Morals and Money

Maybe I should have entitled this post as Morals OR Money...

There has been some recent Twitter activity about ratings and popularity of certain games. It is clear not everyone agrees with each other on the stand of Morals vs making games with an eye towards making money. Obviously anyone who makes games wants to make money, of that i think there is no doubt. However what we compromise when making our game can show in the final product and can also tell in the sales of the said product.

Let me go to a subject or Moral dilemma, this is mine and my friends set of dilemmas that we have recently discussed (again).
1. Should we add some tottie into the mix (put semi-naked girls into the game).
2. Should we use girl voices in suggestive ways in the game.
3. Should we plagiarize another game to piggyback off of its success.

Now I have a job currently, and my friend has recently lost his job. When he was working we decided to stay away from all 3 points listed above. However we did not really Need the money to survive at that point in time. Now a few months on we are talking about adding into any new games we do the number 1 and number 2 items. Something i can tell ya our wives are not very keen on. Now why is that ? Well it seems wrong to add this things arbitrarily to a game just to get more downloads and sales. Yet..... If ya giving the buying public what they want, well, isn't that a reasonable way to view a designers task?

So back to our discussion about moral implications. So far as you can tell my Friend wants to goa  more risky route with the games, as making money is now more important to him. Today while discussing this issue i told him that i would in fact be very interested in also loosening my morals if my job ended.

Now i am not talking about compromising the games to add in these female bits, but instead find good ways to put them in the game. Heck, the game is gonna be the same with or without them, but instead of being bold knights or barbarians in armour, they would be nightie clad girls swinging pillows or something. So it is obvious i can convince myself that this doesn't matter, my games integrity is still solid as it is the game i designed way back when i had a solid income. But somehow in the back of my mind i am not truly happy with the decision.

This brings me to my last point. Number 3 is something i cannot seem to get over. I cannot seem to feel poor enough or without my own ideas and designs and hopes for my own ideas that i could just copy someone Else's game. Now all games come down to several common seeds and then are remixed and rebalanced in the new mix to create a new game. This i know, but fully plagiarized games do not interest me at all.

Each person has their own personal and subjective view on their moral high ground. Some the sexist aspects are not as important as legal ones and in some cases nothing matters but making money.

Where do you fall?

I fall somewhere related to my desperation for money for my family and mortgage.

Da Voodoochief

ps. i apologise for jumping around in this Blog post. I just could not quite get my head organised, yet i felt like i had stuff to say.