A Triad of Typology and How People Get Conned:

A Triad of Typology and How People Get Conned:

 

It’s believed that in the Olden Days, especially within the Great Civilizations, there was not yet a line drawn betwixt the Good, the Beautiful, and the True. Similarly, I might suppose that to be Good, to be Intelligent, and to be Right were one and the same; one could not be one without presupposing the other two.

Such is not the case in the Present Day. By and large, questions of Intelligence, Morality, and Righthood are consigned to the Psychoanalytic Arts. The question of how an individual will behave is determined by temperamental predispositions, just as is the case with introversion, sexual preference and drive, etc. Individuals possessing more “intelligence” will tend to value intelligence, no more egocentrically than those who possess more “conscientiousness” value morality and forthrightness. Those who are the most diligent may or may not prefer morality to intelligence, depending upon the nature of their diligence, often regulated by “disgust”; one may be diligent in the pursuit of a “reprehensible” enterprise which is disgusting and therefore immoral, or one may be diligent in the pursuit of a more “noble” cause if one is more easily “disgusted” by “evil”. At any rate, those who are neither conscientious nor intelligent to the same extent as they are “diligent” and “persistent” will value being “right” above being “good” or “smart”. Righthood is thus distinguished both from “meaning well” and from “being wise” or “being practical”. These people “work harder, not smarter”, and their “work ethic” is an ethic of principled efficiency.

Theoretically, the various types, in effect all fragments of one fully integrated human being, (fractions of an Ancient Greek, if you will) could coexist in harmony, just as these “drives” would coexist in the fully actualized person. Yet in the absence of a binding social order, certain obstacles preclude the harmonious union of conflicting types, and foremost among these obstacles is the “con artist”.

Con artists come in many different shapes and sizes. Some are extremely high-brow and academic. The professor of postmodern philosophy has found the ideal target audience in a legion of grad students who are open to the ideas of Heidegger, Nietzsche, and Foucault; it’s easier to lie to people who pride themselves in their own uncertainty about the Nature of Truth. Yet more often than not con artists employ an evil so banal it is disappointing. In the absence of a binding social order, human beings tend to retain in common only the basest of instincts, and as we fall deeper and deeper into the egalitarian paradigm we tend to be reduced to these embarrassing functions. The most damning insult that I have ever received was in the reminder that my body’s most repulsive functions were nothing to be ashamed of, since I shared them in common with all of humanity; all of a sudden, I could only imagine solidarity with my fellow human beings, quite literally, by avenue of a line to use the toilet.

Con artists occupy this domain predominantly. Sex, survival, and power are those drives which, like any student of Freud, manipulators primarily appeal to, and more often than not they regard the remainder of the individuated personality as no more than a mask for these urges.

Yet some people are much too proud to be won over with a cheap thrill, and if they are to satisfy these urges they will only do so by avenue of a specific set of principles. Those who value honesty will only allow themselves the pleasures of sexuality within the context of an established relationship; those who value sincerity will regard sexual consent as legitimate only if both parties care about each other without pretense, but nonetheless to such an extent that meets an established social standard entirely independent of individual desire and preference. Some come to power by their own will; others assume it as a social responsibility. Some people would sooner die as innocent victims than to live as oppressors; others rationalize their survivor’s guilt by priding themselves in their strength. Pride is most often shame in disguise.

The advanced manipulator thus must go beyond the banal drives and to appeal to ego. By identifying what an individual values, based upon that individual’s temperament, the manipulator is able to avail his or herself of an arsenal of subtle tricks in order to appear as an ally to the prospective victim. “Leveling” is easiest in an “egalitarian” society of “liberal individualists”. If I claim to value independence, this value reflects upon me personally. It would appear gauche indeed were I to criticize the sexual libertine or the drug pusher (often one and the same) for giving consenting adults “what they want”, though it would NOT be out of character for an upright police officer. By professing a value, I say, “this is my role; this is me. I shall always come onstage in this guise, and none other.” Thus the individualist must REMAIN individualistic so as not to appear inconsistent, and should he or she take sides with a Collectivistic Social Order, this is damning to both parties; ergo, never the twain shall meet. Coexistence between Individualists and Loyalists becomes not only problematic and fruitless but downright dangerous.

A con artist can easily drive a wedge between individuals of comparable but distinct character, simply by appearing to each as an ally against the rest. Who would one be to resist one’s own reflection? It makes far more sense to antagonize one’s “natural opponents”.

With regards to the trichotomy of Intelligence, Good Will, and Righthood, (the latter an addendum to Aldous Huxley’s veneration of the former two as indispensable corollaries) driving a wedge between “excellent” people is a walk in the park.

Consider the father of Chuck and Jimmy McGill from Better Call Saul. There is no evidence that this man is “unintelligent”, yet he is constantly being abused by grifters with a sob story. Once confronted by a young Jimmy who recognizes a cheap conman for what he is, the father’s retort is one of my favourite clichés of modern television, for it summarizes both philosophy and heroism: “What if you’re wrong?” This same line is employed by Jack Shepard and John Locke from the earlier series Lost, with regards to the torture of a prisoner; unfortunately, since Jack fears one fate and John fears another, even so universal a question fails to solve their particular problem. Liberal individualism wins yet again over Justice. Much like the late McGill patriarch, both Jack and John are men of extremely above-average intelligence, expressed in different ways. They also have this much in common: both have been conned, over and over again.

Certain rudimentary forms of con artistry work on stupid, unconscientious and inattentive people: zombies lacking in intelligence, morality, and diligence. Yet if this appears too severe a description, rest assured that it refers to a minority of people that is hardly “oppressed”. Most people excel in at least one of these three qualities, and it is precisely their excellence which is used against them. If one wishes to anger a person, one appeals to his or her weaknesses; loyalty is won by appeal to strength. When Jimmy’s Dad gives grifters money and “a gallon of milk”, that milk is the milk of human kindness, and though the unassuming shopkeep can’t afford it forever, it is nonetheless a testament to his strengths of character that he surrenders so much for free to the “wolves” of the “world”; one must suppose that, every once in a blue moon, the “grifter” is a sheep in wolf’s clothing, as tends to be the bulk of the innocent victims in the Better Call Saul universe, often victims whom Jimmy abuses, though his cynicism somehow endures in the face of innocence.

Consider this scenario: a conscientious young woman is about to surrender a hundred dollars to pay for a con artist’s “cancer treatment”. Nearby, an intelligent young man watches the scene unfold, with amusement. The intelligent young man knows, for a fact, that this hustler is a grifter; he was tipped off just last week by the bartender, who is a very diligent fellow who did his research but didn’t have the heart to stop the grifter from spending other people’s money on the tavern’s tap. (This particular grifter, unlike Joe Pesci’s characters in Martin Scorsese films, pays his bar tab.)

After the transaction has been made, the grifter leaves, as does the young Good Samaritan. The bartender, having witnessed the outcome, asks the intelligentsia: “Why didn’t you stop her giving him that money?” To this, the clever young man asks, “Why didn’t you stop him asking for it?”

In truth: one question does not answer the other, but simply “levels the playing field”. Yet allow me to be the first impartial witness to answer both questions:

Leveling, though inconclusive, nonetheless begins to answer the question, since both men are cut from the same cloth in this instance, just bleached differently. For egocentric purposes, the intelligent man needs people to get ripped off, so as to feel smarter than the victims. By the same token, the diligent man needs people who are wishy-washy and easily swayed to be disadvantaged, so as to legitimize his diligence. Neither man regards the con man as a threat to that man’s own person and ego. The intelligent man sees through the con, or so he hopes to; the diligent man maintains a respectable business, and it’s not his problem if the business benefits from this inferior enterprise, any more than the benefits it gleans from dishwashing and other “lowly” occupations which are paid less because they are “inferior”. Ironically, the very egalitarianism of individualist society transforms people into the most depraved elitists; were we to live under the rule of a more binding moral law, answering to established moral authority, it would fall to the bartender in this scenario to stop the grifter, but liberal individualism allows him to say, “that’s his business, not mine. I’m just collecting his money by my own, honest means.” Under such a paradigm, suppressing secrets is not tantamount to lying, since no one is entitled to the Truth. In both instances, both conspirators have rationalized their conspiracy with the con man, hoping, (perhaps naïvely) that they are not getting conned just by so doing. By a similar device, the victim hopes that she is not simply losing money that could be spent on a Higher and More Pressing Cause. Yet were she to act on this hope in an aggressive way, she would act out of character, for “good people” are not supposed to demand refunds for charitable acts. Even the naturally selfless person is transformed into an egoist under the paradigm of individualism, her egolessness used against her nonetheless.

Not only has such a con succeeded in parting a woman with her money; it has also driven a wedge between three people who would otherwise have made a fine team if compelled to work towards a Common Good. By being so basic, so stupid, so immoral and so easygoing, the grifter manages to turn all of his or her vices into strengths. The virtues of the intelligent, the noble, and the thorough turn to weaknesses, and any peaceful coexistence between them is torn asunder, so that even were one of them to realize this, the rest would resist.

So: this is my question…

Ought we to con them?

To some considerable extent, the prevalence of trickery in modern life is the fault of the victims. The pride and vainglory of each stock character are comedic because they are so myopic and ironic. Of course the wise guy lets the good girl get conned; morality is not his strong suit, so he’ll think less of her for falling for a trick that only good people fall for!! Of course she falls for it. It does not matter if she’s smarter than the others put together; her bleeding heart is all too predictable!! Of course the bartender does nothing; why risk a source of income? He works hard enough as it is!! The least that he can do is benefit from a stupidity tax, and who is better to attest to her stupidity than the wise guy? Grifters will be grifters; at least by collecting a cut of the profits the bartender ensures that it returns to the Beneficent Establishment to which he has pledged his life.

How could the con man resist? OUGHT he to??

 

Some people are subtler. Some will excel in at least two of the three virtues. Their act becomes a juggling act. In one hand, the Stoic holds her moral convictions; in the other: her practical intelligence. When it behooves her to be practical, she throws morality up into the air. When she can afford to be kind, she captures kindness and tosses up discretion. In this manner, she never owes anyone anything, for no one owes her anything. When she needs something, she acquires it by being practical; when she wants to feel good about herself, she acts good, and this behooves her reputation amidst good people. Should she offend another good person by disappointing his expectations, what could she possibly owe to him, and how would she repay him? If he sought his own interests by avenue of goodness, then he was not truly good, for the ethic of Stoicism renounces all rewards outside of pure virtue; if he sought his own interests by avenue of intelligence, then his failure is a testament to his folly, and if he sought his own interests by avenue of diligence, he clearly lacked diligence, as evidenced by his presumptuous oversight. Thus the Stoic wears her virtues like a revolving door of party masks, and dignity lies in knowing which mask to employ at which opportune moment and momentous opportunity.

In confronting such a prospect, the con man’s best bet would be to turn the conflicting personalities against one another, either by involving her in an enterprise that eventually will require her to use both techniques at once, to extremes that their inherent opposition can’t withstand, or by getting her invested in an enterprise that, up until a certain point, requires excellence in one suit, only to shift gears very suddenly midway.

 

Yet OUGHT he to do this? Does she “deserve” it, if she ostensibly “deserves” nothing?

 

Ultimately, those who pride themselves in their immunity to con artistry would benefit morally from being taken down a peg, even (and perhaps especially) if they pride themselves in being “moral” people? In employing our strengths, we all too often vainly ignore our weaknesses, to the detriment not only of ourselves but of our fellows. By practicing “counterconning”, a Deprogrammer may manage to finally bypass the psychic defences of his or her fellows. All of them have conspired in the victim’s victimhood, and even if the victim was himself misled by egoism, their collective evil is great enough to warrant its exposure, and this can only be done by forcing them to get over themselves.

 

[({Dm.R.G.)}]

Why Ripto Rages: a Supercharged Argument. (OUTL!NE.)

Problems with Ripto’s Rage:

-    Introduction: Why I am not Biased by Nostalgia.

o  Why you might suspect that: Bias for the Past.

§  The first game for PS1 I owned.

§  Played on and off for twenty years.

o  Counterargument One: Games older to me than Spyro, of which I am more critical:

§  Sonic the Hedgehog 2.

§  Sonic C.D.

§  Wario Land.

§  King’s Quest VII.

o  Counterargument Two: Games newer than Spyro 2, for which my nostalgia is stronger and my admiration greater:

§  Jak and Daxter trilogy.

§  Ratchet and Clank trilogy.

§  Sly Cooper trilogy.

§  In all three of these instances:

·     I finished the trilogy, whereas I never acquired Spyro the Dragon: Year of the Dragon until I got Spyro: Reignited. My sister didn’t even know that Year existed.

·     The success of the first sequel was what prompted me to buy the third installment, and in two out of these three (Jak and Sly) I ended up preferring the second to the first game, in spite of fond feelings and intrigue for the first, personally and critically.

o  Who I was when I first played Spyro.

-    Fewer Worlds makes Backtracking Awkward.

o  The Ladder in Glimmer.

§  Moneybags is right there. Greed is no excuse for the inconvenience.

§  Not much to be found up there anyway.

§  The Balloonist Routine: How distant ledges used to work alongside quotas.

·     Why it works, especially in Magic Crafters.

·     The New Alternative:

o  The Ladder in Autumn Plains.

o  The Vortexes.

§  Why can’t I just fly? Compromising player agency when it’s not necessary to even implement that skill here.

-    Acquired Abilities.

o  Swimming underwater with no need for an air supply: no mean feat for a dragon who could not touch water in the first game.

o  Climbing, as discussed.

o  Head-smashing.

o  Abilities as Currency.

o  Perma-flame when you need it least.

-    Temporary abilities.

o  No faeries kissing you.

o  No arrows on the track.

o  Only one (obnoxious) combination, in Metropolis, when you’re already tempted to leave.

o  Flying is less rewarding than in the Flying Levels.

o  Point System is demoralizing: kill count in a kid’s game.

o  Idle springs.

-    Getting a Life:

o  Old Format:

§  Gnorcs are Gems in disguise; gems have been stolen, as were the eggs abducted by the thieves.

·     Sense in terms of lore.

·     Sense in terms of morality.

·     Sense in terms of design.

o  Kill Gnorcs, get gems, advance.

o  If a Gnorc has been killed already, it produces a Life Token.

§  Enough Life Tokens add up to a Life, like rings, coins, or wumpa fruit.

§  Life tokens indicate Gnorcs that have already been killed, marking territory that has been explored, like breadcrumbs or Ariadne’s thread. This relates to the presence of gems and crates as pathways to new territories.

§  Lives may also be found in cute chests with eyes. What’s inside? A Dragon-shaped Life. It all makes complete sense.

§  Health can be restored by devouring butterflies that are contained within the local fauna and fungi.

o  New Format:

§  Enemies may or may not be working for Ripto. In fact, several of them are simply combatants in a conflict wherein Spyro plays as double-agent, taking ample casualties for both sides in order to further his own objectives.

·     Breeze Harbour/Zephyr.

·     Metropolis/Robotica Farms.

§  When enemies are killed, they release white balls of light, most presumably their Souls, which appear to be pure (unlike the evil spirit who haunts the statues in Colossus, who is distinctly dark and alters the colour of the statues it inhabits). No sooner do they give up the ghost than these light spirits are drawn into magic goalposts which harness the energy to fuel temporary power-ups for Spyro to exploit once he meets his kill quota.

§  Lives are only acquired by eating special butterflies, which most often appear in bottles. Whereas the original Spyro RESCUED beautiful, magical creatures, this one feeds them to his accomplice, not unlike Ripto does.

-    Puzzles become more obnoxiously childish and contrived, since they are no longer to be discovered as natural outgrowths of the environment.

o  Haunted Towers: Perfect for an Open World.

§  How I learned how to win.

§  Faeries, Supercharge, and the Knight’s Gauntlet. (Analogous to High Caves from earlier.)

o  Idol Springs:

§  Boxes, Tikis, and Shapes, oh my!!

§  Puzzles feel less relevant to the “Real World” because they do not require the player to be resourceful about the environment.

§  While some of these devices warrant explanation, most of the explanations are as simple as, in my own words: “this tiki lamp is a very picky pescatarian.”

-    Flying Levels stop when you find secret areas, even if you do not want them do stop.

-    Our “Villain” has a Reason to Rage.

o  All we know about Ripto is that he was accidentally transplanted from another world and that he decided to take refuge in Avalar, a home already to diverse species that often butt heads with one another, both figuratively and literally.

§  While Ripto ostensibly expressed a desire for conquest, (“Say hello to your new king.”) this is forgivable for two reasons:

·     A “King” is distinct from a “Tyrant”. The Dragons Themselves inhabited a Dragon KINGDOM, implying a certain regality whose splendor:

a.          Justifies the expulsion of Gnasty’s Minions in the first game, and

b.         Makes Avalar’s technocratic, multicultural mishmash of a battlefield pale in comparison: a World less worth fighting for, except as a means by which to return to Dragon Shores, where, inexplicably, the Gnorcs have either taken over or been turned into slaves. (Weren’t they gems just a minute ago?)

Ripto, apparently a displaced monarch, may be qualified to rule, but who stops him? Elora, because this threatens her power.

·     Elora’s version of the events is the only account we have, and she has shown signs of bossiness and bias already, especially towards Spyro, Hunter, and Moneybags.

o  When Elora demands that the Portal in Winter Tundra be deactivated, Ripto loses his path home.

§  What would Spyro have done? Just as Ripto does: plow ahead into the New World, lighting things on fire and occupying territory. Ripto’s conquest is nothing more than the same strategy that made the original game so engaging.

§  This also explains why the wealth of orbs that the Professor was using for his experiments has been displaced. It wasn’t the villain who stole it, unlike in the original game; it was Elora’s doing.

§  Considering that Ripto only has two henchmen at this time, one of whom is too slow-witted to understand the command “Go through the Portal”, there is no reason why the faeries couldn’t just store the orbs in one safe place, such as, say:

·     Glimmer, a mining colony, parts of which can only be reached by climbing or flight. (This makes me wonder how Gulp got INTO his Overlook to begin with.)

·     Colossus, a Buddhist Temple in the Mountains, far out of reach of giant dinosaur creatures.

·     Behind a forcefield in Hurricos, past a series of propellers that cannot possibly hold the weight of Ripto’s minions.

·     Aquaria Towers, an underwater city. (Can Ripto or his minions swim underwater? They don’t look it, though they’re not dragons.)

·     Fracture Hills, behind several feet of rock that can only be opened by Satyrs versed in the ancient art of bagpipe music, whose song can make even the Earthshapers dance on demand.

·     Zephyr, in a military barracks.

·     Breeze Harbour, on a flying ship, perhaps?

·     Scorch, where doors can only be opened by using a Superflame attack.

·     Shady Oasis, behind a grate that can only be opened by eating magic fruit and being a hippopotamus.

·     In a secret ice cave in Winter Tundra, or perhaps the Magma Cone.

·     Behind one of several cracked walls in Autumn Plains.

·     In literally any flying level.

·     Agent Zero’s Hideout. (Under supervision.)

·     Metropolis. Enough said.

o  Ripto only conquers Autumn Plains after Crush is killed in his own dungeon and Ripto and Gulp are forced to flee Summer Forest.

o  When Gulp, Ripto’s trusty steed and last surviving ally, is killed, he avenges the death of his minions by bombing the Portal that brought him here in the first place, devoting his remaining efforts to the development of mechanical surrogates for his fallen allies.

o  Ripto is simply the scapegoat.

§  When Gulp is killed, Elora and the faeries reward Spyro by turning Gulp’s Overlook (Gulp’s home and the setting for his demise) into a suntan parlour, crediting Spyro with bringing peace to Avalar while blaming Ripto for creating trouble between rival sects.

§  Presumably, two such warring sects are the Breeze Builders and the Blobpeople in Zephyr, who MUST be manipulated to reach this stage in order to acquire their Talismans, though no further Talismans appear afterwards.

§  There is absolutely no evidence that Ripto inspired such bitter rivalries. Judging by how quickly the professor tends to operate, how slowly Ripto moves in taking new territory, and how advanced the arms race is between the birds and the blobs, it would appear that they had been at war far longer.

o  Why does Ripto hate dragons? They do have a way of killing his friends and allying with any cute faun who works against him (and not just Elora, as we observe in Fracture Hills). This also explains why he tends to resent faeries and use them to feed Gulp.                              [({Dm.R.G.)}]

Choice, Player, Designer: an Open Response.

This is an intriguing question you have raised, and the answers you find may be even more intriguing yet. In addressing it, I hope to resolve some of my own quandaries pertaining to the relationship between Choice and Game(s).

The simple question of whether or not to program a menu in a visual novel is, at heart, the question of whether or not to give the player a choice. Yet to give the player a choice or not to give the player a choice is in itself a choice on the part of the designer. Furthermore, to address one’s fellows for advice with regards to this choice implies another question: which choice OUGHT I to make? It is inescapably a moral question then, regardless of what moral scheme one subscribes to: how OUGHT visual novels to be designed?

One might presume, given this summary, that the answer might only be found where the question originated: within the designer. Since the designer functions as the “dealer”, he* holds all the cards; with him, the game begins and ends. It would apparently follow, under such a paradigm, that designers must decide the matter for themselves, by arbitration, that the question can have no definite, “objective” answer, and that by asking it one only invites a makeshift anthology of case histories and partisan, anecdotal accounts.

Yet this is not necessarily so, since such a paradigm (beginning and ending with the designer and his “Vision”/will) in itself is tragically one-sided, and one mustn’t forget that, just as the designer starts the game and the player finishes it, the answer to this question of design might properly be sought in the Player. Yet since one designs games for multiple players, most of whom are unknown to one’s self, this “Player” must be regarded not as an individual, but rather as a concept out of which the EXPERIENCE of the individual “player” (and, as such, the individuality of the experiencer) emanates.

 

*The generic “he”, for brevity, meant to imply any number of identities, chosen or given. I will employ more traditional pronoun usage for this text in the spirit of maintaining clarity and concision, without any ideological meddling or personal involvement.

 

When one asks, “should the player be given a choice?” one really enters into a complex, often self-referential and circular, yet thoroughly symbiotic and beautiful series of inextricably contingent relationships, mostly predicated upon one trinity: the Player, the designer, and the Choice. The relationship between Player and designer, as well as how each relates to Choice, circumscribes the entire inquiry.

In order to determine what choices to give unto the Player, the designer might start with a moral prescription for the Player; in other words, the designer asks himself: “what sort(s) of choice(s) do I want the Player to MAKE?” An undertaking of this sort is by no means pretentious for a genre which owes so much to both storytelling and adventure game design; both media have rich traditions of “educating” the player, and while the adventure game educates the player with regards to the internal workings of the fictional World, the story serves to educate the listener/reader/observer (the “audience”) about the external, “nonfictional” World.

It is precisely the combination of these two Worldviews that puts decision-based narrative games at the cutting edge of game development as an Art Form, as well as placing this Art Form at the forefront (the “avant garde”) of modern storytelling. It is also this delicate balancing act between the development of a Fictional Universe and a Relevant Allegory that produces most of the exciting and frustrating challenges unique to the development of choice-driven narrative games. The term “ludonarrative dissonance” is perhaps one of our generation’s subtlest contributions to the academic lexicon, and its scope reaches far beyond the mere conflict between “reading”/“listening”/“attending” and “having fun”.

When the designer has chosen what sorts of choices he wishes for the Player to make, according to the story’s “moral”, (i.e. its ethical message) he has begun to decide for himself what sorts of choices to make in creating choices for the Player. Yet how does one even choose what sorts of choices one wishes for the Player to make? Before we address this problem, we must first illustrate the nature of moral prescription in a game and its effects upon gameplay and narrative.

When one says, “I wish for the Player to make choices of this kind”, one creates the necessity for the Player to develop “agency”. At this point, the menu becomes necessary, except insofar as the player controls other factors, such as the pace at which he or she reads the text or the volume at which he or she listens to the soundtrack, both of which are normally of no consequence to the narrative, but only to the subjective experience of the narrative on the part of the Player.

A menu represents a branching in the narrative: on the most fundamental, brute level, it allows for the story to go “one way or another”. Some menus may create the “illusion of choice” by allowing the Player to exhaust secondary options within a closed loop until the primary option is selected, advancing the story only once the “right” choice is made. Yet such a structure does not in itself present the Player with a moral choice; the Player must simply find that answer which fits into an existing, deterministic framework. Such choices may ultimately be of no consequentialist value; they may have “consequence” for the player’s “experience”, (both in the sense of accumulated knowledge and immediate encounter with the media) yet in and of themselves they do not impact the development of the story and its characters. However, such a structure, like many other menu structures, may INCORPORATE an element of consequentialism by introducing hidden mechanics, such as a point system, a counter, or various flagging variables, which serve to ASSESS the Player’s choices as they are being made, usually without the Player’s conscious knowledge. For example, if the moral of the story is, “always tell the Truth”, the designer might confront the Player with a series of dialogue options, only one of which expresses the Truth of the Situation, and to such an extent as the Player AVOIDS telling the Truth by selecting other options from the menu, to that same extent a secret counter might assess the Player’s “Honesty”, quantified as a variable, functioning as a hidden “character stat” that might very well trigger a later event and thereby alter the course of the game, with or without the Player’s conscious knowledge, either “at the time” or “ultimately”.

In this manner we have established that the proper function of a menu is to create choices for the Player by providing the Player with options, many of which are alternatives to the “right” choice(s) which the designer desires for the Player to make. Yet of what relevance is this to the choices which the Designer makes, and how do we, as designers, choose them? Rather than imposing any binding moral law upon this discussion, at least so early on in its development, I should rather direct your attention from the relationship between Player and Choice to the relationship between the Designer and Choice as well as its inextricable corollary: the relationship between the Designer and the Player. At this point, you will notice that “Designer” is capitalized in the manner that “Player” came to be capitalized, since I am now referring not to a hypothetical individual but to an entire Category of hypothetical individuals, specifically with respect to the Category of Player and the phenomenon of Choice which manifests in various “choices”.

In deciding what sorts of choices one wishes for the Player to make, the Designer seeks to determine what choices the Player ought to make. Yet in order to make such a sweeping generalization as would warrant such a prescription the Designer must exist within a set of his own moral dictates. These are not necessarily “his own” in the sense of them being “of his own choosing”; in fact, any designer who publishes must note the limits of his own arbitration with regards to the content which he produces. Yet it nonetheless represents an intimate and often personal sphere within which the Designer navigates: a sort of middle ground between Vision and Social Necessity. The Designer himself relates to the Choice insofar as he is himself a moral agent and a “player” within the social game of Game Development.

Usually, the foremost secular appeal with regards to the Designer’s moral obligations concerns the relationship between the Designer and the Player. Egalitarian thought dictates that the Designer, as the Author of the Work, ought NOT to prescribe any ethic for the Player to follow which the Designer does not treat as binding also upon himself as Designer. Yet in this instance egalitarianism amounts to a stultifying dogma. Most notably, the relationship between the Designer and the Player is NOT one of identical reciprocity within the external World. The Designer often produces the work at the expense of his or her own resources, and the work is typically made available for a price that is arbitrated by the Designer and/or his conspiring distributors; the Player, on the other hand, expends no labour towards the development of the work, (usually) but must part with some sum of money, most often acquired by other means of the Player’s own choosing, in order to purchase the work. In this process, both Designer and Player are certain to expend only one resource: Time, and even that varies between Designer and Player, as well as from player to player and from designer to designer, depending upon innumerable and often incalculable and inestimable factors.

It follows, therefore, that in the external World outside of the microcosm of the fictional story and its virtual Reality, there is no a priori necessity for an egalitarian relationship between Designer and Player. Be that as it may, however, there remains the danger of the Designer becoming guilty of Hypocrisy. While neither the external World nor the virtual World** find the Designer and the Player on equal footing, (**for the Designer does not have to “learn” the game, typically) in the relationship BETWEEN the two Worlds a moral obligation persists. This is because, as mentioned previously, the moral of a story must serve an allegorical function which converts the content of the microcosm into a prescription for the macrocosm.

If, for instance, the Designer develops a game that can only be won by gathering certain privileged information, and if such privileged information can only be acquired by illicit means, and should such a crime stand to benefit the Designer at the expense of others, then the Designer has made an immoral choice by multiple if not all moral rubrics. Yet even if such a crime is not INTRINSIC to the design of the game, games may nonetheless present the Player with a moral prescription which he or she only ought to follow if they are so binding that the Designer ought to follow them as well, especially within the development of those games. To revisit an earlier example: if the moral of the story is to “always tell the Truth”, and if it is only by adherence to this principle that the game may be won, and if it is only by winning that the game may be enjoyed or “fully experienced”, (presumably: the Player’s intent for spending time and often money on the game) and if the game itself is programmed in such a manner, as illustrated previously, as to implement this system, then it would be poor form indeed were the Designer to lie to the Player either within the game or outside of it, especially in selling it.

Yet here, too, egalitarian ethics present a dogmatic imposition upon the Art, for there exists an entire pantheon of reasons to put the Player in a situation which one does not inhabit. For instance, if one wishes to illustrate a World wherein stubborn adherence to rules ultimately leads to despair and absurdity, a Designer might justifiably offer the Player superficial rewards for obedience with very long but binding strings attached. The challenge here is for the Player to look past what appears to be the prescription and to fathom the UNDERLYING message. Games like Portal and Braid, while they are narratively deterministic and therefore not “choice-driven”, per se, are excellent examples of this sort of subversion of indoctrinated common sense, and since such common sense remains within the external World, their designers arguably do a service by deliberately manipulating them.

We might tentatively conclude, therefore, that while at first it would APPEAR that the Designer’s relationship to Choice is contingent upon the Designer’s relationship to the Player, in fact the opposite seems to be the case. To some considerable extent, the Designer chooses the sort of relationship which he wishes to have with and to the Player. This falls under the purview of the Designer’s Vision. Whether the Designer is to function as a satirist, a master, a comrade, an investigator, or any number of available social roles, it is up to the Designer to CHOOSE which role to assume as both storyteller and Worldbuilder.

This brings us back to the final rung of the triangle: the relationship between Designer and Choice. While it was posited that the answer to the question of the use of the menu might be found in the Player, and while this position remains valid and essential, it would appear that we conclude our preparation for this quest on that rung of the triangle which excludes the Player: the Designer’s relationship to Choice.

It has been established that it is the Designer who chooses to determine the nature of the desired relationship to the Player. It follows logically from this conclusion that the nature of those sorts of choices which the Designer prescribes for the Player to make is contingent upon this arbitration; the Designer chooses how to “approach” the Player, and by that same token, often as a consequence, it is the Designer who chooses how the Player “ought to” play the game. This goes beyond merely an idealized projection of what an “infallible” Player would do, for it accounts also for every element of the Player’s experience and condition in making various “errors”; as Will Wright puts it, most of the time the player is failing, and the “job” of game designer is to make failure a rewarding experience (though “rewards” might include “punishments”, by extension).

Presented with so many choices, the Designer has no choice but to confront Choice Itself: the phenomenon of Choosing, specifically the phenomenon of Choosing Ethically.

We began our discussion with the question of when we ought to “give” the Player a Choice. Yet this word “give” may be misleading, and we must choose how we are to define it. When one “gives” someone else five dollars, for instance, one surrenders it TO that other person. On the other hand, when one “gives” another person an orgasm, this is not mutually exclusive with attaining an orgasm of one’s own. Ergo, we have not yet extricated ourselves totally from the intimate relationship (vulgar puns intended) between the Designer and the Player.

In the former category of giving – that is, wherein possession for one party is inversely proportional to possession by the other, as is “agency” as giving in this sense pertains to Choice – the danger morally is that of creating a parasitic/“codependent” relationship wherein either the Designer or the Player is limited absolutely by the other’s freedom. Yet not all relationships of this category are inevitably parasitic. If the Designer surrenders agency to the Player but manages thereby to acquire scientific knowledge from the Player’s choices, the relationship is mutualistic; if the Player loses agency but consequently enjoys the story during a linear, deterministic passage, the relationship is mutualistic. If the Designer gains nothing by removing a pointless fork in the road but this choice does not cost the Designer any time that the Designer does not wish to spend removing it, then the relationship is commensalistic, insofar as the Player benefits from the removal of the inconvenience and the Designer neither benefits nor suffers an inconvenience in removing it. At every stage of Development, we see the relationship between Designer and Player already developing alongside the game, so that the external World always represents some aspect of the virtual World, and the relationship between Designer and Player in both Worlds, as well as the relationship BETWEEN the two Worlds, may be assessed according to fairly standard biological and ethical sciences and various other lenses.

Let us turn, therefore, to the latter category of giving: the relationship wherein both Designer and Player acquire agency. Suppose that the Designer wishes to tell a story which follows the outline of classical Greek tragedy. While some writers might insist that Aristotle was not a game designer and that his formalism does not translate neatly into gaming, defenders of the ancient Greeks might contend that the structure is as valid as the spirit in which we harness it. As pertains to choice, the story may be truncated in a standard three-act or five-act play, wherein each act is concluded with the Player-Protagonist making one crucial choice which impacts later events, consequentialistically. Up until that point, the Player is presented with minor choices of no apparently substantial consequence, yet these serve to establish player agency within a fatalistic framework, so that not only will the player be prepared to make such choices at the end of the act, but also the pivotal decision may be obscured by the proliferation of inconsequential choices. Disguising enterprises of great pith and moment within an interactive World is undoubtedly advantageous to the “realism” of the work, though it does leave a lot to arbitration. Yet in this both the Designer AND the Player are arbitrary; the Designer chooses arbitrarily how to design the options from which the Player just as arbitrarily chooses. Suppose, now, that the Designer should recontextualize these arbitrary options within a scoring system, as previously suggested. The Designer might thereby determine this scoring system to be the TRUE arbiter in the development of the Story. While its consequences might not be presented immediately or even shortly, ultimately the Player’s performance is assessed and the Player’s experience defined by this rubric. The Designer now gains the freedom to make SEEMINGLY pivotal decisions secondary to the story without the Player’s conscious knowledge. Yet such a choice does not rob the Player of agency, and the Player ends up learning MORE over more stages of revelation as a result. In such a situation, both Player and Designer learn about a nuanced World which develops alongside their relationship, and the bulk of this development may be orchestrated within the confines of the Designer’s private thoughts and plans.

We conclude therefore that the question of when to create choices for the Player is neither one for which there are no right answers nor is it one for which there appears to be any one set of right answers. To decide how best to approach this choice, one has to evaluate one’s own relationship TO Choice: one’s Ethical Convictions, from whence emanates the desire to form a specific kind of relationship with the Player as a Category and a specific kind of relationship between the Player and Choice, as manifested both within the virtual World of the game and its relevance to the external World as an allegorical story. Yet in the absence of definite guidelines a lot falls under the purview of Vision and Social Obligation: a relationship between the Designer’s intent as an Artist and the Designer’s role as a producer operating within a specific marketplace. This relationship, as well, ought to be subject to ethical guidelines not unlike those which govern all other relationships we have so far discussed.

Thankfully, we have also established that the most subtle and rewarding games for all parties involved tend to be those which, while they are largely developed internally, within the Designer’s “own mind”, represent a relationship to the Player which is evolving and growing. Since the designer typically only approaches the task of Design as the abstract Category of Designer, and since he approaches players as the abstract Category of Player, such limitations are hardly pretentious or damning.

[({Dm.R.G.)}]