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  • Farm Folks CEO On Boob Physics: ‘We Don't Want To Attract Nasty People’ [Update]

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    On April 29, an in-development farm sim from Crytivo called Farm Folks shared a now-deleted post about breast jiggle physics on its official X/Twitter account that kickstarted a firestorm, emboldened gaming’s baddest actors, and wreaked havoc in the game’s official Discord. The team behind the studio has since apologized, but the aftermath lingers, leaving confusion and doubt about the company’s true intentions in its wake.

    I spoke to the CEO of Crytivo, Alex Koshelkov, about the post, jiggle physics, bad actors, and more, to try and paint a clearer picture.

    The Farm Folks breast physics controversy

    The post in question, shared to Farm Folks’ more than 28,000 followers on X/Twitter and beyond, featured a paneled video of three versions of one of Farm Folks’ femme-presenting characters walking, with three different percentages displayed on each panel. The text accompanying the post read: “Alright, folks, it’s time for some serious game development talk! We’re tinkering with character physics in Farm Folks. Burning question: which version has the perfect breast jiggle physics?”

    The percentages (30, 50, and 90) indicated the level of jiggle physics applied to the character. The official Farm Folks account replied to its own post, asking fans if they wanted to see “what 150% looks like.”

    The Farm Folks social media post that was deleted.

    Screenshot: Crytivo / Kotaku

    The responses were less than positive, clearly charged by the culture war currently raging in games that’s seen a fifty-something former Blizzard employee rallying people against community managers, Pokemon GO changes, a narrative design company, and the perceived censoring of Shift Up’s new action RPG Stellar Blade. Members of the Farm Folks Discord took to the chat to demand clarity about the social post, wondering if it was fueled by misogynistic attitudes in games or was just very, very tone deaf. Bad actors flooded the comments on X/Twitter, and some bled into the Discord, as well.

    After being tagged, Crytivo founder Alex Koshelkov joined the conversation, writing, “Sorry guys, I was going through morning calls. Let me check what’s happening here and I’ll respond.” He went back and forth with a few people, with some questioning Koshelkov’s alleged ignorance regarding the GG2.0 movement. He apologized several times.

    One apology posted by Koshelkov in the Farm Folks' Discord.

    Screenshot: Discord / Kotaku

    “I’m not pretending; I’m explaining the reasoning behind this,” Koshelkov wrote in one apology. “Our goal is not to over-sexualize our characters; it’s the opposite. The goal is to achieve realistic physics and reactions to the world. We have ragdolls, we have inverse kinematics, hair moves with wind, and so on. It just felt natural to have tasteful breast movement on the character.”

    Koshlekov promised that the original post would be deleted and an apology would be shared in its wake. That apology said that the team “crossed a line” and was “inappropriate” in its portrayal of in-game jiggle physics. It was jumped on by Mark Kern, the aforementioned former Blizzard employee.

    Kern posted a statement on X/Twitter saying that “you should never apologize to cancel pigs” because “they were never your customers. They don’t buy games/comics. They will ask for more and will even blast you for your apology. They want to hurt you, and an apology only emboldens them to do more. You lose sales. Your real customers hate you for caving. You leave money on the table. You have an obscure indie game and it’s hard to stand out. You literally missed your chance to get 10x the support and visibility by doing this. It’s not too late @FarmFolksGame. If you delete the apology and put the jiggle physics back in, and tell them to pound sand, you can still rocket your game to marketing success.”

    His post was one of many lamenting Farm Folks’ decision to apologize for the post.

    A Farm Folks character stands in a forest.

    Image: Crytivo

    Farm Folks CEO on backlash, boob physics, and bad actors

    I didn’t expect Koshlekov to respond to my request for comment, let alone talk to me via Discord video call for over an hour about Farm Folks, his dislike of “cozy game” labels, the game’s purposefully cheeky content (which you can see in some of its older social media posts), and American politics. (Koshlekov is originally from Turkmenistan.)

    “The wording was silly,” he said when I asked about the original post, the response to which he said was “overwhelming” and “unfortunate” because “the internet is almost a one-sided court” where “no matter what we say, it doesn’t matter.”

    “The original idea was—yeah we spiced it up with a joke, which was the problem—but the general idea was to make sure that we’re doing [breast physics] right…because our game is very immersive. It’s not that we’re fixated on women’s parts…our entire character body is full of technology…to me, breast movement was not controversial since it’s human biology.”

    A Farm Folks character model stands naked holding a card that says "Costume Design" over their genitals.

    Farm Folks’ social media presence has historically been somewhat cheeky.
    Image: Crytivo / Farm Folks on X

    Koshlekov insisted that “he wasn’t even following” the Stellar Blade discourse. “I learned more about it recently, so that’s why we really wouldn’t gaslight [and pretend we didn’t know].” He then talked at length about how Farm Folks wasn’t just a cozy game, that it has elements of immersive sims, PvP and PvE modes, and was overall “a bit more mature” than other games in the genre.

    “We’re apologizing for the wording…and there’s people saying ‘you guys shouldn’t apologize, not cool, you should stand up to the crowd.’ No, we fucked up. We’re happy to apologize.”

    But the bouncy boobs will stay in some capacity: “Regarding elegant, tasteful [breast physics] implementation, I still think that we’re going to do it.”

    More than once in our conversation, Koshlekov referred to “both sides,” suggesting that there were bad actors involved on either end of the spectrum. I asked if he wanted Farm Folks to court the kind of players that joined the Discord in bad faith, or those who believe that boobies should be bouncing at 150% physics. This was his response, edited for brevity and clarity:

    We don’t want vulgarity. Because like, it can be fun. It can be a little bit goofy, it can be meme-y, but we’re not gonna go after, like over-sexualization goofiness in the ways like Conan Exiles, where you can like modify penises and things like that. We’ve listened to our community, we heard that sometimes we talk about, like, implementing, like, that jiggle physics, right? Which, again, like, we obviously have tons of settings for any kind of physics, like the body parts, just like we can, we can do it with soft spots like the butt, we can do it with chest, shoulders. Anything’s like we’re just assigning it—it just makes it immersive.

    But to answer your question—No, we don’t want to attract nasty people, we don’t want those. We will have some limits—like as much as we want to give it, but it’s so controversial—I want the player to choose how they want their character to look. Like, if you want, for example, the breast to have a little more movement or not. But like again, it’s not going to be like you scroll [the physics slider] up and then this is just like all over the place, and it’s like, goofy…We are definitely not tailoring our game for little kids…We want to spice it up for people to have action, to have fun.”

    Here, he digressed into talking about GTA and the team’s plans for PvP elements before asking my opinion on the issue. I told him that I had been the subject of a harassment campaign since early March. I said that I felt not pigeonholing his game in the cozy genre was smart, before bringing it back to the discourse, and the harassment that has often followed suit.

    “The issue is political…some groups of people don’t agree with this, and some groups of people have no limits,” he said. “I think we’re in the crossfire, and the question goes to if [the post] was intentional or not—like, no, not really…We’re not using any kind of gross tactics where it’s enraging our community. That’s stupid, right? I’ve been hearing a little bit about the, I don’t really know the game name, the Blade game, I’ve seen the screenshots [of protagonist Eve’s outfits and body] and they’re crazy to me…it’s not even almost fitting to the game.”

    I asked how he felt about some people, Kern included, saying that Farm Folks will miss out on support from because of its apology.

    “Fuck that. I don’t care what he thinks,” Koshlekov replied. “I’m apologizing for structuring it badly…if we were to rewind the times, we would skip that.” He confirmed that some of his Discord responses were formulated really quickly, and there were some language barrier issues because of the swiftness in which they were written. “But I don’t want to use that as justifications, if we fucked up with that, we fucked up that.”

    “We don’t want to be a part of [the culture war]. We don’t want [Kern] to give us any recommendations, we prefer to evaluate it from what we consider human character…we want to be sincere with our fans and do good…we don’t want to get into that kind of dirt,” he said. “I see this as the biggest problem in the United States [Farm Folks’ 20-person team is based in Dallas, Texas, nine of which are women], all the people are very divided. There’s two camps and everybody’s throwing stones at each other. I’m more on the side of like, we need to—it sounds a little bit silly—but I think it’s about uniting and finding a language between each other.”

    “The goal is for players to properly represent themselves in the game. We’re not aiming for over-exaggerations,” Koshlekov insisted. “The goal is to make it very elegant and very sensitive to women and their bodies…You have to be a very poor person to kind of sexualize this…like the internet is full of sex right now. There’s some crazy things that you can find, if you’re having problems with our characters, like, look for help. Maybe go and date a woman or something like that. Because this is not our goal, we don’t want to attract people that are attracted to only these body parts.”

    Though Koshlekov toed the “both sides” line, he did make it clear that the goal of Farm Folks is to “be diverse.”

    “I’m not afraid of that word. I know those guys can pick it up and start shaking it like crazy like monkeys in a zoo, but we are after diverse gameplay. Everybody’s welcome. Doesn’t matter what your gender or your preference is, everybody’s welcome.”

    I felt more than a little bit of whiplash while talking to Koshlekov—in one breath he’d say something like “everyone is welcome” and in another he’d bemoan the existence of radicals on both sides. He told me he was talking to me with an open heart, but made a comment about the press twisting words. In our over hour-long conversation, he spoke about saving bugs in his house, how young I looked (thanks Botox), and Turkmenistan politics. But ultimately, it felt like he was open to having a discussion and against bad actors using Farm Folks as a battleground for their culture war, even if he was hesitant to make sweeping, politically charged statements.

    Only time will tell.


    Not long after we concluded our interview, I was told that one person who was speaking out against the boob physics post was kicked from the Farm Folks Discord, ostensibly after asking about past Kickstarter campaigns. “We’re not banning anyone if they have questions or constructive criticism,” Koshlekov said in a Discord DM.


    Update 05/02/2024 at 5:30 p.m. EST: After several posts of Koshlekov’s were sent to me in which he stated that one of the above quotes misrepresented him, I reached out via Discord DM and asked what he felt was misrepresented. Below is the complete quote from our original conversation, unedited, as well as his statement.

    To the politics where it’s like there’s almost no way of winning any of them right, but like I don’t really want to win any of them. In a way—If you don’t understand and if you’re being radical about it is there’s not much we can do about that but the message with the game to like the fans that would like to enjoy the game, so the goal is to properly represent themselves in the game. We’re not aiming for like over-exaggerations, we want to be delicate and elegant with this, right, so we want to have it like some immersive elements in our games, but we’re not for some goofy disrespectful things like over-exaggerating things that can offend, and as I told my team I was like even like offending or hurting like five people in our, in our community base, we have no problems apologizing for that, right like, so we will try to tailor towards everyone it’s like they call it as our weaknesses is like ‘all you guys tailored towards your fan base,’ it’s like no, it’s like we are making a game, we want to make sure that like everybody likes it, you know, it’s like, of course, there’s a little bit of people, as you mentioned on both sides, like no matter what we do, but the goal is to make it very elegant and very sensitive to to women to their bodies. And if, again, I just feel like, like, of course, it doesn’t need to be over-exaggerated, but it can potentially exist in the game. [AM: Yeah] At the same time, we have no problems, like disabling it, but I feel like that’s a little bit of loss in the way that like, again, I don’t think that there’s any kind of sexual emotions attached to them. Right? Like, it’s just like, you have to be a very, very poor person to, to kind of sexualize that was like, like, like. The internet is full of sex right now. Like, there’s some crazy things that you can find, then if you are having problem with our characters, like, I feel like that’s, like, look for help. [Both laugh] Like, I think like maybe go and go date the woman or some things like or something like that. Because it’s like, this is not our goals. Like we don’t want to attract people that, like, are attracted to only these body parts. And we wanted to make it immersive and nice and kind of, because it’s hard for me to use word ‘realistic’ because, like, people will call us like ‘your game is not realistic’. But it’s style. Stylistically realistic. [AM: Yeah] Right. And always, like we’re paying attention to little details like realism, but it’s stylized, you know, it’s like so it’s still we’re trying to do realistic, right, like, character is reacting things. So like, they’re gonna get cold, they’re going to get warm, you have to wear cold, cold, cold jackets during the winter, like snow pants and everything is like we’re paying a lot of attention. And it’s just like, this particular piece, people are just like, get very attracted to it was like, in a ways like I still want to treat it as, we clearly fucked up with the message right? Like, but like I feel like having the mechanic like that, as you said as well as like, I think it’s okay, as long as it’s like, tastefully implemented. [AM: Yeah]. Without any craziness.

    Kolshekov’s statement, sent via Discord DM:

    “Hi Alyssa, I strongly believe that this sentence was taken out of a context to support a specific narrative and goal. I believe it’s part of a larger context where you and I agreed that having a breast physics in the game is acceptable. The quote that you shared was my response to people that are offended by the breast movement in the game. I’m clarifying what I meant since it seems it was taken out of bigger context and I probably didn’t choose the best words to express it. I didn’t intend to hurt anyone or call names, but it’s being interpreted this way now.”



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    Originally posted 2024-05-03 02:30:00.

  • Starfield's New Maps Are Great, But Boy Those Cities Are Tiny

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    Starfield, Bethesda’s large open-world space RPG released last year, is set to receive a big new update later this month. One of the big features being added is 3D surface and city maps, something the game has needed since its launch. But these new maps also reveal that Starfield’s biggest cities are actually pretty tiny.

    On May 1, Bethesda revealed the patch notes for its next big Starfield update. And while this new patch isn’t quite out yet, players who own the game on Steam can opt into an early, beta version of it and see all the new changes Bethesda has planned, including the additional difficulty settings, UI tweaks, and the fancy new 3D maps of planets and cities. If you remember, at launch, Starfield’s maps were heavily criticized for being unhelpful and hard to use. In this new update, Starfield’s surface maps look far nicer and are more useful for navigation. However, it also reveals that most cities in Starfield are really small. Like…weirdly small.

    Let’s look at Akilia City first, a frontier town located on a desolate planet.

    A screenshot shows Akilia City in Starfield's new map screen.

    I didn’t expect this city to be massive, but it looks so tiny seeing it in the new 3D map via a post on Reddit. Walking around it I often got lost and that helped make it feel bigger, but zoom out the camera and you see that, in reality, it’s pretty small and condensed.

    The next city I want to show is New Atlantis, which is one of the first major cities you’ll likely visit and is the de facto capital of the massive, galaxy-spanning United Colonies.

    A screenshot shows New Atlantis in Starfield's new map screen.

    Yet, New Atlantis looks more like a large mall with a medium-sized parking lot. When I played Starfield, I got the feeling that New Atlantis was small—it felt like I was running around an outdoor mall—but seeing it in the new 3D map just confirms it.

    Maybe the saddest and tiniest city I spotted on the new 3D map screen is the city of Neon, a scummy city built on platforms above an alien ocean.

    A screenshot shows Neon in Starfield's new map screen.

    While playing Starfield, Neon felt more like a few buildings connected to one big street than an actual city. But I didn’t expect Neon to look so minuscule in the new 3D surface maps. So tiny. So cute.

    Of course, these outer views of the major cities in the game don’t tell the whole story. If you go into buildings or underground, you’ll find areas not seen in these overhead views.

    Image for article titled Starfield's New Maps Are Great, But Boy Those Cities Are Tiny

    These places also received new 3D maps, but they aren’t as nice and look more like an early mock-up of a video game map that will be finished later. Maybe that will happen in the next big Starfield update in a few months?

    .

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    Originally posted 2024-05-03 02:25:00.

  • Featured Blog | Satisfying frustration: How to make compelling games that encourage moral reflection

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    Video games have a great potential to support moral development. Playing is a crucial part of learning and developing behavioral patterns. Through play, one can safely test out behaviors and decisions without facing actual consequences. Moreover, a guided form of play, as provided by video games, can lead the player through a set of intentionally designed experiences. These experiences can become unique learning opportunities when they provide players with powers or roles they’d usually not be able to have.

    Confronting players with moral dilemmas, situations inherently lacking a clear-cut solution, in the context of a video game allows players to contemplate their morals, act out their decisions, and experience potentially unforeseen consequences firsthand. This can leave a great impact, helping to solidify or reassess moral views.

    Exploring these effects during my master’s thesis on moral dilemmas, I created a short game about moral choices. The design is based on relevant theory and literature analysis. In the game, you make decisions as one of the last politicians in a country ravaged by civil war and threatened by a violent government-opposing group. Moreover, you help other government workers with the use of social & elemental skills in Point’n’Click-like puzzles.

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    ▶ Play the game Johnson & Dilemma for free on Itch.io

    Based on the game a playtesting survey was conducted, questioning participants on their general opinions toward moral dilemmas in video games and their specific experiences in my game. The results revealed an overall positive sentiment toward moral decision-making and moral dilemmas in video games, with some even citing the encouragement of moral reflection as a reason for liking them. This shows that there is a not-so-small group of players who enjoy reflecting on moral dilemmas as focal points of the gameplay.

    However, my investigation into the topic unearthed that there are quite a few challenges to overcome when it comes to creating a game that encourages moral reflection and still offers a satisfying and fun experience. Here are my learnings:

    1. Fix flaws or backlash is guaranteed

    2. Check your bias and stop influencing the player

    3. Pace between satisfaction and frustration

    4. Don’t show consequences

    5. Let players experience frustration

    Fix flaws or backlash is guaranteed

    Moral dilemmas are inherently frustrating to deal with. Nobody wants to be faced with a decision that forces them to choose between the lesser evil. Moreover, players feel generally unfairly treated when the game argues against them or blames them for any of their moral choices. This much became clear to me when I analyzed posts and comments on Steam and Reddit, literature on the topic, and the results of my survey.

    Due to this frustration, players will consciously or subconsciously attempt to avoid the dilemma by lashing out and trying to put blame on the game itself. Therefore, it is detrimental to remove as many flaws as possible when making a game about moral decisions.

    Firstly, the scenario should be as clear as possible. Players will use any leeway for interpretation to justify their decisions and downplay risks. Moreover, as it is impossible to know which intentions a player puts behind their action, it becomes crucial to adequately describe the options beforehand. In the end, if a choice does not fit the player’s expectations or intentions, they will complain about the game being unfair.

    Secondly, the scenario should make sense. When designing a scenario with a limited set of action options, it is not unlikely to exclude an obvious alternative solution. When forced to contemplate the situation, players will complain about the missing option. Therefore, it is important to iterate on the scenario, finding justifications and removing or adding variables until the scenario becomes watertight.

    Thirdly, when iterating on the scenario, consider player feedback and their choices. In my study players were presented with the choice between saving either one NPC or another. The survey responses revealed that participants did not only question why it isn’t possible to save both but also claimed that they had chosen randomly. They stated that they did not care for either character deeply enough as the game did not provide sufficient opportunity to build an emotional connection with them. Interestingly enough, participants showed clear favoritism to one of the NPCs, suggesting that their choices were not as arbitrary as they claimed. Making it apparent that, as a designer one cannot rely on player statements alone.

    Check your bias and stop influencing the player

    When designing a game about moral dilemmas, it’s crucial to play-test the game and actually hear others’ thoughts and reactions, taking an explorative approach to game design. Presenting a player with a moral dilemma making one option seem better than the other can hinder the player from reflecting on the dilemma on their own. Even when the goal of the design is to argue against the player’s views, it affords that the game lets the player make an unbiased decision first.

    However, it’s far too easy for a designer to let one’s unintentional bias seep into every aspect of designing moral dilemmas. Usually, one is not able to check one’s own individual, generational, gendered, or cultural bias. Players might associate a moral dilemma in the game with some current or historical event. In other cases, players might simply have a clear answer and see the presented moral dilemma as not dilemmatic at all. Moreover, players might feel that the designers preferred one resolution to the dilemma over another, thus encouraging them to consider what the game wants them to do.

    No one’s above bias, so check yours before it ruins the experience of your game.

    Pace between satisfaction and frustration

    Generally, it is advisable for all types of games to create a pacing that switches between moments of higher and lower tension. This way, players stay in the golden spot between boredom and overstimulation.

    As previously mentioned, when we confront the player with moral questions, we’re likely not only causing tension but also frustration. Games are usually centered on creating a fun and satisfying experience for players. Frustrating the player feels like a mistake. However, it is ordinary for anyone to experience a certain degree of frustration when being confronted with a difficult situation. And for any type of media, there are consumers that intentionally seek out and appreciate heavy subject matter, even if might not be a fun experience for them. Games like “Papers, Please” show that success is possible even when committing to a more serious experience.

    So, how does one pace around this frustration? First, you have to be clear on what experience you want to create. How much of the game do you want to dedicate to moral reflection? How satisfying & fun has the game to be? Is broad popularity crucial to you or is it also okay when your game is only appreciated by a niche audience?

    In any case you’ll want to have at least some moments of leisure to make your moral questions stand out as instances of high tension and stakes. This can be done in various ways. You could, for example, let the player decide on a matter in which all outcomes are positive, but the player can decide to their liking, shaping the world as they want to see it. Or you could include some lighthearted, humorous passages in your game.

    What you have to keep in mind is that feelings of tension and frustration can highly differ between players. When examining individual perspectives on specific dilemmas, it becomes apparent that people, influenced by their preexisting mindset, differ in their perceptions of what they perceive to be truly dilemmatic.

    Firstly, players vary in their moral beliefs. For instance, those steadfast in a belief system prioritizing the greater good might not hesitate to sacrifice one life to save many. Therefore, as designers, we have to take into account that some may see the presented dilemma as actually dilemmatic and deliberate it accordingly, while others might swiftly dismiss it as non-dilemmatic.

    Secondly, the emotional impact of a dilemma is further influenced by the player’s level of immersion and their suspense of disbelief. Taking a life-or-death dilemma as an example, we, of course, have to acknowledge that players do not feel the same about the situation in a video game as they would in actual life. Going even further, as players are aware that it is only a video game, some might even enjoy a life-or-death dilemma when it means parting ways with a character they hate. While immersion can be enhanced or decreased through various means available to designers, it is ultimately up to the player to which degree they want to immerse themselves in the experience.

    Thirdly, some dilemmas are more polarizing than others. A dilemma can be polarizing when each of the options activates different moral priorities. For example, one dilemma makes you choose to save one of two relatives, while another makes you choose between a relative and your romantic partner. In the first scenario, one might feel the same family-based moral obligation to both relatives and choose based on preference alone. In contrast, individuals might be more torn on whether to morally prioritize family or a romantic partner in the second scenario. A player might then make a swift decision based on their preexisting mindset without any struggle. However, dilemmas like these also have the potential to spark conversations between players outside the game, discussing their values with each other.

    Ultimately, the interpretation of the dilemma is up to the player. As designers, we should be cognizant of the varying impact moral dilemmas have on the players’ reactions in and outside of the game, particularly when considering the game’s pacing.

    Don’t show consequences

    It may seem like bad advice to let the player decide and then not let them experience consequences: It means taking away power from the player, giving them less feedback on their actions, while still expecting them to be engaged enough with the game to continue playing. It goes against fundamental principles of game design and likely frustrates players (and it does).

    So why should one avoid consequences? The problem lies at the heart of how players usually play games. Most players tend to follow an objective in the game, either offered by the game or self-imposed. Players then prioritize these objectives, such as optimizing stats, role-playing, unlocking new skills, characters, or specific story outcomes, over making choices based on their own morals.

    Karma systems, for example, often have the problem that they incentivize players to go full good or bad in order to unlock some new content (on top of literally telling the player what is good and bad instead of letting them reflect on their own). The bigger the consequences on the game mechanics, the bigger the incentive to not choose morally but strategically.

    On the other hand, experiencing multiple choices without showing consequences might even make those players lose their suspense of disbelief. Consequences are an important part of life, after all. Players then might conclude that all upcoming choices will be irrelevant as well, which lets them take future choices less seriously or, in the worst case, makes them quit the game.

    When I asked participants of my survey what they liked about moral decisions and moral dilemmas in video games, roughly a third mentioned “having an influence on the story and game.” They want to make an impact.

    Impactless choices can be perceived as meaningless by players. However, these choices are not meaningless at all. They offer players the opportunity to express themselves or their interpretation of the player character. Whether this benefit comes to fruition, however, depends on the player’s immersion.

    Still, while participants of my survey felt quite powerless in general, likely due to the plenty of meaningless choices in my prototype and an unchangeable, quite dark ending of the story, two-thirds of them still felt responsible rather than non-involved and one-third guilty as well as one third innocent. These feelings of responsibility and, to a certain degree, guilt indicate that even without influence, some players are still engaged, potentially reflecting on their responsibilities and actions in the game.

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    Underinform the player

    To de-incentivize strategic decision-making in favor of moral decision-making, one can also provide insufficient information to the player. This also goes against common game design principles, as it limits the player’s agency. They might be able to impact the game world but cannot plan exactly how.

    Underinformed choices are best suited to represent so-called “wicked problems”, where someone is faced with a complex situation in which not all information is known or is hard to understand. Or in which there are many people with many different, conflicting views involved and the ultimate impact on the system is unknown. These are the kinds of problems one might encounter when facing large-scale systematic decisions like in politics or economics. When presenting a problem like this in a video game, it’s usually sufficient only to provide a bit of information and otherwise rely on the players preexisting understanding of the topic, ultimately confronting them with their own biases.

    However, from my research, players confronted with such problems are likely to claim that they are unable to make a decision because information is missing. Moreover, when facing the consequences of their decision, players will feel unfairly treated by the game as they are blamed or punished for outcomes they could not have foreseen. Designers here again have to decide how to pace their game and to which extent they want to rely on players’ moral assessment of serious topics instead of game strategic decisions.

    Let players experience frustration

    In order to make the player feel engaged by your game, you should create a unique experience for the player. You should start by getting the player involved. While this again depends on the player’s immersion, you can actively increase their involvement, for example, by putting them in a role of power and responsibility. Moreover, players also feel a certain responsibility to NPCs that express trust in them or come for them to help. To enhance this effect, it is, of course, also important to let the player build a relationship with these NPCs by letting them overcome hardships together, giving insights into the NPC’s life, like information about their family, their values, or their aspirations. This strategy, for example, led players of my playtest to repeatedly express a desire to overcome the presented crisis together as a group and also to apply this moral standard to NPCs.

    Moreover, to leave a lasting impression, you should not only let the player decide on a topic but make them act out their decision. For example, during my playtest, the players had to flee from an impending danger with a group of NPCs. One NPC refused to come as she wanted to call her husband and children from a wall phone to make sure they were okay first.

    The players then had the option to either wait for her, endangering the group, or flee the scene without her. In contrast to the other decisions in the game, they did not have to pick an option in a dialog. Instead, players had to actually stay in the room waiting for the NPC to stop trying to call her family that wasn’t picking up or had to leave the room without her actively. To make the situation more realistic, the players were not informed about how much time they had to decide and wait.

    While the players in my playtest most of the time took risks and tried to keep the group together and also did so in this scenario by waiting on the NPC, their answers on why this scenario was difficult or not difficult showed a great deal of emotionality. Players expressed feeling the urgency and impatience of the situation as well as the fear of the unknown consequences, with one even claiming, ”I thought I was gonna die, but I couldn’t leave her ”.

    Conclusion

    Moral dilemmas are hard to design. To inspire moral reflection, we as game designers have to go against players’ inherent instinct to make strategic decisions and break a few fundamental game design principles along the way. Meanwhile, we have to solve a dilemma on our own: Do we want to prioritize a satisfactory experience more likely to reach mass appeal, or are we okay creating an intense, partially frustrating experience encouraging moral reflection only appreciated by a niche audience?

    ▶ The full study can be found here: “Portraying Moral Dilemmas through Video Games



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    Originally posted 2024-05-03 00:00:00.

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