Assuming God exists, and God rewards behaviours that are beneficial to other people...

Would God, then, reward you for good behaviour in a video game?
If you have the choice to kill that NPC or give him a medpack, and you give him the medpack, do you get Karma?
If you see a beggar and you give him a gold or two in Oblivion, do you get rewarded?
If you choose to be social instead of aggressive in Spore...?
If you choose to use the light side of the force instead of the dark side in Star Wars...?
If you save the Little Sisters instead of harvesting them in Bioshock...?
If you help the NSA over the JBA in Splinter Cell: Double Agent...?

Basically, is karma and that sort of thing based on real-life consequences of your actions, or just your intentions?


But the other interesting thing is that, if you look at that list up there ^ again (I went through my games list and picked a few), you'll notice that most of them involve 'x or y' decisions, where you have to choose essentially being good or bad. Given only two choices, that's not much of a choice. Real life has more variables than that.

But I played this one game, KOTOR, where a beggar asks you for a couple of credits. Here's the interesting thing.
If you didn't give him the credits, he would starve and you'd lose morality.
If you gave him the credits, you gained morality. But! A little while later, another beggar mugged him, killed him, and stole the credits. Which is reprehensible and all, but these are both forgotten, overlooked, starving beggars with no prospects, skills or future. And since the first beggar died, it rendered your good deed pointless. Worse. You were a contributing factor in his death by giving him the credits.

So I think we need more games which really test our morality. You know, other than 'x or y'.

But there's another problem. Most people, when playing a video game, dissociate because it's not real and has no consequences.
But I thought of a way to slightly circumvent that.
Basically, you don't allow the person playing to save. Or, if they can save, it's only to store their progress; basically, to make it so that they can't go back and pick something else.

Because often, when I'm playing a game, I'll save, do the bad thing to see what happens, then restore and do the good thing and continue on - feeling 'eh, I just did the good thing, it's what's expected of my character, so what?'.

But if they can't save, it puts the pressure on them to get it right the first time. Same goes for platformers and shooters; if the person only has one life, they tend to play much more conservatively, not taking risks. It doesn't stop them dissociating completely, it's just a tiny difference that, when combined with other things to make it more realistic, can change the decisions you make.

And to be honest, I much prefer games that adapt to my style of playing, rather than me having to adapt to theirs. Spore is a good example - on my first play through, it told me I was a herbivore, social, religious creature. Second play through I purposefully killed everything and was significantly more aggressive. Know what? The first one was much more fun - to fight, you just press a few buttons without thinking about it. But to be social, you've got to win other creatures' trust, and you've got to put in the effort - and walking around with three other different creatures backing me up is just aweome.
Whereas in COD4, say, I'm always Allied, and I always have to fight Axis (or OpFor, or whatever the 'bad guys', generic russian communists and middle-eastern terrorists are called these days). What if I agree with tearing down the system that currently exists to make way for one that is for the greater good of all the people? (For example).

So yeah. In conclusion, I wonder if you get karma for good decisions in a game; and also we need more interesting games that test us in different ways (than just reflexes or hand-eye coordination).