Black Friday deals, riots & more!
You can listen to this week’s episode here or on iTunes
Join The Reformed Gamers this week as we discuss the dietary habits of hippos, Biblical work ethic and sacrifice, our Black Friday hauls of games and discuss if morality has a place in video games.
The Reformed Gamers 
Recently discovered and enjoying podcast. Think might have missed opportunity with the morality discussion in this one; in particular whether morality is subjective or objective and how that relates to our entertainments.
Very contrary to the IGN piece I see an objective morality as one of the primary motivating factors in folks actually enjoying any given game. Generally the escapism of either being able to act in ways contrary to how we would normally or legally in ‘real life’ or getting satisfaction from being the hero and saving the day are huge draws that make a game fun. In game, the moral inclinations of the characters we play are often different from our own, but that should not be confused with ‘a completely different morality/moral system’, because it’s an objective morality that is enabling us to gauge where in the moral spectrum our actions and the actions of the character in the game lie.
The IGN article seemed to me to come from a relativistic and pragmatic standpoint. Bringing up the ‘murder’ (murder??) of a cheerful wiggler in Mario in the same context as the airport scene in MW2 and implying those are different moralities, and different from our own seems naive and extremely simplistic. Article also seems disingenuous to imply the reason people are doing immoral things in GTA or Skyrim would be to analyze the game mechanics or AI. Any gamer knows they do those things often simply for a laugh, for fun and to do what we cant under normal circumstances, or to achieve a game objective despite knowing its a bad thing to do. The thing is we still know it’s wrong. That’s the point. Even in these games there are repercussions for being caught stealing or killing a chicken, and often being caught and chased by the police is a big part of these games. This isn’t a different morality.
Also thought violence got off lighter than it should have vs sexual content. Seems like we have an easier time rationalizing it as morally neutral or not having a negative effect on us. But later comments about ‘desensitization’ seem telling. If there’s nothing to be concerned about there why do we care about desensitization? Both powerfully affect psyche and can influence us in negative ways.
Also wasn’t any discussion of age appropriateness and how or if age is a consideration in these moral questions to do with games which would have been interesting. As a dad with two school age boys this is often an issue.
Now if you’ll excuse me I’m off to play Wolfenstein; The New Order and kill some Nazis…
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Definitely a conversation that is worth continuing. So many facets that we missed but I’m sure we will touch on in future episodes. Thanks for listening and taking the time to comment! GG & Amen
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