Mind Games via Mirror Neurons

Celia Wagar1 Comment

What’s the difference between a mind game and blind guessing?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_neuron#Understanding_intentions

Mirror Neurons. People have a natural capacity to understand and predict other people. This same capacity does not exist with machines (though one time I beat a rock paper scissors neural net with 5 wins, 7 draws, and 0 losses, presumably because it was acting on data from real people). Machines can be way more perfectly random than people. People are very bad at being random.

Picture 2015-02-03 01_00_57.png

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1044840/ https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/02/150226132046.htm http://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/~karl/Predictive%20coding%20an%20account%20of%20the%20mirror%20neuron%20system.pdf

It’s been shown that humans have a limited ability to predict the actions of other humans under observation, believed to be facilitated with Mirror Neurons, Neurons that fire both when you do something, and when you see someone else do something (or even if you think they’re going to do it, but don’t realize you think it yet). When you expect someone to do something, neurons in your head fire, but you don’t have conscious access to these, rather they bubble up into your conscious mind as a prediction.

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There are some people who have no ability to predict other people, and just choose what they think the most unlikely thing is, like Mew2king. There are others who get inside the other person’s head, like PPMD, Mango, or Daigo. Fun fact, autism is suspected to be at least partially connected to a deficiency in mirror neurons (Editor’s note: History hasn’t borne this one out. Mirror Neurons are mostly considered kind of a dead-end these days).

A mind game is about watching people’s responses to situations, then choosing the response that beats theirs in that situation. A mindgame is about conditioning another player to respond a certain way to a situation, then changing it up on them at a critical moment. Repeat conditioning causes people to act pre-emptively and worsens their reaction time for unexpected stimuli.

Mindgaming is about knowing common reactions to certain situations and preying on those or setting up those situations at a critical moment to eke out a win. The thing is, when you’re playing someone else, they’re adapting to you too. So you need to update your log of opponent reactions as they change their pattern or anticipate when they’re going to change their pattern based on what you know about the player’s adaptation speed.

The difference between a read and a reaction is speed. When you read, you act pre-emptively. For this reason, reads are stronger than reactions, because you have more time to get stuff done, but you sacrifice accuracy. When you read, you’re flying blind.

Emukiller was the dude who taught me to react more in Smash. A lot of scenarios have 100% solutions, but only if you react. If you read pre-emptively all the time, then you’re liable to get screwed up when you could have covered all possible outcomes by just reacting. It’s up to you to figure out what the limits of your reaction time are to determine what’s reactable and what’s not.

This combo video is good for emphasizing mindgames. Notice how Darkrain moves preemptively of his opponent’s action. He’s there ahead of his opponent. He knows what they’ll select.

Or this:

Or here’s a Daigo montage for comparison:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ob6123gOqk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8qm96m7YOs

And this is probably the most clear example of a mind game you’ll see all day:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qF2S9KeaO2M
(for those wondering what it did, it made Combofiend afraid to act and more defensive, allowing Mike “Mike Ross” Ross to get in and pressure him for the KO)

Try playing someone worse than you and beating them just using basic options. I frequently beat beginners using nothing but light attacks in street fighter, or only sweeps, or only crouching strong. If you know exactly when to throw a move, then unless there’s a pure counter for it, you can win every time, even if it’s a bad or unsuitable move. Knowing when to throw it involves reading. Try this versus a friend who is bad to see what I mean.

See Also: How to Read a Book: Reads in Competitive Games

Parkour Thief Concept

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How would you design a game with stealth elements from the Thief series, mixed with the parkour system with all of it’s advanced techniques found in Mirror’s Edge?

Interesting idea. I wasn’t sure how this could work at first, but I think I might have an idea based on an older concept I thought up, of a stealth game based on speed. The idea is that as you go faster, you’re less visible/audible, so stealth is about trying to keep up speed and not let it drop. Keep on moving, don’t get tripped up.

Mirror’s edge has a system that supports this, a lot of the game is about avoiding getting tripped up. Many things like climbing up ledges or over fences have varying standards of success. Do it higher and more smoothly and make less noise, and go faster. This could also be applied to fall damage. Landing without a heavy fall is optimal, rolling is less optimal, then two levels of fall damage that make less and more noise. More perfect sideboosting could create less noise too.

A basic thought is, how do you inform the player that they’re being loud or quiet? One idea is that loud sounds can be lower pitched and more bassy where the quiet sounds can be higher pitched, softer in tone, and less bassy, so players can clearly distinguish them, yet still receive auditory feedback.

It would make sense to have footstep sounds change radius at different speed thresholds, so that things like wallboosts and the like can temporarily push you over the normal speed threshold, making you quieter until you slow down. It would also make sense to add a sound for hitting a wall at high speeds.

There should be a more mundane stealth system based on going slow on top of this, because it’s hard to go fast without knowing the level layouts. So you have the high level, gottagofast stealth, then the low level stuff. The low level could function more like thief, the high level more like mirror’s edge. Throw leaning on Q and E, move use onto F. Implement the fancy lighting system. Add a blackjack that can disable guards who don’t detect you.

The hard part is the level designs, the enemy AI. To make something suited for this would be difficult. You need to design around the fact that the player doesn’t know where stuff is in advance. How do you plan guard patrol paths that players zip by without getting a chance to study them for flaws? You could give players wallhack vision like everything does these days, show guard vision cones too. Whatever.

The levels probably make more sense being linear than open if speed is the focus, but you gotta provide a lot of paths to get around guards, otherwise the game doesn’t really make sense. I dunno what the final product would look like, would require a lot of thought to put together, maybe research into similar games, if any exist.

Designing Games for Teamwork

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How would you design activities which emphasize team work in Coop games? Most team events in games are kind of boring (Usually it’s stuff like hold button to help partner open door or move block, partner does something while you defend him, or something else)

Compared to the questions you asked leading up to this one (how would I make multiplayer games deeper?), this one is a lot better.

In my mind, it’s a matter of giving the characters’ various tools more applications that can potentially help a team mate. Team recoveries in Smash Bros are built on the simple principle that hitting someone in the air always restores their airdodge and Up B (unless they’re Yoshi or ROB). Some Up Bs like ganondorf’s and falcons naturally reset if they grab someone, so they lend themselves to team recoveries.

Overwatch naturally has a bunch of team-work things too. It’s a matter of creating synergy between moves, and not having those moves on the same character. Skullgirls has a similar principle. You’ll never find a character with both a shoryuken and a good horizontal projectile.

Some basic uses for team mates are healing each other, reviving each other, buffing each other, getting enemies off one another (left 4 dead), holding enemies in place for friends to annihilate, opening paths for one another (tower of power, mei’s bridges), trading resources with one another, pushing each other around, sharing information

Perhaps some things can have special arbitrary bonuses if you do them on top of what a team mate does, or special effects for actions performed in synchronicity.

Of course creating the potential for team work is not the same thing as emphasizing it, or forcing people to work together, but if you do that then you probably end up with situations like you described.

L4D forces team work by having it so special infected can do really quick specials on the survivors that instantly disable them, which they can only be saved from by another survivor. If you die, you can only be pulled out of a closet by a team mate, you can only be revived by a team mate, you guys can all pass healing supplies and guns around.

And as usual, depth is about making sure everything has a niche, multiple uses, variable outcomes, and synergy with other elements.

Arcade Design in the Modern Era

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Do arcade-like game design have a place in the modern era?

Okay, what’s Arcade-like design? Lets have a look at some elements I think fit:

-Low Persistence. Almost nothing is retained across sessions, or built up over time. You always start and end in the same place. Even across levels few things are typically carried over, so there is no worry about things like running out of ammo.

-No Direct Tutorials beyond a 30 second video (at most) at the beginning of play

-Pick up and Play, get into the action instantly due to low/no investment and short play cycles.

-Short Session time. 30 minute or less session times.

-High Difficulty, likely to die or take damage at any time.

-Fairness, all damage can be avoided, no need to manage attrition over time.

-Small numbers. Anything that’s a resource usually is dealt with in small chunky integers that are easy to keep track of. Like health being lives or icons, and granting mercy invincibility when you’re hit.

-Temporary powerups that are picked up and have a big effect. No 2% bonuses versus undead here. Quad Damage or go home. Powerups replace typical resources and are nonessential to progress.

-Lives, sometimes instead of Health. Lives change how checkpointing works, so you have big checkpoints (for when you continue) and little checkpoints (for when you lose a life). Sometimes lives are basically just health and the character respawns on the spot when they lose a life.

-Continues. When you run out of lives or health, you can put in another credit to continue, sacrificing your score, but getting all your health and ammo or whatever back. Lets you destroy the difficulty of the game in exchange for currency. But if you’re better, you can spend less money. Sometimes you’re asked to repeat some sections in exchange for continuing so it’s not completely free.

-Scoring. Scores give people a higher standard of play to work towards, and encourages 1 credit clears. Scores can institute their own systems of risk versus reward, track more carefully how perfect player perform certain actions, award players for conserving resources, milking enemies and the environment, and consistent performance. Scores are superficial, not used as a form of persistence. Gives people a reason to come back to games even when they beat them, and to not credit feed.

-Lack of exploration. You never backtrack, the way forward is always obvious. Branching paths may exist.

-Time Limits. Progress either continues automatically, or actual time limits penalize players that do not progress. Progression is inevitable. The only thing preventing progression is death.

-Local only. Everything happens at that one machine or set of machines.

-Twitchy fast action. No Puzzles. Usually nothing that could potentially be memorized or more accurately, trivialized through memorization.

What’s arcade design in a nutshell? “No Bullshit, go right at it, enjoy.”
I think there’s an audience that wants this, but developers and gamers keep getting distracted by other stuff. Not that it’s all bad, there’s a lot of games that you can’t really do in the arcade, like Dark Souls of course. However I think there’s something to be said for each of these design elements.

Glitches and Intentionality

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You’ve talked about how a lot of Melee’s advanced mechanics were intentional. So, how do you determine, in Melee or any game, whether or not a mechanic is intentional?

Only a couple are truly intentional honestly. Like L canceling is undeniably intentional. Edge canceling and teeter canceling are arguable but unlikely. Wavedashing was discovered and left in. Multishining is almost certainly unintended.

How do I judge? I look at how the mechanic works, what the developers definitely did implement that lead to the trick, how hard the trick is to perform, changes in the sequels.

Like L canceling, you look at that and it’s almost certainly intentional. There’s no other mechanic in any fighting game I know of or heard of that can increase the speed at which an animation plays. That’s the type of thing you’d need to specifically set up. Having a 7 frame window beforehand is even more unlikely. Having a buffer to speed up the next animation, that’s the type of thing that doesn’t appear by accident.

Wavedashing I largely argue is intentional because I’m stubborn and the sakurai interview. Wavedashing works because air momentum is inherited into ground momentum, and airdodging imparts momentum. Those are things the developers had to set up, but if this were any other game I wouldn’t argue wavedashing is intentional.

Jump canceling in Devil May Cry, that’s something else that can only be intentional, because it’s in every game in the series, and it’s too weird to allow the character to jump in midair without the normal midair jump effect (the magic circle beneath his feet) and reset all his air options.

Kick Glitching in Mirror’s Edge is weird, same with the other fall height resets. When the animation ends, you’re set to a grounded state. There’s no real purpose for this. One might presume that maybe this fixes weird collision issues with the floor, but it doesn’t. It’s there, and there’s no reason for it to be there. Maybe they just goofed in development and set the state to standing rather than falling after a kick, roll, or fence damage?

(description reads: “It would’ve been so easy to fix for the developers, it’s almost like they put it in the game on purpose.”)

Another one is Charge Partitioning in 3rd strike. It’s so weird, it’s hard to judge if it’s intentional. First they clearly build a timer that allows you to act while retaining charge, but it starts at an effectively random point. Maybe it’s there so you can do standing normals and cancel them into charge moves? Maybe it was improperly implemented? Who really knows? Since the timer meter exists, I’d point towards intentionality with bad implementation.

All the soul duping glitches in Dark Souls I’d argue are unintentional. They typically involve buffering actions, then replacing the item that’s used. The system is set up to perform the action associated with the animation, but decrement the counter of the item current slotted. Similarly, dropping the item before the counter can be decremented is an obvious abuse.

Intentionality doesn’t matter much to me though.

Hitscan versus Projectile weapons

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hitscan vs projectile? Even for fast ones like bullets, what would be better for gameplay? I think dodgeable bullets would be much more interesting.

Okay, if the projectile is so fast, it’s basically a bullet, then there’s really no difference between a physical projectile and a hitscan ray.

I absolutely agree that dodgeable bullets are more interesting. I think you can draw a basic relationship on how dodgeable bullets are between the speed/size of the bullet versus the movement speed/size of the character. When characters move faster, it’s more realistic for them to be able to dodge faster projectiles. When they are fast enough (about CS:GO speed and higher), it’s more realistic for them to be able to move out of the way of hitscan bullets by staying ahead of the other player’s ability to keep their reticule on the target (though of course, not to dodge bullets coming directly at them).

Basically, as a character is slower, the projectiles too should be slower to compensate and allow the player to dodge. As the character is faster, the projectiles are allowed to be faster because the player can adequately dodge them. At the threshold mentioned above of about CS:GO speed, a player can move and change their momentum fast enough to stay ahead of someone’s reticule (this is because of human reaction time).

Regrettably, we’ve seen the opposite relationship between projectiles in games, slower games are more likely to have hitscan rays, and faster games are more likely to have slow projectiles.

This is because the world is fucked up and there’s nothing we can do about it.

As a follow up to the hitscan/projectile question, is there a place for hitscan weapons in games? Are the best kept as low-tier weapons such as how quake 1 handles them, or how q3 handles them as either high spread or low power?

Yes, absolutely.

I think you’re forgetting that in both Quake 1 and Quake 3, the Lightning Gun is one of the best weapons you can get.

The thing is, when you make a weapon projectile-based, even with relatively fast projectiles, such as Q3’s plasma gun, it gets harder to aim it. So the Plasma Gun doesn’t see the same type of use as a DPS weapon like the Lightning Gun, even though the Plasma Gun has a higher DPS than the Lightning Gun. Instead of being used to DPS opponents, it’s more used for covering fire and controlling space when you don’t see your opponent, or outside LG range.

Hitscan weapons are fine because ideally if both you and your opponent run out into the open and shoot at each other with LGs, you’re not both going to hit each other dead on until the first one to get shot dies, because you’re both going to miss a lot, because it’s hard to keep your reticule trained on someone who keeps weaving back and forth, and aiming better when your target is moving in ways you can’t predict, while simultaneously weaving yourself takes predictive skills.

It’s sort of like how in fighting games, you can’t see what move your opponent does until after it hits you. Reactionary blind spot. Similar deal in RTS with the fog of war. The winner isn’t determined strictly by efficiency, it’s determined by who throws rock and who throws paper. Efficiency in FPS games isn’t strictly who has better aim and target acquisition speed, it’s who can predict where the other will move and shoot as well. So hitscan weapons can’t consistently DPS, so it all works out as long as you’re not so slow these things become trivial.

Hitscan is fine, as long as it doesn’t dominate the game in one way or another.

Are you a fan of hitscan weapons? Why or not?

Uh, I like them when I like them? I dislike when a game is ENTIRELY hitscan weapons, like most modern shooters. It’s nice to have a mix of projectiles and hitscan. There’s only so much varying functionality you can get out of exclusively hitscan weapons.

I only really have an issue with when enemies have 0 startup hitscan weapons, that’s where trouble comes in.

Hitscan works fine in multiplayer because players need to predict which way their opponent will move, so it’s not totally a “who sees who first” thing, unless you die practically instantly and move slowly like modern shooters.

It also works fine in multiplayer because it doesn’t really matter if the player has unfairly overpowered weapons relative to the CPU, only that enemies don’t have unfair weapons against the player, because they can’t participate in the same mindgames as two human players can. They can at best approximate it, and have their efficiency cranked up or down.

Ori: Definitive Edition

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What do you think of Ori and the Blind Forest Definitive Edition?

It doesn’t quite live up to all expectations; mostly because it’s hard to make the original map structure as interconnected as I would prefer given the way the world is laid out, but it does do a lot to aid the interconnectivity of the world, and the warp points are a decent compensation.

Basically, the trouble with the original as a metroidvania game is that all the major points of interest function on their own little part of the map and don’t involve movement through any others. There’s no reason to backtrack if you are interested in progressing. Each area is its own self contained obstacle course and you’d only want to return in order to pick up collectibles.

So Definitive Edition still has this problem, but they made the world more interconnected and added warp points, which makes it a bit easier to backtrack for collectibles. Also now that all the areas can be backtracked to, including dungeon areas, there’s no danger of missing collectibles in say the ginso tree.

On the upshot, they added a new dash ability. It lets you move really fast, recharges on contact with the ground. What’s also cool is that the trick where you release the control stick right as you do the move also works with Dash, so you can do a bash style boost anywhere and ride the momentum as you glide and double jump. What’s also cool about this is they had it work in combination with the charge jump, so if you charge then dash, you’ll do a charge dash that goes further and can hurt enemies and break walls.

They also added a new grenade tossing ability. It kind of makes sense given the physics engine, but doesn’t really see much use except for hitting switches that can only be hit by this ability.

These abilities are both hidden in a new area placed close to the start that is designed to avoid using most of the other abilities available to you, so you can clear those areas as soon as you get walljump or maybe double jump. I ended up not visiting this area until late in the game unfortunately (after getting charge jump, right before ascending mount horu).

I think they also placed more collectibles that can only be obtained with late-game powers in earlier sections of the game. I definitely noticed a couple blocked off by the grenade toss power.

Also interestingly, they kept all of the old glitches, and most of the old skips. I was able to perform the cutscene skip save glitch in a few places, and do a number of the old skips. Good work on their part keeping that alive.

There’s a new easy, hard, and hardcore mode. I played Hard mode, and it ramps up the damage significantly. Makes the game about as hard as I’d like. I felt the original was a bit too forgiving.

Overall, it’s definitive. It’s better than the original. It couldn’t completely overcome the original’s flaws because the world structure of the original was a bit too restrictive, but it did a nice job regardless.

Castlevania 3 Level Design Counter-Analysis

Celia Wagar2 Comments

http://gamecareerguide.com/features/869/good_games_bad_design__episode_.php thoughts on this article?

Ha ha. An article on why the game that I praise as being a masterpiece in level design has poor level design. Maybe they should have reviewed one of the actually interesting levels instead of the first one.

Here’s a video so you can see the first level in motion:

1-01. You were given a safe space to try out the controls before being thrown into the action. They placed a candle at the top of the stairs, so that if you walk up the stairs, you are rewarded for doing so, building the basic behavior that walking up stairs is rewarding. Stair controls in classicvania were very rigid, so it’s nice to have a place to try them out without risk.

1-02. Now you have stairs in conjunction with skeletons. These are the most basic enemy type in the game, giving you a place where you can be damaged, but also destroy skeletons. You can walk up the stairs, but need to be somewhat careful of the movement of the skeletons. The game is starting you off slow. Mario did much the same thing.

His ideas here for how the game could branch off and offer all these amazing possibilities are getting way too far ahead of himself. The game is giving you a chance to acclimate yourself to the controls.

The “disappointment well” is the most insignificant thing.

Also here you have a heart that drops over a pit, but because of the sine pattern of hearts, you can catch it without jumping off the platform, minor skill challenge, important for the room ahead.

Funny that he disregards the chapel. Guess he’s only focusing on the bad.

Maybe they’re playing a bit hardball here. You can react to it if you’re familiar with the controls. It’s not fair to say that this is the first enemy that has a real challenge. There were bats in the chapel.

They have you move far to the right to ascend because stairs only go diagonal, and they want you on the far end of the top platform. Also it brings the next skeleton into view so he can become active throwing bones down at you while moving you out of the way of his bones to face him head on.

The skeleton below the overhang has quite clever positioning actually. He blocks the stairs down, practically asking the player to fall, he tosses bones up at you, he offers the risky option of jumping over him to skip him. Plus this is a great opportunity to use your subweapon, as both the bottle and axe will hit him down there.

I don’t know the purpose of the top platform with the candle either.

There’s a candle in the “disappointment well”. The first swivel platform also lets you test the platforms in a safe environment before the real test with the medusa heads ahead. Also notice the first one spawns in a place with no platforms. He’s right about the way players might accidentally take the bottom path, but it’s not a huge fault.

1-03. It’s the first level, it doesn’t need to strongly engage the player. It just needs to establish the basics. This room has enemies that need to be dispatched 1 at a time continually, and a small jump that might be made more dangerous by enemies on the other side.

The skeletons don’t jump randomly, flea men are a fair way to ramp up the challenge.

It’s not earlier misdirection. There can’t be misdirection if the pattern doesn’t exist yet. I know the author has a preconception from prior castlevania games, but in this game this is the first instance of turkey.

There’s two flea men here, both fight you individually. It wouldn’t make more sense to put the zombies here because it’s not flat ground, and the space is rather cramped in comparison.

I’ll admit that it’s a fault in the boss that you can get trapped without a way to escape.

Overall, this analysis short sells a lot of the level design of the first level. The way they took pictures, omitting most enemies, really makes it a lot harder to understand what’s going on in the first level.

The other thing is, it’s the first level. They’re not trying to destroy the player. It’s the ramp-up, the teaching phase. All these “disappointment wells” cost seconds at most.

They keep reiterating that the player’s not really learning anything, but lets look it over:

They get an opportunity to try out the controls, including the stairs. They get an opportunity to destroy some enemies or get hurt. They’re required to climb stairs to proceed. They get an opportunity to break candles and catch their contents over safe gaps. They are required to hit enemies or get hurt. They are required to jump to aescend. They have an opportunity to fall into a bottomless pit. They are introduced to enemies with projectiles, they are required to jump over the easiest type of bottomless pit, with a ramp up, mimicking the jumps in the chapel, so they won’t make the mistake of thinking they can walk over it. They’re introduced to medusa heads and a new type of level feature, the swivel panels. The medusa heads themselves are like more extreme versions of the bats they faced earlier. They face respawning enemies, required to whip them to proceed and potentially get the cross item which clears them. They have to jump over a real bottomless pit in combination with the respawning enemies. Then they face the flea men, the first dynamic enemy, and have a chance at wall chicken. Finally they face a boss who is one of the simplest bosses in the game, but has the minor flaw that the player can get trapped and forced to take damage.

To win, the player needs to know how to move, climb stairs, whip, and jump. Optionally they need to know how to break candles, and use subweapons. These are all the skills the player uses throughout the game. The first level has accomplished its job and the game is now free to challenge the player under the assumption they have all the skills necessary.

Why’s everything an RPG these days?

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What do you think of this trend of making everything a RPG? I think it’s a excuse to make games with shit gameplay.

C’mon, do you think developers intentionally sabotage their own games? People do things because they think it’s the best course of action. It’s hard for people to bear the cognitive dissonance of intentionally doing something they don’t think is the best option.

It’s much simpler to say that they have a different set of values, that they look at it a different way.

On a base level it feels good to grow stronger. It feels good to find something easier than you did before. You can do this through legitimately getting better at the game and more consistent at executing, or you can do this through stats increasing. The brain registers these things in similar ways.

On the marketing end, adding hamster wheels to games makes them last longer. Players get a sunk cost in the games. You have regular reward scheduling. Simple stuff.

Beyond that, it kind of makes an intuitive sense to most people. You want your game to be more complex? Add more functions. You can’t really add new mechanics, so add bonuses that players invest into. Look at all the online multiplayer games like Call of Duty where you grind for things, and have loadouts of mostly identical weapons. RPG mechanics can be attached to anything, so they are attached to everything. Don’t know when to dole out new abilities? Make it an RPG, let experience points sort it out. Don’t want to overwhelm players with having tons of abilities from the start? Same thing. It’s progression and tutorialization in one package.

It doesn’t fit in everything, it’s kinda lame to grind to trivialize games, but people think it’s cool, and it appeals to some base human desires in a way.

How would you make a morality/character alignment system?

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Okay, what function do morality/character alignment systems perform?

They usually control:
1. What powers the characters can get/have
2. What choices the player is capable of making
3. Other characters/enemies reactions to the player
4. What ending you get
http://www.giantbomb.com/moral-decisions/3015-93/

One common drawback is they’re frequently a sliding scale from good to evil, with more powerful benefits as you’re further down one end of the scale, at which point it’s worth asking why they don’t just lock you into one choice at the beginning of the game since they clearly don’t want you to switch mid-way or mix and match. Mass Effect lets you mix and match at any time, sometimes to the other one’s exclusion though, and if you weren’t building up points for one from early into the game, you’ll get locked out of choices later on.

Morality systems differ a lot in impact across various games. Shadow the Hedgehog has a complete branching tree of levels that are traveled based on morality, with a good, bad, and sometimes neutral objective in every level. Dishonored has the levels change based on “chaos” level, with a net additive effect across levels. Some SMT games like Strange Journey have a synergy effect between demons if they have the same alignment. Undertale has practically a whole different campaign for genocide versus pacifist (weak example compared to the others, I know). Demon’s souls has character and world tendency.

So what type of system would I make? I don’t really know. It’s not the type of thing I’d include in the first place honestly. I’d probably make up hokey alignments like the ones on the alignment chart below that a friend of mine (clarencemage) made up for fighting game players. I lean towards a dishonored type system, except I’d have different outcomes for good and bad that made levels more interesting as suited to that playstyle, rather than one just making the game flat easier. Like have different enemies appear. That and if I went with a system that was just one sliding scale of good to bad, I’d have neutral with unique things showing up in the middle, or some type of special reward for players who mix it up and end up neutral, or who swing all the way from one alignment to the other. I also really like the shadow the hedgehog approach, it’s just cool.

Maybe I’d go full D&D and have a grid of 9 alignments. Have power upgrade trees for each of them, when you get enough points to shift alignments, you lose your greater powers, then regain the ones appropriate to that alignment after a while.

What would assign alignment? Miscellaneous grindable actions (like every open world game)? Specific exclusive objectives (shadow the hedgehog and Undertale)? Sidequests? I really have no idea.

If I REALLY cared, I’d probably think about real world morality long and hard and try to come up with something that reflected that.