The Ethics of Video Games

How video games give rise to moral panics —both real and imagined.

Link to the original blog

School Shootings and Video Games

On April 20th, 1999, the Columbine High School Massacre jumpstarted the now commonplace modern phenomenon of high school shootings. At this point — at least in the United States — school shootings have tragically become a norm. Since Columbine, the frequency of these shootings has risen exponentially.

The media frenzy around the Columbine shooting was massive. Several people pointed fingers at video games as the culprit — Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the perpetrators of the Columbine Shooting, were avid fans of the notoriously violent video game Doom.

Harris wrote in his journal in anticipation of the Columbine shooting that it was “like playing [the video game] Doom” and that his shotgun was “straight out of the game.”

One can see readily why this might raise some red flags about video games. The fear is that simulated violence will translate over to actual violence. This fear has led to untold numbers of video games becoming banned in many different centuries, lest another columbine occurs. At least in the United States, what ended up happening is that ESRB ratings (which is basically what establishes which games are appropriate for certain age groups) were established and were given more diligent attention.

Since Columbine, the video game industry has grown to become one of the largest industries in the world. In the U.S. alone, the industry is worth $18.4 billion (2017) and is projected to be worth $230 billion by 2022. Hence, the population of people who are playing video games is growing, and it is growing exponentially. It is well understood, too, that the vast majority of these games contain graphic violence.

“If Pac-Man had affected us as kids, we’d all be running around in dark rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive electronic music.”― Marcus Brigstocke

Do Video Games Cause Violence?

Why, then, is it the case that in 2020, global violence and crime rates are at the lowest they have been in human history? All of the data indicates that video games don’t cause violence.

Clearly, the idea that these games cause actual violence is an unfounded one, otherwise, we would see a very different correlation here.

Instead, the opposite correlation is occurring: the higher population of gamers, the lower the frequency of violence and crime. Is this causal?

Clearly not. Some people might still be influenced by video games to be violent, but mental illness is the culprit in those cases, not video games. Is this correlation simply a coincidence? Probably not either: as we have seen with the COVID-19 crisis, people staying indoors causes crime and violence decrease. Those who play video games stay indoors far more than those who don’t.

Hence, the idea that video games are the root — or even one of the roots — of violence and crime is an illusion. Playing video games even brings about some positive effects on gamers: online gaming can — italicized, as, knowing from firsthand experience, this can get very ugly — facilitate a sense of community; according to the American Psychological Association, playing video games in moderation can enhance certain forms of learning and reasoning capabilities and it can promote relaxation and stress-relief.

Young Men Revert to Games at Their Own Peril

There is, of course, the flip-side to this. While video games are not going to cause violence, what they might cause is the abdication of responsibilities.

Video games have been produced in a manner that is extremely compelling — a dare say in some cases, ‘addicting’.

Their design is tiered towards ensuring that players do not play in moderation. The incentive is to play as much as you can. What this has ended up producing is a generation with more men-children than previous generations, whereby childish activities take precedent over those which are indicatory of maturation — e.g. education, career, long-term intimate relationships, family, etc.

Young men are, on average, less educated, in less serious (or in any) relationships and are working less than any previous generation, and a huge portion of the time being spent by these men is otherwise playing video games. And they get by, by continuing to live with family.

The evidence suggests that men who spend their 20s this way experience extreme levels of unhappiness in their 30s and onward.

These men tend to use drugs and alcohol at higher proportions than those who went the other way and adopted responsibility and are also diagnosed with anxiety and depression at higher levels.

Given that these men at the moment compose up to 50% of young men with college degrees and up to 75% of young men without college degrees, this seems to me to be a moral crisis waiting to happen. When huge numbers of half of the human population are becoming more and more impotent, one cannot help but feel that some sort of negative spillover effect will inevitably occur as a result.

Is this to say condemn video games? No. I still enjoy them from time to time. But rather, it is to take a lesson from the ethics of Aristotle and practice some moderation.

Playing video games too much will ruin your life. Nothing bad will happen if you play video games for an hour or two a day. The problem is that young men are generally not disciplined enough to do this, and it is ruining their lives.

The Takeaway

While video games do not cause violence, and in moderation, can have profoundly meaningful impacts on the lives of gamers — they do carry the possibility of ruining the lives of young men through excessively playing video games will begin to result in an increase in cases of self-implosion.

And at best, it will absolutely result in a generation where a fair number of men are simply uneducated, unskilled (professionally and socially) and in turn, a greater danger to society, as, being uneducated and unskilled is a prerequisite to poverty and poverty is the number one cause of crime.

To answer “Socrates’ question”, as the 20th-century moral philosopher Bernard Williams called it, “what ought we to do,” we may answer “do not play video games excessively and in doing so, seek some discipline.” The situation many find themselves in will inevitably lead to some very immoral consequences, and the ethical answer — which, in many ways is the ethical answer — is moderation and discipline.

“I like video games, but they’re really violent. I’d like to play a video game where you help the people who were shot in all the other games. It’d be called ‘Really Busy Hospital.”
― Demetri Martin