Morality Meters and Their Impacts on Moral Choices in Videogames: A Qualitative Study

Morality meters are a commonly used mechanic in many ethically notable video games. However, there have been several theoretical critiques of such meters, including that people can find them alienating, they instrumentalise morality, and reduce morality to binary good evil with no room for complexity. While has much discussion these issues, far less empirical investigation. We address this gap through qualitative study involved participants playing custom-built visual novel game ( The Great Fire) different intuitive counter-intuitive meter settings. Overall, we found players’ attitudes towards the was complex, context sensitive variable throughout gameplay intuitiveness encouraged treat more ‘as moral guide’ prompts reflection score’ be engaged reactively.