1.1 Virtual Murder: The Current State of Play
Within single-player video games (hereafter, video games), it is permissible to engage in simulated murder. By murder, I mean the intentional and unlawful killing of an individual. Indeed, it is far from hyperbole to say that a large percentage of violent video games contain acts of simulated killing, many of which would be categorized as murder or as otherwise unlawful if performed for real. To illustrate, Cunningham et al. (2011) report that from a total of 1117 video games sampled, 672 were identified as non-violent and 445 violent (based on the Entertainment Software Ratings Board’s (ESRB’s) ratings and content descriptors). Of the 445 violent titles, 113 were considered to be extremely or, as Cunningham et al. refer to them, ‘intensely’ violent. Moreover, Prigg (2009) reports that, on the first day of its release, the video game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 sold 4.7 million copies in the USA and UK alone, outselling the previous best video game – Grand Theft Auto IV – by some distance. Both the Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty series are held to be extremely violent games. (Before proceeding, a point of clarification: reference to ‘violent video games’ should be understood as short-hand for video games whose content contains simulated violence.) Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 became infamous for its airport massacre scene, and Grand Theft Auto IV permits the gamer’s character to have sex with a prostitute before mugging or even killing her. The popularity of violent or even extremely violent content does not appear to be waning. As Haynes (2015) notes:
In 2015, we saw some of the most violent video games ever released. Plus, older violent games such as Gears of War: Ultimate Edition and Resident Evil: The Definitive Edition were re-released with visual upgrades that intensify the more violent moments, including blood and gore splattering (p. 1).
When describing the current state of play (meaning those games currently available to age-appropriate persons in the UK and USA), enacting murder is not only permitted but a common occurrence; some might even say ‘positively encouraged’. In Manhunt 2, for example, I (in the form of an avatar) can bludgeon to death a stranger with a kitchen utensil. Postal 2 allows me to set someone on fire while they are alive, douse the flames by urinating on them, before beating them to death with my boot and a shovel. More recently, the video game Hatred has courted controversy through its seemingly relentless enactment of random murder (Campbell 2014). In contrast, the current state of play does not permit video games to contain enactments of paedophilia.1 One quick and easy way to account for this discrepancy is to point out that virtual child pornography, which would include the virtual enactment of paedophilic acts, is illegal in many countries, including the UK and, with qualification, the USA.
Before discussing the legality of virtual paedophilia (both for the purpose of clarification and as a means of informing the moral debate to come), one might ask with some incredulity: why would anyone want to do that? By ‘that’, I mean why would anyone want to play a game in which they can simulate paedophilic activity and therefore, to all intense and purposes, play at being a paedophile? The intuition underlying this question and the incredulity with which it might be asked seem to appeal to player motivation. Crudely put, one might suspect that there is something wrong with someone who wants to play at being a paedophile; that their motivation to enact paedophilia stems from the fact that it vicariously satisfies, and is therefore a symptom of, their desire to engage in actual paedophilia. Or perhaps, one fears the risk of enacting this activity within a game; that, somehow, repeatedly engaging in such simulations may lead one to acquire a taste for what the simulation represents (a kind of slippery-slope argument). Of course, some people may question the motivation of individuals who play a game like Postal 2 in which one can enact all kinds of extremely violent acts. Returning to the earlier example, they may ask with equal incredulity why anyone would want to play a game in which it is possible to set someone on fire, urinate on them to douse the flames and then beat them to death. Is enacting this kind of activity likewise a symptom of some other desire: namely, to engage in actual murder? Although there will be dissenters, I suspect the majority response would be ‘no’. It is, however, a question I will return to.
1.2 The Gamer’s Dilemma
Virtual murder is permitted in the UK and USA, even when enacted with the level of violence depicted in video games like Postal 2 (as one example among many). Given this, consider the words of Morgan Luck when introducing the gamer’s dilemma:
Is it immoral for a player to direct his character to murder another within a computer game? The standard response to this question is no. This is because no one is actually harmed as a result of a virtual harm. Such an outlook seems intuitive, and it explains why millions of gamers feel it is perfectly permissible to commit acts of virtual murder. Yet this argument can be easily adapted to demonstrate why virtual paedophilia might also be morally permissible, as no actual children are harmed in such cases. This result is confronting, as most people feel that virtual paedophilia is not morally permissible. (Luck 2009, p. 31)
According to Luck, the dilemma gamers face – or indeed anyone faces who has a view on the selective prohibition of video game content (Young 2013b) – is that any appeal to rudimentary arguments avowing ‘no harm’, used to rebut criticism of our intuitions over the permissibility of virtual murder, can also be used to challenge any intuitions we may have about the impermissibility of virtual paedophilia. If the claim is that no actual harm occurs as the result of virtual murder then, likewise, why should it not be claimed that no actual harm results from virtual paedophilia? Given the permissibility of the former, why prohibit the latter? What justifies our contrary intuition, here? Where our intuitions are shown to be inconsistent or seemingly without support, at least after a cursory examination, the gamer (or any other interested party) is faced with a dilemma. If one wishes to achieve parity, either one prohibits virtual murder and virtual paedophilia (resulting in the unfortunate consequence of prohibiting an activity many gamers intuitively feel is acceptable and indeed enjoy enacting: namely, murder) or one permits each of these activities (thereby creating a different unpalatable consequence: allowing the enactment of paedophilia, which many would find repugnant). Of course, one could simply admit to having inconsistent and, it would seem, indefensible views about different virtual content; indefensible, that is, outside of an appeal to the popularity of certain intuitions.
Appeal to intuition is not a sage strategy, however (something we will return to in Section 2.1); a conclusion Luck himself acknowledges. Indeed, much of Luck’s original paper on the gamer’s dilemma sets out to examine “whether any good arguments can be produced to reconcile the intuition that virtual murder is morally permissible, with the intuition that virtual paedophilia is not” (2009, p. 31), thereby making such seemingly inconsistent intuitions defensible through evidence and/or argument. Luck concludes that there are none.
1.2.1 A Brief Overview
Since the introduction of the gamer’s dilemma, a number of ways of resolving it have been suggested, and debate continues over their respective success. In what is to follow, I will consider each of these arguments in turn and present various responses to them: mainly in relation to competing or absent empirical findings (where certain findings are required to support an argument) or through the identification of internal inconsistencies and/or conceptual incoherence within the argument itself. On completing my critical review in which, to a greater or lesser degree, I identify problems with all previous attempts at resolving the dilemma, I present my own thoughts on how we might approach finding a solution.
Chapters 2 and 3 will be taken up with the different ways in which Luck tries to resolve the dilemma, none of which he finds wholly convincing. In his original paper, some of his suggestions are given only cursory treatment, I therefore expand on the reasoning Luck uses in each case. My aim is to provide further support for the conclusions he draws and although, in places, I disagree with the manner of his argument, I nevertheless concur with his overall dissatisfaction with the suggested means of resolving ...