Moral in videogames

[Robert Ewing]

1. A game is not real life, so you can cause x amount of damage, death, and destruction with no consequence. And any action can be redone, over and over again. It's not anything real, it's a simulation if you will.

2. It helps you blow off steam, the real world is a drag with millions of limitations, a game can eradicate those limitations easily.

3. Thou shall not kill isn't a rule I truly believe in, I think it's a nice idea, but ultimately flawed. I also find it funny that it's a Christian commandant, yet god has killed over 2,000,000 people in the bible, and Crusaders, inquisitors, and general holy people have killed far more.

Death is necessary. Some people deserve death, some people need death, it's the natural ending of life.

4. Killing without consequence is fun. Exploring different methods of unreal killing is fun. Humanity has laughed at people getting hurt for millions of years, it's one of the things that tickle our funny bones. If a computer simulation 'dies' in a funny way, say falling from a great high and his peen landing on a metal bar, i'm bound to feel amused. Watching characters ragdolize and smashing against walls is fun. And if you don't find killing in games fun... Go read a book.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

If you do not want to be reasonable you must not try to discuss such topics.

I'm not saying 'anger isn't anger' I'm saying it's somthing completely different.'Real' rage is not the same emotion as what you feel when Alma from Ninja Gaiden kills you for the 40th time. There is a difference between rage and frustration.

The feeling of killing someone isn't the same as shooting a cell operative in Crysis. Ask any soldier. If you know any.

 

[Emurlahn]

Okay, now I've read through this, and as you say that you are not troll, politician nor fanatical religious, and that you do not have an agenda against violent games, and that you play these games yourself.

The I would like to ask you: what is your own justification?
Why do you do this "killing"?
What makes you break the "standard moral code"?

Cause before I give you my opinion I'd like to hear if you have a valid opinion yourself.
If you don't have that, there is no discussion to be had and everything you've said through this entire thread would be pretty much void.

Until then, have fun.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Why do you kill in videogames if you know thou shall not kill? Is there no such thing as moral behaviour while acting in a virtual world? Please submit your explainations, justifications and reasons. Thanks in advance.

Well, "thou shall not kill" was never intended to be an absolute rule. Some argue that it should translate as prohibiting murder, ie, unlawful killing, During the Crusades, Christian leaders claimed a misquote, and it only prohibited killing christians.

In any case, shortly after receiving the commandmets, Moses supposedly had masses of people killed over the whole golden calf thing.

...

However, I do take your point. Most games will give you reasons for legitimising the killing. The enemy is unquestionably "evil", or you are acting in self defence, for example.

I generally find it distasteful to play "evilly", at least in games in which the world is set up so you can imagine the characters as people. Admittedly, yes, they aren't real people, but the attraction of playing games is the emotional connections you form. Monsters jumping out at you can't really hurt you, but Jesuschristwhatthefuckwasthat!!! Likewise, there's no reason why you shouldn't left click when the cursor is hovering over the head of a character designated "innocent child", but you have to, at some level, want to kill a kid to do it.

 

[Manji187]

Virtual reality is virtual. What is there to take responsibility for exactly?

 

[DexterNorgam]

Why do you kill in videogames if you know thou shall not kill? Is there no such thing as moral behaviour while acting in a virtual world? Please submit your explainations, justifications and reasons. Thanks in advance.

Ever heard the expression there's no such thing as a stupid question? Thanks for providing me something I point out when I want to debate that point.

 

[Jachwe]

I'm back.

[...]

But isn't stealing "wrong", according to morality? And what if you stealing that medicine results in the death of a patient that had the money to buy it but couldn't since you took the last dose?

Do not change the premise of my example. This way you cannot discuss on basis of an example. You can always alter the example to destroy an argument. It is a common mistake undertaken when you are in a debate. To give an analogy: You are trying to solve a question in mathematics. On hte one side would be the premises on the other the result. There are a certain numbers of known variables in it on the side of the premises. Would you feel compelled to add new variables to the side of the premises? I assume not because it would change the result. We can both do our math but at the end we have two different results thus we won´t be talking about the same.

edit: the example is to show how two moral demands occur but cannot be met at the same time even though they must. It is a dilemma. If you follow an absolute moral you can do nothing but wrong. If you have a ranking of values you can show how they are ranked. There are a couple of other dilemmas that will show similar shortcomings of a respective ethic.

I bevlieve that the concepualization of morality as the consentual believe of good is the way that enables us to talk about morality in a meaningful way.

Then we really can't discuss morality, seeing as I don't agree to that concept. "Good" and "Evil" are just terms, there are no absolutes in this universe, except perhaps death, and maybe not even that, depending on your personal beliefs.

Firts things first. The opposit of good is not nescessarily evil. The conceptualization of the believe of good is universaly acceptable because it is a concept of our conscisnous. A good knife is a knife that cuts realy well, thus the opposit is a knife that does not cut. With good actions it is more complicated because our conceptualization of reality varies to a degree. We can think of good actions as such that it is good to do what authority commands but we can as easily think of good actions as those who have the most pleasureable consequences. They both encompass the idea of good which to put it simple is the most adequate and desirable.
As to why the idea of good has to be an absolute concept I say because it is a concept of our conscisnous. The one concept no one can seriously challange is the concept of "being". You are, I am, everone is. What is and what is not is only the conceptualization of our conscisnous demanded by our thinking. I will now take a shortcut skipping how to avoid the problem of solipsism and the mind-matter-problem.
Same conscisnous enables us to conceptualize the idea of good. That is why everyone can conceptualize the idea of good. Because our consciouness demnded by our thinking conceptualize everthing there is no problem for you to conceptualize the same things I do. That is how we are understanding each other.
Second "Good" and "Evil" are not just terms. Words do have meaning. Again there are concepts associated with those terms. Because these words are not merely terms consisting only of sound but also meaning we are able to communicate in a meaningful way. Otherwise everyone could not understand anyone here because our only means to communicate here right now are words.

[...]

That's splitting hairs. Fine, I don't acknowledge them as living beings, is that better?

Well unfortunatly not. Just not ackowledging them as not living does not necessarily mean they are not living. Well here is an example. In the antic times it was common in the roman empire to not acknowledge slaves as being human. They were just tools. If we look at that situtation and the one at hand you see how easily I can imagine the paople in a videogame as living beings and you just not acknowledging that thus not respecting the rights of living beings.Well there are a lot of assumptions in this example. But these assumtions must be ruled out if you want a consistent an universaly acceptable theory concerning ethics in videogames.
But this would be ontology and not ehics.But then again it is so interwoven espacialy in this topic. So we could lay that to rest because this could well be too much at one time.
Do not get me wrong I understand your sentiment of virtual life not being real life and thus different rules apply to them.

[...]

What I refer to as "Personality" are the actions and behavior pattern of the NPC, which, now that I think of it, are pretty much one and the same.
This "Personality" is defined by the coding within a game, and does not disappear from the game even if the model carrying out the actions dictated by the code vanishes from the map. As I said, NPCs can brought back as many times as desired, and they will go through the same motions over and over without memory of their so called "death".

Actualy this reminds me of "Surrogates" Having a body destroyed but not the human controling the robot. Well yeah this might work

 

[Not-here-anymore]

Morality is a subjective idea at heart. In a society, however, the individually subjective nature is overwritten by the ideas of the community - if one is raised by those who already have a set of moral beliefs, their ideals almost certainly become yours. Take Britain or the US for example. Both countries contain a fair few atheists, but almost of them have a remarkably christian moral code, because that's what's evolved in the society of each nation.

As for killing in video games... Well, you don't. No living being dies as a result of your actions, ergo you don't kill anything. In a great many games, it's more akin to moving an obstacle out of the way.
I can see how one would mount an argument that reducing the health of certain characters in some RPG's to 0 might constitute killing, but again, they're not alive. A pre-programmed set of responses, with no free will; their actions up to this point are entirely influenced by yours. In this case it's again equivalent to moving an obstacle out of the way, with maybe a slight equivalence to throwing away a toy.

To suggest that removing a character in a game by virtual force is killing is much the same as implying that every writer who's ever caused the death of a character in a film, book or game has killed someone. An imaginary construct with a fundamentally linear path is not a living being, and hence cannot be killed.

 

[Alssadar]

I have more than half a brain cell to understand that "these people are not real, they have no effect in the real world, no back grounds, no personalities, no one that cares for them, and they're just data stored, given an image, a voice, and some basic NPC allegiance settings."
As for player controlled characters, "Oh no! They have to wait 5 seconds! I've ruined their entire life!"

 

[Jachwe]

Morality is a subjective idea at heart. In a society, however, the individually subjective nature is overwritten by the ideas of the community - if one is raised by those who already have a set of moral beliefs, their ideals almost certainly become yours. [...]

I do not agree. Morality is no subjective idea. You should know that morality is nothing less than the conceptualization of conscisnous of the consentual believe of good. I also quite clearly stated why this is an acceptable definiton. But, and this is a big but, you are the first one I cannot dismiss.
According to you humans posses absolute freedom of morality in the state of nature. That is there is morality in the state of nature. So the consentual believe of good I am talking about occurs only if we live in society. Would you agree?
Well as for me I do not believe that in the state of nature humams have any morality but as soon as they live in society it becomes a necessity to conceptualize the consentual believe of good for the sake of order in the respective society. Thus morality comes into existence and is based on consensus, read objective, and not subjective.
I cannot argue with you about the state of nature but I think we can at least agree that in society there is the consentual believe of good.

As for killing in video games... Well, you don't. No living being dies as a result of your actions, ergo you don't kill anything. In a great many games, it's more akin to moving an obstacle out of the way.
[...] they're not alive. A pre-programmed set of responses, with no free will; their actions up to this point are entirely influenced by yours. [...]

I realy like that answer. well the key words are "free will" of course. As I read it as long as a being has no free will it is not to be moraly considered. That is only if we assume all humans posses the free will. But there is still the problem of apathy that games can cause. You will have to explain how you deal with this on the basis of the free will. It is a huge topic that has to be adressed in this discussion.

To suggest that removing a character in a game by virtual force is killing is much the same as implying that every writer who's ever caused the death of a character in a film, book or game has killed someone.

That is a nice comparison. It also displays nicely the problem of agency in fictional works.

as for games they are works of fiction,the enemy's are simply data formed from 1's and 0's they are not sentient beings in any for or fashion.

Well I never get tired of telling you people that the because-they-do-not-feel-we-do-not-feel-either logic is wrong do I? I suspect this sentiment behind the argument.
Well how should I put it? Yes having only to consider sentient beings in moral questions is legit. BUT you see we are the sentient beings that must be considered. So if you want to base your ethics in sentience you do not have to consider the digital character death. What you have to consider is you. There is scientific evidence of you deafening your empathy if you do not game responsibly. You have to explain how you do that unless you want it to be a half baked excuse of an argument.

To all I think we are finally getting somewhere. I hold BordeauX and JO3bot dearly as shining examples of placing the right words in the right context in hte discussion. There are certain problems not yet explained and solved and I might not agree with them on all points but cannot dismiss them easily as so many others.

 

[Grospoliner]

I would like to state for the record: Morale = emotional/mental condition of generally optimistic status. Moral = of or pertaining to a principle of rules concerning conduct. Morality = conforming to a specific moral code.

The moral of the story? "English motherf--ker! Do you speak it?"

 

[dagens24]

The bible also says that I should stone gays to death. So yeah... I guess we'll just have to let some of it slide. Stupid bible.

 

[Son of a Mitch]

Because games are not real life. We can do whatever the hell we want in games without having any consequence in real life. That being said, most of my friends generally choose to do the right thing and be goody two-shoes in every video game they play, so I make my character the biggest asshole ever just to see what happens differently. My Mass Effect runs are going to be so radically different from theirs.

 

[Exius Xavarus]

So is it wrong to "kill people" in an MMORPG such as, say, R.O.H.A.N.: Blood Feud, or Guild Wars? If you kill another player, you're killing an avatar of pixels controlled by a sentient being. Granted they do return to life, but that is beside the point.

What about games like Demon's Souls? A very large majority of the enemies you fight are not "people" per se, but demons and monsters. Is it still wrong to kill these beings of animated pixels?

You're treating video games like real life, where the "murder" of another person is wrong. Morality is subjective to those who are playing the game and committing those acts. I've had my times where I've actually felt bad for attacking another person in a video game, but there are also times that I enjoyed becoming a bloodthirsty monster. It's a game. Whatever happens in said game, it was created for that purpose.

Personally, my morality will change with the role, or type of the character I am playing. If I'm the hero that aids all those in need of it, I will whoop villain ass and my justice will be swift and terrible, while preserving the lives of innocents. But on the other side of the same coin is the savage, bloodthirsty nature that all of us harbor within. Place me in the role of the villain, and I will be that villain. I will take countless lives, innocent or not, all for the sake of furthering my own goals. But then there are also the character you can make good or evil on your own, which, for me, will always be the good guy, acting fair and and being kind to all, because in morality systems like that(Dragon Age, Fable and Mass Effect are examples of games with such a morality system), my character will reflect the kind of person I am.

Now, because I will become a savage, bloodthirsty, murderous beast if placed in such a role, am I morally wrong because I will commit those acts within the game? I think not, because it does not reflect who I really am in real life. It is a game, and anyone who can clearly distinguish between reality, and a virtual reality, should not be barred from performing the role they are given within the game they choose to play because the acts they would commit are "right or wrong."

tl;dr: Morality is indeed subjective. Not everyone believes the same, and each individual being has their own view on what exactly is right or wrong, despite what is commonly viewed as such.

 

[Not-here-anymore]

Morality is a subjective idea at heart. In a society, however, the individually subjective nature is overwritten by the ideas of the community - if one is raised by those who already have a set of moral beliefs, their ideals almost certainly become yours. [...]

I do not agree. Morality is no subjective idea. You should know that morality is nothing less than the conceptualization of conscisnous of the consentual believe of good. I also quite clearly stated why this is an acceptable definiton. But, and this is a big but, you are the first one I cannot dismiss.
According to you humans posses absolute freedom of morality in the state of nature. That is there is morality in the state of nature. So the consentual believe of good I am talking about occurs only if we live in society. Would you agree?
Well as for me I do not believe that in the state of nature humams have any morality but as soon as they live in society it becomes a necessity to conceptualize the consentual believe of good for the sake of order in the respective society. Thus morality comes into existence and is based on consensus, read objective, and not subjective.
I cannot argue with you about the state of nature but I think we can at least agree that in society there is the consentual believe of good.

To phrase it differently, morality is an individually subjective idea as to how to react to a society. Society, in turn, influences this morality with its own laws and customs (read: The moral system in place from years of social conditioning).
In nature, morality is meaningless. It's a series of guidelines regarding how to react to others. No others, no morals.
In society, it's an individual construct based on how others react to your actions and/or what you are comfortable doing. Your definition is vastly too narrow, and doesn't account for the many people who fall outside 'the consensual belief of good'. Societal morality is the idea that one should follow the laws of the land. Individual morality, however, might come in the form of 'If I steal this food, I can feed my family' - a conflict not allowed in your definition.
Much as I hate to use a video game example in a thread debating the morality of actions in games, Bioshock. The willpower of one man alone is enough to overwrite years of societal conditioning in the creation of a new society. To give a real life example of the same thing (and prove Godwin's law in the process), Nazi Germany. The individual's beliefs can subjugate the community's at times, showing a certain subjectivity, surely?
So, whilst you may have quite clearly stated why you feel you've presented an acceptable definition of moral objectivism, I fear I cannot accept it. If we are to agree on anything here, it seems it must be to disagree.

Lot of editing going on here: I do agree that there is an idea in society as to what is and isn't good, yes. But not in all things, and hence I do not believe individual ethics are entirely synonymous with those of the community.

As for killing in video games... Well, you don't. No living being dies as a result of your actions, ergo you don't kill anything. In a great many games, it's more akin to moving an obstacle out of the way.
[...] they're not alive. A pre-programmed set of responses, with no free will; their actions up to this point are entirely influenced by yours. [...]

I realy like that answer. well the key words are "free will" of course. As I read it as long as a being has no free will it is not to be moraly considered. That is only if we assume all humans posses the free will. But there is still the problem of apathy that games can cause. You will have to explain how you deal with this on the basis of the free will. It is a huge topic that has to be adressed in this discussion.

My point was more that there is no 'being' in the first place. One does not kill in games because there is nothing to kill. This is why it is acceptable. If I were to take any given FPS, replace all of one team with red cuboidal blocks, all the other team with blue cuboids, and the guns with balls your block throws, the aim being to break the opponents' blocks, this is clearly not killing. It doesn't change based on the shape of a player avatar.
As for the apathy you describe... I have yet to hear anyone claim that because they are comfortable with in game shooting they would happily bring an assault rifle to the mall. Or even enlist in the army, in a situation where killing is legal, possible, and sometimes necessary. Most people cannot kill. Video games don't change that.
Look to any of the frequent threads here asking if people feel they could kill someone in self-defence. Most of the respondents could not. These are people with a greater than average exposure to virtual violence, and yet I see no apathetic erosion of their original pacifism.

To suggest that removing a character in a game by virtual force is killing is much the same as implying that every writer who's ever caused the death of a character in a film, book or game has killed someone.

That is a nice comparison. It also displays nicely the problem of agency in fictional works.

Problem of agency? Please elaborate.

EDIT: Reading through some of your other posts, you seem to attempt to differentiate between morals and law. In principle, I agree. However, if morality is as objective as you claim, it should be directly and inextricably linked to the legal system. If ethics are a mutually agreed upon idea of a society, as you claim, then the system imposed to enforce what can and cannot be done should be defined by these ideals. Conflict should not be possible. Yet both you and I have presented cases where conflict does arise between the two, and an individual must choose.
There is an absolute quality to your arguments on what I feel is a fundamentally flexible idea.

 

[Jachwe]

I would like to state for the record: Morale = emotional/mental condition of generally optimistic status. Moral = of or pertaining to a principle of rules concerning conduct. Morality = conforming to a specific moral code.

This might be helpful. Or not because I have to challenge this definiton.
I stated earlier that morality is the consentual believe of good. That is according to the definiton above the confrimation to a specific moral code is the consentual believe of good. Well that does not make much sense.
But (normative) morality can also be used to describe behaviour, rules and principles within a group to determine the (factual) good, right, wrong or evil. A moral is a lesson or teaching within morality. Now I have stated that morality is nothing more than that a principle within a group to determine good is nothing less than the consentual believe of good. That is if you are in a group and you agree within that group something is good it is good. That is because in a state of nature there is no consensus of good there is no good. Only the believe of good within a group creates the idea of good.
Well I do not speak english very well because it is not my native language. So you have to excuse me for the barrier of language that is always to be assumed to be imposed on the different parties.

 

[karoliso]

Would the OP be as nice as to tell us how he/she justifies killing in video games if he/she really is a gamer?

 

[Jachwe]

Your definition is vastly too narrow, and doesn't account for the many people who fall outside 'the consensual belief of good'. Societal morality is the idea that one should follow the laws of the land. Individual morality, however, might come in the form of 'If I steal this food, I can feed my family' - a conflict not allowed in your definition.

This problem gave me pause. But then I realized it is not a conflict that is not allowed but quite common because we are talking about consensus. There will be contradicting viewpoints.
If you live in a society that lets people starve to death and it is believed that should not be the case you have to change the law accordingly. If you cannot change the law you have to change the system.
The law is an interesting topic within ethics. Some authorian ehtics state it is the source of good. Thomas Hobbes expresses this idea in his book Leviathan for an example. The law is given by the souvereign who is empowered by the consensus of the people to do so. That is if you believe because it is the law it is good law and morality become one and the same and you should act accordingly.
If you believe because it is good it should be the law we have another conlusion. The just law is nothing but consensus. It can be quite clearly confused with the definition of morality I have given. Morality is the consensual believe of good and the just law is pure consensus. That is for a large society with a lot of groups with different viewpoints to keep order in said society. A just society is the society founded on consensus. If you live in a just society and you have to break the law to act according to morality you act according to morality but also bear the consequences for breaking the law. I wil stop here for today.

Much as I hate to use a video game example in a thread debating the morality of actions in games, Bioshock. The willpower of one man alone is enough to overwrite years of societal conditioning in the creation of a new society. To give a real life example of the same thing (and prove Godwin's law in the process), Nazi Germany. The individual's beliefs can subjugate the community's at times, showing a certain subjectivity, surely?

I hate you. I hate you so much now. There was no new society in Nazi Germany. It was the same as the Weimar Republic. It has been presented as a one man show but behind the scenes was a whole system supported by a dedicated group to the task to mobilize the people.

My point was more that there is no 'being' in the first place. One does not kill in games because there is nothing to kill. This is why it is acceptable. If I were to take any given FPS, replace all of one team with red cuboidal blocks, all the other team with blue cuboids, and the guns with balls your block throws, the aim being to break the opponents' blocks, this is clearly not killing. It doesn't change based on the shape of a player avatar.

Now we realy would have to go into ontology. "It does not change based on the shape of a player avatar" is a intuitivly sound point. That is if you want to argue that it is the behaviour pattern "aim shoot hit" that we should be concerned about. But I think we should be concerned about the desensitisation. Which leads to...

As for the apathy you describe... I have yet to hear anyone claim that because they are comfortable with in game shooting they would happily bring an assault rifle to the mall. Or even enlist in the army, in a situation where killing is legal, possible, and sometimes necessary. Most people cannot kill. Video games don't change that.
Look to any of the frequent threads here asking if people feel they could kill someone in self-defence. Most of the respondents could not. These are people with a greater than average exposure to virtual violence, and yet I see no apathetic erosion of their original pacifism.

Again the protectionism. I encounter it too often in this kind of argument. You jump to conclusions. You think of the most extreme case we can reasonably imagine and act as if it is some kind of factual prediction anyone makes once he point out games do desensisize. The concern is not people going on a killing spree because they play videogames but people getting problems. That is they find it harder to care, socialise and emphasise with other people. That is furthermore they tend to retort to aggressive behaviour faster. Aggressive behaviour is to shout and be enraged or to punch someone. Only the most extreme extent of aggressive behaviour is killing someone.
I am not jumping on any "violent games make violent people" bandwagon. It can happen but I suspect "violent games make people insular" is more often the case... That is if we exclude the internet as a way to connect to people, assume the internet not being as good as real life connections, and now I point at another field of studies that is also yet not well researched. Er well, the point is videogames do desensisize people that is a fact that cannot be reasonably argued, this should raise concern not because it means people playing videogames go on a killing spree, but because it could cause problems for the people playing videogames themselves.
Okay here a little more information before people get freaked out. The imidiate desensizing effect of videogames has been scientificly proven in studies concerning children. There are as always uncertainties about how much can be said about longterm effects because there is no longterm study. That is we caonnot say with a degree of cerainty what combination of when you have to start playing those games, how long you have to play them, what kind of enviroment you live in, how expirienced you are with such games is required to have a negative effect. We can only say that there is a negative effect. There are very good assumptions and this is why there reasonably is a rating system.

Problem of agency? Please elaborate.

There are some assumtions we have to make. The agent of actions is accountable for the actions undertaken if he has free will. Otherwise the one accountable is the one who instructed the actions. If we talk about videogames and being accountable for the actions undetaken it is often assumed the agent of the actions, the avatar of the game, is not accountable because he does not posses free will. Thus you are responsible for what the avatar does because you have free will and instructed him to do those actions. If we abstract from games into fictional works we see that there are also books, films etc.
With videogames it is intuitivly sound that the player as the instructor can be responsible for actions undertaken. Because the player interacts with the fictional world and does not only watch it. With films and books it is no different. The characters in a book have no free will thus are not the responsible for their actions. The one with the free will and only possible instructor of the acitons is thus the author of the book. Are we willing to say books and videogames are to be considered the same? Does that not mean we should impose the same restrictions on books as we do on videogames and vice versa? That is the problem of agency. Who is responsible for the actions?