Over at Backbone designer David Sirlin's blog, there's a powerfully good conversation going on centered around the concept 'Can Games Teach Ethics?', and Sirlin's statement: "I think they definitely can, but my colleague Frank Lantz argued that I have it wrong."

This is probably a bit difficult to summarize in two paragraphs, but here's a try, using some liberal quoting, first from Sirlin's argument: "Imagine a game vaguely like Oblivion, a 3D world where you control a character who can visit towns, talks to people, pick locks, and fight... After we’ve established conventions (it’s usually wrong to steal) and shown some exceptions (sometimes in unusual circumstances, it’s wrong *not* to steal), then we can cook up a bunch of really gray areas where most people will disagree."

And how about Area/Code's Lantz (who co-created the entirely neat A&E Soprano's Game Connection web/life game, btw)? "He says that one or the other is true: your in-game decisions about ethics have in-game consequences (meaning they manipulate various stats) or they don’t. If they do, then no matter how clever your situations, the player will really just try to “game” the system... And if your decisions *don’t* affect any stats or gamestate, then they are meaningless and that doesn’t teach much either." So.. who wins here? Join the conversation here or on Sirlin.net, please!