Is it morally wrong to simulate abhorrent acts such as rape and murder in video games, and if so, does this affect the aesthetic values of such games? First of all, let’s consider a few examples of games in which it is possible and in fact encouraged that the player participate in simulations of what we may assume are immoral acts.
In the Grand Theft Auto (GTA) games, the player completes missions for criminal gangs. Arguably there is nothing wrong with this idea; as I mentioned in another post, some people see the games as a form of satire, a sort of caricature of (usually) American city life. But some of the missions seem to involve the player performing acts of murder which don’t have any obvious satirical value:
Let’s assume it is always morally wrong to push a man in a port-a-loo into a hole and then cover him with wet cement. Is it always morally wrong to do so in a video game? What about in a lucid dream? What about writing about it in a novel?
Another example. Rapelay is a game which I am proud to say I have not played (I therefore don’t know much about it), because whereas GTA is at least intended partly to have comic and satirical value, Rapelay is effectively rape-themed cartoon pornography that allows the user to play a more active role than in ordinary pornography. The player molests and rapes women and children and scores points for doing so. Let’s assume it is always morally wrong to rape or molest. Is it always wrong to do so within a video game? It seems plausible to me that it is wrong to play Rapelay, because it involves indulging violent sexual fantasies. Whether this is wrong because it reflects badly on the player’s character, or because it risks encouraging real sexual violence or the consumption of extreme pornography, or for some other reason… plausibly it is wrong to play this game. Perhaps these wrong-making features will always be present in game simulations of rape; if so, plausibly we have here a clear-cut example of something which it is wrong to do and wrong to simulate.
One more example. In Doshin the Giant, a colourful, cartoonish game aimed largely at children, the player adopts the role of a giant who can choose at any time whether to help or to terrorise little villagers. The default mode of the character is Doshin the friendly yellow giant, who grows bigger from the love given to him by the villagers, in return for his help in the form of planting trees, levelling the ground for buildings, etc. But with one button-press, the player becomes Jashin the hate giant, who resembles Satan and grows bigger with the hate directed towards him from villagers whom he frightens or murders. Sounds unsuitable for children, but take a look at this video and you’ll see how the total lack of gore and realism prevents this from being used as a kind of genocide simulation:
Let’s assume that genocide is wrong, even when performed by satanic giants. Is it wrong to play this game and adopt the role of Jashin the hate giant? I expect many would share my intuition that this game is harmless fun, maybe even for children. One might even argue that it can teach children something about good and evil, although I won’t go that far. Suffice it to say: it seems permissible to pretend to be Jashin the giant and smash up some little pretend villages and villagers.
Maybe the supernatural and cartoonish elements of Doshin the Giant make a difference: it takes a bit of mental effort to draw a connection between this game and the behaviour of those in history who really have burned down villages and killed their inhabitants. Rapelay, on the other hand, although its graphics are somewhat cartoonish and unrealistic, does attempt to simulate the kind of sex crimes that really do take place. Playing Doshin might be more about escaping into a magical fantasy land than indulging genocidal fantasies; whereas playing Rapelay seems to be about pretty much nothing else apart from indulging violent sexual fantasies. Because of this, it is perhaps morally permissible to play the former game and not the latter.
What about GTA, then? My experience of those games has been partly of escaping into a fantasy world which amusingly and entertainingly caricatures the American criminal underworld. Clearly though, given the example above, it is possible to use these games to indulge homicidal fantasies. But it may also be possible to play the game and yet refrain from indulging such fantasies; not by avoiding those parts of the game that simulate murder, but by simply not having such fantasies to indulge. In short, then, GTA does seem to be in a grey area between the other two games I’ve mentioned, and the morality of playing it might depend on the player. Rapelay, from what I can tell, is not appreciable except as pornography, whereas GTA I think is more than just an interactive video nasty.
So it seems that playing Doshin is probably okay, playing GTA sometimes might not be, and playing Rapelay is probably wrong. Does this affect the aesthetic values of these games? This is unclear, and I won’t try to make it clear right now. In my opinion, Doshin is an amateurish but uniquely pretty game with enough aesthetic value to make it worth playing. The GTA games that I have tried have been pretty good in quite a different way: more satirical, more explorative, more realistic and challenging. From what I can tell, Rapelay has little to offer in terms of aesthetic values, unless you count erotic beauty as the relevant kind of aesthetic value. I regard the values of art (perhaps I should call these artistic values) as excluding the erotic beauty of human beings, such that the sexual attractiveness of a nude painting does not contribute to the painting’s aesthetic value.
So in my opinion, GTA is aesthetically better than Doshin which is aesthetically better than Rapelay. Rapely is also, I think, morally the worst of these games, yet Doshin seems to be a better game to play than GTA morally speaking. Would GTA be aesthetically improved if it were morally improved? Perhaps we will find this out when the new child-friendly GTA-style Lego game is released:
Would Doshin the Giant be an aesthetically worse game if it involved, say, the player adopting the role of a national leader who must decide how to treat his/her citizens, so that realistic acts of genocide were possible in the game? This actually sounds like it could be a better game.
So in conclusion, I don’t know. Moral values might make no difference to aesthetic values in games, or maybe they do and the new Lego game is going to be a masterpiece (I doubt this, so perhaps I am leaning towards the former claim). Maybe I will return to this issue in future posts.
Ben McGorrigan on the Aesthetic Values of Games 