I’m a big fan of narrative games. Finding a compelling story is as vital as good mechanics, multiplayer or visuals. But having some hard decisions that pull at my heartstrings or wrack my brain with guilt is the icing on the cake.
I don’t just enjoy hard decisions in games; I love them. And it looks like science has the answer to why.
An Ice-Breaker
FrostPunk is a post-apocalyptic city-builder that approaches survival in the same way you might approach dinner with a hungry polar bear – you might make it out alive, but at what cost?
Your job is to flex your mayoral muscles over a contingent of Londoners thrust out of their comfortable suburban lives and into the great white tundra of an Earth choked by snow. They shiver and complain around a massive furnace that serves as the centre of your town, while you build roads to carry the dead, homes for the dying and workplaces for the starving. The only way it could be bleaker would be if it was animated by Tim Burton – without the humour.
I adore this game. Call me a glutton for punishment, but the harrowing ordeal of a hundred beleaguered simpletons hanging out in sub-zero temperatures is just the right mix of Sim-City and Lord of the Flies, only much colder.
See, the temperature periodically drops, which means everyone far out of the furnace gets colder, working conditions become harder, food becomes more scarce and slowly everyone grows to hate you. Some talk about leaving, others talk about deposing you, some will steal or vandalise the town. It’s like they don’t know that you’re making the hard decisions, so they don’t have to.
Throughout the game, you’ll face some difficult choices. When you have an overwhelming number of injured citizens, you can pass a law to improve healthcare in which case you’ll have to employ a doctor and build a hospital. Or you can enforce mandatory amputations for the injured, which is far quicker – but of course, people are prone to missing the limb you sliced off and tossed to the wolves.
However, the decisions that most gave me pause were extended working shifts, and child labour laws. Now in the real world, neither of these are laws that I would condone passing, and certainly never something that I would consider if I were really in charge of people’s lives. But what I found, as I led my intrepid band of survivors day after day into the end of their lives, is that in the right circumstances a game can make you question your moral compass.
What I realised is that when your people are starving, and everyone is freezing, forcing the woodcutters to work a ten hour day in the cold feels more acceptable when compared to everyone freezing. And when you take on a group of survivors who bring 30 hungry children with them and providing daycare takes space, heat, food, and workers to look after them – apprenticeships are at least an option to set them up for future employment?
I found it fascinating that the act of playing forced me to question my moral compass and contemplate decisions that I would otherwise condemn. So I did some research. Thankfully learned minds all over the world have collaborated on thoughts like these, and come up with some answers to the questions rattling in my brain.
First is the concept of “Dialectical Bootstrapping” — or being your own Devil’s Advocate. In the real world, we all know how “two heads are better than one” and having a friend or coworker with a different frame of mind can spark something in you that you couldn’t do on your own.
Being your own Devil’s Advocate can have a considerable effect on the accuracy of your decision making as well
A study published by the Association for Psychological Science looks at this idea of how opposing viewpoints can lead to more positive outcomes overall. In essence, if you have a group of people with opposing opinions, through the process of group-thinking, they will eventually reach an equilibrium. This is how a jury works in court as well; you take a group of different people from different backgrounds, prime them with all the information and see what verdict they reach.
I have plenty of coworkers that I clash with every day, and if any of them read this, I’ll say it’s all for the sake of creativity. But butting heads with someone else isn’t the only way to jog your noggin. Being your own Devil’s Advocate can have a considerable effect on the accuracy of your decision making as well.
Even if you are opposed to the idea of extended working hours, or child labour laws, by priming your brain with the facts of low temperatures, dwindling food and limited workers — suddenly those options seem like much more feasible solutions.
Decision-Making Rules
By a similar token, this had me thinking about other games that pushed the limits of my moral compass. Back in 2010, it was Fable 3, a game that pulled such a fast switcheroo that it almost gave me whiplash. From the outset of the game, your brother — the king — is painted as a tyrannical leader who cares more about money and influence than he does about his subjects or his flesh and blood.
By building your revolution, you plot to overthrow him and seat yourself on the throne where you pledge to be a just and kind ruler. Unfortunately, the truth of the matter is far more concerning, as there is a great calamity heading for the kingdom, and you have to build your treasury to pay for the army to stop it. It’s an eventuality you can’t plan for without knowing the twist, and the decisions you’d made to this point all feed into your situation on the throne.
Now with your power firmly planted and doom on the horizon, you have to preside over seemingly insignificant decisions of the townsfolk about crime, poverty and with which wallpaper to adorn the castle.
It’s funny how, in retrospect, these decisions seem so trivial under the shadow of the oncoming horde of monstrous beasties. The game very quickly allows you to turn yourself into a reflection of your brother at the outset – because how could they expect you to care about such small decisions when the fate of the world is at stake?
Looking at a similar study in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, researchers looked at how people in different emotional states make decisions. They found that when you’re in a sad emotional state, you more often make choices based on logic or practicality, while when you’re happy, you make emotional decisions based on your gut instinct. This makes an interesting connection when you’re playing a game — something that you’re inherently doing for enjoyment, but it’s making you sad or worried. It puts you in a state the researchers call the “ambivalent mind”.
“The ambivalent mind can be the wise mind” — in our example, a game that challenges you emotionally while providing a mechanically exciting and fun challenge gives us the best of both opportunities. Our emotional sadness pushes our brains more towards analytical decision-making, while the enjoyment of playing a game gives us the emotional freedom to go with gut decisions and look towards the future.
So it’s a good thing to enjoy the hardship of your townsfolk, I think?
Games have an incredible power to make us question the way we think, inform how we feel and fill us with joy, sadness, terror or guilt. But most importantly they empower us to live another life without lasting repercussions.
All this has reinforced the idea that the decisions I’ve made in my real life outside of games have made me who I am today. And so I feel that by pushing the limits of that in the safety of games can make me someone better tomorrow.
It could make me someone wiser, more experienced, and more aware of the bigger picture of my decisions. Or maybe I’ll pour some wine, fire up The Sims, then build a pool and delete the ladder.
Nathanael Peacock is a big nerd. When he’s not gaming he’ll have his nose in a history book, rebuilding his PC, riding a motorbike or arguing about grammar. Oh, and Dynasty Warriors is cool, don’t believe anyone who says otherwise.
