LiamCollins

Contributing writer for The Artifice.

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The effectiveness of "Morality Points" in video games

Games have been keeping track of player morality in games more and more frequently. Fallout's karma system and Mass Effect's "Paragon/Renegade" system are two well-known examples. However there are many games, such as those in the Elder Scrolls series, where player morality is not tracked. What are the benefits of tracking player morality in games, and what are the drawbacks? Are players guided to do good or bad things because they want to achieve a moral standing, or because they have a planned personality for their player?

I would definitely say some of us have a planned personality for a character! In skyrim I have one "bad character" and one "good character." I can't complete all aspects of the game while sticking to one moral code of a character and it would feel inconsistent to do many good things in a row then suddenly kill someone for a daedric prince out of the nowhere. It is my own drive to stick to one value set and not because the game will track it like when I played Fable. Nerd problems... – Slaidey 9 years ago
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For the potential writer of this topic, I would also look at how as videogames are increasingly integrated into our lives, morality measures should be included in our conception of virtual "play." – 12jm9 9 years ago
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@Slaidey: I completey agree with you. I don't feel that tracking morality is as effective as the player's drive to create a character with a real personality. – LiamCollins 9 years ago
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Have you played Metro 2033? There's a morality system in that game that doesn't present itself in an obvious way until the end. The player isn't even aware that they're /making/ moral choices or not until then. I think that's an effective way to run things. Players should be allowed to build their own characters based on what they want to do, not based on what colour they want their lightning to be. – Snowskeeper 9 years ago
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Latest Comments

Jun 11, 2015 LiamCollins I always thought about this when playing the Fallout series. In one of my playthroughs, I had killed thousands of humans, but I was still the “Messiah of the Wastes”. It has always been one of Fallout’s flaws for me; there is no incentive to avoid combat when you earn so much experience from it.	Video Game Violence and Narrative Dissonance
Jun 11, 2015 LiamCollins I remember watching paulsoaresjr’s video, “How To Survive Your First Night in Minecraft” video; I was immediately entranced by the game. I absolutely had to have it. Once I had it, I spent hundreds of hours building. To this day, I could still spend the better part of a day mining out a cavern or building a monolith.	How is Minecraft captivating millions?
Jun 11, 2015 LiamCollins I think the Dark Souls franchise speaks to the idea that gamers have not grown tired of the old-school game design standard of difficulty curve. The game is extremely hard from the outset, and continuously punishes the player. Think Contra in 3D, with a sword instead of a gun.	Dark Souls: What Makes Gamers Endure the Pain?