders for a player's experience, passing that test, having the more fireworks laden playthrough- but it ethically not being the best would make for a much more engaging game, pushing the player ultimately into a mindset of whether they wat to metagame or not. Do they wanna see the pretty lights or do the right thing?

Here's an example of some central conflicts that have much more tangible stakes that I personally think would make the back of a box pop out to me:

Selflessness vs the Self

You have to give away money to make yourself go down the selflessness route, but eventually in this game, that won't be the right decision. Eventually, you'll actually be punishing yourself for committing entirely to a route to min-max the game, rather than making a multitude of different decisions.

By rewarding the player for each change of decision, even just the fact that they changed it, it'd do wonders for making a playthrough that much more engaging. The dream scenario would be a game that has several archetype playthroughs similar to a class system... but without telling the player. Or, by telling the player through dialogue and narrative.

For example, if it's in the dialogue, players prompted if they make a decision it might have consequences, they might take it or not, but these 'prompts' would actually be pivotal points where a player makes a decision to roleplay a type of class.

Now of course, some people would want to stick to class, but that ends up being a metagame where you're trying to be the best Cleric you can be or something. Not bad, but the end goal would be an in-game version of this.

Give the player no tutorial on this. No warning, no signposts, no class metagaming. By keeping narrative decision and the reward system a secret until the powers or money they get at the end of roleplaying decisions, it remains in-game and in-story.

The player gets to feel like they made the right choices roleplaying the character or class they liked best, changing when they felt was best, and most importantly, weren't told of a best ending or rewards they'd get for going full paragon.

By keeping them in the dark, letting the decisions be as un game-y as possible, they remain special to the player. They have the impact they have in-game, and it feels so much more like each decision could go anywhere, and have an in-game impact that keeps them locked in and invested wondering where the story goes rather than where they have to cheese the system to get the rewards.

I think eventually, with this system, with similar decisions that could be equally interesting, players would replay more often, argue over which decision was ultimately best for the characters involved, and then when finding out about the class system (sure making their routes and guides) ultimately they would recommend like with the best films: Go in blind.

Don't look up guides, just make your decisions, don't ask, play it first. It'd become more special, and maybe a singular choice-based game that would really carve a path for making choice-based games seem the pay-off they're selling.

Romantic Hero vs Rogue-ish Hero

One long term love interest or several more short term, only to find following the romantic hero route that the person you're interested in will demand more of you romantically than you think is reasonable.

Suddenly, it's a question of whether you're genuinely their love interest, or just being used. This could even be the point of a whole game, where you help people with the belief that love is about doing things for someone and 'going after' them, only to hit them on the head that the best thing for them was to stop much earlier.

You could also reward the player with the Rogue-ish option- perhaps the first person they are with is a fling, but after them, somebody else comes along, and you could find any of the flings turn into a love interest that is much more kind towards you, as you are more casual with them doing more selfish things rather than 'doing things to please them'.

That might seem like the decisions are skewed towards the more traditionally evil-looking one, right? But those are just set-ups. If the writing is specific enough, the planning good enough, then you can say a lot more from decision to decision, if you keep in your head as a writer what the player will be thinking after making a decision, what's cause them to do one or the other.

So instead of the two superlatives and rewarding a player for sticking with one and just choosing that one option, Paragon Paragon Paragon like a stick bird hitting the same key while your brain turns off- (while still keeping it as simple as possible for the designers!) instead, reward players for changing their decisions.

Now admittedly, unless you were willing to go through every which one and design a much more sophisticated morality system (e.g. you picked the romantic decision and then stopped after 6 of them, you then picked sarcastic decisions, we have rewarded you for these particular changes which all amount to a particular interlaced character that only picking all of these decisions will get you).

I think a huge step in the right direction would be to reward players ultimately either throughout the game or just at the end, for changing their mind. Maybe the amount of times they change their mind.

Every time a player changes their mind, and does one option and then another, it shows investment in choosing decisions you think would be good in that moment, rather than 'Doing a Paragon Run'.

Now admittedly, this would be abused, min-maxed too, and of course would lead to people maybe angry that it doesn't make sense, why am I being rewarded for saving the puppy and then killing this other puppy? But at least in the beginning when people played, they would find it out after doing their first run which has already put into question the idea of metagaming. And that's really the mentality people get put into.

In Dungeons and Dragons, sure you have alignment, but as much as people might focus on it, isn't the most fun part when the DM puts a hard decision in front of you? 'Til you're pointing red-faced 'You asshole! Oh dammit because I want BOTH of those THINGS!'.

Those are the moments you talk about after, ultimately. They change characters, and through them, players, making them question good and evil.

Of course, the dream would be a more nuanced version, (some 70 years down the line when we're all playing PS20s and Xbox X-Class Series X2's) where the game takes into account a playing style without telling the player, and then surprises the player by rewarding a much more nuanced play through, encouraging replayability and to think about every different decision.

The thing that would make this work best of course, is the writer/s ability to take into account what a player would do, and to write concise, wildly different but all feasible decisions that are satisfying enough for someone to pick one or another. And keeping the decisions down to a minimum for budget, while having enough fully developed personalities to reward. Tricky.

So an answer could be, like Fallout: New Vegas, to scrap the traditional morality system and give players the freedom without having to keep up after them like a parent trying to validate a rampaging toddler.

But with morality systems so tied to story quests in video games, of course you need some sort of reward, I mean without them the only difference between them and other RPGs would be the engagement with the quests themselves, which if the game is full of depressing difficult decisions could be too much for a lot of people.

Whatever it is... just make sure you don't kill any puppies for real. Renegade is almost certainly nowhere near as fun in real life.