Do you want to be the good guy or the bad guy? It is a question quite a few games ask nowadays. Indecision does not pay off. Anybody who responds to an average game with any level of ethical nuance will end up being the Jack of All Trades, Master of None of Morality. This is not only a purposeful design element where “karma” is tracked based on how many “points” certain actions get, it is also implicit in almost all games: You fight the “bad guys”. Or, if you have a really original title on your hands, you might fight as a bad guy against the good guys!
It is binary ethics, and I will hardly claim it is unrealistic. Religious zealots and fervent nationalists base all their actions on the thought of fighting for good against the forces of evil. In turn, this is reflected in anything from fairy tales to the Ten Commandments. It is the idea that some acts are intrinsically good or bad – a concept that is quite easy to quantify and characterize in video games. Now the question is not only if this is good design. The question is also, is this a morality we want to support?
My suggestion is to base video game morality more on the reality of human nature, and less on a bland black-white dichotomy where no one wants to be caught dead wearing any shade of gray. Gray is the interesting color! It has more depth, reality and interesting choices. On top of that, morally black and white human beings do not exist. They are an abstract concept. We naturally use it to simplify our encounters with people that strongly disagree with us, and lose so much in the process: empathy and understanding. A truly relatable game will be made up of characters we can sympathize with. Enough designers put in effort to create a protagonist that is flawed but likeable. But what about the other side of the conflict? Seldomly have I seen games where the antagonist is a real human being. The tragedy of conflict, war and death is best shown by how futile it always is. There are only two features in human nature that cause us to fight with one another and create misery: Misunderstanding and Malfunction.
Misunderstanding is when people refuse to see, or are unaware of, other perspectives on the problem. They are so dominated by their feelings, or by their fellows, that they do not stop and think what they are doing to others. They do not realize the suffering they bring.
Malfunction is when people are mentally damaged. Psychopaths are incapable of empathy, and so are incapable of caring what damage they might do. Other mental disorders might make people blind and deaf to the suffering they cause.
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