I’m not usually one to play the “link something interesting” game with my blog, but you owe it to yourself to read this. Angus of Tango Lima Delta Romeo has written a very thoughtful piece on the continuing evolution of “morality” as it’s presented in games (his definition of morality, in this case, is doing your best to achieve your goals within a game; so, as such, it is “moral” to kill goombas in Super Mario Bros).

Aside from criticizing the “invisible hand of God” that keeps a fully tabulated and annotated count of how many “good” points and “not so good” MoralityPoints™ you have, he raises interesting ideas as to how one might truly present moral quandaries to a player, and, therefore, add new depth to “playing” and “beating” a scenario.

But the most interesting parts of moral conflict, the ones that separate pulp and genre from literature, are the ones that are ambiguous and dependent on situation. I ran an Unknown Armies (a pen and paper role-playing game) game for some friends awhile ago where everyone played sort of idealized selves and put them through any number of horrible events that have no grounding in life. Players reactions were surprising. People acted out of panic, anger, fear, attachment, all of the things that many simplified moral codes urge us to deny.

Definitely worth a look, if this sort of thing is up your alley.