Wearing certain military uniform, having ritual scarring, war paint or bristling with nasty weaponry may quickly teach me to classify someone as hostile while still treating other creatures of the same race/culture/origin as friendly. I’d consider this different from just making all creatures of that kind enemies.

Teaching players through observing a creature’s actions has a lot of potential to be explored but migth require too much work/resources, as said. If UI provides the absolute indication of good/evil (or friend/enemy), that part of the game is going to be a little shallower, but that might allow more focus on something else.

While I have little personal experience of doing violence, I imagine that the process of preparing yourself to seriously injure someone involves an automatic classification — at some fundamental level of your mind — of that person as Other, alien, evil.

All it ever took for me was an entity’s “self-classification” as “ENEMY.” I had a kid attack me once - himself, otherwise, a good student and “upstanding” character in the eyes of others - because of some perceived slight: he surprised me, and my reaction was one of violence. It all cleared up after the fact, but it was that initial contact that made me respond with my combat training first. It had nothing to do with “alien” or “evil,” necessarily; just that an offensive gesture immediately conveyed ENEMY instead of simply THREAT.

Perhaps it’s not so much about visually “branding” someone as ENEMY as much as it is conveying intent. If I am approached by something which looks innocent (be it known, I’m generally paranoid by nature), I will, explicitly, treat it as THREAT until it proves out FRIEND or ENEMY (things for which I tend to have immutable designation). It’s part of the reason I move so slowly through some MUDs or other “interactive” fiction: I am reluctant to simply trust that the entity confronting me directly conveys his true intent.

I’ve examined this model as a project, lately (in my exploration of possible routes into the gaming industry), and it really is a tough challenge so far. Trying to make the base motivations of an entity match up with the storyteller’s desired outcome has proven a difficult path because of the unlimited scope of “intention.” Interesting challenge, to be sure.

As for whether or not it’s “art”; I think the first “game” (if you could still call it that) to perform such an abstraction of “personality” versus “presence” would redefine “art” in context of gaming.

The association of light skin with goodness and dark skin with evil isn’t connected to real races; it’s connected with the universal human imagery of goodness as light and evil as darkness. Bright colors are cheerful while dark colors are depressing. Light is illuminating and overt; darkness obscures and hides.

Whether or not you make NPCs in your game obviously good or evil just depends on the intended source of enjoyment in your gameplay. If part of a player’s enjoyment of your game is intended to be moral decision-making and deep thinking, then it might be fine for the NPCs killed to not obviously fit the role of enemies/monsters. But the whole game’s design would need to take that sort of gameplay into account: pacing, how information is relayed, color schemes, etc.

If, on the other hand, this moral concern is an afterthought, then don’t include it in the game. If previous experiences in the game haven’t set up an expectation of moral gameplay, then adding that moral element will probably feel like a gimmick, a burden, or undesirable in some other way.

Not sure why you have to stick to the stereotypes though. You can have a dynamic system where creatures start out as nasty neutrals and follow their leaders, which you can control as part of your story-line… More expensive, but somewhat more interesting than “you are attacked by another swarm of angry insects from hell”.

@Steven, well, in Norse mythology the men in Jotunheimen are the bad guys. Their women are perhaps not, and frankly, Odin was a raping jackass… He was worshiped for his powers… The clean Good/Bad dichotomy is more prevalent in Jewish (clean/dirty), Christian (heaven/hell) and Hollywood (hero/enemies) thinking… So no, you don’t need those clean-cut stereotypes. And you don’t have to be 100% consistent if the users are to spend a lot of time in the system, the popular mythologies aren’t. They reflect real life and our struggles. Hollywood-movies are different, you have to go from no knowledge to full understanding in a few minutes. You might want this for newbie areas, but this is not a requirement for the deeper layers of a virtual world!

Anyway, go read my post for more detail.

A long time ago, I took a course on Shadowplay in SE Asia. The Asian, and, in particular, Javanese iconography was very different than ours. Small, characters with delicate features and slanted, small eyes were good and noble (regardless of skin color) while, big, round eyed characters were typically evil … hence the “round-eyed devil” term.

Sound was also used as certain types of music are associated with certain personality archetypes (something that is done in Western cultures as well).

You can probably do anything, so long as it is consistent. Wagner’s lietmotifes (?) were musical shorthand that continue to be an effective tool that allow those of us who aren’t expert in Norse mythology to know who the good and bad guys are quickly.