Morality in the Mechanics | Game Maker's Toolkit

This is Game Maker's Toolkit, I'm Mark Brown.

Darkest Dungeon shows the psychological toll
of being a warrior in a Lovecraftian nightmare.

Heroes become stressed out, they suffer debilitating
afflictions, and they rack up destructive

personality quirks. And while physical wounds
heal instantly after a quest, psychological

trauma lingers for much longer and must be
treated with prayer, or booze, or a trip to

the sanitarium.

It's a surprisingly nuanced representation
of mental health - backed up by the yelps

and appeals of your emotionally tortured party
members - which makes your heroes feel like

real and vulnerable humans.

And this makes it so much worse when you,
as their team leader, make the decision to

crush their spirits, drive them to drink,
push them way past their mental limits, and,

when they've become too mentally broken to
be useful anymore, toss them onto the streets.

Yes, it's important to take good care of your
most valued troops, and you'll consider their

emotional factors carefully. But it's also
true that the only thing that's free in this

game are human lives.

A good strategy, then, is to hire a bunch
of suckers for free, take them into a dungeon,

and extinguish the torch. Fighting in the
dark is incredibly stressful but it leads

to much better loot. When the troops come
back - haunted and suffering - you dismiss

them and hire some more.

Darkest Dungeon ultimately makes you the bad
guy, but it doesn't tell you that through

the premise or as a twist in the story. You explore your
morality organically, simply by engaging with

the core mechanics on offer.

As Jim Sterling wrote in his review, "you
start having a much easier time the moment

you stop thinking like a hero and start embracing
the cold, calculated sociopathy of a would-be

corporate CEO".

What you definitely do not need is one of those hokey
karma systems to tell you that you've crossed onto

the dark side.

I'm not really talking about the ones found
in RPGs like Mass Effect and Fallout, seeing

as they stem from D&D character sheets that
ask you which alignment you're going to role

play as.

But the ones found in action games like inFamous
and BioShock are, to put it kindly, a bit crap.

Choosing good or evil options simply leads
to slightly different powers and cutscenes

in inFamous, and while Irrational was going
somewhere with the little sisters in BioShock,

where you had to make the ethical decision
to kill a child in order to get yourself more magic DNA

juice, it bungled the execution by rewarding
virtuous players with more stuff in the long run.

These systems are reductive, flattening out
the complex maze of human morality into a

single good or evil bar. And they frequently
ignore the middle ground, and make it more

about replay value than genuine heart-wrenching
decisions.

Which is why it's pleasing to see games like
Darkest Dungeon, which is one of a number

of recent indie games that explores this topic
with a lot more nuance - mostly by doing away

with separate "karma systems" altogether,
and embedding morality into the main mechanics

themselves.

Undertale, for example, turns every monster
encounter into a moral choice as you can choose

to kill the critter, or talk to the monster
and try to pacify it.

Killing is easy - we've been taught how to
do it by decades of JRPGs, after all - and

this is the only way to receive experience
points and boost your health. It's possible

to justify your violent actions as coming
from a place of fear and disempowerment.

Mercy, on the other hand, is a complex puzzle
- especially in boss fights - and because

you receive no in-game bonuses for doing it,
you'll have fewer health points and will struggle

to defend yourself in upcoming encounters.

But Undertale's rewards for pacifism are far
greater than stats: you become friends with

the characters, you receive a more interesting
story, and you get to go on a date with a

skeleton.

To be truly good in Undertale, you have to
put in more effort, and make a significant

sacrifice. And you also have to ask yourself what you value in video games because you get completely

different things for choosing a more violent approach,or a more merciful play style.

Ultra depressing civilian survival game This
War of Mine has more strict repercussions

for immoral choices.

If you direct a character to steal items or
kill defenceless people when out scavenging,

you will get more items for your safe house
but you also risk making that character become

sad, then depressed, and then broken. At which
point they may leave your group or commit

suicide.

To restore that character's spirits, you'll
have to spend time consoling them, or use

up resources making alcohol. The consequences
of your actions are felt keenly in this game.

And then there's Papers, Please. Here, you're
tasked with checking passports as people cross

the border into your country. If everything's
legit, you let them through but if their passport

is out of date or missing crucial information
you turn them away.

You earn money for every person you process,
provided you make the right call, and at the

end of the day you get to spend your money
on food, medicine, and rent for your family.

Then, things start getting complicated. Every
day new rules are introduced, extra paperwork

must be checked, and it takes you longer and
longer to process each person. Your rent's

going up, your family's getting sick, and
you're not making enough money each day.

The odds are stacked against you, and the
game starts to apply pressure. This guy will

give you extra money if you detain people,
even if they don't really deserve it. This man asks

you to let his wife through, but she doesn't
have the right paperwork and you could lose

money if you don't turn her away.

In this game, the idea of right and wrong
becomes very blurry. Papers, Please is mired

in the murky grey area - and it essentially forces
you to become corrupt. It's just down to you to

decide the extent of that corruption.

What I love about this game is that Papers,
Please shows how good people don't just make

an arbitrary choice to turn to be a bastard,
but are instead driven to do immoral and cruel

things by systemic failure, poverty, and desperation.

That's a pretty profound message in of itself,
but video games are uniquely equipped to explore

this topic because they aren't limited to
just showing and telling: they make you complicit

in the system.

Darkest Dungeon, for example, may be making
a comment on the way corporations can ignore

the mental anguish of its employees just to
make a profit - and it shows it to you first hand

asking you to confront this nasty system.

Each of these games explores morality in its
own way, but some similarities are clear.

In each, you're tempted to be evil by the
promise of money, experience points, or easier

gameplay. And only This War of Mine seems
to have a negative mechanical reaction to

those who are immoral.

It's much harder to be good in these games, as you must make sacrifices or make yourself vulnerable to

do the right thing - and the rewards, if there
are any, are often not about gameplay. They're

narrative or character driven.

And these games all do a terrific job of making
you feel miserably guilty for being a jerk,

as characters and the world in general react
to your misdeeds. I genuinely felt like human

garbage when this woman was weeping over the
corpse of her husband. Who I had just punched

to death. Sorry.

And most importantly, I think, is that all
these games explore and comment on morality

through their core mechanics, rather than
in isolated choice sequences or separate karma

systems.

In Undertale it's tied to experience points
and combat. In This War of Mine it permeates

looting and character moods. And in Papers,
Please, decisions impact your budget, and

are made with that big rubber stamp.

Morality is something that more video games
should touch on, if only because their participatory

nature makes them the perfect medium for asking
tough and uncomfortable questions of ourselves.

But these games prove that it can be a lot
smarter than simply choosing between the nice blue

option and the evil red option.

Thanks so much for watching. Please leave
a comment with your thoughts, or with more

examples of how games can talk about morality
in interesting ways. I try to read every single

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