I agree with you on agreeing with me, Radek [img]smile.gif[/img]
But I beg to differ on the other points. I agree with jsalsb that parenting does make a difference. A parent's job is not to make every decision for their child, and neither is it to give them a laundry list of reactions for every situation. There are just too many of them. Rather, they need to give them the tools to be able to make up their own minds, even starting at a young age. That's why parents need to be involved.
Sadly, it doesn't happen enough these days. I believe that studies have shown that if you look at schools with student who do well overall, and contrast them with those where students do poorly, one of the big differences is how involved the parents are. The more involved the parent, the better the child does. And "involvement" means more than just sitting in a conference once every six months.
We read a lot of books with our kids, and some of them do cover things that are a little more advanced than we'd like. We discuss those things, and get our kids to talk about what they'd do in given situations.
It's the age-old argument of nature versus nurture, or heredity versus environment. Can the parents have an impact? You bet. I've seen it happen with my kids... to the good *AND* the bad. They've picked up some of my bad habits on occasion.
As for Kakero's comments, I tend to agree. Gaming is an escape for me -- it lets me do things I can't in real life. I wasn't born with straight 24 stats, but I can pretend to be that way in W&W. I can't cast magic spells, but I can through my characters.
Last night, I wanted to game badly because I'd had a rotten several days. Unfortunately, I couldn't because AdAware had clobbered my system and wouldn't let me run W&W. I wanted to kill something, but couldn't; so I went to bed.
I didn't kill something in the real world to make up for it (although I did want to kill a white russian (drink, that is), but I didn't have any). Of course, you might make the argument that I'm well-enough adjusted to know the difference between reality and fantasy, even after seeing all those Road Runner cartoons when I grew up [img]tongue.gif[/img]
I agree that the MM approach to morality still left some holes, but I think it was a step in the good direction. If you remember some of the NPC interactions, you may recall that the folks at NWC brought up some of those kinds of issues. Think of the things the children would talk about -- whether goblins were people too, basically, or whether they had thoughts or feelings. It was an effort to make you think, as you went along wielding sword, spear, and staff.
I certainly would like to see games make things more realistic. Imagine if the townsfolks in MM started hiring heroes or "police" to combat you... imagine what that could have been like
I think the key thing in games, just like in RL, is not to prevent evil from happening, but to give you the choice, and see what you do. And then live with the results and implications. And yes, I'd like to see a whole lot more of them.