Video games, stories, and morality

This is a really interesting review of the game Bioshock at Catholic Media Review (found via the Sci-Fi Catholic one of my new favorite blogs. I've never played the game and as the owner of a Mac and a PS2 probably won't anytime soon. What's interesting in the review is the level of moral consequence that seems to be embedded in the storyline of the game, to the point that one's moral decisions during the game determine how the game ends.

Stories are one of-- if not the-- most effective ways to learn about morality and the consequences of our decisions, short of painful first-hand experience. Video games are often touted as a form of immersive storytelling. This review points toward the potential gaming has: to craft a story that allows us to try out-- safely-- the outcomes of different courses of action. I don't think our AI technology is at point where that potential can be reached yet (Bioshock appears to offer only two endings which implies a correspondingly limited range of possible actions) and the kind of game I'm thinking of would require a lot of wisdom to program consequences correctly (and there are certainly different competing worldviews that would look at the same action and propose radically different consequences), but the potential, as I said, is there.

Years from now I suspect people will look at this era of gaming the same way art history looks at the beginnings of the Italian Renaissance, 150 years before the time of da Vinci: amazing for what they did given what they had but possessing just hints of the greatness to come.