How good or bad are you at gaming?

The researchers have created their own computer game to test the effect of a meter that shows players the morality of their decisions.

Two papers published by Macquarie University researchers show that most of us ignore the meter when the moral choice is clear, but we use it when the choice is more morally ambiguous. And some of us, about ten percent, will do anything to win.

You are playing The Great Fire, a descriptive computer game. It’s all about Frankie, a cinematographer in regional Australia in the 1940s who encounters a murderous psychopath.

Along the way, players have to make choices that affect the progress and outcome of the game. Some are simple black-and-white decisions, such as whether or not to kick a dog, but others are what’s called the “trolley problem,” asking if you’ll kill or harm someone, for example.

Each choice is labeled with a score of good or evil, and your total morality is recorded on a meter at the top of the screen throughout the game. But the moral impact of an election isn’t always clear, if you look at its score. It can also be vice versa. Do you rob money from some homeless person who can help you? What happens if the moral score insists that this is a good thing?

“Our hypothesis was that in that situation, players might choose to steal,” said Dr. Malcolm Ryan says “But we were relieved to find people saying it’s cool to steal money don’t change their response … although there will always be about 10 percent who would choose to do so anyway.”

great game

To study such issues he and his long-term co-researcher Professor Paul Formosa, co-director of the Center for Agency Values ​​and Ethics in the Department of Philosophy, developed The Great Fire. He was assisted by collaborators such as author Dr. Jan Messer and cognitive psychologist Dr. Stephanie Howarth in creating a fully functional computer game in which he of course owned the code, allowing him to change things at will.

“The morality meter, which indicates how good or bad your avatar is, has been around in computer games since 1985 when Richard Garriott pioneered the idea in Ultima IV.” says Dr. Ryan. But so far there is no empirical data on which to discuss their effect on the attractiveness of games, or their effect on players.

entertainment and education

Dr Ryan considers this work important for several reasons. “For me, the entertainment value of games is primary. I want to improve them as a designer, not just because they’re fun, but because I want them to look like more mature works of art and literature that can be used for serious purposes.” able to deal with.” matters of morality.”

This is the application for moral education and awareness, he says. “Games provide a way to simulate different moral scenarios and ask what is the right thing to do.”

Research involving The Great Fire has already produced two papers. first published in the journal sports and culture In January last year, it was qualitative, exploring players’ emotions and their reactions to the morality meter. This showed a difference between players who made choices simply to maximize their morality scores, and others who viewed the meter as some sort of moral guide.

Another paper published in computers in human behavior Provides the first quantitative data on the ethics meter. The results suggest that meter is generally ignored when the moral choice is straightforward, but that it can influence decisions when the choice is more morally ambiguous.

further work

The team has already started on further work, such as a study on the effect, in morally ambiguous situations, to find out what others think. If we know how the majority will act, do we go with the crowd?

In addition, the Computing Department is currently building a Game User Research Lab where biometric measures, such as skin conductance and eye blink rate, can be taken while experimental subjects are engrossed in computer games. “Blink rate, for example, can be an indicator of how deeply you are thinking about something,” says Malcolm Ryan. “These biometrics will give us a snapshot of the players’ moment-to-moment experience.”

“There’s a lot of interest in this area around the world,” he says, “so I’ll be running a workshop in June at the Digital Games Research Association conference in Seville, Spain.” The session will also be available online. And the researchers are already in talks with a local game company that is developing a game based on ethical decisions.