Moral decision making is not one of those things people tend to associate with video games. Shooting, racing, twenty-minute unskippable summoning sequences: those are things that immediately pop to mind, but not soul-searching ethical quandaries. And, for many years, that was entirely understandable – Eating the ghosts in Pac-Man had no visible ramifications, and as far as the player knew, none of the spaceships they shot down in Space Invaders had any family to worry about.

Most early games were about fun, simulation, or escapism. They were also, more importantly, incredibly linear in general. Linearity, by its definition, does not offer much in the way of choice, and choice is ultimately the engine that allows moral decisions to make themselves known in games. Choice is what starts to allow a player to break out of the lines and start to delve into questions of Good and Evil and everything in between. Pen and paper RPG systems such as Dungeons & Dragons had their built-in systems of alignment, and these were easier to play out when a human being was running the show as dungeon master. If the players chose to follow a path different than what the DM planned, he could simply adapt. Video games, it was felt, either couldn’t, or shouldn’t, have to worry about player choice.

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