Game Design, Gamer Culture, Politics, Virtual Worlds
Morality in Games, or The Unexamined Game is Not Worth Playing
Video games are growing up. Well, they’re trying to anyway. We used to be content with traipsing through the carefully groomed grounds of the Mushroom Kingdom, guiding pixelated sprites toward a jaggy princess. Maybe this blind escapism is enough: as Super Mario Galaxy showed, sometimes it’s fun to play with gravity and not have to worry about economic turmoil or national security concerns. Sometimes, though, we want games to be something more, to illuminate a previously unknown aspect of the human condition the way a great movie or book does. In the last few years, games like Fable and BioShock have featured morality as a core mechanic, while Grand Theft Auto has actively flouted it and many others have avoided the issue altogether. But the real question here is: can games be moral?
A 43 year-old Japanese woman has been arrested for allegedly hacking into the game MapleStory, where she virtually killed her online ex-husband.
With the scent of Halloween sweets dangling in the air, many of you are planning your trick-or-treat routes in order to provide maximum candy-grabbing efficiency—and to avoid those people who think pennies, apples, or razor blades are an acceptable substitute for chocolate. It’s a strenuous job, and sometimes you might just decide to “try your luck” at a new place in hopes of free candy. But beware: if there’s anything that video games have taught us, it’s not to go anywhere unprepared (especially if ghouls are involved). The following are five locations you may be better off avoiding during your hunt for free sugar, but in case you do end up waltzing through these neighborhoods, I’ll offer some advice on how to make your trip a treat, even in the trickiest of situations…
Ever play a game where you could kill an entire town just for the fun of it… and you actually do? Are you the type of person that will make the evil choice every time you can, just because it’s more entertaining? Well, you’re not the only one. A lot of us do, and perhaps that fuels the undeserved rumors that we, as gamers, are violent and destructive people.
Will Wright’s life simulation legacy continues with the release of The Sims 3. Although we will have to wait until late February 2009 to get our hands on it, more information about what will be included in the game is becoming readily available. The real question is: will you be buying the core game or the swag-filled collector’s edition?
A couple of weeks ago, Blizzard unleashed “Echoes of Doom,” its last major content patch for World of Warcraft before the Wrath of the Lich King expansion releases on November 13th. The emphasis here is on “major.” There’s a lot of new stuff in “Echoes” and it’s taken about two weeks to sort through it all, particularly with the unbearable lag that almost always accompanies a new update. I am here, however, to hit some of the high points of the new content for you non-WoWers, you once-WoWers, and maybe some of you soon-to-be WoWers. (Disclaimer: While it’d be great, albeit sad, if I had an uber-70 of every class, this will have to be written from my experience, which is predominantly of the mage and warrior varieties.)
While still officially unannounced, there has been plenty of buzz on the Internet about the Knights of the Old Republic MMORPG ever since Bioware and LucasArts announced their collaboration on a “Ground-Breaking Interactive Entertainment Product” last October. There have even been recent rumors that official news on the KOTOR MMO could break any day now.
There’s plenty of reason to look forward to the upcoming Fallout 3. For starters, it’s being handled by a company known for its “Game of the Year” awards, genre-redefining RPG games, and a sheer in-game size and depth that rivals the Grand Theft Auto series. But I’m looking forward to something much more meaningful (at least to me): the return of one of the most interesting, most detailed, most engaging post-apocalyptic gaming universes ever created. While the complete Fallout history would take at least a few days to completely learn, here’s a quick step-by-step of the important rules, regulations, history and quirks of the Fallout universe.