Value, violence, and the ethics of gaming

Splintering the gamer’s dilemma: moral intuitions, motivational assumptions, and action prototypes

“…However, as Ali (2015) has proposed and as I hope to have substantiated, the dilemma can easily come to mask the fact that context matters, even in virtual worlds (see also Goerger, 2017;Tamborini, Weber, Bowman, Eden, & Skalski, 2013).…”

Getting away with murder: why virtual murder in MMORPGs can be wrong on Kantian grounds

“…when they do not only represent immoral actions but endorse a morally problematic viewpoint" (p. 117). In other words, I am claiming that MMORPGs are not morally evaluable simply because they allow for virtual murder, but because they are the sort of game that allows for virtual murder to be performed in morally objectionable ways (in this case, as a form of exploitation) [see Goerger (2017) and Ostritsch (2017)].…”

Objections to Ostritsch’s argument in “The amoralist challenge to gaming and the gamer’s moral obligation”

“…This is an important failing given that the entire dependency relation Ostritsch seeks to promote is predicated on the veracity of this last claim. If we take CEE to be a means of accounting for what is required to establish the veracity of "x is immoral" (i.e., in virtue of a constructed moral norm based on a shared negative moral attitude towards x without necessarily having shared reasons for this attitude), then if it became the established view (for example) that Hatred merely represents murder, even gratuitous murder, rather than endorses it, as Ostritsch argues is the case with regard to Grand Theft Auto V's satirical portrayal of violence despite views to the contrary (e.g., Goerger 2017;Saar 2015;Trotman 2014), then one's enjoyment of the gameplay of Hatred would not (should not) be considered immoral.…”