Transcript of a chat about a moral quandary…

(Names changed for privacy)

Today while writing Aura’s story for my thesis, Do I Date?, I came across a difficult moral situation. I called several friends and discussed it with them. I’ve transcribed one of the conversations below. I thought this would provide an interesting and raw look into the process of writing a game about mental disorders.

Me: Bold

Friend: Italics

Hi so you know my game, my thesis, my dating simulator about mental disorders?

yes

Okay so the character I’m working on right now, Aura, she’s a sociopath

So I just talked to Larry and Moe and my friend Curly who is also a diagnosed sociopath, cause I’m trying to make this as accurate and factual as possible and I’m having a moral conundrum

So basically what’s going on in her story is that she meets up with the player and they go to a chocolate shop and she literally takes candy from a child and then eats it and then laughs about it

So that’s like the first indication that there’s something morally off about this character

But then she’s like okay we should go home and the player notices that she’s basically about to steal a bunch of stuff and that’s not good

So like I wrote up fake situations and sent them to these three people, Larry, Moe, and Curly, and was like what “would you do in this situation, like what would piss you off the most?”

how would u define “correct” there are 2 ways of going about it. what is “right” and what she would prefer but obviously those aren’t the same here

It’s basically like you’re in a situation where you could get away with stealing some stuff and what would piss you off the most if someone just let it slide, or paid for you, or forced you to pay?

And all of them are like if “I could get away with it why would I ever pay”

its not morally right to let people steal

I mean they’re sociopaths, they don’t get right versus wrong, but like the moral thing, a normal person should be like “hey yeah I’m supposed to pay for that”

people shouldn’t let their mental issues excuse their bad behaviour

So like that’s the reaction that a normal person would have in that situation but that’s not what the sociopath wants.

enabling them prob isn’t the best

Basically how the game works is there is an internal counter and it gives you points or take away points based on the choices you make, so like earlier in her story you you see her and it’s like okay do I hug her do I wave or do I shake her hand?

If you shake her hand that’s like a neutral choices, try to hug her she gets angry so that takes away point, and if you just wave that makes her happy so you got a point.

fallout new vegas has character quests where different decisions lead to different outcomes for example, u basically recruit an old man and u have 2 different paths. u can either show him how old people can still be useful on the side-lines, or you can just have him persevere regardless of his age. at the end of the quest he picks either a support role or an attack role (u can force him to pick either but the one he picks is based on the quest). and in that quest the counters are invisible as for them being contradictory while that is n8 from a developers perspective that might be confusing to a player as its going contradictory feedback

So basically I’m at this crossroads where there she’s about to steal a bunch of stuff and what she the sociopath would want is to just get away with it, right, but I’d not sure if that’s something I want to advocate as the “right choice” in my game because it’s morally not the right choice… but you’re trying to get this person to trust you and want to spend time with you.

mental health isn’t easy. its not just what u want to do. its what players will want to do and how that will affect the course of the game/relationships

So imagine Larry was out getting weed and his drug dealer’s brother was there and someone just shot the brother then obviously he could just walk away with the weed, and he would not see anything wrong with that (that’s the situation I gave him) but like if you were there you should be like “hey dude you need to pay for that weed” but that would piss him off, right?

Like I don’t want the player to be pissing off the character, but I also don’t want to be blatantly ignoring the law. Should I give a disclaimer?

so basically a warning 2 the player, “don’t the advice from the crazy person game as real world behaviour,” is basically what ur saying

I want this to be realistic so what I’m thinking of doing is having a bit of a contradictory reaction, so it’s like feedback on my end.

pretty isolating them isn’t going to help either

Like if you have a brain you’re like “oh I obviously made the wrong choice because now she’s stabbing me with a knife” or something, like you know “oh I made a good choice because she took her shirt off” you know but this is sort of a contradiction.

I mean ig on one hand most people aren’t going to care on the other hand people think series like goblin slayer should be burned at the stake for having evil people doing evil things, so people are going to be pissy no matter what

But there’s nothing, like, you don’t see your points you don’t see them until the end, and the end is based on how many points you have.

pretty sure making a game covering mental health have romance be a genuine outcome for some of the paths isn’t exactly a reflection of reality

There’s three different endings, like for Aura the good ending is that she’s like “okay I have a problem I’m going to go seek therapy and get help” and her neutral ending is just like she’s like “I don’t care I’m just going to keep doing what I’m doing” and her bad ending is like she kills someone and goes to jail.

So like this is realistic and it’s like “dating simulator” in quotes cause I’m trying to be as realistic as possible.

If one’s personal relationship with the girls is irrelevant isn’t the only things that’s going to matter is the “Right” option. like obvs what they think of u doesn’t matter as u aren’t going to get anywhere anyway, as in “best” option

It’s not really realistic to have a sociopath, someone with antisocial personality disorder, in a loving happy romantic relationship in any sense.

Like no matter what that’s just not something they can feel so… it’s complicated cause I like the idea of the players getting immediate feedback on what they did being right or wrong, but the “right” choice here is to just let them get away with it because that’s what would make them happy, but I also don’t want to say “yeah you should let people steal”

so seems like u appear to place what is best for their health overall above short-term happiness

It’s confusing morally, I’m stuck cause there’s like three different correct choices one of the correct choices is “what would make the sociopath happy?” the other correct choice is “morally what should I do?” and the third correct choice is “what is best for the sociopath even if they’re not happy about it right now?”

in rpgs if people can cheat out a option with no consequences they’ll typically go to that another example from new vegas u have a person who’s basically insane (goes into rages, talks to a person who isn’t there, etc) u can convince them to talk all of them medicine, stabilising them, but making them completely forget their past take half of it (half remembers/half rages) or take none of it (remembers all, but completely insane) and its a real moral quandary or if ur science is good enough u can just fix her brain, so most people just go with that

I feel like they’re all correct but they’re also all wrong…

then you’d be left with the first three choices of the three, letting her go completely insane is obvs bad so ur left with 2 “fix” her, but make her forget her past, or leave her damaged but she still remembers her past

if the point of the sim is to teach people what to do irl u prob want to give an actual “”correct”” option so people emulate that

If I went with the contradictory choices and then the internal dialogue, do you think that would be effective and make sense?

Like someone would play that and be like “oh I’ve made the wrong choice and understand”

well from my perspective where its more of an educational tool than a sim id try to railroad the character to the correct option if the objective is to make sure people are aware of how to deal with the issues irl but u need to balance the writing, gameplay, and so on. there’s no solution’s going to satisfy everything perfectly

But like understanding that maybe like the sociopath is happy that you made the wrong choice sad that you made the right one like cuz their moral compass is nonexistent, so their reaction shows that.

It’s a matter of compromises and priority.