Growing up we all go through phases.  Whether it is fashion pertaining to clothes and shoes or technology, our interests are forever changing.  When it comes to games the same thing applies.  Some games I still enjoy and some I do not, but the game I enjoyed playing the most was Crash Bandicoot!  The concept of this game was for you, as the player, to complete all the tasks within each level in order to level-up and eventually beat the entire game.  Each task had obstacles that you had to overcome in order to advance, some of which included dying or being injured.  It was not until I saw the Ted Talk video that I looked at Crash Bandicoot in a whole new light when it came to the idea of morality.

Care/Harm: In Crash Bandicoot, both aspects of care and harm come into play.  Going through each task set before them, Crash and/or his sister Cocoa had to try their best to get through each level without being harmed.  Some of the obstacles included swimming through bodies of water, dodging swords and avoiding animals like rhinos.  Although there were many dangers there was one item that kept the characters safe through it all and it was referred to as Aku Aku.  Aku Aku is a spiritual witch doctor that served as Crash’s protector throughout the course of the game

Fairness/Reciprocity: When it comes to the act of being fair I would have to say that overall the game was quite fair.  Sure, there may have been times when it seemed like I just couldn’t get past a level or two, but that wasn’t the game; I believed that that had to do with the skills I had or may have lacked at that particular point, but were taught and probably just forgot.  After you complete each level crash gains more abilities that help him overcome more and more obstacles in his quest for the goal.

Loyalty/In-group: In terms of loyalty you typically think of others who are on the journey with you and whether or not they are really there to help or hinder you, but in the context and setup of this game the idea of loyalty does not come into play for Crash or his sister Cocoa.

Authority/Respect: Sure one could think of Crash as an authority figure and one who is respected by his sister and Aku Aku, but I believe the authority would be Crash’s evil enemy Dr. Neo Cortex.  Throughout the course of the game Dr. Cortex is trying to build an army of beasts to try and conquer the world and Crash is trying to get to him in time.  Other than those two characters, no one else has qualities of authority.

Sanctity/Purity:   Lastly is the idea of sanctity and purity.  Although these two qualities are quite heavily prevalent in the world today, and maybe in some games, it does not show it show in Crash Bandicoot at all and thus not applicable.

Sure, Crash Bandicoot is all about survival and the quest ‘til the end, but analyzing it through the aspects of morality you can see that it’s also about fairness, care/harm, and authority.  Without these morals Crash Bandicoot probably would not be the game that it has become in terms of enjoyment and fun.  (I highly recommend this game to those who have never played for once you play once; you are guaranteed to go back!)

I admit it, I love Pokemon. I am mostly a collector, as I do not have the knowledge necessary to getting the best Pokemon, stats, and move sets. But I’m addicted all the same. Since the storyline changes with every game that comes out (though the stories are usually quite similar), I will be explaining the five aspects of morality with regards to the game mechanics, rather than plot.

1. Harm/care: This has always been a controversial issue in Pokemon. Players trap Pokemon in Pokeballs, and force them to fight each other. But, apparently, we’re friends with Pokemon? They get injured and knocked out, but we always take them to a Pokemon Center or give them a potion to revive them.

2. Fairness/reciprocity: The more time you put into the game, the more experience and money you get. You can also trade Pokemon with other people, and in that respect, you set up your own rules of fairness. The Pokemon themselves also have a particular idea of fairness. The more attention you give them, the more they like you. But if you let them get knocked out too many times, or give them nasty things to eat, they don’t like you any more. This doesn’t usually apply, however, except when you try to evolve certain kinds of Pokemon.

3. Ingroup/loyalty: The more time you spend with one Pokemon, the more friendly it becomes towards you. The more time you spend battling using one Pokemon, the stronger it gets. It is easier to complete the storyline using just six Pokemon, rather than switching between parties all the time. You can not, however, afford to be loyal to one or two specific types of Pokemon. Each type has its own weaknesses and resistances, and you need many types of Pokemon so you are not at a disadvantage against any one opponent.

4. Authority/respect: The player is basically the authority. However, some Pokemon disobey their owner because their owner isn’t strong enough. If you get a high-leveled Pokemon via a trade, you need a certain number of gym badges in order to control it.

5. Purity/sanctity: Not really sure if this applies or not. The player is supposed to be a young kid, fresh and morally good, not having committed any crimes. The player can not change this fixed personality. They are always the good guy, and can’t commit any legal crimes (though I suppose, you could deliberately abuse your Pokemon and make them hate you, so that the move “Frustration” becomes more powerful). Outside of the game, however, some people actually cheat and use codes and hacks and abuse bugs in the game in order to advance, get rare Pokemon and items, clone Pokemon and items, and get maximum stats.

All in all, I think the Pokemon games have mechanics that can please anyone. Obviously, the game caters to Achievers the most, as I think it is with many, if not most, games. You can earn all 8 gym badges, defeat the Pokemon League, complete your Pokedex, and champion the Battle Frontier (in the newer versions). There is rather a small map for Explorers, but it is sometimes a challenge to navigate. Also, the Battle Frontier in the newer versions has many battling challenges, some of which include navigating a randomly generated maze. For Socializers, you can trade, battle, and chat with your friends. Killers can attempt to get the most powerful Pokemon and battle other players through several means (wireless, infrared, Wi-fi).

The games that others have mentioned that I think I might enjoy are RuneScape and Oregon Settlers. I am an Achiever, with an occasional wish to explore and a great desire to collect. These games seem to fit my likes.

One of my favorite games to play is Save the Sheriff. On the surface this game seems pretty simple but upon further examination it is evident that parts of the five aspects of morality are embedded in the game. The basic premise of the game is to save the sheriff by dodging several obstacles.

Harm/Care- This is probably one of the main aspects of morality present in this video game. One of the main and most used functions of the player is to kill the snakes and bandits that try to prevent them from advancing. There is definitely a kill or be killed mentality. If the player does not kill or effectively avoid opponents, than they will probably be killed by the bandits and snakes. A player will also gain points every time they kill which definitely adds an incentive to do harm. Care is not as prominent in this game other than in the overall goal of trying to save someone.

Fairness/reciprocity- There is definitely an aspect of reciprocity in this game. Throughout the game the player is given the option to lead a lost bird back to its home. This action would take time, effort, and put the player in more danger, but if the player completes this good deed they will gain a generous amount of points. The game rewards good deeds.

Ingroup/loyalty- There is really no in-group loyalty present in this game. The player works alone and never collaborates with anyone. The only sense of loyalty is towards the sheriff which as an absent character in the game.

Authority/respect- This aspect of morality is not present in the game. The player never encounters anyone who demands authority or respect. Bandits and wild animals are the only interaction available, and these characters are meant to be killed.

Purity/Sanctity- The premise of the game is pure. The main character is playing with the intention of saving a good person from bad people. The only people that the main character kills or hurts are bandits or animals that have the intention of killing first. Although the game may not appear pure because of all the killing, when observed on a deeper level it does have such a component. Even the aspect of rewarding good deeds, such as saving lost birds, reinforces the aspect of purity.

Based on the aspects of morality present in Save the Sheriff I would say that it is a game created for killers and achievers. There are many opportunities to kill opponent for the killers and several point recorded milestones for the achievers.

I almost hate to admit it, but I love to play Angry Birds. On the surface, the game seems to be the very straight-forward killer-type. The goal is to fling birds at pigs in order to kill them. In the end, everyone dies.However is we think about the different aspects of morality as discussed in the Ted Talk we can see the expanse of the moral compass in the game.

Care/Harm- This game focuses almost solely on harm. The objective is the take the allotted amount of birds and fling them at the pigs. The harder the birds hit the pigs, the more likely the chance they die. There are obstacles that prevent direct contact with the pigs, so the birds will hit other objects and die themselves. They also die when they hit the pigs.

Fairness/reciprocity- There is not much fairness in this game. Firstly, there are different kinds of birds. Each possesses a special skill or talent which allows them to hit the pigs easier. For example, there are birds that can accelerate speed, birds that split into other, smaller birds, and birds that explode. The game gives the player three to five birds to start out with, but the player does not get to choose which kinds of birds nor the order in which he/she can throw them. Therefore, there is less fairness between the player and the computer. The game is very computer-based, mostly left up to chance.

Loyalty/in-group- this set of morals is not really applicable to this game. it is generally every man for himself, and there is one man.

Authority/respect- The question of authority and respect apply in this game when there are the greater sized pigs and pigs in armor They are more difficult to kill, therefore have a more dominating pretense in the game. It feels like they have more authority because the player has to work harder to challenge them. In regards to respect, the player gains respect as he/she progresses and advances in the game. The player’s score goes up and other players have to ability to view each others’ scores. In this way, players with higher scores also have authority.

Sanctity/purity- These elements, too, are not highly relevant in the game unless one sees the act of murder as impure– in which case, there are high levels in impurity in Angry Birds.

Therefore, the overarching goals of this game are to kill, to achieve, and to gain respect and authority.

One game I enjoy playing is Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3. This game is a first person shooter game taking place during a fictional world in the middle of World War III. This game heavily emphasizes harm/care and loyalty because it takes place in middle of a war. The main objective in every game mode is ultimately to survive. There three game modes are Spec Ops, Story, and Multiplayer. The Story and Multiplayer modes focus more on harm while the Spec Ops mode focuses on loyalty.

Story mode is a single player mode and the player has the ability to follow the narrative created by the game developers. This appeals the explorers because hidden Easter eggs are scattered throughout various game stages. Achievers also would enjoy this game mode because achievements can be unlocked by beating the game on various difficulties. Although the story mode provides each kind of gamer with their own objective, they still have to kill hordes of enemies throughout the progression of the mode. I mentioned before that this game takes place during a war so the ultimate objective is to survive. No matter how matter how much you may want to explore or get achievements, at some point you will have to kill (harm) in order to progress.

The other game with an emphasis on harm/care is Multiplayer. Multiplayer is a unique game mode in this game. Prior to Modern Warfare 3, multiplayer game modes favored killers because awards and achievements were based on kills. When this game came out, it created new achievement systems that also rewarded people who supported others and did in game achievements. The introduction of this increased the morality aspect of care in the game. Players were encouraged to have a choice in whether to focus on killing or aiding teammates.

The last game mode is the Spec Ops game mode: it focuses on loyalty which appeals to socializers. In the Spec Ops game mode there are survival maps that place two players on a team and force them to battle computer enemies. The player still has to kill enemies but through voice chat they can choose to talk with their partner to coordinate attacks or relax with a casual conversation in-between battles. This game mode encourages loyalty to your teammate because without them you will not be allowed to continue. If they are knocked down then you have thirty seconds to revive them or the mission is failed.

This game includes no explicit references to fairness, authority, or purity. Purity is completely vacant (as in most war-based games). Fairness may implicitly be seen in how the multiplayer game mode doesn’t only reward people for killing. The new rewards system makes the game fair by rewarding people bases on what they are good at (killing, achievements, caring for others). Authority may only be seen in the rankings. Naturally, if a player see’s another player who is ranked below them they may think their skills are superior and they deserve respect on the battlefield. This happens a lot when I play with my group of friends. We all look up to the friend who (literally) is always the top player in every online game with lobbies of sixteen players.

Based on the games other students played, I would most likely enjoy them. The game I played is very versatile in regards to gamer needs: It has something for just about everyone. On some days I may be complete garbage and my killing skills may be nonexistent. In that case, I may like to work in a team functioning as the support person or “medic”. One game another student wrote about was RuneScape. Beena mentions the main elements are “combat and murder” but she also says that a player is able to walk through cities with their friends and “slay chickens”. If I also lacked skills in killing while I played Beena’s Runescape, I may slay a chicken while walking through a town with my friend. As long as a game gives me versatility in which style I want to play, I will most likely enjoy it.

Morality is everywhere in RuneScape, the fantasy MMORPG that I used to play with my friends in middle school. Then, we all got hooked on MySpace and stopped playing RuneScape. Those were the days.

We would get on RuneScape after school to chat among each other with our nifty usernames and avatars, often playing in the same World and walking through the town together, often stopping to slay a chicken, deposit money in the bank or pursue a trade for a quest.

Looking back on RuneScape, at thirteen years old, I never recognized the major elements of the game: combat and murder. Possibly the largest element of morality in RuneScape is the harm/care feature. Killing is essentially the game – whether it’s killing chickens or killing other players. When dead, and often in a pool of blood, there lies an amount of gold or items possessed by the victim. Unlike in World of Warcraft, looting is allowed, diminishing the value of fairness/reciprocity: if you don’t immediately collect your treasure, tough luck – it can be easily taken by another player.

It’s a simple formula that allows no further movement in the game without some aspect of murder. Even if you don’t want to complete quests or be social in the game, without a food supply, you lose life points and eventually die. To even walk around in the game, murder of at least small chickens is necessary. And to increase success and levels, you must kill larger and larger things – including people.

Authority ranks into the heavy combat element in the game. Those who are stronger with more life points (gained by the consumption of food or drinks) obviously perform better when trying to kill, and players at higher levels will annihilate their victims easily. The lesson? Make sure you take on someone that’s your own size or smaller, because otherwise, it could fare badly for you. Also present are authority figures who distribute quests and are alienated because they are machine operated, and some of the only people in the world that are machine operated.

The purity element is not prevalent in the game as a good or bad factor, but more in the ironic element of the cycles of death and rebirth. You die because, typically, because you are not strong enough to tackle the other player. You are then reborn and keep skill points but lose some articles that you have with you because of your death. And then you continue to kill – just the way you died – and keep hoping to survive. It turns the entire game into a rather hideous cycle of murder.

It’s through this cycle that the essence of loyalty and in-group success becomes seriously diminished in the game. RuneScape functions as a purely individualistic game, fueling the mentality that you can be successful by killing alone – though killing will help the “achievers” side by furthering quests and the “social” side by spurring interactions and trades with others. For RuneScape, harm is the main moral function at stake – a dark purpose of the game that I didn’t realize when I was younger that’s perfect for killers.

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.

At first glance, League of Legends–a competitive online game that pits players against each other in team deathmatches–appears to be a game designed specifically to cater to the killer player type. You are rewarded with gold for killing players and destroying enemy fortifications and minions. Your overall success rate is translated into your ranking, which is then displayed to other players, who will fear and respect you accordingly. However, as you move into more advanced gameplay, the greatest rewards are given not to the killers, but to the social players. As a team game, only the teams with the best coordination and communication succeed. Players whose styles mesh particularly well tend to group up into permant teams–an act which facilitates simple socializing in addition to competitive games. Thus while many ‘killers’ can be found in the game, it is the cooperative or social

As the game has developed over the last two years, the developers have become increasingly supportive of the social playerbase. During this transition, the 5 moral elements become increasingly evident. Fairness is a huge issue in the game, as players are forced to play premade characters. The developers go to great lengths to ensure that the options are available are all balanced, so that players aren’t frustrated by unfair chances.

Loyalty is an incredibly important factor of the game, to the point where victory hinges on your ability to form a coordinated team. Often, certain players are designated as ‘support’ and encouraged to sacrifice for the more offense members of the team. Even out of game, this loyalty is encouraged through an extensive friend’s list and chat features.

The game offers little form of authoritative structure to players, allowing them to form their own hierarchies. While everyone is expected to be a respectful players, there is little way for the company to actively enforce this aside from the typical multiplayer “report” option. Tempers often flare, or independent players may bicker among themselves over matters of personal pride. Due to the high concentration of killer-type players and the high stress, competitive environment, respect is a notoriously difficult thing to find in the game–to the point where the company has implemented honor as a secondary currency, both adding goals for achievement oriented players and rewarding the relatively small population of respectful players.

While respect in League of Legends is rare, sanctity is almost nonexistent. While every player eventually finds characters they favor, the developers regularly release new content. Consequently, every two weeks marks the release of a new game patch, which buffs (strengthens) certain aspects of the game and nerfs (weakens) others for the sake of balance. As such, no aspect of the game is considered safe, and the players’ perception of the game and style of play is constantly in flux.

Considering the aggressive, black and white nature of the game, it’s surprising that so many of the morals are even present at all. It is possible that even in game scenarios, regardless of what behavior is encouraged and rewarded by the game developers, a certain level of real world morals carry over into the game. Alternatively, these morals could be a result of the killer behavior. As players who specialize in hunting other players, it is likely that a worthy rival would merit a certain level of respect and admiration, resulting in killers working together to teach each other, hone their skills, and develop their own codes of honor translating to the morals we see in game.

Kids Down the Stairs, the game I wrote my second narrative on, is a PC game I used to play as a child. The rules of the game are simple. One just has to keep on jumping from stone steps to stone steps in a downward direction, avoiding iron thorns on the ceiling and on certain steps. Once the player gets stabbed by the thorns, his energy decreases, and when the energy bar turns to zero, he dies (figuratively, of course). The player also loses if he falls down the step while jumping. There are two ways to play the game, either in one-player mode or two-player mode, and the focusing elements of the game changes as the player switches his mode.

Not all four elements can be seen in Kids Down the Stairs. Among the four, which are killing, socializing, achieving and exploring, the socializing aspect seems the least obvious. When played in one-player mode, the game has an emphasis on mostly achieving and a bit of exploring and killing. This is because what the player would like to achieve in this mode is to jump on as many stone steps as possible to break his own record. While the player could explore the area by moving around in different directions, it is not the main focus of the game. The player eventually dies, but that is just how the game ends and no actual killing is involved. Neither exploring nor killing is stressed in one-player mode. However, in two-player mode, the players become killers as whoever dies first loses the game. Like one-player mode, achieving and exploring are also noticeable, but not socializing, since players can’t communicate via the game when they play.

In light of the five aspects of morality, fairness is weighed most heavily. Take the two-player mode as an example, where neither of the players has an advantage over the other. Even their characters look exactly the same besides shirt colors. The game encourages fair competition, yet it at the same time discourages care, authority and loyalty because according to the rules the two players are supposed to harm each other to achieve victory. They do not respect or care for each other, and are only loyal to themselves.

I enjoy playing games with simple rules and a clear goal, so Kids Down the Stairs is a perfect match. Although I played games like The Sims before, its lack of emphasis on achieving soon made me lose interest. Nevertheless, if Kids Down the Stairs was made into a more complex game where you can form groups for competition, it may be interesting.

One of my favorite games to play is Borderlands. I own the first game in the series, and I have also rented the second one. I only played the first few missions of the second game. Despite a few upgrades, the formula for the two seems to be roughly the same. For the sake of discussion, I will be referring to the the first game in the series unless otherwise stated.

Borderlands is one of the few games that takes elements from two genres that, at times, can seem like polar opposites. Elements of a first-person shooter game are blended together with role-playing game components. The most obvious aspect of the game is that it turns the player into a killer. The wasteland setting transforms you into a survivor/killer immediately. The first person shooter element completely transforms you into this sort of soldier. It gives you the weapons that are needed to kill. With your character being a treasure hunter, it turns you into an explorer and an achiever. The role playing game ingredient rewards you for your added exploration by giving you loot and more guns to kill with.

The fourth element that this game is missing is the socializing element. This is not a massive multiplayer online role playing game. There is not a lot of socializing that goes on. Many of your quests are given to you in the form of a bounty board. There is little need to socialize with the townspeople except for a few select characters. The max number of players that are allowed to be in the same game at once is four. There is little need to talk. The shooter element greatly outshines the role playing game element when it comes to combat. In Borderlands 2, the difficulty is increased a bit. Boss battles now require more creative action (Like shooting nuclear missiles out of the air). This prompts players to communicate a little bit more, but at the same time, it is not needed (granted you have enough bullets).

When it comes to Borderlands, fairness can be a mixed bag. When in a party, any killed enemy grants the whole team experience. This is great for those who are lower in level. At the same time, it can promote lazy players who like to sit back and observe, rather than help their teammates. When money is collected, the same amount goes to all members of the squad. However, ammunition does not work the same way. Sometimes there are players who sit around and open chests to gather loot and ammo while others fight enemies. Loyalty is also a bit wishy-washy. The game makes a common goal for the different character classes. Rather than create separate warring factions like World of Warcraft, the game encourages looting and treasure hunting throughout the game. It is kind of like an honor among thieves system. The more players in a group increase the strength of enemies. This usually encourages the teammates to revive each other.Other than this, players are free to engage in combat with each other by hitting others with a melee attack.

The large first person shooter element keeps the game itself from becoming a game that centers around care/harm. It also prevents the game from having a purity factor. It is also not too big on socializing either (perhaps due to the fact that parties can only have a maximum of four players). Games like The Sims do a better job at filling in the moral gaps left by Borderlands. Although this genre of game is on the other side of the spectrum, I think that I will still enjoy it. I am a gamer who plays all types of games.