For as long as there have been computer games, there have been what’s been known as computer role playing games. Personally, I’m hesitant to use the term for many games that claim to be part of that genre, simply because the opportunity to play a role of your choice has usually been severely limited. One of the most famous role playing games – and one of the greatest games ever made, in my opinion, was Ultima IV. However, even in a game of such depth and complexity, the opportunity to play more than one kind of role was curtailed; rather than choosing how to behave, the player was railroaded into becoming the epitome of truth, love and courage to complete the game. If, like me, you’re a believer that computer games, like stories, books and films, are an important means of informal education, then truth, love and courage are probably a good way to start.

In many ways, Ultima IV set the standard for many of the RPGs to come. For the next decade or so, games required the players to behave in a certain way – that is, to be ‘good’ in order to succeed. This is the crux of my argument – if we must behave in a certain way, are we, really, playing a role?

However, by the 90s, and definitely in the 21st century, there was a marked change in the moral guidance implicit in the role playing genre; indeed, with games like the Baldur’s Gate series, suddenly there was an opportunity to behave in a totally different way – and a way that would lead to different kind of endings. Nor was this kind of thing limited to CRPGs – games like Fallout included a variety of endings as well. Let me give you an example, in Baldur’s Gate, you were set upon the path to become a god, but by the end of the series of games, you had to make a bunch of different decisions about whether you wanted to be a god at all, and if you did, what kind of god you would be.

Nor was it limited to a final choice at the end of the game – you had a variety of choices about how you spoke to NPCs -and if a choice didn’t fit your role, it wasn’t available. Of course, this had an effect on the way NPCs percieved you, and so on. Naturally, this has proved to be incredibly popular with gamers – and now games like Fable 2 and Fallout 3 incorporate quite a sophisticated approach to this problem.

But here’s the nub of the matter: if, as I suggested above, games are a form of learning, in much the same way as fairy tales and novels are, what are people learning by being able to choose to be evil?