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Jan 25th, 2016 at 01:38:01 - This war of mine (PC) |
I've completed my first ever play session of This War Of Mine. So far I am liking the game a lot. The entire game is based around you controlling three people trapped in a ravaged city in the middle of a war-zone.
You must make choices on how best to keep the three alive by scavenging resources used to build up your shelter.
I decided to play the first time as if I was playing Fable or Mass Effect. In such games I always choose the good side as I believe it is what I would do in a similar situation.
Perhaps I overestimate myself in these games, as I tend to subscribe to the Utilitarian morality more than Kantian.
Still, when I play these types of games I tend to follow Kantian moral theory and abide by a set of moral laws which I believe are correct regardless of the consequences.
I decided on three simple moral laws: Keep all three survivors alive, scavenge only from unoccupied locations, and never kill another person.
For the first couple days this went well. Then the nightly raids started happening. Because I was very strict in never kill, I never kept guard at night, as the guard may kill some of the bandits or the bandits kill one of my people.
I tried to reason around "Killing is wrong." I added "unless you are defending your possessions," however this did not fit with my law: the consequence of keeping my possessions has no bearing on the action of killing. I still killed someone, and the act of killing is wrong.
As a result my survivors made it to day 7, when all my food and water was stolen and two of three were starving.
In my opinion this game, so far, shows a great flaw with the Kant's first formulation: it only works if it can be applied to a rational system.
In a crisis, such as the game depicts, survival takes precedence over rationality. Survival instincts are primal and do not often coincide with rational actions. As more and more people fall into survival mode, the rational system breaks down, leading to a breakdown of Kantian morality.
Consider for example my stealing is wrong law. If everyone was acting as I was and only scavenging from unoccupied locations or bartering for their items, I would not have to worry about standing guard at night and possibly killing someone to protect my resources.
However, bandits come around and steal from me every few nights. By Kantian theory, they are acting irrationally, and I am the moral superior.
I could state that a person acting irrationally is not a rational being and thus my moral laws do not apply to them, but this violates Kant's second formulation as people are known to be capable of acting rationally. By opting out of my moral laws, I would deprive the person of the choice to act rationally, thus using them as a means to an end (that I could do as I pleased to them because they were irrational).
So despite my best efforts I could not change how I played or rationalize doing anything to protect myself lest I accidentally violate one of my moral laws. As a result I lasted a week in the war-zone. At least I die happy knowing I hold the higher moral ground, except that dying violates my first moral law.
Perhaps I am being too hard on Kantian theory, as the thought of universally applied laws is appealing. However, I find the system to be too rigid. Morals should not change easily, but when trying to overcome overwhelming adversity, morals should be allowed to adapt to the changing environment. In a pure survival situation, killing in order to steal objects may be morally wrong, but killing to protect your resources may be morally correct, rather than having a single universal moral law that says killing is wrong.
For my next play-through I will alter my rules to fit more with the situation: Keep all three survivors alive, scavenge only from unoccupied locations, and only kill in defense of self or property.
The change to the third law should add a more utilitarian approach. The formula is my three survivors and N bandits. If the raiders steal from me they get minor happiness, but they cause my survivors great unhappiness. By fending off the raid I cause the raiders minor unhappiness, while giving my survivors great happiness.
I will discuss how this approach worked in my next game log.
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