I know that trying to account of every possibility in something like this is a near impossible task, but there were definitely a several points that I wished I could have given my actual answers. As an example, in the first scenario, I wish there had been an option to talk to the cabin boy instead of just taking the captain’s word that the cabin boy was okay with sacrificing himself for the rest. I didn’t fully trust the captain, so I didn’t know if I actually believed him when he told me the cabin boy was okay with it. If the cabin boy said it himself, my choices likely would have been different. Even more than that though, I wish there had been an option to sacrifice myself to save the others. While yes, the later scenarios did have some self sacrifice type of options, spending money to save lives and paying higher taxes don’t have the same weight as offering my life to save others.
In general, I felt like the choices I was given were very limited for discussing moral dilemmas, as were the interpretations of those choices. I wasn’t going to eat the cabin boy, not because I am morally against the idea of sacrificing one to save many, but because I didn’t trust the captain was telling me the truth. Fixing the car part made the most sense, not just because lives were more important than money but because knowing this was a problem and doing nothing would be worse for the company’s image than stepping up and fixing it. Not wanting to government to read people’s personal messages has more to do with my government showing itself to be untrustworthy than because of thoughts of personal freedom and privacy.
I tried playing a second time thinking of my character as someone different instead of me, but it still just felt flat to me. I felt like I was being lectured more than taking part in a game or even really a discussion. It felt like it was pushing one idea of what morals should look like, and I didn’t feel like I really had the option make a different argument if I disagreed. I may have had some choices I could make, but it felt like I was being pushed in one direction.
I think the idea of this game is interesting, but it feels very limited for the topic.