Valve talks about moral choices in games, lack thereof |
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| BY Chad George Jul. 30th, 2009 | More on: |
Destructiod had the chance to talk with Valve’s Chet Faliszek concerning the recent uptick of the moral choice theme in games, specifically, why the choice was never there to begin with. His answer was a bit surprising - and a lot refreshing.
He explains that there cannot be a true moral decision if we never have to live with the consequences of that choice. “We do things in our game to get you to behave better, to make you play together, to have this interaction in a game, but I don’t think those are moral choices,” Faliszek continues. Even though a game allows us to be evil and do bad things, such as “In Grand Theft Auto, I’m going around running people over, and guess what, I’m not doing that in real life.” He doesn’t think games allow us to make a moral choice which has a lasting effect.
“So, in the context of games having moral choices, that’s a weird thing to me. I don’t think they have real moral choices when I think of that. They have something else, like strategic choices, choices inside their world, but to me a moral choice is something that would live outside of a game. I don’t see that.”
Ahh… smell that? It’s the scent of actual common sense.
July 30th, 2009
at 10:35 pm
Mr. George,
This argument only constitutes “actual common sense” if you assume a metaphysical framework to justify the claim that so-called moral choices are not moral because they do not have any actual consequences. If we live in a materialist world (Read: No God, no soul, just the physical universe), then this argument is more persuasive. The statistical data does not conclusively show that such decisions will have an impact upon human behavior apart from the game. However, if we live in a Buddhist or Christian world, for instance, such things may corrupt the soul. To ignore this critical point is to grant Mr. Faliszek’s presuppositions uncritically.
July 30th, 2009
at 10:46 pm
After posting this and considering that I only cited one religious (Christian) and one quasi-relious and quasi-philosophical (Buddhist) worldview, I realized that I should have used some non-religious frameworks to justify my point. Pre-modern and classical liberal philosophy generally argue that humans have a fixed nature. The practice of virtue allows us to act out our nature properly. In these worldviews, just as in the religious, there are external demands imposed upon human life. Making certain choices in a game would deny virtue and corrupt human character.