"Spiritual" Games

[econ21]

Sounds like it will embody everything that is wrong with modern religion:

There's no blood and a no cursing rule - curse and your energy level drops.

Focussing on swearing (or depictions of blood) is obsessing over form rather than content. And in gameplay terms, what on earth can it mean - that the programmers install a "curse" button that gamers can press in order to lose energy? Just too dumb for words.

I must admit I like some morality in computer games, but it has to be based around genuine moral dilemmas. The Fallout games had some nice moral elements in that your actions in each community you visited had consequences that were revealed to you in the game ending. Planescape Torment had a lot of spirituality in its plot and dialogue. KOTOR and some DnD games have followed PST in having shifting alignments, whereby your choices influenced your character's alignment. This was especially nice when the moral dilemmas became shades of grey rather than black and white, as in KOTOR2 where Kreia would comment on the unintended consequences of your choosing the apparently "good" option. However, this kind of stuff - real roleplaying - sounds a million miles from the inane "kill demons" stuff proposed here.

[Avicenna]

It's hard to actually do something in a game because it's 'moral' though, you just don't particularly care since you know they're just game characters. IN KotOR I just ended up doing all the 'good' choices or 'bad' choices depending on which alignment I chose to take, not really because I thought that was the 'correct' thing to do.

It all sounds like a whole load of ideas that won't really get anywhere.