Games with a conscience?

3rd May 2004

Imagine playing a game where you could adjust the level of you character’s conscience. I’m not exactly clear on what I’m trying to suggest but I thought I would open it up for discussion.

Imagine playing a game where you could adjust the level of you character’s conscience. Without getting to bogged down in a philosophical discussion we all have a conscience when playing a game but because we know the game is not real the power of this conscience is almost worthless. Admittedly the chance to utilise our conscience in games are small but anyway.

Here’s an example; you are playing an FPS with the character’s CL (Conscience level) set to high. You run past an innocent bystander that is being attacked by one of your enemies. Because you?ve set the CL to high you running speed drops by 70%. The right thing to do would be to stop, go back and help said bystander.

This action could of course have dire consequence for the outcome of the game. However by performing this action it may lead to a short cut in the map.

There could be plenty of variations on this type of theme: do the right thing possibly, although not definitely, get a reward. The reward could range from short cuts to extra points depending on the game.

My only interest in gaming is FPS so I have only really thought about it from that aspect. Another CL controlled action could be to make your gun shake when facing an unarmed opponent. Shooting him in the leg gets you a good CL rating.
The CL would be set at the beginning of a game and would completely depend on the type of game you are playing.

2 Comments

  1. THIS Sounds like a killer Idea..

  2. Bramblepath

    I can imagine this being a really cool idea, but it would be awkward to implement I imagine. It would work well in an RPG-style game.

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