Moral Minds in Gaming

Abstract. Games including meaningful narratives and moral decisions have become increasingly popular. This case study examines (a) the prevalence of morality and moral foundations, (b) player decisions when encountering moral options, and (c) the influence of contextual factors (i.e., time pressure, played avatar, and humanness of nonplayable characters) on moral decision-making in the popular video game Detroit: Become Human. Based on extensive coding of available world statistics we identified 73.21% morally relevant (vs. morally irrelevant) decisions in the game with a high prevalence for harm- and authority-related situations. Although players had an overall tendency to engage in moral behavior, they were more likely to act “good” when under time pressure and if nonhuman characters were involved. Our findings are discussed with regard to common theories of morality. Results support the notion that prior theoretical assumptions may be successfully mapped onto top-selling video games.