Good vs Evil: How the Urge to Win Drives Gaming Decisions

hubie writes:

Researchers have built their own computer game to test the impact of meters which give players a morality score for the decisions they make while playing:

Two papers published by a multi-disciplinary research team reveal that most of us ignore the meter when a moral choice is clear, but we use it when the choice is more morally ambiguous. And some of us, about 10 per cent, will do anything to win.

[...] The game story centres on Frankie, an usher in a cinema in regional Australia in the 1940s, who is confronted by a murderous psychopath.

Along the way, players must make choices which affect the progress and outcome of the game. Some are simple black and white decisions, such as whether to take money or not, but others are what developers call 'trolley problems', where players must decide whether they will kill or harm someone if it saves others.

Read more of this story at SoylentNews.