Well, one thing could be that the games I described would be quite crappy :) L.A. Noire as Michaelos described it sounds better.
I admit that my attempts to make game mechanics that teach to values truthseeking over “comfortable compromise” weren’t that great. Doing it right requires two things:
1) Having an environment in which it is possible and meaningful to choose between truthseeking and comfortable compromise (so the player can exercise his “truth-seeking muscle”)
2) Encouraging the player to do pick truthseeking
I think the Phoenix Wright games fail at the first (the decision is taken “in the story”, not in the game mechanics), and my examples fail at the second.
It may be that the best way to teach that is through a strory in which a sympathetic character uncompromisinly looks for the truth, but in that case it doesn’t matter as much whether the story is in a game, a novel, a movie or a Harry Potter fanfiction. You could take the plot of a Phoenix Wright but replace the dialogue/interrogation/search gameplay phases with some minesweeper-like gameplay, then I get the impression that a lot of your arguments would still hold.
Well, one thing could be that the games I described would be quite crappy :) L.A. Noire as Michaelos described it sounds better.
I admit that my attempts to make game mechanics that teach to values truthseeking over “comfortable compromise” weren’t that great. Doing it right requires two things:
1) Having an environment in which it is possible and meaningful to choose between truthseeking and comfortable compromise (so the player can exercise his “truth-seeking muscle”)
2) Encouraging the player to do pick truthseeking
I think the Phoenix Wright games fail at the first (the decision is taken “in the story”, not in the game mechanics), and my examples fail at the second.
It may be that the best way to teach that is through a strory in which a sympathetic character uncompromisinly looks for the truth, but in that case it doesn’t matter as much whether the story is in a game, a novel, a movie or a Harry Potter fanfiction. You could take the plot of a Phoenix Wright but replace the dialogue/interrogation/search gameplay phases with some minesweeper-like gameplay, then I get the impression that a lot of your arguments would still hold.
^You’ve just described the Professor Layton games...