Homer in Silicon on Fable 3

Over here. There were a lot of things I did like about the game (awesome loading screens, some hilarious side quests, more memorable characters overall, Stephen Fry), but I was seriously disappointed in how it handled its moral dilemmas, and that’s mostly what I talk about.

8 thoughts on “Homer in Silicon on Fable 3”

  1. This is kind of off-topic, but I have my doubts about this passage:

    …most politicians basically believe that they are working towards the common good, even if they have different ideas about what that good looks like. Not infrequently, they even have roughly similar goals, but disagree on how to get there. That’s especially true with the recent economic crises. Everyone wants the economy to be healthy, unemployment to go down, the poor to live better, and so on. The disagreement is about how to get there.

    In our polity, and I think this would be true in the most interesting games, the first sentence is arguably true and the rest arguably not; at the very least they require evidence. Different people and politicians have different conceptions of what the good is. The difference between someone who sees Obama’s healthcare plan as an intolerable intrusion on liberty and someone who sees it as a way of providing necessary goods to the people isn’t a dispute over means to the same end, it’s a fundamental argument over what government ought to be doing.

    Or more succinctly: Some politicians express admiration for Ayn Rand. Others don’t. Do they want the same things? Do they all want the poor to live better, or do some want the poor to live how they deserve?

    Back to games, I think a really interesting approach is possible here. You could have a situation where competing NPCs/factions are presenting competing conceptions of the good, and you have to not only manage your resources in order to attain your goals, you have to figure out what your goals are. I think this is probably part of what you were trying to do with Floatpoint (though I need to play that in more depth); but it’d be really hard to do in a game that was meant to map onto something like our current economic debates. Not only would it need the simulation mechanisms that showed how your actions have consequences, it’d have to present the different conceptions of the good without making any into straw men and without watering them down. (I sure couldn’t bring that off.) And it sure couldn’t rely on a morality score. The game would have to show the consequences of your actions and let you decide for yourself how you felt about them. Don’t know if we can expect that from any game that has to make back an AAA budget.

    Reply

    1. Different people and politicians have different conceptions of what the good is.

      Absolutely. I didn’t mean to suggest that they were all always looking for the same thing. But in the case of the economy, I do think there’s a high level of agreement on things like “there should be more jobs for people who want them.”

      Possibly I should have added the caveat that a small handful of people are selfish as a matter of philosophy. Hardcore Randians might be happy to see the poor and middle classes suffer, but “hardcore Randian” is not a badge I would pin on most of our elected officials at the moment, and (for obvious reasons) not one I think most of them would wish to claim explicitly. So I think it’s essentially true to say that most politicians would like to see unemployment drop.

      The vision diverges rapidly after that, of course, some people dwelling on the image of a protectionist state where jobs can’t legally be outsourced, or one where all the illegal immigrants are deported leaving plenty for everyone else, or one where the government puts together a massive WPA-like program to rebuild infrastructure by employing everyone who doesn’t have employment, or whatever; and a lot of people having more moderate visions. What’s lacking is a clear agreement about which methods are most likely to work and whether those methods come with moral costs that we’re unwilling to pay.

      And I think if you express the goal at a high enough level, you’d even get widespread if not universal agreement about health care: we would like Americans to be healthier and live longer. Most of us would probably like health care to be more affordable and a good quality of care to be more equally accessible.

      Then you get into whether that is something that government can achieve or should even be trying to provide, and if so whether it should be done with mandates or incentives; if not, whether it’s up to individuals and/or businesses and/or private charities to promote that end, and in that case how the government can best get out of their way; what constitutes “good care” anyway, and who gets to choose that; etc., etc., etc.

      You could have a situation where competing NPCs/factions are presenting competing conceptions of the good, and you have to not only manage your resources in order to attain your goals, you have to figure out what your goals are. I think this is probably part of what you were trying to do with Floatpoint

      Yes, it was.

      Reply

      1. Well, I don’t want to get too deep into a discussion of politics, for obvious reasons, but I actually picked on Rand because of this guy (and at least a couple other examples). And part of what I’m thinking of is the line about how he sees the free-market system as a moral imperative; that seems to me a very common view in the GOP, and one that I think does reflect a different conception of the good. (Rand’s total view isn’t compatible with the nonatheism of most elected officials, I think, but then there are plenty of religious Marxists too.)

        Anyway, back to games! The more I think about it, the odder it seems that Fable 3 doesn’t try to evoke competing conceptions of the good. At first I was going to say that, if there is nobility in the Fableverse, one likely dispute would be whether it is good for everyone in society to be in a place that accords with their social class. And then I thought, wouldn’t one of the questions be whether there should be a monarch at all? Maybe in order to maximize your good slider, you need to abdicate and let the AI play the game out.

  2. Also off topic regarding the same statement quoted above on politics in the US. I think it is dangerously naive to hope that any politicians actually believe they are working towards the common good. For the most part, politicians need to be forced to care about what we (citizens) need because most of their campaign contributions (and personal wealth as well once they transfer over to working as a lobbyist) come from corporate interests – not us.

    So yes, I agree that this game Fable sounds ridiculously simplistic and so out of touch with reality that they couldn’t even cobble together a sense of narrative. But then, that seems to be the case for most Americans with regards to understanding their own government and political process.

    Reply

    1. For the most part, politicians need to be forced to care about what we (citizens) need because most of their campaign contributions (and personal wealth as well once they transfer over to working as a lobbyist) come from corporate interests – not us.

      I’d argue that isn’t completely contradictory, though. Once you believe that you/your side being in power is necessary for good things to happen to the country, you start to see that power as an end rather than a means in itself — and then it seems like a good idea to make some deals, here and there, with companies who can fund your campaign.

      I think as citizens we have an obligation to keep on top of our elected officials — not just to vote, but to nag and advocate between elections. I also think we need some reforms of process, though I’m not sure how we’re going to accomplish that. But I don’t think we’re speaking to people who are all inherently blackhearted or even indifferent. That hasn’t been my experience of actual politicians. A few are probably skilled sociopaths in it only to support their own delusions of power, but not all.

      Reply

      1. I agree that I was painting on the tar and feathers with a broad brush as I was speaking of officials and representatives in the Federal Gov’t. I have met many good politicians and civil servants in local offices, even some in State Office.

        I think distance (geographic) from constituents, wealth, and power are the problem. All are figurative forms of distance between constituents and politicians. The greater the distance, the more likely the politician is to have entirely different priorities than our own.

        The old adage “power corrupts” is a good rule of thumb.

  4. I can’t help but feel that (perhaps ironically) “moral” choices in games are generally held back by the desire to include “evil” options.

    I’ve had the same problem with both Fable games – I play through as Evil, and that makes all of the “tough choices” completely risible. You can’t present a moral dilemma when half your audience are actively choosing to do evil for its own sake. And of course being evil makes the opening sequence nonsensical: “I’ll never forgive you for this! I wanted to kill those peasants *myself*!”

    Although the Orphanage/Brothel decision is the most ludicricrous of the “king section” choices, the one that made me facepalm the most was when you have to decide whether or not to increase the guard in Bowerstone. Your financial advisor basically says “remember sire, we have to be ready for the invasion, and if you spend all this money on *soldiers* we might not be able to afford to build up our *army*.”

    Reply

Leave a comment