So here's where look super geeky with a mix of my educational side and my gamer side. Small beginning disclaimer: this is in no way any sort of scholarly article, and is really just my ramblings about how some psychological theories along with the game play of Star Wars: The Old Republic may interact. As you read, please keep in mind that I am NOT saying in any way that SWTOR is bad, that games are bad, or any sort of that nonsense. This is me just throwing my ideas and how I string the elements that I encounter in life together. Also, please note that I am really quite insane and tend to take things I see in games and movies with me in real life and incorporate parts of them in to myself. I will explain further what I mean, but I wanted to throw out there that I realize not everyone is like this, and so my worries about the implications of SWTOR in real life may not apply to everyone.
Now that we have that out of the way...
The topic I am really curious about is the impact of decision making and the view of morality as we see in SWTOR and how it might influence individual feelings of morality in real life.
First, for those of you who are not familiar with the gaming realm, SWTOR is a very story-line based game, where you can pick different things to say or do in quests and conversations. Some of these decisions are trivial, with no impact whatsoever other than making the non-player character (NPC) you're talking to react in a different way initially, to other decisions that affect whether someone (again, an NPC, not anyone in your party) dies and/or determines what rewards you obtain. Some of these decisions will gain you Light or Dark side points, which may affect what gear you can wear, or lightsaber colors you can have. So when deciding what to say, you will be shown whether your decision is a Light or Dark sided option and yes, you can be a Jedi that has become aligned with the Dark side, or a Sith with Light side alignment (I don't think you can ever actually change factions though).
Secondly, for those of you who are not familiar with the psychology realm, I will explain one of the key theories in my thinking: Cognitive Dissonance theory. So while I've linked to the Wikipedia article on it for those of you interested, here's just a quick run-down. Basically, if we see ourselves behaving (speaking and/or doing something) in some way that is inconsistent with beliefs [we think] we hold, this causes cognitive dissonance, which is anxiety inducing, and we must make some sort of alteration in either the behavior or the beliefs in order to remove/reduce this anxiety. This is, of course, dependent on there being no other explanation for our belief-inconsistent-behavior, such as payment or other rewards. FOR EXAMPLE: one of the simplest studies of cognitive dissonance was to have subjects come in to a lab and perform some very meaningless, useless, and especially boring task. It was after this task that the real experiment began - upon finishing, the subject would be asked to tell the next person coming in (really just a person working for the experiment) that the task was fun and enjoyable. In one condition, the participant was offered some sum of money (like $20) for lying, and in the other, the participant was offered either no money or some piddling, negligible amount. Then, before leaving the lab, they filled out a survey which included questions about how fun the task was. For those who were offered the larger sum of money, the survey was overall rated as boring, and not fun, while those who were not offered that money rated the task as fun. Basically you have the people in the former condition thinking (probably outside their awareness), "Why did I say that was fun? Well of course I SAID it was fun because they gave me $20 to do so - but it really wasn't fun at all" while those in the latter condition would have been left with thoughts such as, "Why did I say it was fun? I guess it must've been pretty fun, but they gave me $1 to say it was fun... but that's not enough money to make me lie, so I guess it was fun." This is just one of the examples of this theory, but we see how inconsistency between behavior and beliefs can result in a change in one or the other, when there is no other explanation that adequately accounts for the inconsistency. And, because the behavior is usually hard to change (on account of it being in the past, and not necessarily going to be repeated), it is usually the thoughts that are altered.
So now that we know that SWTOR makes you choose between Dark and Light side behaviors, and that if we see ourselves doing something inconsistent with our beliefs, we might end up changing those beliefs. So how does this impact morality? Well if we consider the Light side as inherently good and moral, and the Dark side as bad and evil, then the game's labels of some decisions as Light and others as Dark then we are making decisions that are already labeled as "moral" or "immoral." This is where I start to have a problem and I, personally, start feeling a lot of cognitive dissonance.
Lets start with a concrete example: there's a Trooper (Light-side) quest where you're asked by a mother to find her missing son who had been kidnapped. When you find him, he says he would like to leave the planet so his kidnappers won't find him again. Your two options, at this point are to give him enough money so he can escape the planet on his own (Light-side) or have him go to his parents (Dark-side).
Here, in playing a Jedi, I feel as if I should take ALL the Light-side points (_o/ <-- Allie Brosh pose) and be the ideal Jedi, but goddamnit, I'm ASIAN. I'd HAVE to send a kid to his parents if they're so worried about him! So if I had picked the Light option to give him money, I would've been feeling quite a bit of anxiety over my decision - thankfully for me, this was actually my boyfriend playing and I was watching while my computer was going through a reset-to-manufacturer's-settings (a whole story in itself). But what about the alternate explanation - could there be some sort of reasoning behind a decision that would've been inconsistent with my beliefs? Well, as my thinking went, it was, "It's just a game, I should take the Light-side option to get all the Light-side POINTS....... but... it's just a GAME and the points don't do much, so I should do what I think is right." So on the one hand, the "just a game" argument could be used as justification for inconsistent behavior, but paradoxically could be seen as inadequate reasoning for the same thing - it all really depends on the individual person's point of view.
So, here's where I feel like it may have a broader impact. I wonder if it is possible that I'm not the only person that feels these moral dilemmas between picking decisions that are in line with their character's Light or Dark alignment, and their own personal beliefs, values, and morals. I mean, if the Dark/Light points and alignment had a greater impact on the story and on others' interactions with you in the game instead of just changing what gear you can wear and what colors you can use for your blaster or lightsaber, then perhaps there would be enough incentive to make a decision that goes against your personal beliefs without causing cognitive dissonance and the resulting anxiety. If there is such a greater impact, then I haven't played the game enough yet to find it. But I wonder if Jedi/Sith morals will begin to set itself into people's value sets because of the role of cognitive dissonance.
I do like how being able to play on either side kind of blurs the line between "Good" and "Evil" though, as some Dark-side options have some very good reasoning behind them, and could be very logically justified as being for the good of others.
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