‘Moral Management’: Dealing with Moral Concerns to Maintain Enjoyment of Violent Video Games

Abstract

Many of the most popular video games contain violence (for example, see Smith, Lachlan, and Tamborini, 2003). Players of violent games take the role of soldiers, policemen, secret agents or professional killers (Hitman: Contracts, 2004), which implies war action or ‘small-scale violence’, such as shootings or bombings. Rapid progress in computing technology has rendered the audiovisual appearance and the interactive quality of today’s video-game violence extremely realistic, authentic and dynamic (Tamborini and Skalski, 2006). In fact, the simulation of violence in some video games has become so authentic that the military has discovered them as new opportunities for training and recruiting (America’s Army, 2002; Full Spectrum Warrior, 2004).