What does the gamer do?

Davnall, Rebecca ORCID: 0000-0001-6535-3833 (2021) What does the gamer do? ETHICS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY, 23 (3). pp. 225-237.

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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10676-020-09558-8

Abstract

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>The 'Gamer's Dilemma' is the problem of why some actions occurring in video game contexts seem to have similar, albeit attenuated, kinds of moral significance to their real-world equivalents, while others do not. In this paper, I argue that much of the confusion in the literature on this problem is not ethical but metaphysical. The Gamer's Dilemma depends on a particular theory of the virtual, which I call 'inflationary', according to which virtual worlds are a metaphysical novelty generated almost exclusively by video games. Actions performed in virtual worlds really belong to the kinds of action they appear to—'virtual murder' is a kind of murder. Inflationary theories are contrasted with 'deflationary' theories which, in effect, consider video games purely as systems for generating images, and thus the gamer as (merely) a consumer of media images. Inflationary theories struggle to explain why video games produce this unique metaphysical novelty; deflationary theories fail to do justice to the intuition that there is some significant difference between the gamer and the consumer of other media forms. In place of either, I sketch a theory of the gamer as performer, primarily by analogy with stage and cinema actors, which I suggest captures more of the moral complexity of the gamer's action.</jats:p>

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Gamer's dilemma, Video games, Virtual ethics, Virtual metaphysics, Performance
Depositing User:	Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited:	28 Sep 2020 10:06
Last Modified:	27 Nov 2023 06:09
DOI:	10.1007/s10676-020-09558-8
Open Access URL:	https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-020-09558-8
Related URLs:	Author Publisher
URI:	https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3102842