Moral Decision Making in Fallout [624425]

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Moral Decision Making in Fallout
by Marcus Schulzke
Abstract
Many open world games give players the chance to make moral choices, but usually the
differences between good and evil paths through a game are slight. In order for moral choices
in games to be me aningful they must be fairly calculated and have significant consequences.
The Fallout series is one of the best examples of how to give players thoughtful moral
problems and multiple paths to resolving them. This essay looks at the series, and Fallout 3 in
particular, as examples of how moral choice can be incorporated into video games. One of
the oldest fears about art is that it may corrupt observers and lead them to immorality – a
criticism that has resurfaced with attacks on video games. Fallout 3 does the opposite. It
encourages players to think about the morality of their actions in the virtual world, thereby
teaching them the practical wisdom that Aristotle considered essential to being a moral actor.
Keywords: Fallout , Aristotle, Phronesis , practic al wisdom, morality, education.

Introduction
In the Poetics Aristotle initiated a new line of thinking about tragedy that dominated aesthetic
thought for centuries (Aristotle, 1997). While his predecessor Plato condemned art as being
deceptive and leadi ng to immorality, Aristotle believed that tragedy had the power to make
audience members into better people. Plato objected to art for several reasons. Morally, he
thought it was corrupting because it intoxicates those who experience it, putting the observ er
under the spell of the work and hindering clear thought (Plato, 1925). Aristotle defended
tragedy based on its pragmatic value. He thought tragedy was useful precisely because of its
intoxicating affect. It gives the audience catharsis – a chance to los e themselves in the work
and experience the emotions of fear and pity in a controlled setting. Subsequent aesthetic
theorists built on Aristotle's work to find other pragmatic functions of art, including some
who saw art as having the capacity to teach mor al lessons (Burke, 1998; Shelly, 1904).
Video games are only the latest art form to suffer from accusations of corrupting
morality. Just as Plato and Aristotle argued over the relative merits of tragedy, contemporary
social theorists and commentators in t he popular media debate the intoxicating effect of video
games. The strategies of attack and defense have changed little over centuries. Video games
are, however, much different from earlier art forms as they are the first to be truly interactive.
It has l ong been a criterion of good art that it provide the spectator the opportunity to
participate in the content by supplying new meanings and interpretations. What sets the
classics of literature apart from lesser works is the former's engagement of the reade r and
encouragement to go beyond passive receptivity. Yet even a great work of literature fall far
short of video games in participation because games allow the content to change based on the
players' decisions. Players can remake the game world and produc e their own characters
rather than simply attributing meaning to those created by others. As Jesper Juul points out,
games are "half -real." They create fictional worlds for us to play in, but they have an impact

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on us in this world; our actions in the game determine what our relation is to the game in
reality (Juul, 2005).
The engagement of players in fantasy worlds allows video games to serve the
cathartic purpose that Aristotle had in mind, but it also gives them an educative function that
he did not ant icipate. Interactivity makes games an arena in which players can experiment
with different ways of resolving moral problems. This essay shows that the Fallout series
(Bethesda, 2008; Interplay, 1997, 1998; Universal, 2001), and Fallout 3 in particular, pro vide
a promising look at how video games can serve as tools of moral education. The Fallout
series is among the video games best suited for ethical instruction because it is set in an open
world that grants the player freedom of action – including the free dom to be moral or
immoral. Although these games have not perfected the moral dimension of play, they are
effective in presenting players with complex moral dilemmas that require careful reasoning.
The games do not purport to teach morality and they should not attempt to do so. Their value
is in creating compelling simulations that force players to test their own values then using
sanctions in the game to respond to the player's choices. We should see them as a training
ground in which players can practice thinking about morality.
Games like Fallout cultivate what Aristotle called " phronesis" – the practical wisdom
of knowing how to act morally in particular situations. According to Aristotelian virtue
ethics, morality is not a matter of learning universal laws. It is learning how to be good by
strengthening one's practical wisdom to the point that it is capable of resolving moral
dilemmas as they arise. Practical wisdom is essential even for those who believe in a moral
code as it is the skill that allows o ne to recognize when to apply a particular rule. By situating
players in a virtual world in which they can test their phronesis and improve it without
suffering from the adverse consequences actions real world, video games serve as an
invaluable educational tool. When players choose to act morally they get practice in making
sound decisions, and even when they choose to act immorally they gain experience in
evaluating moral problems and experience the consequences of their actions. Simply being
presented with opportunities to act morally and immorally can, from the Aristotelian
perspective, make players wiser and more sensitive to real -world moral dilemma s.
Moral Choice in the Virtual World
Unlike many video games, which have only minimalist plots and rely on graphics and action
to promote the game (Piot, 2003), the Fallout series has an engaging story. It takes place in a
world torn apart by nuclear war. In each of the games the player takes control of a character
in the United States who was insulated from the outside world by living in a subterranean
vault or a primitive tribe. The character ventures i nto the wasteland of post -nuclear America
to find an array of enemies ranging from mutated ghouls to renegade factions of the US army
and must complete a series of open -ended quests that make game experiences personal. With
the exception of the series' tactic al RPG, Fallout Tactics, the games allow for a great deal of
personal choice including what quests to complete, how to complete them, what kind of
character to create, and how to explore the map. What makes the games so enjoyable is that
choices matter. Wh ile players must complete the same main quests they have so much choice
over which side quests to complete and how to complete them that no player come away with
the same experience as another One of the qualities that sets the Fallout series apart from
other games is that the quests are not only open but that they also attach moral weight to the
player's choices. Moral choice is a part of many video games, especially RPGs, however, the
Fallout series and especially Fallout 3 have taken it to a new level.

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While some of the choices in Fallout 3 are extreme, most are more complex and
nuanced than in its contemporaries. BioShock (2K Games, 2007), for example, gives the
player a single major moral choice that is repeated continually throughout the game (Tavinor ,
2009). Players must choose whether to kill little girls called Little Sisters in order to harvest
them for ADAM, a mutagen that gives the player more strength. Saving the Little Sister also
results in some gain, but not as much. The choice has an effect on the game's difficulty, but is
ultimately shallow. Only two endings are possible – one for a purely evil character and the
other for a purely good character. There is no middle ground between the two. The choices
also do not affect the locations the play er visits; the game follows the same path regardless of
which option is taken. Once the player has decided between the good and evil paths little
more thought is required because the scenario that tests morality goes unchanged. There is a
great deal of mor al speculation in the game's story, but the most significant questions are
confronted passively. The character is presented with deep questions only as issues for
contemplation; they do not enter into gameplay. As Sicart puts it, the BioShock is "focused o n
very concrete experiences," even as it meditates on deep philosophical problems (Sicart 2009,
p. 156). This is not a major improvement over earlier games. Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark
Forces II (LucasArts, 1997), for example, included a similar dilemma be tween extreme good
and evil. The player had to decide between the light and dark sides of the force by choosing
what powers to improve after each level up. These choices had an effect on what powers the
player could use and changed the ending, but had litt le substantive impact on the game.
Mass Effect (BioWare, 2007) is a better example of an innovative moral choice
engine. Although it falls short of having the same depth as the Fallout series it does have the
novel bipartite morality scale. One earns para gon points and renegade points so that no good
action can negate a bad one and the reverse. The two scales slide independently. These do
have some effect on gameplay as a high rank on either scale opens new assignments.
Nevertheless, being good or evil doe s not force the player to sacrifice anything. One can be
high in both paragon points and renegade points, making it possible to unlock all the quests.
As with BioShock , Mass Effect lacks any significant consequences to the moral choices.
Moral traits are found in many other RPGs as well, but they are usually ascribed to the
character rather than being earned. In Dungeons and Dragons games players have moral
alignments like "chaotic good" and "lawful evil," but these are chosen when making a
character and t hus exist before the character has actually done anything. Rather than having
actions determine the character, the character is set in advance and actions are supposed to
conform to it (Fine, 2002, p.17). Their fault is that one's character is taken as som ething given
rather than something to be produced in action.
In most games the moral choices the player confronts are distant from everyday life.
Many of those in Fallout are as well, but not all of them are as distant from everyday life as
the post -apoca lyptic setting suggests. There are some choices that are so immediate that
government censors have found them objectionable. Fallout 3 was initially banned in
Australia because of the prominent role of drugs (Peckham, 2008), only to be accepted in an
altered form that fit with the country's game rating system. Reviewers from the Office of
Film and Literature Classification deemed the drugs too suggestive of real life drugs and said
that they rendered the original version of the game unclassifiable under the country's rating
system, which does not have a mature level. In the game, each drug is accompanied by a
small graphical representation of the drug and the player is shown using them when they are
taken in the game. The drugs closely resemble real ones. Me d-X, was even called 'morphine'
before censors forced a change. They are also suggestive for having numerous positive and

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negative side -effects as well as the possibility of addiction. Usually drugs in games are far
more one -dimensional, repairing hit poin ts or increasing strength and not doing much else.
The first two Fallout games also included high levels of sexual content. In Fallout 2 the
player could collect condoms, "Jimmy Hats," and work in the post-apocalyptic American
pornography industry. The sce nes were never visually graphic, but they did bring real moral
questions about sexuality into the game with uncompromising directness.
More than anything else, the Fallout series is unique in giving players an open world
in which they can make genuine mor al choices. Moral dilemmas are not presented for passive
contemplation – they are an integral part of gameplay. As Sicart points out in his study of
virtue ethics in games (Sicart 2009), virtue ethics is player -centric. It makes sense only when
players are not merely passive recipients of the games content but actually play a role in
determining the course of events. Fallout is certainly player -centric and it includes a
sophisticated system of quantifying players' actions in order to work them into a comput er
simulation.
Calculating Morality
Moral choice engines depend on weighting moral and immoral actions. The fact that games
can quantify moral choices is itself an accomplishment as earlier attempts to do this in the
real world were plagued by problems o f incommensurability. Jeremy Bentham's
utilitarianism is the most famous of these attempts at calculating the consequence of actions.
His theory is based on the belief that happiness is the greatest good and that morality should
therefore be defined as act ing to produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number of
people (Bentham, 1961). Bentham considers the source of the pleasure irrelevant and thinks
that only the amount matters. The problem that he runs into is using this as a criterion for
judgmen t. Different people value different goods; everyone has their own incommensurable
objects of happiness. It seems very difficult to weigh one person's happiness against someone
else's and because there is no objective measure of the amount of happiness a pe rson receives
to serve as a basis for comparison. His solution to each of these problems was to design a
calculus that could measure a person's happiness. With this objective measurement he could
overcome incommensurability and, he hoped, have a reliable w ay of making moral decisions
by weighting the quantitative value of one person's happiness over another's.
Bentham measures happiness by assigning numerical value to the variables intensity,
duration, certainty, propinquity, purity, fecundity and extent. For time and propinquity this is
easy since we already measure time and space numerically. Bentham also thinks we can
assign numbers to the intensity of a pleasure and how certain one is of obtaining it (Bentham,
1961). The Hedonistic Calculus he uses to d o this is a Baroque apparatus with little real
value. It runs into many problems. To start, it is unconvincing that the numbers assigned to
pleasure and pains are meaningful. Quantifying the intensity of pleasure or pain, for example,
runs into the same pr oblem of how we can attach a numerical value to something subjective.
It only shifts the incommensurability problem to a lower level, by dividing happiness into a
number on analytic parts on which the problem is recapitulated. Another major difficulty is
that it is hard to imagine ever being able to use such a system of measurement. Our moral
choices must be made quickly, in most cases, or at least more quickly than the Hedonistic
Calculus can be used. In fact, the calculus is a great deal more complicated than what is
outlined here as each of these variables must be multiplied or added together to arrive at the
number of hedons or dolors that a given action would produce. Quantification does not work
well in making daily moral decisions, but it is promising in the virtual world where

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developers can determine the wishes of each character and assign numerical values to the
player's actions to make a neutral standard of judgment.
Fallout 3 attempts something similar to Bentham's quantification of pleasure and pain
with the Karma scale. Although Fallout does not start from the utilitarian assumption of
happiness being the greatest goal, it does measure the amount of harm done to other
characters in the game. There are six moral types corresponding to the numeric al values.
Between -1,000 and -750 the player is very evil, -749 to -250 is evil, -249 to 249 is neutral,
250 to 749 is good, and 750 to 1,000 is very good (Hodgson, 2008, p.29). Nearly everything
the player does in Fallout 3 affects Karma in some way, eit her increasing or decreasing the
number of points depending on the morality of the action. Stealing incurs minor penalties,
killing results in more significant drops in karma, and destroying an entire town – something
the game allows the player to do – exacts a heavy karmic price. In order for the system to
work the developers had to assign numerical values indicating the magnitude of each action
then set good, bad and neutral paths by which to complete each task. This is a far easier task
than with real pe ople for the obvious fact that developers can determine how much pleasure
and pain characters suffer. The result is a world governed by something akin to the hedonistic
calculus in which the player receives immediate feedback about the effects of their act ions
based on the karma system. A quantifiable morality allows the game to apply a consistent
standard for moral actions that the player can adjust to and use to inform their decisions.
Morgan Luck writes that "Most people agree that murder is wrong. Yet, within
computer games virtual murder scarcely raises an eyebrow" (Luck, 2008). While this is true
in most games, non -player characters (NPCs) in the Fallout series react to the player's
actions, including their murders. One of the clearest indications of one's karma level comes
from interactions with NPCs. They respond differently depending on the morality of the
player's past actions and in many cases even react to specific actions. For example, a player
with good karma might be welcomed by a shopkeeper, but when the good karma was earned
by helping that shopkeeper with a past quest then her behavior reflects that particular good
deed. The NPCs are not uniform either; they have their own moral preferences. Some are
good, some neutral and some evil. Each re sponds to the player in a way befitting their
personality.
Karma levels also determine what locations the player can visit. Evil NPCs like
slavers and raiders welcome the player if one is evil enough while those who oppose these
factions respond by attack ing and barring entry to their locations. There is no way to act in
the Fallout world without creating new opportunities and closing off others. No karma rating
is without its price. The Fallout 3 world is overrun by factions that in constant competition
for land, technology and weapons and there are factions that hunt players for being good or
evil. The Talon Corps Mercenaries hunt good players on behalf of those whose ambitions
were thwarted by past good deeds and the regulators hunt evil characters. A pl ayer that has
been both good and evil will be hunted by both for past actions because a change in karma
does not erase the memory of past actions. The only character that is safe from such attacks is
the neutral since taking the middle course is likely to avoid harsh reactions from others and is
exceedingly difficult to remain neutral in a world that demands action.
Experience and karma come together to give the player a title. In the original game
there were twenty levels of experience and combined with t he three basic moral affiliations of
good, evil and neutral, there are sixty titles in all. A level one evil character is a "Vault
Delinquent," a level ten neutral is an "Observer," and a level 20 good character is the "Last,

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Best Hope of Humanity." As these shows , each experience level grants a more dramatic title.
They show how other characters in the game perceive the player. The developers clearly
think that neutrality is the course that most people take as good and evil characters earn lofty
titles and the titles indicating neutrality stress how average the player is. The level 20 neutral
title is Paradigm of Humanity and at 30, the highest level possible, one becomes a "True
Mortal" while "Messiah" and "Devil" go to the good and evil players respectivel y. Allowing
players to be neutral is one of the Fallout series' most significant innovations as most games
force them to choose between good and evil. Neutrality is the hardest path to take in the
game. Again this is not a flaw in the game because it refle cts the reality that neutrality is a
hard to define. As it is commonly used, neutrality is staying aloof from moral dilemmas and
not intervening on behalf of any interested parties. However, this kind of neutrality is usually
not true neutrality because re fusing to play a role in a conflict amounts to allowing the
stronger side to win. In Fallout 3 the character has to make choices – there is no simple
neutrality of nonintervention.
The karma scale improved through each installment of the Fallout series. I n the
original game there was reputation, which acted like karma but lacked the same moral
connotation. There were also few special perks for having a positive or negative reputation,
but not as many as in Fallout 3 . Unlike Fallout 3 , morality only made mi nor changes to
gameplay. There were no factions hunting down a player just for having a bad reputation nor
were there any locations made unavailable to players based on morality. Although the moral
dimension was less overt in Fallout 3 , Fallout did have gr eater scope for immoral action as
well as particular labels that would attach to the player based on misconduct. There was, for
example, the "child killer" label bestowed on a player who killed three or more children. This
would provoke bounty hunters to c ome after the player and NPCs were aware of the standing.
In Fallout 2 the karma scale was introduced and the range of potential moral and immoral
actions was expanded as the game included new opportunities for drug us and subquests
having to do with porno graphy and mafia killings. Yet, it did suffer from a few shortcomings.
The reputation system was still present in Fallout 2 , making it and karma two different scales
on which the player could be judged and there were not as many perks based on the player's
karma level. The karma system is one of the series' greatest innovations, but what truly sets it
apart from other games are the challenging and innovative quests.
Morality in a Post -apocalyptic World
The quests of Fallout 3 differ greatly in their content and their degree of moral sophistication.
At two extremes are the quests "The Power of the Atom" and "Free Labor." One of the
game's most well -known and controversial quests is "The Power of the Atom" in which the
player is faced with the problem of wheth er or not to detonate a nuclear bomb sitting in the
middle of the town of Megaton. The residents are aware of the bomb and a cult even
worships it and bathes in the radioactive water that it sits in, but until the player arrives no
one has the skill to def use it. The player is approached by the scheming NPC Mr. Burke, who
offers the job of detonating the bomb in exchange for money and an apartment, but at the cost
of -1,000 karma. The reason he gives for needing the city destroyed is that it is an ugly plac e
that blocks a clear view of the Capital Wasteland. A good player can get the quest of
disarming the bomb from the town sheriff Lucas Simms then capture Mr. Burke. This course
of action only results in a gain of 200 karma, making the good and bad courses of action
vastly disproportionate in karmic impact.

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"The Power of the Atom" is an entertaining quest, but one that does little show off the
game's moral choice engine. There is no middle ground between the extremes of destroying
the town and saving it. Wh at is more, there are not even significantly different results.
Destroying Megaton results in higher pay, but either resolution earns the same experience
point bonus and a new home. Each also results in vigilantes or mercenaries hunting the player
in retal iation. Of course, the game is changed by the removal of the city, but this is not a
change to the main character.
In The Pitt , a Fallout 3 expansion, the player is faced with a moral decision that is far
less clear than most others in the game. The main quest, "Free Labor," revolves around a
difficult choice between freeing slaves and curing a degenerative disease by kidnapping a
baby or defending the baby and the scientists looking for a more humane cure to the disease
while allowing the slaves to remain oppressed. The designers took a care to present
compelling reasons for each choice. The slaves clearly live miserable lives and aspire to
something better, but they are also ready to hurt the innocent baby in pursuit of their cure and
want to kill all of their former captors, not all of whom seem immoral. On the other hand, the
slavers treat the baby well and they have a strange paternalistic care for the slaves because
their leader claims to defend them from the outside world. The masters are flawed becau se
they keep slaves and because the forced labor includes such unnecessarily harsh measures as
forcing them to fight each other to the death. Thus the player is forced to weigh two choices
that will each produce a great deal of good and evil. This makes th e quest far more
sophisticated than "The Power of the Atom," but, it is so complicated that the designers
themselves seem incapable of resolving it. They assign no good or bad karma for choosing
either course, as if to say that there are good reasons for b oth.
"Free Labor" is an excellent example of how morality can be handled in a game; its
only limitation is that when a problem has no clear moral and immoral resolution it is
difficult to make the character feel the effects of their actions. The choice do es lead to two
different endings, one in which the player may simply leave the city and another in which the
player joins a battle to free the slaves, but there are no moral consequences. They player does
not have to incur karmic penalties and there are no factions that hunt the player for
retribution. Decisions are most meaningful when they have some moral weight and
significant results. In this case the player gets a profound sense of how difficult doing the
right thing can be, but the consequences for th e action are purely subjective.
The strength of the Pitt scenario is not that neither side is entirely good or evil. Up to
the moment of decision there are bits of information that help the player understand the
situation, yet nothing that conclusively po ints in one direction or another. The absence of a
complete perspective that games usually provide draws attention to the epistemological
difficulty that plagues us in decision making. We only have limited information from which
to make moral choices. This information is often woefully inadequate and stops us from
making a truly rational calculation. Good and evil are not chosen based on a careful analysis
of all the fact and it is rare that we can even see that one side is good and the other bad at the
mom ent of action. Even when the moral difference would be clear given more information,
we rarely know enough before acting to know what results an action will have.
The best scenarios for approximating reality and providing an engaging moral
dilemma are tho se that fall somewhere between "Power of the Atom" and "Free Labor." The
ideal is a scenario in which there is a moral dilemma with the potential for good and bad
resolutions and that carries with it significant consequences, but in which the player does n ot

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have complete information about the problem. "The Power of the Atom" could be rewritten
to pose the same problem but with the NPC's motives made less obvious or even deliberately
hidden. Mr. Burke could lie to the player to make his evil plot seem as th ough it were well –
intentioned. More dishonesty and half -truths from NPCs might be a good way of achieving
this. The player has many opportunities to lie in the Fallout 3 dialogues and in a chaotic
world of individuals seeking only their own self -interest i t is surprising that the NPCs do not
dissemble more often. It is particularly strange that those with evil intentions are so
forthcoming with their motives. Quests that force the player to resolve moral dilemmas based
on limited evidence would be more chal lenging. The player would be unable to resolve on
their character type for guidance. There are a few quests in the game that approach this ideal.
One of the best quests in Fallout 3 and one of the strangest is "Oasis." It is about a
small community hidden away from the desolate wastelands in which there is thriving
vegetation. It is all because of Harold, a character from each of the preceding games. He used
to be a ghoul with a tree growing out of his head, but the tree overtook his body and he
became tra pped within it. A cult arose to worship him and the trees that grew around him, but
the members ignore his pleas for death. Life as a tree is excruciating and so he asks the player
to travel underground to find his heart and kill him. There are three disti nct choices to make:
to kill Harold and save him from a life of pain, to apply a liniment to accelerate his growth, or
to apply sap that will stop him from growing, but keep him alive. The reason for keeping him
alive or accelerating his growth is to susta in or even enlarge the forest that has grown up
around him. The quest raises the question of euthanasia and to what extent it is worth making
an individual suffer for the good of the group. It is thus an excellent moral test – one with
clear practical impo rt. Like "Free Labor" it is a morally complicated quest with no clear
correct answer; it is shrouded in ambiguity. Like "Power of the Atom" it encourages the
player to form an opinion about what is the right thing to do and it imposes consequences.
What se ts it apart from them is that it forces players to resolve moral dilemmas that they
encounter in the real world, albeit from a new perspective that fosters original thinking. There
are also distinct rewards for and punishments for each of the resolutions, which means that
the way in which the quest is resolved affects the rest of the story.
Learning to be Good
Aristotelian virtue ethics is one of the dominant schools of thought in moral
philosophy, and, as Miguel Sicart notes (Sicart 2009), video games are well-suited to
teaching the practical wisdom that is central to virtue ethics. Aristotle avoided giving
definitive rules for moral conduct as there are in utilitarian and Kantian ethics and instead
argued that moral behavior is learned through practice. I n the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle
characterizes virtue as the mean between extremes. For any given virtue there are two
corresponding vices of excess or deficiency (Aristotle, 1999, 1106b) that must be avoided.
Courage, for example, is not simply fearless ness. It is the mean between fear and
overconfidence, each of which is a vice (Aristotle, 1999, 116a5). "The former two show
excess and deficiency, while the courageous man keeps to the median and behaves as he
ought" (Aristotle, 1999, 115a6). The same gui delines apply to other virtues. Finding the mean
can be difficult because where it lies is contextually dependent. Courage for a soldier is the
mean of standing in ranks and marching into battle with his comrades while the extremes are
running away from th e fight or charging into it alone. Courage means something entirely
different for a scholar or a statesman, but it consists in the same ability to find the mean. The
mean is always there, but finding it requires special skill. As Aristotle develops his the ory, it
becomes clear that seeing what the middle road is in every situation and having the ability to

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follow it requires a special practical wisdom that he calls phronesis . The theory thus settles
on the importance of practical wisdom that allows one to f ind the mean between extremes
and act on it.
Practice is a central part of Aristotle's philosophy because it is only through constantly
performing virtuous actions that virtue becomes ingrained one's character. Repeatedly finding
the mean between vices th rough practical wisdom strengthens practical wisdom. It is, like
any other skill, one best learned through training rather than through introspection and
rational analysis alone. "Moral virtues, like crafts, are acquired by practice and habituation"
(Arist otle, 1999, 1103a). The appeal of this approach is that it explains how moral reasoning
can be improved through practice so it becomes second nature. A person with good character
does not have to waste time thinking about what course of action is the best as a good person
is habituated to doing what is right. As Barry says, "Aristotle's approach was, above all,
practical" (Barry, 1998, p.11). Those with virtuous characters should be able to recognize
moral dilemmas immediately and act correctly because of t heir cultivated practical wisdom.
For Aristotle virtues are akin to technical skills that must be improved through hard
work – we should thus take the same approach toward them as we would to improving our
ability to read or to draw. Knowing moral princip les alone is insufficient to give on the ability
to act on them when the time comes so it is essential to practice moral decision making as
much as possible. When the moment of decision comes a weak person may see the right
course of action, yet lack the c haracter to act on it. Human passions plague the weak person
and lead them to habitual bad choices. To make the right choices a person must therefore also
be capable of withstanding the costs of doing the right thing. As in the "Power of the Atom"
quest, t he immoral choice is often the one that pays better and holds greater appeal for its
immediate consequences. One must recognize that this is the alternative leading to long -term
harm to one's character.
Each of the three scenarios discussed in the precedi ng section is useful in teaching
phronesis . They confront the player with challenges that demand investigation and careful
analysis of what consequences are likely to follow from each choice. They transform the
player into an active participant in the game rather than a spectator, thereby making gameplay
into practice for real -life moral dilemmas. Even when the scenarios are as fanciful as a
mutant transforming into a tree, they make reference to well -known issues such as
euthanasia. What matters is not the realism of the narrative but the realism of the problems
that it raises. By recasting common problems in a virtual world the player has a chance to
work through them and experiment with different outcomes without actually having to live
with consequences of a bad choice.
Although McCormick defends violent video games on utilitarian and Kantian
grounds, he says that they are probably indefensible from an Aristotelian perspective. He
argues that an Aristotelian would say that "By participating in simulation s of excessive,
indulgent and wrongful acts, we are cultivating the wrong sort of character" (McCormick,
2001, p. 286). While it is true that Aristotle might be suspicious of many violent video games,
he would not oppose all of them. He was not a pacifist and so would not object to violence as
such. What is objectionable in some games is that the violence is the gratuitous killing of
innocent people; it is immoral violence. Some games leave players with no choice but to kill
innocent people, but Fallout 3 does not. It allows for killing good and bad characters alike.
Choosing the good path, while violent, does not harm one's character as this path provides
positive character development. Choosing the bad path does not have the same payoff for

10
character devel opment, but it does have the positive function of allowing the player to
experience this way of life in a simulation and to come to a deeper understanding of
immorality without causing real harm.
Educators have worked on developing moral dilemma simulator s for years. Moshe
Sherer conducted a study in 1998 of a simulators that measured development according to a
moral development calculus developed by Avner Ziv (Ziv, 1976). The calculus measures
moral stages, punishment and posttransgressional reactions of t he player and revealed that
those who play the simulation scored higher than those who did not. The simulation offered
moral dilemmas derived from real life situations concerning family, friends, school, work,
community, society, sex, criminal activity, dr ugs, money, military service, relationships with
other groups, intergroup relationships and general behavior, with around 10 questions in each
area. Players were offered four potential solutions for each problem and were scored based on
their response. The scores were specifically designed to reinforce positive behavior and the
players knew that they were being judged based on that system (Sherer, 1998, p.379). Based
on the evidence of 20 weeks of playing the simulation the authors concluded that
"computeri zed therapeutic simulation games may contribute to the process of moral
development of youth" (Sherer, 1998, p.385). These studies show the potential of simulations
to teach moral reasoning and thus lend support to the argument that even practice in the
virtual world can improve our ability to think through complex issues.
Computer games designed for entertainment are probably far more engaging than
those used in Sherer's study and, even when set in fanciful environments, will be more
immersive and thus feel more real than educational simulations. Those like Fallout will also
be far more open -ended than most education simulators. The more immersive the
environment the more real the ex perience and thus the more useful it is in giving players
practice that is useful in the real world. In video games players can interrogate the game's
characters about their motivations and feel the consequences of their actions after their
decision is mad e unlike educational simulators that tend to focus exclusively on the moment
of decision without providing it much context. We should, therefore, see video games as one
of the most promising tools for teaching moral -decision making rather than continuously
blaming them for social problems.
Conclusion
An opponent might claim that the greatest weakness of Fallout 3 when judged as a way of
exploring morality is that it does not put forth a moral code. In this regard it seems to be a
strange source of moral in struction, yet the lack of a moral message is one of the game's
strengths. It mirrors real life in that one is not forced to obey a particular moral code. The
player has a vague notion of what is right and wrong, but does not encounter the game's
morality as a coherent system. The consequences of actions are realized after the actions are
made. It does not teach a particular morality. Instead, it shows that there are consequences for
every action that arise from the response of other characters; it throws p layers into a world of
moral judgment without offering any definite rules and forces players to t in a morally
ambiguous world. This will never lead the player to a systematic moral philosophy, but it will
help teach the practical wisdom which Aristotle th ought was so much more valuable than
theoretical knowledge.
It might be argued that introducing morality into games could be misguided because
the developers will always be judging players by the developers' personal values. Again, this

11
is one of the stre ngths of moral choice engines. Individuals can make autonomous decisions,
but these are subject to consequences outside of their control. In the real world, murder is
punished as a crime regardless of whether or not the murder thinks the act is justified. The
murderer's own feelings about the crime are irrelevant if the legal code and other people
consider it wrong. In the Fallout universe there is no legal system that punishes crimes, yet
the same informal sanctions of popular sentiment are at work. Games should reflect the moral
values of the developers because this makes the player struggle to understand what moral
rules are in effect. It is a strength of games that they make players come into contact with
other people's moral judgments. Sicart argues tha t "Playing is an act of judgment of the rule
systems and the fictional world the player is presented with" (Sicart, 2005, p.16). This is true
with for the game's moral system. The developers may make whatever rules they want and
the player will still gain experience in applying these to the challenges faced in the game.
We can also see that the Fallout deals with morality and especially with consequences
more effectively than most other games. It is rare for individual choice to change the game's
content s o drastically. One might be arrested in a Grand Theft Auto game for going killing
innocent people, but no matter how egregious the crime it can be washed away by avoiding
the police for a few minutes and changing the car's paint color. There is either no element of
moral reasoning or it is presented in a shallow form of needing to avoid punishment. This is
markedly different from the Fallout world in which every action is judged and becomes part
of a permanent reputation. While it is true that players are just as likely to play as neutral
characters or evil ones, and many players take pleasure in becoming as evil as possible, they
are still playing the game according to a moral standard. The player who consistently tires to
be evil is making the same calculations as the consistently good player, going through the
same judgments of the consequences of the action, and just choosing to act in a way that will
lose karma.
Game critics often urge games to do things that they cannot reasonably accomplish or
that would compromise the experience of play. For example, Barrett criticizes GTA: Vice
City (Rockstar 2004) for not serving as a plat form for criticizing California's three -strikes
laws or drawing attention to the disproportionate rate of imprisonment for African Americans
(Barrett, 2006, p.101). This is asking too much of a piece of entertainment, especially
because it fails to account for the fact that Vice City is only supposed to resemble a city in
California and not actually be located there. It is unreasonable to expect games designed for
entertainment to solve the world’s social problems, especially when these are external to the
plot. The moral dimension of games is, however, one that was created by developers and not
forced upon them from the outside. It adds to the enjoyment of play while having an
educative function. It gives games more depth and creates multiple routes through the story
for better replayability and a customized experience. Thus it seems fair that commentators
draw attention to the moral dimension of games and encourage further improvement of it.
The Fallout series is a great illustration of how education and en tertainment can meet without
compromising the latter.
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