Sounds a lot like Deus Ex: Invisible War, many choises are presented, none of them with a label for good or bad, you just follow the ideal you feel closer to, in my case, I would want to have biomods myself, and don't like religions at all, so I helped the Omar and the WTO .



[edited by - Kwizatz on February 17, 2004 10:02:39 PM]

Anonymous Posters are always the most outspoken and confrontational.

Ketchaval, you''re exactly right, but what is a game but a great big parable? You can have all kinds of philosophical allegories built right into the game, and you can either look for them and learn about the worldview they represent, or you can skip the cutscenes and shoot more aliens. I''m telling you, read Stranger in a Strange Land. It''s awesome. Then read Nietzsche''s The Gay Science and The Birth of Tragedy. It''s amazing how much philosophy Heinlein hid in that ass-kicking story about orgies and telekinesis.

There are many stories that do not involve good and evil. For example, popular Japanese manga (comic) Hikaru no Go and Slamdunk. These two stories have interesting characters and suspenseful plotline by putting strong opponents against each others instead of good against bad. Romance stories also do not involve good vs bad. Horror stories do have good vs bad (demons, evil spirits) but horror novels emphasize fear instead of the morality of good and bad.

But good and bad always provide the justification and motivation for the conflict. It''s always a search for the best outcome. you could make a story where mutual respect transcends the conflict. Two of Nietzsche''s ubermench could be on opposite sides of a battle, and trying desperately to kill each other, but still retain a profound respect and aolidarity for and with one another in the knowledge that they two are the same in their understanding of the tragedy and parody of the world. You see it a little in Metal gear Solid, when Solid Snake talks about his last fight with Grey Fox. They were actually fistfighting in a minefield, but there wasn''t any hate there, they were soldiers who fought because they chose to fight, and they were doing it to the best of their ability. It was neat.

quote: Original post by Iron Chef Carnage
But good and bad always provide the justification and motivation for the conflict. It''s always a search for the best outcome.

As you suggest ''equals'' could be used, for example two equally evil dictatorsstates are fighting each other it started out as an invasion, but has just become a long drawn out battle and you are on one side because you were born in that country, but realise that just as easily you could have been born in the other.

quote: Original post by Anonymous Poster

quote: Original post by Iron Chef Carnage
But good and bad always provide the justification and motivation for the conflict. It''s always a search for the best outcome.

As you suggest ''equals'' could be used, for example two equally evil dictatorsstates are fighting each other it started out as an invasion, but has just become a long drawn out battle and you are on one side because you were born in that country, but realise that just as easily you could have been born in the other.

Yea I like that idea, maybe you start out with the characters thinking what they are doing is justified but you realize down the line that its just as bad as your enemy.

quote: Original post by Iron Chef Carnage
But good and bad always provide the justification and motivation for the conflict.

Not necessary. The motivation of the TV show Iron Chef: beat Iron chef at cooking for the honour of winning. Do you think Iron chef is an addictive show? It is, and the reason is people like to see two strong opponents fighting for the win.

Blurring right and wrong is a pretty simple theory, but a bit tougher to implement.

First, you have to look at an entire design and look at characters in a very detached and objective way. Sure the King is enslaving peasants, but he is a once-great-and-benevolent ruler gone mad in his old age, seeing devils in the shadows and usurpers in his followers. The leader of the rebellion might be truly disgusted by these actions, but his real goal is to take the power for himself. The player might be a mercenary being pulled in both directions, on one hand he has a King who is simply on the wrong end of luck. On the other, he has a violent leader in the making who will solve the pressing issue.

I think fleshing out /motives/ is the first step into creating a ''grey'' area around morality in a game. Anybody can kill just because "they are evil". But as soon as you make it out that they were simply revenging a friend killed in a drunken barfight by muggers, or defending their homeland, killing becomes grey as well.

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Lets see, this is getting pretty philosophical, but if you were to really try and implement using an approach to signify a look into the philosophy of a lack of duality in a game, I think it would be important to some how really communicate just that. That men are men, that good and evil are man made concepts, that nature simply dictates positive and negative as a means for change, but put simply they are ultimatley one.

Motives are a hudge part in our understanding , as humans, to what we consider good or evil and that any ones historicaly preserved image is a basis of what they did or didn''t do for society as whole. The question is, how does one make this interesting and non threatning enough to put into game play? And how do you create a world where a character can really be nuetral?

A possibility comes to mind by taking the afore mentioned concept of having the character change roles from one side to the other thinking that they are going from one side that they become disgusted with to a more noble side. Atleast this is what they percieve at fist. Only to find out later, how much a like both sides really are in their motives and actions.

I would like to expand more on that, but it''s late and I''m having trouble focusing on this monitor any more. Hope those ideas weren''t to vague. If so, ask away.

The problem with all of this is that even after you escape the bounds of good and evil dogma, that enlightenment has next to no impact on your life. Heidegger used the word "authenticity" (actually he used a German word that I can''t remember right now) to denote this condition, but you couldn''t tell an "authentic" person from an "inauthentic" one without a great deal of difficulty, if at all.

really, this idea might be a little sophisticated for video games. After all, you could say that it''s already a critical part of it. Sure, you work your butt off for the Terrans, trying to beat the Zerg, but at the end of the day, when you turn off your computer and go have a sandwich, it doesn''t matter who wins the battle, because there''s no ontological "good" in that little virtual world. If you could somehow infuse a character in that game with the understanding that the player has, then you would have achieved this end.

Or maybe not. Existentialism and phenomenology predicate this claim on the notion that there''s no absolute source of divine judgement. Nietsche called it the death of God, and Heidegger called it "the default of god". But with the player there to give them meaning, the player serves the role of God in their system, judging and deciding and giving value and weight to events that happen. Going to Plato''s Euthyphro, you could say that "good" and "bad" in a gameworld are things that the player finds pleasant or unpleasant. Nietzsche might argue that "usefulness" is more appropriate a term than "pleasantness", but the idea is there.

Now this thread''s getting philosophical. I''m sure there are more conventional ways of introducing this problematic into a game.