Beyond Choices by Sicart Miguel;

Author:Sicart, Miguel; [Sicart, Miguel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 3339668
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 2013-11-21T00:00:00+00:00

6

Into Play

It is now time to bring theory into play. The following analysis of ethical gameplay and game design is based on my own limited experiences. Play is a deeply personal thing, and building ethical game experiences requires player accounts of the role played by games in their moral lives. This chapter is such an account.

The chapter is a reverse-engineering application of chapter 5. Here I focus on the four domains in which ethical gameplay can be designed—narrative and characters, gameworld, rules, and context. Each game is introduced, and the sequences that I focus on are described. I then answer four questions:

• Why is this sequence a wicked problem (one that requires not only logical thinking, but also moral and/or political engagement) for players?

• What complicity does this sequence demand from players?

• What is the source of ethical cognitive friction?

• What designed elements create the ethical experience?

I close the chapter by explaining the ways that I applied these ideas to my own ill-fated attempts at game design and the lessons that I have learned.

Narrative and Characters

Some games use narrative and character design as the source of ethical gameplay. The third-person shooter Spec Ops: The Line (Yager Development 2012) is a bold computer game. Even though it is a classic high-budget console shooter that was designed on the same engine and with similar mechanics as Gears of War (Epic Games 2006), Spec Ops: The Line attempts to make a mature computer game that addresses players as reflective beings whose views on war and interactive violence matter.

Spec Ops: The Line is an oddity in its ethical gameplay design. Instead of articulating its ethical discourse in particular sequences, Spec Ops presents a constant challenge for players to take a stance toward their actions. Spec Ops is a moral tale, and its design presents players with a progressively challenging ethical experience.

Spec Ops: The Line is a third-person shooter game in which combat sequences are interwoven with the story of a military rescue mission that has gone wrong. The game mechanics are fairly simple and use the conventions of cover-system games. Players must navigate levels that are designed with a number of choke points at which they must take cover and eliminate enemies before proceeding. There are multiple solutions to each combat situation, and they always involve some form of violence. The game does not have any remarkable puzzles or any other form of gameplay. It is a purely violence-driven narrative shooter.

Spec Ops: The Line tells the story of a descent into hell by a trio of special operations soldiers who must find a missing battalion in the city-state of Dubai, which has been ravaged by sand storms for months. Players control Captain Walker in his search for a war hero, Colonel Konrad, who deserted his battalion to help Dubai and its residents. Walker soon discovers two factions—the US Central Intelligence Agency and the Dubai refugees—that are working against the lost battalion, which has mutinied against Colonel Konrad and now seems to run the city.

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