I was reading the excellent Gamespot AU feature (link) on Morality in VideoGames, and being a pet topic (or a subset of one), I couldn't contain myself to the comments section...Let me jump straight in.

Do moral choices really have-to-have visible in-game consequences? I don't remember being given a bag of gold coins the last time I was nice to someone. (That would have been REALLY neat though!)

The problem with how present-day games seem to approach morality is that they see that as another game MECHANIC, with a risk-reward equation at play. Morality is more often about subtext, subtle social consequences in some cases. (From the article, it looks like Dragon Age: Origins 'gets' this) The ONE thing that is a direct consequence of a moral choice EVERY single time, is self-appraisal. The game doesn't need to tell me how to feel about an action. I'm doing that myself. So that's one job off the shoulders of the developers.

In my opinion, developers need introduce only two things in any video game to infuse it with moral complexity: choice and context.

One brilliant example of this was Deus Ex. Now Deus Ex presented you with some larger moral choices through the game and even at the end that affected the world in significant ways. But most of these were typical video-game type choices that in some cases even had risk-reward elements sewn in. What made Deus Ex morally relevant for me though, were the minute-to-minute choices I faced - akin to real-life in the frequency and relative insignificance of these choices - when being told to kill guard 'X' to get to the other side of the road, or having the choice of simply sedating him or even bypassing him completely.

These choices by and of themselves did not make Deus Ex morally compelling. Notes scribbled to a 'comrade', or eloquent diary entries gave us a peek into the minds of these foot-soldiers, and nudged one into thinking of them as more than cardboard cut-outs that were simply "put there" to obstruct your progress. While - in the game universe - they were only following orders, you felt like they still had individual reasons or even compulsions to be there. Maybe they didn't even like doing what they did.

This kind of empathy could make one think twice before killing them, and could EVEN make one feel happy/satisfied or guilty for having chosen to do whatever it is one did, regardless of how difficult that choice was to execute. Which, of course, IS what morality is all about!

I'm not sure if Ion Storm intended for this kind of an interpretation, and this is just one of the MANY (and often much larger) experiences you can draw from this game. But this is a great example of how the right mix of choice and context can add moral texture, in ways perhaps not even imagined by the creators. And I hear that's what great art is all about!

(P.S: Yep, I think we've already had our 'Citizen Kane' in Deus Ex, and one only needs to understand what made it 'art' - the interaction elements, the choice, the story, pacing? Or all of these coming together to create a world with room for varying moral interpretations, THUS imbuing the game with true artistic merit and social value? - to find one more direction in which to further games as art, instead of trying to reinvent the wheel. And please, technology is NOT the answer! - Looking at you, Activision - It is an enabler..at best.)