Videogames, emotions and ethics

Abstract

In my spare time I enjoy chasing my friends around desolate graveyards, ancient crypts, and distant planets, and shooting at them with a very large and powerful machinegun. They seem to enjoy the experience, given that they tend to giggle a lot when killed. However, I was recently surprised to find that some philosophers think that my murderous glee makes me an immoral person. Just what is the problem with a bit of consensual mass-murder every now and then? In this paper I will attempt to get to the bottom of that vexing question. Videogames are a recent fictive development that seem to engage their players in all the hallmark cognitive attitudes and behaviours of pretence or make-believe participation. Videogames are distinctive in being comprised of interactive fictions. Passing quickly over some semantic and ontological difficulties with what is might mean to be an interactive fiction, in this paper I discuss the role of the emotions in our fictive engagement with videogames, and the moral evaluation of these emotions and the works that provoke them. Because videogames are interactive fictions, our participation with them seems to engage our emotions in a more intimate manner than is the case with traditional narrative fictions. This leads to the possibility of a moral appraisal of our attitudes toward their content. fictions. Passing quickly over some semantic and ontological difficulties with what is might mean to be an interactive fiction, in this paper I discuss the role of the emotions in our fictive engagement with videogames, and the moral evaluation of these emotions and the works that provoke them. Because videogames are interactive fictions, our participation with them seems to engage our emotions in a more intimate manner than is the case with traditional narrative fictions. This leads to the possibility of a moral appraisal of our attitudes toward their content