Abstract
As growing influences in contemporary society, computer games are raising a host of ethical issues that have garnered both negative and positive appraisals. One promising approach to many of these issues focuses on the character of gamers as the relevant locus of ethically significant activity. This paper develops a character approach to the ethics of computer games. It frames the important question as one of conceptualizing and evaluating the normatively charged traffic between worlds (real and virtual) and develops the concepts of character and valuation as ways of addressing this question. The final section sketches four topics in computer game ethics for which the character approach shows promise.
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Notes
- 1.
Worldwide sales are forecast to top $44 billion in 2011. I use “computer games” to designate computer-based gaming systems. I intend this to include video games as well as online and offline computer games. I conceptualize computer games according to the classic game model outlined by Jesper Juul (2005).
- 2.
See Funk et al. (2004) for evidence that violent computer games may have greater impacts on empathy than other forms of violent media.
- 3.
- 4.
The hedonic utilitarianism of Bentham is probably an exception to this as it takes as its object simply the maximization of pleasure without any concern for the quality of those pleasures.
- 5.
Throughout the twentieth century, discussion of character mostly took place in the social science literature. In The Psychology of Character (1928), for example, A.A. Roback defined it as “an enduring psychophysical disposition to inhibit instinctive tendencies in accordance with regulative principles” (p. 450).
- 6.
See Hursthouse (1999) for an excellent contemporary exegesis and defense of Aristotelian virtue ethics.
- 7.
This circularity is often seen as a weakness (e.g., Pellegrino 1995). It is, however, more true to life than abstract, universal “systems.” Others argue it is totalitarian, relying as it does on the authority of teachers to shape character, rather than rational first principles to guide conduct. I can only here point to the valuable insights developed by Susan K. Allard-Nelson in this regard (2004).
- 8.
Sandra Calvert (2005) further notes that videogames provide cognitive skills, especially “visual iconic and spatial representation skills” that are “needed to excel in many technical careers” (p. 130).
- 9.
Poker, however, can be simulated without losing value, at least in this radical sense, because it is not rooted in the execution of certain physical movements.
- 10.
For another interesting take on this idea see Borgmann (1993).
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Briggle, A. (2012). The Ethics of Computer Games: A Character Approach. In: Sageng, J., Fossheim, H., Mandt Larsen, T. (eds) The Philosophy of Computer Games. Philosophy of Engineering and Technology, vol 7. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4249-9_11
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