The morality of Oregon Settlers

It would seem that morality wouldn’t play into Oregon Settler, the iPad game to which I’ve been addicted for the past six months (embarrassingly enough). Oregon Settler is an app game designed mainly for achievement oriented gamers that combines game playing elements of Farmville with thematic elements of the Oregon Trail. Essentially, the goal is to tend and expand your plot of Oregon land to form a thriving town by building houses and businesses, collecting money, tending animals, and growing crops.

Care is a moral idea that is heavily emphasized in this game. The main goal is to care for a town and help it grow. Especially with the townspeople, with which the town leader (whom the gameplayer controls) has a lot of scripted conversation, the idea of care and harm are very present. Players frequently come to the town leader with problems that need to be solved, and choosing a good solution earns the town leader rewards, like wood for building or extra energy. Also, it is the town leader’s responsibility to aid injured townspeople.

Loyalty to the game is also heavily emphasized through game rewards and achievements. Returning every day earns players additional bonuses, like free houses and experience points. Too much time between visiting houses lowers the townspeople’s moods, as indicated by a red or green smiley or frowny face on the screen. A crop left too long will die. And there’s only a limited space of time in which an ill person can be healed before they die. These are all effective motivators of game loyalty for achievement-oriented people such as myself.

Fairness, however, does not exist in this game. Often, some sort of natural disaster will come by, forcing players to spend large amounts of money to lessen damages and then expend precious energy points to repair the broken buildings and heal wounded animals. These occurrences are often random and unprovoked. Three can happen in the span of an hour, or a town can go incident-free for weeks. In this way, the game is unfair because negative events occur without much reason or predictability. It has nothing to do with how dedicated a player is, there’s no way to strategize and prepare, and there’s not even any sort of warning or pattern that would indicate that something might happen. I suppose along this line we could also say sanctity is cast aside in the game, because it encourages constant change and the randomness of “life-like” gameplay – it’s supposed to be like real life in that sometimes, bad things cannot be foreseen and things change.

The morality in this game does not come from player interaction but rather very predetermined gameplay, which in turn creates a very frustrating but addictive game for the achievement minded player.

 

 

One thought on “The morality of Oregon Settlers

  1. It seems to me like this would be a fun game to play based on Kelsey’s analysis of the morality. Perhaps it is my personal opinion, but I like games that involve care. I am a more nurturing type person, so I would gain a sense of achievement from being able to take care of the town and see the fruits of my labor. I like the thought of developing relationships between people and between the the people and the land. I also like the element of surprise. That is how I interpret the unfairness Kelsey describes. I agree that weather and natural circumstances are out of one’s control in real life, so it helps the player learn skills like adaptation and resourcefulness. In essence, I think I would like this game because it is about people and the relationship between people.

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