I think the interesting part about papers please is that the morality system is completely optional. You can go through the game sticking to the rules, not making any exceptions and not even reading what the people you check have to say. There is an option to engage with it, of rebelling against an opressive system by making an "obivous" moral choice, but these have to be weighed against the harsh reallity of what such a choice would cost you and your ingame family. The most interesting design choice though, is that the game doesn't spoonfeed you what morality is, it just facilitates the player to superimpose his/her real-world-morality over the ingame world and see what the results are. When the game is giving you explicit morality options, such as in Mass Effect, the system becomes uninteresting, because it becomes too obvious and the mechanics incentivize just sticking to one of the 2 extremes. On the other hand, this seems to be one of the pulls that games have over the real world: escapism into a world that works on obvious rules that you do not have to question, that give you a straight way from the botton to the top, relinquishing the element of uncertainty that plagues our real lives. Good video! Really enjoyed it.
Hey! This video got recommended to me because I also made a video on the morality of Papers, Please a couple months back. I like that you focused on morality systems in gaming as a whole, and explain how Papers, Please does it effectively. As you mentioned, because a lot of games do try to tell a more linear story, morality choices don't carry the same impact that they should and feel empty. This game is a unique gem, and I'd love to see more like it in the future.
Great video! I love discussions like this. Spoiler-free FYI to folks concerned about spoilers - two of the (twenty possible) endings are spoiled in a single sentence brief summary. A few (maybe three) of the specific border crossing interactions are also spoiled. They were specific enough, but nothing that will surprise you terribly if you are already somewhat familiar with this game.
1:50 "Genocide and slavery are still as evil on middle earth". Are they though? I mean if you apply it to say, the universe of star control 2. You have the ur-quan as the obvious villains engaging in exactly that: One half of ur-quan culture choosed to genocide every other race they encounter, the other half gives races they encounter a choice: either to become battle-slaves and somewhat free, or to be imprisoned on a singular world without being allowed to persue a galactic destiny. Now, I find in this regard the author of the video is quite correct: both the ur-quan sides are clear villains or at the very least, antagonists. You might argue that one is worse than the other, but it's hard to not call the other evil as well. However, the same might not go up if you look at how the ur quan dealt with the dnyari. For those who don't know, the dnyari are a small psychicly gifted race that can bend whole worlds to their will of practically every other race. They used the ur quan to kill the one race that wasn't affected by their mind control (which had unique features which also caused them to be the only race that the ur quan could make friends with). The ur quan only managed to free themselves after they discovered that being in pain is the only prevention against mind control and they wore devices that would put them in excrutiating pain for years on end during the war to free themselves. Eventually they came at a crossroad what to do with the dnyari. This is all history in the game and not deeply explored but I ask you, dear readers of this youtube comment, would it have been immoral of the ur quan to enslave the dnyari as they did? Would it have been immoral to genocide the dnyari? In the end they genetically engineered the dnyari to have the intelligence of a pet and they were raised and kept as pets (that could translate any language due to latent psychic ability). Essentially a form of enslavement. Was that wrong? I wouldn't say that all morals are the same in a second world. Or perhaps they are and this would have been extenuating circumstance for slavery/genocide? In the end the slavery plans bite the ur quan in the ass, as a single dnyari is healed and gains its full psychic power and you use that to defeat the ur quan.
My cuban friends (who fled cuba) were really amused by the fact that the money you get depends on how well you do. "People aren't compensated based on merit. That would be capitalism!"
Awesome video you brought up some good points. inFAMOUS 2 could really have benefitted if the final choice of the game was presented as purple (the game's grey). This meant that now the player has to decide based on their own understanding rather than on an extrinsic system. InFAMOUS3 could take a note and have a "grey" system where making good and bad decisions result in the player being treated as such and having a mix of weaker good and bad powers. Mass Effect, despite having a more binary system, allows there to be "buffers" so players can do evil things when they're good when they feel its right. inFAMOUS would benefit from that. Metro 2033 and Last Light did a great if obscure job with their morality system, tying it with how the player reacts throughout the game using FPS conventions. In Witcher and Fallout New Vegas have the players actions come back to haunt them.
6:50 I wouldn't consider it a problem to assign numeric points to morality from the developer; that happens in any case, because different endings or what different choices result in are choices that developers have to make in any case. I find games are often as much an exploration of a developer's mind as books are of a writer's mind. I think consistency is more important than accuracy in that regard. Like if a psychopath would make a game in the view of his morality, it would be interesting to play, because you don't have to agree with the view to play around inside the confines of the world that person creates.
![Papers, Please All Endings / Tüm Sonlar (1-20) [English Subtitles]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/7ScMQycenQ4/mqdefault.jpg)
I think the interesting part about papers please is that the morality system is completely optional. You can go through the game sticking to the rules, not making any exceptions and not even reading what the people you check have to say. There is an option to engage with it, of rebelling against an opressive system by making an "obivous" moral choice, but these have to be weighed against the harsh reallity of what such a choice would cost you and your ingame family. The most interesting design choice though, is that the game doesn't spoonfeed you what morality is, it just facilitates the player to superimpose his/her real-world-morality over the ingame world and see what the results are. When the game is giving you explicit morality options, such as in Mass Effect, the system becomes uninteresting, because it becomes too obvious and the mechanics incentivize just sticking to one of the 2 extremes. On the other hand, this seems to be one of the pulls that games have over the real world: escapism into a world that works on obvious rules that you do not have to question, that give you a straight way from the botton to the top, relinquishing the element of uncertainty that plagues our real lives.
Good video! Really enjoyed it.
Hey! This video got recommended to me because I also made a video on the morality of Papers, Please a couple months back. I like that you focused on morality systems in gaming as a whole, and explain how Papers, Please does it effectively. As you mentioned, because a lot of games do try to tell a more linear story, morality choices don't carry the same impact that they should and feel empty. This game is a unique gem, and I'd love to see more like it in the future.
Great video! I love discussions like this.
Spoiler-free FYI to folks concerned about spoilers - two of the (twenty possible) endings are spoiled in a single sentence brief summary. A few (maybe three) of the specific border crossing interactions are also spoiled. They were specific enough, but nothing that will surprise you terribly if you are already somewhat familiar with this game.
You need more followers my dude! I love analysis on video game themes and stuff! It’s my jam
1:50 "Genocide and slavery are still as evil on middle earth".
Are they though? I mean if you apply it to say, the universe of star control 2.
You have the ur-quan as the obvious villains engaging in exactly that: One half of ur-quan culture choosed to genocide every other race they encounter, the other half gives races they encounter a choice: either to become battle-slaves and somewhat free, or to be imprisoned on a singular world without being allowed to persue a galactic destiny.
Now, I find in this regard the author of the video is quite correct: both the ur-quan sides are clear villains or at the very least, antagonists. You might argue that one is worse than the other, but it's hard to not call the other evil as well.
However, the same might not go up if you look at how the ur quan dealt with the dnyari. For those who don't know, the dnyari are a small psychicly gifted race that can bend whole worlds to their will of practically every other race. They used the ur quan to kill the one race that wasn't affected by their mind control (which had unique features which also caused them to be the only race that the ur quan could make friends with). The ur quan only managed to free themselves after they discovered that being in pain is the only prevention against mind control and they wore devices that would put them in excrutiating pain for years on end during the war to free themselves. Eventually they came at a crossroad what to do with the dnyari. This is all history in the game and not deeply explored but I ask you, dear readers of this youtube comment, would it have been immoral of the ur quan to enslave the dnyari as they did? Would it have been immoral to genocide the dnyari?
In the end they genetically engineered the dnyari to have the intelligence of a pet and they were raised and kept as pets (that could translate any language due to latent psychic ability). Essentially a form of enslavement.
Was that wrong?
I wouldn't say that all morals are the same in a second world. Or perhaps they are and this would have been extenuating circumstance for slavery/genocide?
In the end the slavery plans bite the ur quan in the ass, as a single dnyari is healed and gains its full psychic power and you use that to defeat the ur quan.
My cuban friends (who fled cuba) were really amused by the fact that the money you get depends on how well you do. "People aren't compensated based on merit. That would be capitalism!"
Very good video, deserves some more attention than this
Awesome video you brought up some good points.
inFAMOUS 2 could really have benefitted if the final choice of the game was presented as purple (the game's grey). This meant that now the player has to decide based on their own understanding rather than on an extrinsic system. InFAMOUS3 could take a note and have a "grey" system where making good and bad decisions result in the player being treated as such and having a mix of weaker good and bad powers.
Mass Effect, despite having a more binary system, allows there to be "buffers" so players can do evil things when they're good when they feel its right. inFAMOUS would benefit from that.
Metro 2033 and Last Light did a great if obscure job with their morality system, tying it with how the player reacts throughout the game using FPS conventions. In Witcher and Fallout New Vegas have the players actions come back to haunt them.
6:50 I wouldn't consider it a problem to assign numeric points to morality from the developer; that happens in any case, because different endings or what different choices result in are choices that developers have to make in any case. I find games are often as much an exploration of a developer's mind as books are of a writer's mind. I think consistency is more important than accuracy in that regard. Like if a psychopath would make a game in the view of his morality, it would be interesting to play, because you don't have to agree with the view to play around inside the confines of the world that person creates.
"small indie games"
*let see Undertale*
Damn, I still want to play the game blind, so I can't watch this rn.
Froggit lives matter
Also nice video