teaching or reinforcing?
May 1st, 2008 Ryan Gilson
Moral games make us think. They bring to light ideas and events that we would much rather not think about. For instance the baron brings to light an event that much of us would rather ignore then actually believe could ever be true. No one wants to ever hear about a poor girl or boy being raped, especially by a parent. The baron is an interactive game where the player thinks they are the protagonist going to save their daughter, when in realitiy it is a father who is struggling within himself about the fact that he sneaks into his daughters room at night to rape her. The game brings the light the fact that the whole village knows about it but tends to ignore it; just as the wife ignores it when her husband gets up out of bed. The player knows the village is ignoring the problem because when the man goes outside to go and fight “the baron” for his daughter back and he comments that not one villager is there to help him in the fight. After the game is completed and the player knows the true story of the game, they realize that the villagers are choosing to ignore the problem.
So, what does this say about our society? Many of us have been known to be followers. Only a handful of people ever emerge as leaders, even though everyday I feel there are signs and people saying anyone can be a leader. Anyone can show leadership skills, all they have to do is take a stand and make themselves known. We are all getting pushed by our parents, our teachers, and our employers to be leaders and to make a stand; yet, how many of us actually have the guts to be the controller, to be the person in charge. We are all told to make a difference in the world and stand up for what we believe in. Yet, sometimes standing up for what we believe in causes us to be the outcast and can bring much anxiety to that person. Thus, imagine if something such as the instance in the baron were happening in your town. How many of us could actually make a stand and tell the man what he was doing was wrong? How many of us could turn him in? And what if we did, and it turned out he was innocent?
I’d like to think that any one of us would have the guts to at least turn the man into the police if we could not say something to him ourselves. We want to believe we are that strong and would do the right thing, but what if we had no proof. What if we just had rumors? So what is the game designer saying about that village? I find it hard to believe not one person would be able to say something, so for him to decide that not one person would have come outside seems preposterous. We are better then that, we have morals and we want to upkeep them. But maybe that was the designers plan all along. Maybe he is not trying to say that no one would help, but maybe he is trying to make it so that someone always comes outside. I know how strongly I feel after playing the game that I’d be that one villager outside. Yet, I feel I would have been out there anyway, even if I had not played the game. Thus, he is reinstalling a feeling I already held dear to my heart, he just wanted to remind me of it. So, moral games may not be there to question our morals, but there to help reinforce them into our brains. They help to just make us not forget what we actually felt was important all along.
Entry Filed under: Game Log
