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Cathy Fers

Professor Gonzalez

ENC 1102

30 March 2023

Literature Review

Over the past year or so, I stumbled upon an interactive story-telling video game called

Detroit: Become Human, which completely fascinated me. Set in the year 2038, the game takes

place in a world where laborious tasks that humans don't wish to do are performed by Androids.

As the player, you play as three different Androids: Connor, Kara, and Markus. Throughout the

game, players are confronted with numerous choices, including several moral decisions.

Examples of these moral decisions include: being tasked with going against human orders,

deciding whether to kill or save someone, or peacefully or aggressively protesting for the liberty

of androids. While playing Detroit: Become Human, I realized that decision-making was a

crucial aspect of the game, and it demanded a great deal of thought. As a result, I became curious

about the factors that influenced the decisions I made in the game and wanted to delve deeper

into understanding and analyzing them. The decisions I made in the game had a profound impact

on the story's trajectory and the eventual outcome, which made the gameplay all the more

compelling.

As it turns out, my curiosity about the game, Detroit: Become Human, and the moral

decisions it presents is shared by others. In my review of sources, I discovered that several key

topics are commonly explored, including video games, morality, and decision-making. To find

relevant sources, I examined the Works Cited pages of papers that shared a similar inquiry as

mine, and I ensured that each source was recent and focused on at least two of the key points I
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intended to discuss. These sources provided valuable insights into how video games can serve as

a platform for exploring ethical and moral questions, as well as the potential impact of these

games on players' beliefs and behaviors.

The sources I’ve analyzed provide insights into players' decision-making processes in

Detroit: Become Human. They reveal that players often make moral choices (versus immoral

decisions) in video games, especially if they are playing a heroic role, and that these choices they

make are influenced by their feelings of empathy or predictive feelings of guilt (Consalvo et al.

232; Hartmann and Vorderer 113; Boyan et al. 49). I believe that their findings can be seen in my

gameplay, as a lot of the choices I made were mostly because I know I’d feel like a bad person if

I chose to make an immoral decision. The timed nature of the decisions also affects players'

choices (Holl and Melzer 295). This adds another stress factor, during my gameplay it led me to

almost make rash decisions. Environmental cues within the game, such as public opinion or

societal norms, often influence players' decisions (Tamborini et al. 576). An example of this that

can be tied with Detroit: Become Human is when it comes to the protesting I previously

mentioned. The only way for the public eye to support the android liberation movement was to

be peaceful instead of aggressive. Some players may experience moral disengagement when

making immoral decisions, this means they’re going against their morals. However, if there isn’t

any violence caused by their actions, they’re more likely to make immoral choices (Hartmann

and Vorderer 112-113) Some players also separate themselves from their characters, leading to

multiple playthroughs with different moral choices (Consalvo et al. 226-228). I have also done

this with Detroit: Become Human, once I finished a full playthrough of the game, I went back to

see what the outcome would’ve been if I made the immoral decision. An aspect of particular

importance that I aimed to investigate is the underlying reasoning behind my decisions, even if
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they were perceived as immoral. To achieve this, I will utilize Clifford and his colleagues' Moral

Foundations framework to analyze my data. (Clifford et al. 1182)

There are a few key findings in the sources I have that connect strongly with my research.

The most important key findings I find to be the fact that most players usually tend to make

moral decisions, and that societal morals are to blame. This can be either a conscious or a

subconscious decision, but regardless it has an effect. Another very important finding for my

research is the fact that empathy and predictive feelings of guilt have a strong effect on the moral

decision-making process. Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of others. It

involves the capacity to put oneself in someone else's shoes and feel what they feel. Predictive

feelings of guilt, on the other hand, involve anticipating the negative emotions that may arise

from making a particular decision. This also ties into the finding that most players tend to

immerse themselves into the role of the character they’re playing, especially if it’s a heroic one.

Which in turn affects the decision made and how it aligns with the morals of the player and also

the character. The last key finding which affected my research will be environmental cues seen in

the game. The weather, music, lighting, and colors, all affect the gameplay, which reflects on the

decision-making because it impacts the players' emotional state. Combining all of these findings

and applying them to my research, there will be a clearer explanation as to what factors (game

aspects, morals, etc.) seen during gameplay affect my decision-making process for moral

decisions.
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Works Cited

Boyan, Andy, et al. A massively moral game? Mass Effect as a case study to understand the

influence of players’ moral intuitions on adherence to hero or antihero play styles.

Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds, vol. 7, no. 1, 2015, pp. 41-57.

Consalvo, Mia, et al. Playing a Better Me: How Players Rehearse Their Ethos via Moral

Choices. Games and Culture, vol. 14, no. 3, 2016, pp. 216-35.

Hartmann, Tilo, and Peter Vorderer. It’s Okay to Shoot a Character: Moral Disengagement in

Violent Video Games. Journal of Communication, vol. 60, 2010, pp. 94-119.

Holl, Elisabeth, and André Melzer. Moral Minds in Gaming: A Quantitative Case Study of Moral

Decisions in Detroit: Become Human. Journal of Media Psychology: Theories, Methods,

and Applications, vol. 34, no. 5, 2022, pp. 287-98.

Tamborini, Ron, and Nicholas D. Bowman. The effect of moral intuitions on decisions in video

game play: The impact of chronic and temporary intuition accessibility. new media &

society, vol. 20, no. 2, 2016, pp. 564-80.