From Matthew Devereux's article on The Christian Science Monitor:
"Fundamentally, most games operate within a moral framework: good versus evil (or vice versa). But what games conspicuously lack is moral consequence. Once you've killed someone, stolen something, or blown up a building, that's usually the end of it – you'll rarely get to see the emotional impact of your actions on the characters around you.
Every bit of mayhem becomes just another item on a video-game to-do list. Games ignore moral consequence and emotional nuance to focus on the purely visceral. There are only two types of decisions you can really make: the strategically correct one or the strategically incorrect one. There is no 'right' or 'wrong' – only success or failure.
Unbridled competition combined with no moral consequence eventually leads to a lack of compassion. And without compassion, humanity is lost."