Abstract
This paper expands Rami Ali’s dissolution of the gamer’s dilemma (Ethics Inf Technol 17:267–274, 2015). Morgan Luck’s gamer’s dilemma (Ethics Inf Technol 11(1):31–36, 2009) rests on our having diverging intuition when considering virtual murder and virtual child molestation in video games. Virtual murder is seemingly permissible, when virtual child molestation is not and there is no obvious morally relevant difference between the two. Ali argues that virtual murder and virtual child molestation are equally permissible/impermissible when considered under different modes of engagement. To this end, Ali distinguishes between story-telling gameplay and simulation games, discussing both in depth. I build on the dissolution by looking into competitive gameplay in order to consider what the morally relevant difference between virtual murder and virtual child molestation might be when competing in a video game. I argue that when competitors consent to participate in a competition, the rules of the competition supersede everyday moral intuitions. As such, virtual competitions ought to represent such consent from virtual characters. Virtual children cannot be represented as giving consent to be molested because (1) children cannot be represented as giving sexual consent, and (2) consent to be possibly molested cannot be given. This creates a morally relevant difference between murder and molestation. By fully addressing competitive gameplay, I answer Luck’s worry that Ali’s dissolution is incomplete (Ethics Inf Technol 20:157–162, 2018).
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Notes
Let us suppose that all sexual acts mentioned in this paper are represented “off-screen” to avoid the possibility of virtual sexual acts being cases of pornography and child pornography (see Bartel 2011).
By “equally permissible,” I understand Ali to be arguing that they are both permissible in similar contexts, as opposed to being permissible to the same degree. The gamer’s dilemma does not rest on comparative claims between the permissibility of murder and the permissibility of child molestation (i.e. “virtual murder is more permissible than virtual child molestation”).
This decision supports our distinction between essential content (narrative in story-telling games) and non-essential content (simulations, open-world games).
Note also, that the choice to kill or not to kill the civilians was still a relevant one considering the narrative: the character is, after all, undercover as a terrorist. Mohamad Alavi, the game designer, explains that the mission was meant to make the gamer think about their situation: “the fact that I got the player to hesitate even for a split second and actually consider his actions before he pulled that trigger–that makes me feel very accomplished” (Senior 2012). We see here a situation in which both story-telling and competitive elements of the game are relevant to our evaluation: we consider the narrative background of our character, and the competitive space that we are virtually acting in when evaluating virtual murder.
Consent to participate is necessary when the rules of the game override everyday moral intuition, not for a competition to take place. C. Thi Nguyen makes an interesting distinction between merely competitive games, for which it is “entirely possible to compete without knowing that you are competing” and oppositional games, during which a competitor must interfere with their opponent’s goals (2018). The kind of consent that I am talking about is only relevant in the later kind of competitions. While swimming laps, I can compete with the person swimming in the lane next to me and race them to the other side of the pool without them knowing, but I cannot punch a stranger and claim to have won a boxing match without their consent.
To contrast, killing is not essentially non-consensual. Some cases of euthanasia are consensual acts of killing, and to some even consensual acts of murder.
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Acknowledgements
I am thankful to Rami Ali, Julia Driver, Kathleen Higgins and Sinan Drogramaci for comments on earlier drafts of this paper. I am also thankful to the graduate students at the University of Texas at Austin for their help and feedback, as well as two anonymous referees for their comments.
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Nader, K. Virtual competitions and the gamer’s dilemma. Ethics Inf Technol 22, 239–245 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-020-09532-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-020-09532-4