Simulating Good and Evil

The Morality and Politics of Videogames

Marcus Schulzke

• Publisher: Rutgers University Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781978818569, 9781978818576
• eBook ISBN: 9781978818583
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Computer Science General
• Index: Computer Science

Simulating Good and Evil shows that the moral panic surrounding violent videogames is deeply misguided, and often politically motivated, but that games are nevertheless morally important. Simulated actions are morally defensible because they take place outside the real world and do not inflict real harms. Decades of research purporting to show that videogames are immoral has failed to produce convincing evidence of this. However, games are morally important because they simulate decisions that would have moral weight if they were set in the real world. Videogames should be seen as spaces in which players may experiment with moral reasoning strategies without taking any actions that would themselves be subject to moral evaluation. Some videogame content may be upsetting or offensive, but mere offense does not necessarily indicate a moral problem. Upsetting content is best understood by applying existing theories for evaluating political ideologies and offensive speech.

1

The Conceptual Terrain of Simulation

The moral issues relating to videogames span multiple academic disciplines, including game studies, philosophy, communications, psychology, sociology, law, and political science, among others. They lead through dozens of intractable debates, such as what it means for media to influence audiences, whether fictional entities are in some sense real, what moral standards we should employ, and what should be covered by free speech protections. The issue is so expansive that it exceeds any single treatment, including this one. I cannot hope to give the definitive last word on all things about videogames, especially when the medium is continually changing. My goal is more modest: to provide an accessible overview of why videogames are morally significant and to make the case for reorienting academic research and popular commentaries away from moral panic. I aim to map out a more constructive approach that recognizes the benefits of the moral exploration made possible by videogames.

This chapter provides an overview of the conceptual terrain. I start by drawing a distinction between videogames and real life, which I continually refer to throughout the book. I acknowledge that videogames influence real life and vice versa; these two domains are irrevocably connected. Any approach to analyzing games must recognize that they exist in the real world and that the ideas they present are real even if simulated actions are not. However, it is still possible to draw a firm line between reality and fiction when it comes to the types of entities they include. Videogames may borrow from real life for inspiration, at times even attempting to mirror it, but they are nevertheless unreal in the sense that any simulated moral transgressions are purely imaginary. To a large extent, efforts to demonize games rest on critics’ attempts to bridge the divide between reality and fiction, such as by claiming that games cause players to mistake fantasy for reality or that they provide realistic simulations of violence that can train players to kill. From here, I turn to some of the unique traits that set videogames apart from other media. Above all, videogames are interactive. Player participation is one of their defining characteristics and the key to understanding their moral significance. Players are actors in game worlds. They help to determine what happens, making them ethical agents within the narratives. Players are responsible for causing the fictional events in a way that audiences watching a film or reading a book are not. This makes it possible to judge their simulated actions as right or wrong, good or evil, even when there are no real actions that warrant praise or blame.

In the second half of the chapter, I explain the methodological assumptions that guide the analysis. Game studies developed with help from a disagreement between ludological and narratological perspectives. The former emphasizes the importance of gameplay rules and the concept of play, while the latter focuses on narrative elements such as plot and character. Although this disagreement has largely been overcome in recent research attempting to bridge the divide, this distinction provides a useful framework for thinking about different aspects of videogames. Ludological perspectives highlight the importance of game mechanics in structuring moral challenges, determining what options are available, and creating consequences. When approached from this perspective, we can see the moral challenges in terms of what moves they permit and what makes them fun. Narratological perspectives are likewise important, since game narratives imbue otherwise abstract puzzles with a sense of moral significance. The narrative elements of a game make it possible to understand player inputs as influencing fictional worlds.

Polysemy—the possibility of reading a text in different ways—is another key concept informing my analysis. All media are polysemous. The text of a book does not change when different people read it, but each reader can take a different position on what the book means. Some readings may be better or worse when it comes to accounting for the textual evidence provided, but we can never settle on a single definitive interpretation. The entire history of literary analysis, with its constant disagreements over the meaning of great books, provides ample evidence of this indeterminacy of meaning. Polysemy is particularly important when it comes to videogames because they do not offer a consistent experience that is the same for all players. Interactivity multiplies the range of evidence available to formulate divergent interpretations by exposing players to different textual cues.

I devote the final section in this chapter to discussing three of the ethical theories that come up throughout the book: deontological ethics, consequentialism, and virtue ethics/axiological ethics. I will not argue that one of these perspectives is better than the others. Instead, I explore the implications of each when it comes to games. Critics of videogames have launched attacks from each vantage point, often treating these theories as different opportunities for impugning games. However, they have failed to produce convincing arguments that games are wrong according to any of these three dominant traditions of Western ethical theory. There is much to learn from looking at which theories are applied and why. Psychological research and outrage from concerned politicians tends to take a consequentialist approach by attempting to show that gaming has harmful effects on behavior. Philosophers, by contrast, have been more drawn toward deontological and axiological perspectives as ways of showing that games are harmful even if they do not cause behavioral changes.

The Reality of Simulation

Throughout the book, I draw a distinction between the worlds simulated by videogames (which I call digital worlds, simulated worlds, or game worlds interchangeably) and reality. This dichotomy is important to clarify at the outset because it holds a great deal of moral weight. Many commentators who criticize the morality of gaming attempt to collapse this distinction as a way of finding some grounds for saying that simulated actions are in some sense real and therefore capable of being immoral. As I show later, this makes it easier for critics to argue that behaviors learned in digital worlds carry over into the real world. Amoralists take the diametrically opposed position that games are completely self-contained and detached from everyday life. They say that a game is “just a game,” with no deeper meaning beyond immediate enjoyment. Here there is a sharp division between reality and fiction, without any intersection between the two and no possibility of games affecting the real world. I take issue with both perspectives and argue that videogames can be significant without treating simulated actions as though they were equivalent with, or even closely akin to, real actions.

Critics of videogames are right to think that there are important connections between the world and digital models of it. Reality shapes the content of videogames by providing events, settings, artifacts, and characters that are incorporated into fictional narratives. And videogames undeniably influence reality, as evidenced by the extent to which moral panic surrounding games has informed policy debates and even been the subject of court cases. There is also overlap between these domains. Gaming is something that we do in the world; it depends on physical objects to provide inputs and outputs, and the code is physically stored on devices. Games are therefore encompassed by the real world. Jesper Juul observes that games are “half real” because they use material artifacts such as machines and lines of code to create fictional worlds.¹ I agree with this point and go one step further by arguing that the fictional elements of videogames are also half real. Just as we may be affected by a film or a book, we may be affected by a compelling videogame. We bring our virtual experiences with us when we turn off games and return to our real lives with memories of what we have seen and done. Critics err by overstating the realness of simulations; amoralists err by thinking that simulations are not real at all.

Establishing connections between the real and the digital is just as essential to my overall thesis about the morally enlightening implications of gaming as it is to critics’ efforts to show that there is something wrong with gaming, but for the opposite reason. My argument rests on demonstrating that digital worlds present moral puzzles that are analogous to those we encounter in reality and in other fictional models, and that games therefore provide meaningful spaces of moral exploration. Games have an influence on the real world by serving as spaces to work through moral problems without engaging in any actions that are genuinely immoral. Where I part ways with the critics is when it comes to the nature of this relationship between reality and simulation. I contend that the overlap between these two domains is beneficial rather than being a source of corruption. My effort to distinguish reality from videogames does not preclude some overlap between the two. Such an overlap exists and can help to account for how games affect us, yet it does not make the actions in videogames real in the sense that they warrant moral praise or blame. That is, there is mutual influence, but it does not undercut the clear separation between simulation and reality.

The continuum between the real world and the fictional events of digital worlds is epistemic—it is a transfer of information. Players take virtual experiences into the real world and are therefore influenced by those experiences. However, the continuum between reality and fiction in games is the same one that exists with respect to other media, such as films and books. These media sometimes spark controversy, but they are generally treated as having a benign or even positive influence. We may learn from a good book or be moved by it; we may be inspired by what we read or terrified. Our lives are affected by prose, but in nearly all instances only subtly. This is why most of us now look back on efforts to ban, censor, or destroy books with derision. Fictional experiences help to make us who we are, but they do so alongside many other influences, including what are usually more important formative experiences that take place in real life. Critics describe videogames as presenting information that is inherently harmful, such that players are akin to drug users or passive victims who lack the same critical faculties that they would bring to a book or film. Throughout the book, I argue that this is an unfair double standard. We can recognize that videogames exert a subtle influence on us, just as other media do, without accepting the sweeping claims that critics make about players being transformed into murderers or sociopaths.

Just as importantly, those who condemn videogames for immorality usually only look for the effects that games have on players and not causation moving in the opposite direction. They focus on one side of an epistemic relationship that goes both ways. Players bring themselves into games. They interpret videogames and interact with them, helping to construct their meaning. Players shape videogames through gameplay choices that alter simulated events and through participation in fan communities where textual interpretations are voiced. They may even substantially alter games through modding (creating game modifications), which may in turn transform how games appear to other players. The epistemic continuum between reality and simulation must be seen as one of mutual exchange, in which players wield much of the power for determining the content and meaning of games.

The disjuncture between the real world and digital worlds is ontological; it is a difference between what kinds of entities are contained within each. We need moral constraints in the real world because it is populated by entities that can be adversely affected by decisions. Morality deals with agents who can inflict harm or be harmed. It proscribes certain conduct in the interest of protecting individuals and social order more broadly. It also deals with second-order obligations to promote fair treatment and provide assistance to those who are wronged. By some accounts, only humans can be full moral agents, though there is good reason for thinking that animals also may have moral agency (at least as recipients of harm) and that autonomous machines may one day have to be granted a similar status if they become sufficiently advanced. Objects sometimes enter into our moral calculations as things that can be damaged and that by extension harm moral agents, but objects themselves do not have moral agency. We treat the destruction of property as a moral transgression because this injures owners through deprivation. Destruction of physical things may also threaten the future interests of moral agents, as in the case of environmental degradation. We do not treat the destruction of physical things as being inherently wrong, however. Breaking a stick lying out in the woods is an action that lacks moral significance because it does not inflict substantive harm on a moral agent or a moral agent’s interests. The destruction of objects must impose some negative costs on moral agents to warrant censure.

It is possible to inflict harm that is purely digital. Erasing someone’s pictures or deleting their homework is clearly harmful. Even if these items have no material existence beyond the computer, they are things that people value and have an interest in. It is likewise possible for goods within videogames to take on moral weight. Players may steal from each other in multiplayer games or manipulate each other in ways that cause harm. Sneaking into someone else’s account and deleting saved games or erasing achievements would qualify as digital harm, as would transferring equipment to another account without permission—effectively stealing it. Objects can be digital and yet still ontologically in the class of things that are morally significant because they are akin to physical property in the sense that destroying or stealing them inflicts harm. I therefore make a caveat to my arguments throughout the book that it is possible to act immorally in games when it comes to offenses that are akin to property destruction or theft. In some extreme cases, deliberate destruction of digital property accumulated in a game has even led to prosecution, which is justifiable considering the genuine cost this inflicts.²

Theft is possible when there is scarcity of digital goods. Having a rare sword stolen in World of Warcraft inflicts harm because it cost time and/or money to obtain and cannot be easily replaced. This scarcity is artificial, but just like digital currencies, maintaining it is essential to preserving the overall sense of value and ensuring that users trust the game’s economic system. Stealing another player’s sword by hacking their account breaks the game rules, while taking a sword in accordance with the rules after defeating the other player in a consensual battle does not. Game rules establish a kind of moral boundary to govern play, and immoral treatment of other players is only possible when players go beyond those rules to inflict harm. Simulated aggression within the boundaries of game rules is not only expected—it is essential. It is what allows games to function and is something that players tacitly assent to by choosing to play.

The scope for immorality in games is fairly small, and the extent of the damage it causes is usually minimal. The first clue that videogames occupy a distinct ontological space is that transgressions do not match up with their real-world analogues. Cheating to kill another player’s avatar is a minor infraction. It is cheating, not murder. Stealing a rare sword from another player’s account may be punishable, but probably not to the same extent as stealing physical property like a car. Attacks against avatars and digital goods seem less serious than those against actual people and property because they are confined to a special domain. Virtual attacks primarily affect players within the game and do not follow them into the real world in the same way as the loss of money or material property.

For the most part, videogames simulate harm that is ontologically distinct from the harms we experience in real life. They simulate murder, yet the entities being killed are not moral agents. They are not real in a sense that would make them deserving of moral consideration. Even if the characters can exert some influence epistemically (i.e., by providing experiences that players take out of the game world), they nevertheless remain ontologically unreal. Avatars may appear to die, but they do not really die. They may look injured, but they are never really injured. Moreover, they do not have any value as property, because they are not scarce. They are infinitely reproducible entities that can never be truly destroyed. Any injury inflicted on avatars disappears upon pressing the reset button. Videogames likewise simulate property destruction, but it is not truly property destruction, because it does not inflict any harm on moral agents. There is no loss involved in stealing a car in Grand Theft Auto or blowing up a city in Fallout 3. No moral agent is affected by these actions. The entities being stolen or destroyed are digital. Moreover, these entities are meant to be infinitely destructible....

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1. The Conceptual Terrain of Simulation
• 2. The Moral Panic Surrounding Videogames
• 3. Imaginary Transgressions
• 4. Digital Morality
• 5. The Many Faces of Moral Reflection
• 6. Persuasive Games and Ideological Manipulation
• 7. Speaking through Games
• Conclusion
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Index
• About the Author