Interesting, but I am curious if this person understands the gravity of what he is trying to censor here. For it goes well beyond video games:

>Perhaps you—dear reader—are still not convinced. I ask you, then, to try this experiment at home. The experiment comes in two stages. Stage One: Take a photograph of someone you love and stab the eyes out. Are you hesitant to do it? Does it make you feel uneasy? Are you unwilling to stab out the eyes? Remember, it’s just a glossy piece of paper. If you can stab the eyes out, then you can move on to Stage Two: leave the maimed photograph in a place where your loved one will find it. When they find it, give them a lecture on the metaphysical status of images and why your actions didn’t mean anything because photographs lack moral status.

The first act is just the destruction of a photo. Not a big deal, you can print more. The second part is a statement, no longer part of a virtual environment, no longer part of just your own perception. It is a deliberate statement to others who will observe this.

By this argument, video game violence is more morally justified then watching a violent movie or even watching the news on TV. Because a video game remains local to your own perception. You choose the violence, if any, and aside from a multiplayer game (which face it, participants consent to the application of violence to themselves and others in), rather then to have it pushed upon you by the media you may only observe.

But would this professor call for the censorship of news and TV series? I rather doubt it.

This article seems to deliberately conflate an action with the use of that action as a symbol.

The reason leaving a photo with its eyes cut out for someone to find is hurtful is because of the symbolic meaning to that action and to the further deliberate action of leaving it out for them to find. It is something you would normally only do because you want them to be hurt.

The sanctimonious ending where you "give them a lecture on the metaphysical status of images" only further cements the point that the author is presenting a straw man.

Yes, publicizing symbolically awful things to people likely to be hurt by them is morally wrong. Posting pictures of an npc you beat up in a video game with "feminist got what's coming to her" is wrong, but not because you beat up an npc in a video game. It is wrong because you are publishing it with the intention to spread the repulsive message that feminists deserve to be beat up.

If the author wants to defend the proposition that "video game violence isn't innocent" then they would need to pose a different hypothetical. Is someone beating up npcs in a video game and not publishing it doing anything wrong? If one person kills an NPC because they are impeding a quest, and another person kills that same NPC because the player is racist and the NPC is black, does that difference make the second act morally wrong? even though no observer is ever going to be able to tell the difference between the two actions?

There are real questions to ask about this topic, but the article doesn't engage with any of them. Instead focusing on the use of actions in video games as a symbol outside video games, which does not support the hypothesis.

There seem to me to be two elements here. They are interwoven in the article and in practice they may not be separable.

The first is the speech-like or communication act. This is exemplified by the example of leaving the desecrated photo for your partner to find. However, the act of publishing some of the games mentioned is also a speech-act. "Come have fun burning these effigies". This issue should be considered alongside other speech-act pros and cons.

The second is more unique to video games. I was involved in the development of multiplayer games already 25 years ago. When playing games you are reprogramming the emotional and values oriented modules of your brain.

Of course every moment changes something in you, but that is on a trivial level. When you take actions in a graphic environment, when you do an act that you would find taboo in real life, the short term and longer term sub-linguistic modules that make up who you are - will change.

It may be true to a lesser extent when watching passively, but game designers are sometimes explicit in their ability to change you and your priorities. For example, when you spend time trying to achieve a goal (even putting some pixels in to top left corner), your motivations are being changed.

I do not wish to propose conclusions. There are cognitive values in (some) games as well as social. Having fun is also valid part your preference structure. I am making a more factual claim (though hard to track experimentally) that you are making changes in playing, particularly with the sort of games described in this article.

(1) Do you want to make those changes? (2) If you can program yourself to be a worse person, is it ethical to do so?

With the example of MLK and also with the example of beating the suffragette, it seems like the objectionable part is sharing that virtual action with others. Doesn’t violence done in video games in solitary skirt those issues, and become less morally objectionable? Or to use his last example, hurting a photo doesn’t offend me, but leaving out a damaged photo for others to see is asking for problems. In other words, can’t I shoot zombies alone in my own basement without hurting anyone?

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More people have been killed because of books than because of videos games. Take your junk science elsewhere.

Yesterday I was reading on Retrotopy of Zygmunt Bauman: violence inherently implicates the idea of a latent war, and two sides of it (violence for good, and violence for evil). Under those circumstances, I believe that we keep close to the concept of "possession" of the beings and goods, and at a certain point (with the prevalence of the idea of violence), we do keep the idea of reification, as well.

I would posit the opposite to give outlet to such violence.

Defacing the image of a loved one can be a cathartic release if there's pent up tension.

Video game violence can also be a cathartic release. Especially if there is pent up fear, or frustration, with a group of people.

"It is morally wrong to hold malicious attitudes toward other people even when we don’t act on those attitudes "

This is a huge and unfounded claim in the article. It is not at all clear that thought-crime should be considered a valid moral concept.

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