metriced morality systems

This note last modified March 8, 2023

If a game gives you direct, tangible game stats / goods for a moral action, that’s a direct morality system. I’m unsure how to feel about that, since on the one hand they encourage you to think about the morality of your actions, but on the other hand they turn a moral choice into an in-game choice.

Designing Morally Engaging Games-Ryan points out that a metriced morality system incentivizes players to think about what the developers felt was moral, rather than thinking about morality themselves.

respect the player's intelligence with subtle messages, slowly built
- Don’t judge the player, let the player judge themselves by seeing the effects of their in-game actions.
morality systems
- metriced morality systems
games - good endings
- Achieving this can be a fun challenge for players and an interesting thing to have in your game, but depending on the type of game, this can lead to an uncritical acceptance of the things the player has done and has similar problems to a metriced morality system. Frostpunk is a good example of how this can feel hollow.
Frostpunk
- I’ve seen Frostpunk criticized for ending with a direct morality system, where at the end it tells you “oh you were ethical and you won!” which took away from the reviewer’s guilt and relief over their actions within the game.
Designing Morally Engaging Games-Ryan
- They don’t like metriced morality systems