{"id":25,"date":"2008-04-17T17:20:21","date_gmt":"2008-04-17T22:20:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/games\/2008\/04\/17\/towards-a-unified-theory-of-meaningful-"},"modified":"2013-09-26T14:39:44","modified_gmt":"2013-09-26T19:39:44","slug":"a-unified-theory-of-meaningful-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/games\/2008\/04\/17\/a-unified-theory-of-meaningful-games\/","title":{"rendered":"Towards a unified theory of meaningful games (rough draft)"},"content":{"rendered":"

From the many conversations we’ve been having over the past half-year, a set of consistent ideas keep re-emerging. I’m hoping to pull those ideas together into a coherent statement about what we mean when we talk about games with moral depth. I’ll be pulling from Bioshock<\/a> for examples.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The game offers meaningful choice<\/strong> along a moral axis. All real games offer choice of some kind, but we seek choices that successfully integrate both narrative and gameplay imperatives and evoke human values in a realistic way. By way of counterexample, Bioshock offers the player a relatively shallow choice regarding what to do with Little Sisters by pitting an obvious good vs. an obvious evil (“Mother Theresa vs. baby-eating<\/a>“). Contrast choices that are between two goods (Hegel’s interpretation of Antigone<\/a>), or two evils (politics, anyone?).<\/li>\n
  2. The games’ choices are consequential<\/strong> to both the narrative and the gameplay. To keep both story and code manageable, most games employ some variant of “magician’s choice<\/a>,” but if real choices prove impractical, the games we seek at least maintain the illusion<\/em> of choice well. In Bioshock, choosing to liberate Little Sisters generates fewer Adam points than harvesting them, but as the game progresses, the difference between these choices evens out when Little Sisters compensate the player with loot. While the narrative consequence of these choices diverge, the gameplay outcome does not (in any significant way). The personal sacrifice entailed in liberating Little Sisters might have been underlined more sharply if the contrast between choices was also sharper.<\/li>\n
  3. The game offers an opportunity to reflect on the player’s choices and their consequences<\/strong>. Perhaps this aims at Aristotelean catharsis<\/a>, or at Joycean epiphany<\/a>. But at some point(s) in the game, we hope the player achieves a moment of awareness, connecting the game to some “truth” about the world or about herself. In Bioshock, this moment comes as a moment of near-perfect identification between the main character’s plight and the player’s own. Of course, in Bioshock the player awakens not to the consequences of his choices, but rather his complete lack<\/em> of choice within the game.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    I’ve been using Bioshock as an example not just because I’m a shameless fanboy (though I am), but because that game so thoroughly deconstructed the world of games as they are — devoid of meaningful choice — that we’re left yearning all the more for new games that could be. Perhaps these three basic ideas can help point the way.<\/p>\n

    – Gene Koo<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    From the many conversations we’ve been having over the past half-year, a set of consistent ideas keep re-emerging. I’m hoping to pull those ideas together into a coherent statement about what we mean when we talk about games with moral … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1658,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[113393,2958],"tags":[82577],"class_list":["post-25","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archival","category-theory","tag-morality"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/games\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/games\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/games\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/games\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1658"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/games\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/games\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":367,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/games\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25\/revisions\/367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/games\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/games\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/games\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}