We discuss the way in which these games break out of the traditional convention of video game moral decision making, and how they create opportunities for the player to reflect on the deeper meaning of their in-game actions. In this paper we discuss two of these games: Pope’s 2013 title Papers, Please and Yager Development’s 2012 title Spec Ops: The Line. However, several games released in the past few years have made an effort to break free of this mould by explicitly externalising moral choices. Rather than offering insight, they instead cheapen and simplify nuanced topics and concepts. Moral choices within games are thus shallow and lack the ability to truly offer us an opportunity to reflect on the actions we have taken. Moral choices then become flattened down into mere narrative flavouring rather than a reflection of an individual’s ethical makeup. Coupled to this is the concept of the “magic circle” in which games are considered to be morally discontinuous spaces where the normal rules of what actions are and are not permitted are different. However, these morality systems are inherently restricted and limited by ludic and business considerations. While the success of these endeavours has been mixed, the systems used to express moral choices within a game have grown more popular. Video games have a long tradition of including elements of moral decision making within their ludic and narrative structures. Do You Feel Like a Hero Yet? Externalised Morality in Video Gamesīy Michael James Heron & Pauline Helen Belford
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