Seediscussions,stats,andauthorprofilesforthispublicationat:http://www.researchgate.net/publication/274958796

Amassivelymoralgame?MassEffectasacasestudytounderstandtheinfluenceofplayers’moralintuitionsonadherencetoheroorantiheroplaystyles

ARTICLE·MARCH2015

DOI:10.1386/jgvw.7.1.41_1

1AUTHOR:

MatthewGrizzard

UniversityatBuffalo,TheStateUniversit…

12PUBLICATIONS121CITATIONS

SEEPROFILE

Availablefrom:MatthewGrizzard

Retrievedon:24August2015

41

JGVW 7 (1) pp. 41–57 Intellect Limited 2015

Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds Volume 7 Number 1

© 2015 Intellect Ltd Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/jgvw.7.1.41_1

Keywords

moral foundationsdecision-makingMass Effectgame designgame mechanicsdigital games

Andy BoyAnAlbion College

MAtthew GrizzArdSUNY-Buffalo

nicholAs dAvid BowMAnWest Virginia University

A massively moral game?

Mass Effect as a case study

to understand the influence

of players’ moral intuitions

on adherence to hero or

antihero play styles

ABstrAct

This research examines relationships regarding moral foundations and moral deci-sions in the Mass Effect video game series. The findings suggest that moral foun-dation predicts what type of moral decisions a player will make during play. This research reports an online survey (N=138) that asked participants the salience of their moral foundations, along with the moral path, either traditionally heroic (para-gon) or traditionally antiheroic (renegade), they chose in their first time playing

JGVW_7.1_Boyan_41-57.indd 41 4/7/15 9:05:40 AM

Andy Boyan | Matthew Grizzard | Nicholas David Bowman

42

through the Mass Effect series. The results indicate that moral foundations predict the extent to which game path players choose, but only with regard to the harm/care moral foundation. These findings are discussed in light of game design and the potential for game designers to use morality as a game mechanic beyond the harm foundation and into realms of more nuanced moral situations in game narratives.

introduction

Can we have moral video games? Game developers have used moral dilem-mas as plot devices for decades, but a recent trend in several mainstream video game series to use in-game moral choices as a way to personalize gameplay has been found to be popular and highly engaging. In the past players were instructed to rescue the princess, but today they choose whether or not to rescue the princess and decide how many casualties in the rescue attempt are permissible. One of the most popular series that features moral choices such as these is the Mass Effect trilogy.

The Mass Effect video games series developed by BioWare spanned three games released over a period of five years (2007–2012). The games were unique in their design due to the extent to which a player’s actions and deci-sions determined how the plot unfolded. Such games had been released, and even commercially successful before, but never before had player-driven choices arced over an entire series. The final game in the Mass Effect trilogy was met with anticipation and blockbuster sales success.

The novel portion of players’ choices impacting the story were especially poignant over the long periods of time that occurred between the release dates of the multiple games in the series. The various plots and subplots branch and connect characters from game to game within the series, and the interactions one has with those characters later in the game series depends on how the player acted towards them in previous interactions. Consider as an example a character named Wrex. In the first game of the series the player has the option to help this character. If the player helps Wrex, then Wrex is less likely to die in a later mission of that same game. If Wrex survives this mission, then in the second game he becomes the leader of a group of alien creatures, who again the character has the potential to help. In the third game, if the player chose to help Wrex’s race of creatures, then Wrex would ally his group with the player’s forces. If the player chose not to help Wrex’s race of creatures in the second game, then Wrex and his group would attack the player in retaliation. If, in the first game, Wrex dies, then the leader of the alien group is a different charac-ter altogether, and the motivations and outcomes of the interactions with that group are different still (see Figure 1 for a depiction of Wrex’s plot interactions as described above). With well over 200 characters over the three game series and the numerous potential plotlines generated by player interactions with these characters, the weaving of the plots in this way becomes complex and subtle.

The choices that generated such interest from players were primarily based on moral decisions. During in-game conversations with NPCs, play-ers are given several options for responses that range from ambivalent silence to aggressive questioning to stoic agreement. In these dialogue moments, players refine their choices to reflect a personality that was either tradition-ally heroic or anti-heroic, as defined by the game mechanics, which measured players’ tendencies towards either end of the moral spectrum. Those who acted in dialogue and action heroically were given Paragon points, and those

JGVW_7.1_Boyan_41-57.indd 42 4/7/15 9:05:40 AM

A massively moral game? Mass Effect as a case study …

43

1. Although research and theory have predominantly focused on defining video game-based emotional responses of the player to NPCs to be empathic rather than sympathetic, there are reasons to believe that sympathy could play a role in these responses, either in conjunction with empathy or in its stead. According to Wispé (1986), sympathy has stronger ties to action tendencies related to alleviating the plight of another as compared with empathy. Given that interactions between the player and NPCs often focus on NPCs petitioning the player for help to alleviate their various plights, sympathy may be predicted to be a more important determinant for increasing a player’s emotional involvement with the game than empathy. Notably, with regard to the research questions in the current study, the distinction between

who took the anti-hero path were awarded Renegade points. Paragon and Renegade points dictated the types of scenarios, characters and events that were presented to the player throughout the series, thus refining the actual story of the game based on a player’s previous moral decisions.

A year following the release of Mass Effect 3, BioWare released an info-graphic of data detailing player tendencies for a variety of in-game behaviours. One notable element was that of the Paragon or Renegade paths players made in the game. BioWare reports that 64.5 per cent of players chose a Paragon path, while 35.5 per cent chose the Renegade path (Petitte 2013). This descrip-tive data shows the general paths that players took, but why would players with a sandbox world where the decisions do not have an impact on any actual lives consistently choose to take a heroic, rather than anti-heroic path? Scholarship examining moral choices and game design can help us to answer this question.

MorAl choice And GAMe desiGn

Game designers have recently taken steps to incorporate player-driven moral choices as a tool for eliciting empathy (Bogost 2011). Close involvement with game characters fostered by these choices and resultant empathy can increase attachment to characters, and increase enjoyment of video game play (Banks and Bowman 2013). Relationships with video game characters are often under-stood as empathic rather than sympathetic due to the nature of control that the player puts upon the character (Bogost 2011). The player is controlling the char-acter and, as such, is placed by proxy in their perspective. Thus, many scholars consider the relationship to be empathic, rather than sympathetic (Steen et. al. 2006).1 Thus, by including moral choices in game design, players may feel more attached to the characters that must deal with the consequences of those moral actions. Such an effect was reported by Bowman et al. (2012), who found that players with an increased perception of control over their characters in online

Figure 1: A simplified depiction of the decisions presented to the player and the associated potential outcomes regarding the non-player character (NPC) Wrex across the Mass Effect series.

JGVW_7.1_Boyan_41-57.indd 43 4/7/15 9:06:25 AM

Andy Boyan | Matthew Grizzard | Nicholas David Bowman

44

empathy and sympathy is definitional rather than functional: both sympathy and empathy are expected to be influenced by the explicated processes in a similar manner (e.g. care should be both positively related to and predictive of both sympathy and empathy). As such, we focus primarily on empathy in the current article, but acknowledge the potential role of sympathy.

role-playing games tended to play more pro-socially, perhaps as a function of their desire to satisfy those players’ (and those characters’) needs.

What are moral choices in games? In many games, the choice of morality comes in the same form as in Mass Effect. The player can either protect innocents or let them come to harm, or even directly harm them. To this point there has not been a sufficient analysis of the types of moral violations found in video gaming, but there is most certainly a presence of harm as a moral violation in many games. Recent industry and academic discussion of game content has called for more complexity and meaning in games. The black hat/white hat dichotomy of bad and good by violence is a simplistic version of morality, and the serious gaming movement has worked to capture some of these complexities. To under-stand whether a blockbuster title that was lauded for moral choices (Mass Effect) has taken these steps, it is important to understand a conceptual definition of moral choices. A body of research from social psychology and communication uses moral foundations to explain how audiences make moral choices.

MorAl foundAtions theory (Mft)

Burgeoning research on video game play has begun to examine the complex relationship between players’ moral intuitions and their reactions to media content. A large body of this research utilizes MFT as its theoretical perspec-tive. MFT posits that people make moral judgements (i.e. whether something is right or wrong) based on the relative weights of their moral foundations. Moral foundations are cognitive mechanisms that provide guidance for which stimuli we should respond to as moral violations and how strongly we should react to those violations. Haidt and Joseph describe foundations with an emphasis on their intuitive nature: ‘Little bits of input-output programming, ways of enabling fast and automatic responses to environmental triggers’ (2004: 60).

There are five basic moral foundations (Graham et al. 2011). These are

harm/care: dealing with the suffering of others … fairness/reciprocity: concerns about unfair treatment, cheating … ingroup/loyalty: concerns related to … group membership, such as loyalty, self-sacrifice, and vigi-lance against betrayal; authority/respect: concerns related to social order … such as obedience, respect, and the fulfillment of role-based duties; and purity/sanctity, concerns about physical and spiritual contagion, includ-ing virtues of chastity, wholesomeness, and control of desires.

(Haidt and Kesebir 2010: 822)

The five foundations will hereby be labelled as harm, fairness, loyalty, authority and purity.

Although the foundations are considered universal, the five foundations are thought to be more or less important to any given individual depending on how that individual is socialized. Individuals with different experiences come to perceive different events as moral violations depending on their cultural upbringing (Haidt 2001; Haidt and Joseph 2007; Haidt and Kesebir 2010).

Recently, Tamborini (2011, 2012) has applied MFT to media environments arguing that the innate salience of moral intuitions should influence our responses to media fare, including judgements of character actions in fictional narratives and moral decision-making in interactive media. Additionally, numerous studies have found the salience of the moral foundations to predict the appeal of media content based on which moral foundations are violated or upheld (e.g. Tamborini 2011; Tamborini et al. 2011b, 2011a).

JGVW_7.1_Boyan_41-57.indd 44 4/7/15 9:06:25 AM

A massively moral game? Mass Effect as a case study …

45

MorAl decisions in GAMes

Joeckel et al. (2013) have demonstrated that a gamer’s innate moral foun-dations can serve as a biasing factor in explaining their observed in-game decisions. When presented with the opportunity to commit a discrete moral violation, such as harming another person (harm) or helping somebody diso-bey their superiors (authority), gamers’ decisions to violate or uphold morality were random (50/50 distribution) when moral foundation salience was low for the particular domain being violated. However, when moral foundation salience was high for the particular domain, gamers rarely chose to commit a moral violation (in the case of harm, only 12 per cent of participants with high harm scores chose to harm another in-game). This data suggest that increased morality salience can significantly impact gamers’ decision-making processes, but only when the in-game content addresses an aspect of moral-ity of particular salience to the player. When players are confronted with this type of morally relevant content, they make ‘gut’ reactions in order to avoid witnessing or committing moral violations.

The present study extends the question posed by Joeckel et al. (2013), and adds an ecological test of moral decisions in off-the-shelf games. Mass Effect provides a unique opportunity for research in that the moral decisions aspect of the game is one of the primary game mechanics. Mass Effect features two distinct moral pathways in gameplay that drive the narrative. Players are required to make choices in game, and those choices steer the resulting narra-tive in different directions depending on the outcome of the player’s choices.

As previously stated, the two distinct pathways in Mass Effect are titled Paragon (traditionally heroic) and Renegade (traditionally antiheroic). The main distinguishing feature between these pathway choices lies in the amount and degree of violence (harm) and reciprocity (fairness) present in the deci-sions of the player with the Paragon pathway featuring less harm and more fairness as compared to the Renegade pathway. Some choices do occasionally involve the other moral foundations such as authority and loyalty, though at a much lesser extent than harm and fairness.

Given the research demonstrating that audience members who place a high importance on harm as a moral foundation tend to prefer less violence, (H1) we predict that importance of the harm moral foundation will predict moral path decisions such that those high in importance of harm tend towards the Paragon path, and those low in importance of harm will tend towards the Renegade path.

Using the same reasoning, (H2) we also predict that importance of the fairness moral foundation will predict path decisions such that those high in importance of fairness tend towards the Paragon path, and those low in importance of fairness will tend towards the Renegade path.

Due to the lesser emphasis on authority-type choices in Mass Effect, it is unclear how importance on the other moral foundations will impact in-game decisions. Thus, the following research questions are posed:

(RQ1) How will importance of the authority moral foundation impact moral decisions in Mass Effect?

(RQ2) How will importance of the loyalty moral foundation impact moral decisions in Mass Effect?

(RQ3) How will importance of the purity moral foundation impact moral decisions in Mass Effect?

JGVW_7.1_Boyan_41-57.indd 45 4/7/15 9:06:25 AM

Andy Boyan | Matthew Grizzard | Nicholas David Bowman

4646

Method

Participants

A total of 268 participants were recruited from online community website Reddit’s Mass Effect fan community (reddit.com). Reddit is a website that hosts thousands of smaller communities focused on various topics. The Mass Effect community has over 50,000 members. Members of the community can submit links or start discussions. The community then votes on whether or not the link or topic is of interest to the community, and many members also comment on the submissions.

A submission was posted to the Reddit Mass Effect community linking a survey about decisions in Mass Effect. The post asked for participants and supplied a link to an online survey. After participants were provided with human subjects protection information, they were administered a series of psychometric measures including a moral foundations scale and a scale devel-oped for this study gauging what type of decisions they made while playing Mass Effect. The order of the measures were randomly determined to account for potential ordering effects. Participants were debriefed and thanked, and the lead researcher answered questions on the Reddit forum as they arose providing further debriefing when it was requested.

A total of 130 participants were dropped due to incomplete responses leav-ing a total of N=138 for analysis. The large number of incomplete responses appeared to be from Reddit users that were interested in the research, but did not complete more than two or three items at the beginning of the survey, or just clicked through each page without answering any questions. The volun-tary nature of the study and the lack of incentive may have contributed to the large number of incomplete responses.

Measures

Paragon/Renegade questionnaire: The Paragon/Renegade questionnaire meas-ures the moral path decision a player took when playing Mass Effect. If the player tends to make choices that are compassionate and self-sacrificing, the player receives more ‘Paragon’ points. If a player tends to take more apathetic or ruthless actions, then they will receive ‘Renegade’ points. The question-naire consists of six Likert-style statements, three of which ask about the player’s tendency to take a Paragon path, and three that ask about the player’s tendency to pursue a Renegade path. Participants are instructed to reflect on the first time they played through the main quest line (story) for Mass Effect. The three Paragon items are anchored at 1 (Strongly Disagree) to 5 (Strongly Agree). The three Paragon statements are ‘I tried to play as a Paragon’, ‘I only made choices that allow me to be a Paragon’, and ‘I tried to be consistently good to the characters in Mass Effect’. The three Renegade items are anchored at 1 (Strongly Disagree) to 5 (Strongly Agree). The three Renegade statements are ‘I tried to play as a Renegade’, ‘I only made choices that allow me to be a Renegade’, and ‘I tried to be consistently bad to the characters in Mass Effect’. Renegade items were converted into negative values, and the six items were summed and averaged to create a Game Path scale. Cronbach’s α for the six item scale was α=0.85. There was no induction check for the questionnaire, given that that the study was done using players’ recollections of their Mass Effect experience – that is, the study was a self-report quasi-experiment rather than a random assignment experiment. The prompt and the questions in the

JGVW_7.1_Boyan_41-57.indd 46 4/7/15 9:06:26 AM

A massively moral game? Mass Effect as a case study …

4747

questionnaire were worded such that a player did not need to have played through each game in the series, but would be able to answer the questions for any amount of playing time. By asking participants to reflect on the first time they played through the main quest line, the questionnaire is asking about general perspectives on the player’s own behaviour. The questionnaire relies on participant assessment of their own play habits, and not necessarily that of specific metrics of play time and play type.

Moral foundations questionnaire: All five modules were measured using representative items from the moral foundations questionnaire (Haidt et al. 2006). The moral foundations questionnaire is split into ‘relevance’ (e.g. ‘This consideration has nothing to do with/is one of the most important factors in my judgements of right and wrong’) and ‘statement’ type items (e.g. ‘One of the worst things a person can do is hurt a defenseless dog’). The scale includes one screening item (‘Whether or not someone is good at math’). Each of the five factors’ Cronbach’s α reliability was in line with previous research (e.g. Tamborini et al. 2012): authority (six items, α=0.60), fairness (six items, α=0.63), harm (six items, α=0.68), loyalty (two items, α=0.76), and purity (six items, α=0.79).

results

Descriptive statistics

Examination of the descriptive statistics indicate that respondents tended to choose the Paragon path in gameplay. On a scale of −5 (Renegade) to 5 (Paragon), the mean value centred around 1 (M=1.16, SD=0.80, Median = 1.5, skewness=−0.92, kurtosis=0.09). This finding indicates that participants in general are more likely to take the Paragon path exclusively than a mixture of both paths or the Renegade path. In fact, only 16 per cent of the participants scored at or below the midpoint of the measure of the scale.

Descriptive statistics of the moral foundation salience measure (see Table 1) shows that the salience of the harm moral foundation (M=3.35, SD=0.82) and the fairness moral foundation (M=3.55, SD=0.71) were significantly higher than the salience of the loyalty (M=2.70, SD=0.76, tharm=−9.71, pharm<0.01, tfairness=−14.66, pfairness<0.01), authority (M=2.24, SD=0.81, tharm=−16.58, pharm<0.01, tfairness=−22.60, pfairness<0.01) and purity (M=1.64, SD=1.01, tharm=−25.54, pharm<0.01, tfairness=−32.95, pfairness<0.01) moral foundations. Given that several t-tests were performed, Bonferroni adjustments were used to offer more conservative comparisons between these means at the 0.01 level. Such a correction – dividing the a priori critical value of p<0.05 by the total number

Table 1: Salience of moral foundations, sample-wide.

Note: Means with different subscripts differ at p<0.01 level or greater.

M SD

Harm 3.35a 0.82Fairness 3.55a 0.71Loyalty 2.70b 0.76Authority 2.24b 0.81Purity 1.64b 1.01

JGVW_7.1_Boyan_41-57.indd 47 4/7/15 9:06:26 AM

Andy Boyan | Matthew Grizzard | Nicholas David Bowman

48

2. r’ is the correlation coefficient corrected for attenuation due to measurement error. The formula for the correction is the correlation divided by the square root of the product of the reliabilities for the two variables in the correlation (Spearman 1904).

of tests performed (5) – allows us to guard against reporting significant mean differences due to chance.

Hypothesis tests

The hypotheses predicted that importance of the harm (H1) and fairness (H2) moral foundations would predict pathway decision such that those high in importance of harm/fairness tend towards the Paragon path, and those low in importance of harm/fairness will tend towards the Renegade path. A Pearson’s r correlation was calculated between score on the harm moral foundation scale and the game path scale, and there was a positive corre-lation (r=0.37, p<0.01, one-tailed, r’=0.49)2 between game path and impor-tance of harm showing that those who tended towards the Paragon game path indicated greater importance of the harm moral foundation than those who tended towards the Renegade game path. Similarly, a Pearson’s r corre-lation was calculated between score on the fairness moral foundation scale and the game path scale, and there was a positive correlation (r=0.20, p=0.01, one-tailed r’=0.27) between game path and importance of fairness show-ing that those who tended towards the Paragon game path indicated more importance on the fairness moral foundation than those who tended towards the Renegade game path.

The research questions (RQ1, RQ2, RQ3) asked how the other moral foundations would impact game path decision. Pearson’s r correlations were calculated for all moral foundations scales, and only the importance of the purity moral foundation demonstrated a relationship with game path (r=0.19, p<0.05, two-tailed, r’=0.23). Neither authority (r=−0.02, ns, two-tailed) nor loyalty (r=0.06, ns, two-tailed) were found to have a relationship with game path decision.

To assess independent variance, the harm, fairness and purity scales were regressed onto game path using linear regression analysis. Subjects’ importance of harm moral foundation was found to be the sole statistically significant predictor of game path (β=0.36, p<0.01, adjusted R2=0.16, F=9.89, p<0.001; see Table 1). An additional post-hoc test was conducted to tease out the unique explained variance of harm compared to the other two vari-ables, accomplished by a stepwise regression that used fairness and purity as predictors at step one, and harm as an additional predictor at step two. This analysis reported that harm accounted for nearly 11 per cent unique variance: R2 change=0.106, F(1,137)=17.73, p<0.001.

Analysis of the constructs shows that only importance of the harm moral foundation predicts game path; thus, hypothesis one was supported, and hypothesis two was rejected. Based on this finding, it seems that while the

Table 2: Regression statistics of moral foundation variables onto game path decision.

β SE t

Harm 0.36 0.09 4.211

Fairness 0.02 0.10 0.22Purity 0.08 0.06 1.21

[1]indicates statistically significant at p<0.001

JGVW_7.1_Boyan_41-57.indd 48 4/7/15 9:06:26 AM

A massively moral game? Mass Effect as a case study …

49

3. It is important to note here that while the results indicate that correlations between harm, fairness and purity were high, diagnostic tests of whether multicollinearity caused artefacts in the multiple regression were acceptable (tolerance=0.73, VIF=1.36). As such, it is unlikely the correlations between the moral foundations distorted the analysis or led to faulty findings.

fairness and purity foundations correlated with in-game moral decisions, harm was pre-eminent in ultimately determining moral decisions after controlling for covariance between moral foundations.3

discussion

The current investigation began by examining whether real-world moral concerns influence moral decision-making in video games. Previous research in experimental settings (Joeckel et al. 2013; Weaver and Lewis 2012) has established that real-world moral values can influence a player’s choices during video game play. However, to date, this is the first study to examine the moral foundations of video game players and their in-game behaviours in an ecological setting by examining their choices in a popular game released by a major studio.

Results of the current study suggest that: most players, even when given the opportunity to behave immorally, choose to engage in moral virtual behaviours; and real-world moral values predict the extent to which play-ers engage in immoral/moral virtual behaviour. Each of these findings will be discussed in turn below.

Making the moral decision

In the current study, a large portion of participants (89%) indicated that they behaved ‘morally’ when they played Mass Effect by making heroic Paragon decisions. This finding is particularly notable as it indicates that Mass Effect players were reluctant to engage in traditionally immoral behaviours in game, even though this type of behaviour would have no ‘real-world’ consequences. The data here is generally in line with BioWare’s own data on the propor-tion of players who choose Paragon (64.5%) versus Renegade (35.5%) during gameplay (Petitte 2013). Questions arise as to why this is the case. Gamers often claim that video game behaviours are inconsequential with regard to the real world (see Hartmann et al. 2010). If this is the case, why would the data reflect predominantly moral behaviours?

First, players may have engaged in primarily moral behaviours because in-game behaviours, while inconsequential to the real world, have very real consequences for the story presented in the game. By behaving immorally in the game, players could damage relationships with other NPCs, impacting the narrative in undesirable ways. By making decisions in-game meaningful to the content, games may incentivize traditionally moral heroic behaviour. More research is needed to examine why the majority of players take the heroic route in a game with moral choices. Additionally, players who play through the game multiple times may likely choose different moral paths for different playthroughs.

Another reason players may behave morally in game relates to the emotion of guilt. Previous research on video game play indicates players feel guilty when they engage in immoral virtual behaviours (Hartmann et al. 2010; Weaver and Lewis 2012; Grizzard et al. 2014). Social cognitive theory (Bandura 2002) and research on moral emotions such as guilt (Tangney et al. 2007) indicate that guilt can act as an avoidance mechanism for immoral behaviour: Individuals’ anticipation of guilt, which is associated with a nega-tive affective state, causes individuals to exercise self-control and avoid behaviours that might elicit guilt. It may be the case that our participants did not engage in immoral behaviours because they sought to avoid the negative

JGVW_7.1_Boyan_41-57.indd 49 4/7/15 9:06:26 AM

Andy Boyan | Matthew Grizzard | Nicholas David Bowman

50

affect associated with guilt. Further research regarding in-the-moment deci-sion-making when it comes to morality and games would illuminate this possibility.

Real-world moral values

The second major finding of the study focused on the observation that real-world moral sentiments, specifically moral sentiments related to the preven-tion of harm, predicted the extent to which players made moral decisions in the game. This finding replicates earlier work by Joeckel et al. (2013) and Weaver and Lewis (2012), but is unique from their approaches in two ways. First, and unlike Joeckel et al. (2013), which utilized a modified game, this study examined behaviour in an unmodified ‘off-the-shelf’ popular press game. Second, and unlike Weaver and Lewis (2012), which used a popular press game, this study examined behaviour in an ecological setting (i.e. retro-spective recollection) rather than an experimental setting.

This finding is important and further emphasizes the importance of real-world moral values on virtual behaviours. As it has been found in past work (Joeckel et al. 2013; Weaver and Lewis 2012) there is mounting evidence to suggest that players’ real-world moral sensitivities serve as potentially power-ful determinants of their in-game behaviours and decisions. Such evidence might speak against concerns that video games serve to morally corrupt play-ers, as our evidence collaborates with other studies showing that one’s moral sensitivities seem to determine their preference for in-game decisions that reinforce rather than violate those sensitivities. Indeed, recent theorizing and writing has suggested that ‘real-world’ moral foundations might be an increas-ingly important trait-like variable to understand, both in the media selection and media effects process (cf. Bogost 2011; Limperos et al. 2013). Yet there are still questions that arise from the data. For example, did considerations of harm drive in-game behaviour because: most moral decisions in the game centred on the harm domain; or considerations of harm are simply the most universal human moral concern, and as such, its centrality to moral judge-ments led to this finding? One might also implicate Tamborini’s model of moral intuitions in media entertainment (MIME) to question how the result-ant consequences of players’ morally biased in-game decisions might eventu-ally impact their ‘real-world’ moral foundations. In MIME, moral intuitions guide initial judgements of character actions and, in the case of video games, initial behaviours and decisions. However, the game’s structure of rewards and consequences might cause players to question the appropriateness of their moral intuition – such as players refusing to harm a character that later goes on to harm another. This system of intuitive moral reactions followed by contemplative moral quandaries (in particular, quandaries that directly chal-lenge the initial behaviour) might be expected to have some impact on the player’s own sense of morality (cf. Grodal 2000; Nakamura 2001).

Recent research on moral emotions elicited by game play indicates that violating moral foundations during game play can lead to an increase in moral sensitivity as mediated by the moral emotion of guilt (Grizzard et al. 2014). In an experimental study on the influence of moral violations in game play on guilt and subsequent moral intuition salience, participants were randomly assigned to either play a game or engage in a memory recall task. These two groups were then randomly assigned to a guilt-inducing condition (i.e. assuming the role of a terrorist soldier in a game or recalling

JGVW_7.1_Boyan_41-57.indd 50 4/7/15 9:06:26 AM

A massively moral game? Mass Effect as a case study …

51

a time that they felt particularly guilty) or a non-guilt-inducing condition (i.e. assuming the role of United Nations soldier in a game or recalling an ordinary day). Results of the study demonstrated that both guilt inducing conditions led to increases in feelings of guilt, but it was only video-game induced guilt that was specifically associated with the violation of the harm and fairness intuitions in the game that led to increases in moral sensitivity. This research demonstrates how counterintuitive processes related to moral decision-making in video games might play out: violating moral intuitions in games may be more of a motivator for increased morality than adhering to moral intuitions.

The preeminence of harm and fairness for moral decision-making

Harm and fairness are important to people’s moral decision-making. Previous research (Tamborini et al. 2011b) provides evidence that perceptions of harm and fairness are the two most central moral issues for individuals in deter-mining their liking of characters in films, and Joeckel et al. (2013) found that perception of harm violations, rather than other moral foundations, drive behaviour in games. This explanation might also unite the two apparently disparate questions posed above. If issues related to harm are the most univer-sal moral intuition, it makes sense that game programmers might intuitively focus on moral dilemmas relating to harm, resulting in the findings observed here. A content analysis categorizing the moral decision trees in the game along the five moral domains could provide evidence testing this hypothesis.

As for the relative insignificance of fairness and purity salience on game path decision when considered in tandem with harm, we can offer a statis-tical, a methodological, and a theoretical answer. Statistically, it is the case that the harm foundation had the most impact on game path progression, as it accounted for nearly 11 per cent of the variance in player’s self-reported game paths – which left only a very small portion remaining to be explained by other modules, such as fairness and purity. Methodologically, it is plausible that players’ recollections of their gameplay might have made more salient considerations of the harm foundation, which could have biased their answers to the MFT items. However, such a concern might actually strengthen the findings of the current study, as it would suggest that players are placing such heavy recollection on instances of harm in relation to playing Mass Effect that those answers are directly or indirectly impacting their thoughts about other more distal harm foundation concerns (such as harming children or animals). Moreover, the fact that Mass Effect is a third-person shooter might have placed more intuitive focus on the use of guns and weapons as instru-ments of in-game harm to so-called ‘weapons effect’ identified by Berkowitz and LePage (1967). Theoretically, MFT research suggests that while all five moral foundations are of universal importance, considerations of harm seem to develop the earliest – as early as hours after birth (Weber et al. 2012), given that this foundation has both biological (avoiding aversive and pain-ful stimuli) as well as social (sanctions befalling those who hurt others). If this is the case, the primacy of harm as a moral sensitivity coupled with the use of a video game so directly and indirectly associated with harm might result in that foundation gaining a dominant role in decisions presented to players. Indeed, Haidt (2007: 1001) argues that ‘research on morality beyond harm and fairness is in its infancy’ in discussing the relative primacy of those two dimensions in understanding affective reactions to moral violations. As

JGVW_7.1_Boyan_41-57.indd 51 4/7/15 9:06:26 AM

Andy Boyan | Matthew Grizzard | Nicholas David Bowman

52

such, the preeminence of harm as the determining factor for moral decision- making may be so ingrained in psychological processes that harm violating decisions are considered to be the most quintessential moral decision. As such, this dominant focus on harm in all facets of life (real and virtual) may be a superordinate factor driving both game developers’ decisions on what moral violations to include in a game as well as game players’ decisions on whether or not to violate moral intuitions when they are presented.

iMplicAtions for GAMe desiGners

The current findings shed light on important implications for game designers. To the extent that game designers are interested in encouraging (or discour-aging) players to engage in specific behaviours, they should consider the in-game implications associated with those behaviours. Games that provide positive reinforcements for moral behaviour or simply provide important consequences for diverging from ‘normally’ acceptable behaviour would be useful for increasing socially acceptable behaviour per the tenets of social cognitive theory (Bandura 2002). Notably, the findings here suggest, at least for this specific game, that players are predominantly taking a moral approach to their in-game decisions.

Apart from the above goals, the current findings suggest that game devel-opers may need to reconsider which moral domains they utilize when they encourage gamers to make in-game moral decisions. Many game developers strive to put moral decision-making elements into their games. In addition to Mass Effect, games, such as Heavy Rain, Skyrim and Fable, all present players with moral dilemmas and moral choices that influence game play and how NPCs respond to the player in-game. The inclusion of these moral decisions may reflect an attempt to enhance the experiences of gamers by making the gameplay experience more meaningful.

The present data suggest that video game developers may not be taking full advantage of the entire moral domain. The current findings indicate that concerns related to harm and violence are the most important determinant for decisions in Mass Effect. Although more extensive analysis of moral choice in game content is needed, these initial findings suggest that game devel-opers might be focusing on what would be ‘easy’ moral decisions for their audience (‘Should I be moral and caring or should I be immoral and uncar-ing?’). If cognitive complexity and moral dilemmas result in feelings of mean-ingfulness (as suggested by Tamborini 2012), then game developers who wish to enhance their audiences’ connection to the games may need to broaden the spectrum of their moral decisions by focusing on more difficult decisions (e.g. ‘Should I be loyal or should I be fair?’). By forcing players to make diffi-cult decisions with real in-game consequences, games may be able to extend beyond simple black hat/white hat perspectives of morality to more complex and subtle moral dilemmas. As such, resolving these more difficult decisions may lead to more meaningful responses to video game play and a deeper connection to the material for players.

Limitations

The research presented here is limited in that the sample of respondents are volunteers with a significant interest in the Mass Effect series. Casual players are less likely to join an online community dedicated to discussion about the

JGVW_7.1_Boyan_41-57.indd 52 4/7/15 9:06:26 AM

A massively moral game? Mass Effect as a case study …

53

game, thus the sample is made up of fans. Additionally, the fans that clicked on the link are those that of the 50,000 members of the community saw the link and decided to click it, which further reinforces the idea of fans rather than a broad sample of different types of players. Indeed, the clustering on the moral foundations scales suggests a subculture of shared moral values apart from simple interest in a video game. Future research should examine a broader spectrum of players to gain a better understanding of individuals with differing importances on all of the moral foundations.

In addition, players in the sample indicated that they were more sensi-tive to harm and fairness than the other moral foundations. It is possible that this heightened sensitivity to harm and fairness in the sample led to a biased sample. Of the numerous potential participants in the Reddit forum, only 268 clicked the link, and less than half of those completed the entire survey (N=138). The study was voluntary and may have been limited in scope to those who are highly invested fans of the franchise.

A second limitation of the study is that research on moral actions and moral perceptions is fraught with social desirability issues. It is unknown if there are perceptions of the Renegade path in the Mass Effect community that is somehow less desirable than the Paragon path. There is a chance that indicating a Renegade moral decision path could be viewed as unfavourable, which might lead participants to alter their responses. The survey was a self-report of past behaviour, which could easily be edited by the participants to put themselves in a more socially desirable light.

An additional limitation is the lack of a check on the players’ skill or progress in the game. The study assumed that players had played some amount of the Mass Effect series, but players who have played through the games several times may very well self-report differently than those who have played only one game a single time. The measures did not account for this, but assumed that players did not need to have played through each game in the series, but would be able to answer the questions for any amount of playing time. By asking participants to reflect on the first time they played through the main quest line, the questionnaire is asking about general perspectives on the player’s own behaviour. The questionnaire relies on participant assessment of their own play habits, and not necessarily that of specific metrics of play time and play type. The specifics of play type and play time may have an impact on the types of choices players report.

Future research

The current research project suggests several potential research directions. First and foremost, a content analysis of the moral decision trees in Mass Effect and other video games that include moral decision-making elements could shed light on the possibility that the harm domain is the most often and consistently occurring moral domain. In addition, several other potential research directions are suggested by the current study.

With regard to player relationships, the current study poses questions relating to how the relationship between player and avatar might influence in-game moral decision-making processes. Work using the character attachment metric (Lewis et al. 2008) finds that gamers who feel more in control of their in-game charac-ters are motivated to play pro-socially, while players with lower levels of suspen-sion of disbelief and decreased feelings of responsibility for their in-game actions are motivated to play anti-socially (Bowman et al. 2012). Additionally, Banks

JGVW_7.1_Boyan_41-57.indd 53 4/7/15 9:06:26 AM

Andy Boyan | Matthew Grizzard | Nicholas David Bowman

54

and Bowman (2013) find that for player-avatar relationships, self-differentiation (distinguishing one’s self from their on-screen character, recognizing each as separate social actors) is a key component in order for the player to have intense and authentic emotional reactions. Finally, research on the consequences of moral emotions elicited by games suggest that negative moral emotions, such as guilt for violating moral domains, may be an important determinant for increas-ing moral salience. However, the fact that players tend to act morally in games suggests the need for research examining how games might induce negative moral emotions for behaviours that are considered to be socially acceptable. Future research should continue to address all of these issues and may provide answers to whether adherence to or violation of one’s moral domain in-game impacts positive as well as negative emotional reactions, connection and control of avatar, and overall hedonic enjoyment and appreciation.

conclusion

This research makes a contribution to the media research literature concern-ing appreciation and digital games, as well as extending MFT work in media choice. Beyond understanding what influences impact people’s behaviour in-game, this work has a number of applications in other areas of commu-nication study. For example, this study uses an ecological test of participant behaviours to assess real world, recent behaviours of video game play. In addition to the theoretical questions this work raises, the study serves as a practical reminder to game designers of the various ways in which games can and do elicit meaningful responses from player experiences.

references

Bandura, A. (2002), ‘A social cognitive theory of mass communication’, in J. Bryant and D. Zillmann (eds), Media Effects: Advances in Theory and Research, Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, pp. 121–53.

Banks, J. D. and Bowman, N. D. (2013), ‘Close intimate playthings? Understanding player-avatar relationships as a function of attachment, agency, and intimacy’, paper presented at the Annual Meeting of Association of Internet Researchers, Denver, October 2013.

Berkowitz, L. and LePage, A. (1967), ‘Weapons as aggression-eliciting stimuli’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 72: 1, pp. 202–07.

Bioware (2007–2012), Mass Effect (series), Canada: Electronic Arts.Bogost, I. (2011), How to do Things with Video Games, Minneapolis: University

of Minnesota Press.Bowman, N. D., Rogers, R., Sherrick, B. I., Woolley, J. and Chung, M.-Y.

(2013), ‘“In control or in their shoes”: How character attachment diffe-rentially influences video game enjoyment and appreciation’, top paper in ‘Media and the Self’ research category, Broadcast Education Association Research Symposium, Media and Social Life: The Self, Relationships, and Society, 6 April 2013.

Bowman, N. D., Schultheiss, D. and Schumann, C. (2012), ‘I’m attached, and I’m A good guy/gal!’: How character attachment influences pro- and anti-social motivations to play MMORPGs’, CyberPsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 15: 3, pp. 169–74.

de Hooge, I. E., Breugelmans, S. M. and Zeelenberg, M. (2008), ‘Not so ugly after all: When shame acts as a commitment device’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95: 4, pp. 933–43.

JGVW_7.1_Boyan_41-57.indd 54 4/7/15 9:06:26 AM

A massively moral game? Mass Effect as a case study …

55

Graham, J., Nosek, B. A., Haidt, J., Iyer, R., Koleva, S. and Ditto, P. H. (2011), ‘Mapping the moral domain’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101: 2, pp. 366–85.

Grizzard, M., Tamborini, R., Lewis, R. J., Wang, L. and Prabhu, S. (2014), ‘Being bad in a video game can make us morally sensitive’, Cyberpsychology, Behavior, & Social Networking, 17: 8, pp. 499–504.

Grodal, T. (2000), ‘Video games and the pleasures of control’, in D. Zillmann and P. Vorderer (eds), Media Entertainment: The Psychology of its Appeal, Mahwah, NJ: LEA, pp. 197–213.

Haidt, J. (2001), ‘The emotional dog and its rational tail: A social intuitionist approach to moral judgment’, Psychological Review, 108: 4, pp. 814–34.

—— (2007), ‘The new synthesis in moral psychology’, Science, 316: 5827, pp. 998–1002.

Haidt, J. and Joseph, C. (2004), ‘Intuitive ethics: How innately prepared intui-tions generate culturally variable virtues’, Daedalus: Special Issue on human Nature, 133: 4, pp. 55–66.

—— (2007), ‘The moral mind: How five sets of innate moral intuitions guide the development of many culture-specific virtues, and perhaps even modu-les’, in P. Carruthers, S. Laurence and S. Stich (eds), The Innate Mind, Vol. 3, New York, NY: Oxford University Press, pp. 367–91.

Haidt, J. and Kesebir, S. (2010), ‘Morality’, in S. Fiske, D. Gilbert and G. Lindzey (eds), Handbook of Social Psychology, 5th Edition, Hobeken, NJ: Wiley.

Haidt, J., Graham, J. and Hersh, M. A. (2006), ‘The Moral Foundations Questionnaire’, http://faculty.virginia.edu/haidtlab/mf.html. Accessed 20 April 2011.

Hartmann, T., Toz, E. and Brandon, M. (2010), ‘Just a game? Unjustified virtual violence produces guilt in empathetic players’, Media Psychology, 13: 4, pp. 339–63.

Joeckel, S., Bowman, N. D. and Dogruel, L. (2013), ‘The influence of adoles-cents’ moral salience on actions and entertainment experience in interac-tive media’, Journal of Children and Media, 7: 4, pp. 480–506.

Lewis, M. L., Weber, R. and Bowman, N. D. (2008), ‘“They may be pixels, but they’re MY Pixels”: Developing a metric of character attachment in role-playing video games’, CyberPsychology and Behavior, 11: 4, pp. 515–18.

Limperos, A., Downs, E., Ivory, J. and Bowman, N. D. (2013), ‘Leveling up: A review of current and emerging areas of interest in video games and future research directions’, Communication Yearbook, 37: 12, pp. 349–77.

Nakamura, L. (2001), ‘Race in/for cyberspace: Identity tourism and racial passing on the Internet’, in D. Trend (ed.), Reading Digital Culture,. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, pp. 226–35.

Petitte, O. (2013), ‘Mass Effect 3 by the numbers: 4 percent of players like shooting doctors in the face’, PCGamer, http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/03/25/mass-effect-3-infographic. Accessed 25 February 2014.

Piaget, J. (1953), The Origins of Intelligence in Children, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Spearman, C. (1904), ‘“General intelligence”, objectively determined and measured’, The American Journal of Psychology, 15: 2, pp. 201–92.

Steen, F. F., Greenfield, P. M., Davies, M. S. and Tynes, B. (2006), ‘What went wrong with The Sims Online: Cultural learning and barriers to identification in a massively multiplayer online role-playing game’, in P. Vorderer and J. Bryant (eds), Playing Video Games: Motives, Responses, and Consequences, Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, pp. 307–23.

JGVW_7.1_Boyan_41-57.indd 55 4/7/15 9:06:26 AM

Andy Boyan | Matthew Grizzard | Nicholas David Bowman

56

Tamborini, R. (2011), ‘Moral intuition and media entertainment’, Journal of Media Psychology, 23: 1, pp. 39–45.

—— (2012), ‘A model of intuitive morality and exemplars’, in R. Tamborini (ed.), Media and the Moral Mind, New York, NY: Routledge, pp. 43–74.

Tamborini, R., Eden, A., Bowman, N. D., Grizzard, M. and Lachlan, K. (2012), ‘The influence of morality subcultures on the acceptance and appeal of violence’, Journal of Communication, 62: 1, pp. 136–57.

Tamborini, R., Eden, A., Bowman, N. D., Grizzard, M. and Weber, R. (2009), ‘Predicting enjoyment from implicit morality’, paper presented at the 95th Annual Meeting of the National Communication Association, Chicago, IL, November 2009.

Tamborini, R., Eden, A., Grizzard, M. and Lewis, R. (2011a), ‘Moral archetypes as exemplars: Perceptions of heroes and villains in fiction and real-life’, paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the International Communication Association, Boston, MA, May 2011.

Tamborini, R., Grizzard, M., Eden, A. and Lewis, R. (2011b), ‘Imperfect heroes and villains: Patterns of upholding and violating distinct moral domains and character appeal’, paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the National Communication Association, New Orleans, LA, November 2011.

Tangney, J. P., Stuewig, J. and Mashek, D. J. (2007), ‘Moral emotions and moral behavior’, Annual Review of Psychology, 58, pp. 345–72.

Weaver, A. J. and Lewis, N. (2012). Mirrored morality: An exploration of moral choice in video games. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 15: 11, pp. 610–14.

Weber, R., Popova, L. and Mangus, J. M. (2012), ‘Universal morality, media-ted narratives, and neural synchrony’, in R. Tamborini (ed.), Media and the Moral Mind, New York, NY: Routledge, pp. 26–42.

Wispé, L. (1986), ‘The distinction between sympathy and empathy: To call forth a concept, a word is needed’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50: 2, pp. 314–21.

suGGested citAtion

Boyan, A., Grizzard, M. and Bowman, N. D. (2015), ‘A massively moral game? Mass Effect as a case study to understand the influence of players’ moral intuitions on adherence to hero or antihero play styles’, Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds 7: 1, pp. 41–57, doi: 10.1386/jgvw.7.1.41_1

contriButor detAils

Andy Boyan (Ph.D.) is an assistant professor of Communication Studies in Albion College in Michigan, USA. His research focuses on mechanical elements of games and how mechanics function in learning processes, as well as cognitive processing of cheating and rule violations in entertainment media such as digital games and sport.

Contact: 611 E Porter, Albion College, Albion, MI, 49224, USA.Email: aboyan@albion.edu

Matthew Grizzard (Ph.D.) is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, in Buffalo, New York. His research focuses on how evolutionarily derived psychological processes influence viewers’ responses to media entertainment.

JGVW_7.1_Boyan_41-57.indd 56 4/7/15 9:06:26 AM

A massively moral game? Mass Effect as a case study …

57

His recent work has focused on virtual behaviors and their relationship to moral emotions.

Contact: 359 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260, USA.E-mail: mngrizza@buffalo.edu

Nicholas David Bowman (Ph.D.) is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication Studies at West Virginia University in Morgantown, West Virginia. His research looks at the intersection of communication technology and human interaction, with a specific interest into social media and interac-tive entertainment (such as video games). He has published several papers on the role of intuitive morality in understanding media production and consumption.

Contact: 108 Armstrong Hall, Morgantown, WV 26506, USA.E-mail: nicholas.bowman@mail.wvu.edu

Andy Boyan, Matthew Grizzard and Nicholas David Bowman have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the authors of this work in the format that was submitted to Intellect Ltd.

JGVW_7.1_Boyan_41-57.indd 57 4/7/15 9:06:26 AM

Intellect is an independent academic publisher of books and journals, to view our catalogue or order our titles visit www.intellectbooks.com or E-mail: journals@intellectbooks.com. Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, UK, BS16 3JG.

ISSN 20517084 | Online ISSN 20517092

The East Asian Journal of Popular Culture is the first academic peer-reviewed journal for scholars, teachers, and students from around the world who have an active and passionate interest in the Popular Culture of East Asia. The journal is devoted to all aspects of popular culture in East Asia and the interplay between East Asia and the wider world.

In the last few decades there has been a huge rise in the interest in East Asian popular culture. The East Asian Journal of Popular Culture will be engaging directly with that trend. From film to music; art to translation and fashion to tourism, this journal will offer a forum where multidisciplinary work can come together in new and exciting ways.

Editors

Kate Taylor-JonesBangor University

Ann HeylanNational Taiwan Normal University

John BerraTsinghua University

intellectwww.intellectbooks.com

publishersof original

thinking

East Asian Journal of Popular Culture

JGVW_7.1_Boyan_41-57.indd 58 3/30/15 2:00:26 PM

Copyright of Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds is the property of Intellect Ltd. and itscontent may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without thecopyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or emailarticles for individual use.