Poll: Survey on Ethics & Gaming

[Araksardet]

Hey all; so I'm writing a paper this semester on whether and how ethics can be used to judge the behavior of people playing or designing video games. While it's not required for the paper, I thought it would be fun to include some original survey data, just to get an idea of perceptions gamers have of ethics.

To this end, I've created a survey using Google Docs and published it; I was hoping some of you might be interested in taking some time to answer the survey. I'm afraid I can't offer payment or anything, but if you enter your email at the end of the survey, I will notify you of the survey results once I reach a significant number of respondents (depending on how fast people complete it, I'm hoping to post some preliminary results when it hits around 50 people, though of course I'd like a lot more).

I won't just be looking at percentage of responses for certain questions, but I'm going to try and tease out differences between various demographic groups as well - Xbox gamers VS Playstation gamers, married VS unmarried gamers, young VS old, European VS North American gamers, etc. That's why the first two pages or so is full of mostly demographic questions that aren't actually related to ethics, so that I can get a better idea of demographic tendencies, if there are any.

So if you're interested in taking the survey, please do so! It shouldn't take more than 10 or 15 minutes. Also, if I made any stupid spelling mistakes, feel free to point them out, and I'll try to fix them (the first time I tried to make a survey with Google Docs, though, editing if after initial completion deleted all the questions, so I'm being very careful).

http://playingwithmeaning.blogspot.com/p/gamer-survey-on-ethics.html

 

[varulfic]

Heh, "which gender do you identify with". I like that phrasing, very transgender friendly.

 

[Jadak]

Could you define:

Undergraduate Studies
Graduate Studies
Postgraduate Studies

for those of us not in what I assume is the American education system. I mean, I'm in a college, yet not really sure what to pick from the options as they don't really apply. Pretty sure undergraduate would be closest for me, from what some quick google searches are saying.

 

[Araksardet]

Could you define:

Undergraduate Studies
Graduate Studies
Postgraduate Studies

for those of us not in what I assume is the American education system. I mean, I'm in a college, yet not really sure what to pick from the options as they don't really apply.

Yes, I had thought about that, but I just couldn't think of a proper name for it all. I shouldn't have been lazy, though - I've just added another option saying "Other Postsecondary Education" meaning everything that comes after high school but isn't part of a university degree system. Not very specific, but it should do the trick. Sorry about that! I should have added that to begin with.

 

[MassiveGeek]

Alright, I've filled out the survey.

It was fun!

 

[Araksardet]

Alright, I've filled out the survey.

It was fun!

Thanks!

In case you (or anyone else) is interested, there's a paper I'm referencing where the author did case studies of 27 gamers' thoughts on whether it was all right to scam newbies out of their money in an MMO. There's a lot of theoretical stuff in the beginning that isn't for everyone, but the findings starting on Page 12 are interesting. (The actual survey question, which is rather long, is on pages 10-11).

http://www.goodworkproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/73-Its-Just-a-Game.pdf

 

[Blunderboy]

Done squire. Glad to be of help.

 

[Whispering Cynic]

Filled it out, since I was intrigued. Hope it helps.

 

[Blunderboy]

I would like to point that that some questions I was a bit uncertain how to answer.
There are a few subjects that I can see no reason for a game exclusively about them, that's not to say that they should not be allowed in games, as an entirely optional extra.

 

[zdgrafyd]

The profession question is a bit limited, where does a scientist or engineer go? None of the above?

 

[Simon Pettersson]

OK done it happy to help

 

[Araksardet]

I would like to point that that some questions I was a bit uncertain how to answer.
There are a few subjects that I can see no reason for a game exclusively about them, that's not to say that they should not be allowed in games, as an entirely optional extra.

That's true - a game all about cutting people's fingers off is one thing, but the option to cut one guy's fingers off in order to get him to tell you where his boss is hiding is something else. For this survey, I was most interested in seeing where people would choose the unilaterally ethical or unethical options, so I didn't specifically target different kinds of nuance, since there are obviously many different factors that influence when something is ethical or not.

In cases where you think a whole game dedicated to something would be wrong but, as a lesser feature, the thing should be allowed, I think the best answer would be to say it's a morally grey area, which is sort of a stand-in for "it depends."

 

[valleyshrew]

Just FYI, you should look up agnostic and take it out of the question on religion. It doesn't mean lacking religion, it means lacking knowledge. The religious (at least modern day christians, jews, muslims, and so on) are all agnostic, that's why it's called "faith" and "belief" rather than knowledge. Atheism is also not the opposite of religious belief, buddhists are atheists. Atheism is the opposite of theism.

I found it a little hard to answer because I do dislike having to kill NPCs in games and it does incite a slight guilt in me, but there's no moral objection because NPCs are merely symbolic humans. Im not sure whether you're going to make the assumption that because of my answers I feel it's good to go around killing things when actually I love games like metal gear solid and fallout new vegas that let you refrain from killing. Also strongly against DRM but it's their product and definitely not "immoral". So keep in mind the answers aren't necessarily the enlightened view of the participant, but the application of logical necessity.

"Are games that...stereotypical fashion morally reprehensible?"

I do think it's wrong in certain games, but certainly GTA and others are social commentaries that widely use stereotypes for humor and it is not morally objectionable.

Are games that encourage the slaughter or persecution of specific ethnic or religious groups (without depicting actual historical events) morally reprehensible?

* Yes, games involving genocide or persecution of ethnic or religious groups are morally reprehensible.
* No, hate propaganda in games is fine.
* This is a morally grey area; it's hard to say.

You've really loaded the answers here, it doesn't have to be "hate propaganda" to have you killing people of a minority. There's really no value in the answers you will receive from this when you've designed it so poorly.

 

[Araksardet]

The profession question is a bit limited, where does a scientist or engineer go? None of the above?

Yes - I picked a bunch of professions that are more or less related to the various controversies concerning video games that have sprung up over the years, so people involved with healthcare, education, crime and social issues (the areas mainstream media mostly associates with the effects of video games), as well as game design and the design of technology related to games.

My main interest here was to see whether being a member of a profession more closely associated with the problems games are purported to cause has an impact on one's views. There are a lot of other jobs - physicists, janitors, actors, carpenters, pilots, etc. - that I didn't feel were closely related enough to the issues raised in gaming controversies, so I decided to make the question simpler to deal with on the data end by naming several professions that seemed closer to the issues, and then letting the rest fall into an "other" category.

 

[Red Bomb]

I've done it. I'm afraid I've put quite afew "grey" areas as I felt it would depend on the game context. It made me realise just how fickle I am about gaming though!
I hope this helps your paper.

 

[Araksardet]

Just FYI, you should look up agnostic and take it out of the question on religion. It doesn't mean lacking religion, it means lacking knowledge. The religious (at least modern day christians, jews, muslims, and so on) are all agnostic, that's why it's called "faith" and "belief" rather than knowledge. Atheism is also not the opposite of religious belief, buddhists are atheists. Atheism is the opposite of theism.

Thanks for the comments! I know that atheism literally means the lack of a belief in a deity (or the belief in the lack of deities), and that agnostic means one who doesn't claim any knowledge of the subject, but I'm using the "casual" meanings of the words, which have been separated somewhat from their literal meanings. I've often found people call themselves "agnostic" not when they lack absolute knowledge but still believe (in the sense of Christians who will say "I don't need knowledge, I have faith."); in my experience, it's usually a term used by people who don't have any religious beliefs specifically because they don't think it's possible to know anything about spiritual matters. Similarly, many self-proclaimed atheists use the label not because they don't believe in deities specifically, but because they don't believe in any spiritual claims made by any religion.

Whether that meshes with the tradition of the word is another story, but I'm going off what experience has told me the words are used to mean, on the assumption that most readers will interpret those words in the casual, and not strict, sense. Perhaps that's a faulty assumption, though since I've most often encountered the terms on internet forums and blogs, I would venture that there is at least a significant minority of people who use the terms as I've just defined them, rather than as their etymology might suggest. A lot of people say "sarcasm" but mean "irony"; I figured it would be better to just buy into the definitions that seem most common, rather than those that are strictly correct.

"Are games that...stereotypical fashion morally reprehensible?"

I do think it's wrong in certain games, but certainly GTA and others are social commentaries that widely use stereotypes for humor and it is not morally objectionable.

That's a good point; I don't consider portrayal of stereotypes to be stereotypical portrayal, though. A person can talk about stereotypes of black people without actually stereotyping, and in the same way, art can comment on stereotypes without actually endorsing them. I'll modify the question to clear up the distinction.

You've really loaded the answers here, it doesn't have to be "hate propaganda" to have you killing people of a minority. There's really no value in the answers you will receive from this when you've designed it so poorly.

When I made the survey, I did try to go back and make both answers sound plausible ("clear inspiration" vs "obvious ripoffs", for instance), but that one and several others seem to have escaped me; I'll go back and change the wording. I actually posted the survey a few days ago first, and at the time I didn't give it a proper one-over, as I was terrified the survey would just be deleted again. Thanks for calling the careless wording to my attention!

 

[plaugeman]

done - good luck

 

[NorthernStar]

Whelp, I filled it out.
Perhaps you could use another category like one for someone who works in the game industry but is not a video game developer? (like someone like me who localizes videogames?)

Hope it helped, good luck with your paper!

 

[Araksardet]

Whelp, I filled it out.
Perhaps you could use another category like one for someone who works in the game industry but is not a video game developer? (like someone like me who localizes videogames?)

Hope it helped, good luck with your paper!

Good point! Sorry I overlooked you; as someone who has done some translation work before, I know it can be tough, and it's nice not to be forgotten. I've added an extra category for other gaming industry-related jobs - now that I think of it, game journalism is another field I neglected.

Thanks to everyone who's suggestions have helped me improve the survey!

I've gotten just over 60 responses so far, so I'm going to start recording the data. I'm keeping track of the changes I've made to the survey since it opened, so that they can be taken into consideration when looking at the data.

 

[Da Orky Man]

I'll warn you, surveys like this tend to get hundreds of replies very quickly. You may bite more than you can chew.