That old debate again

This is my response to a paper I read today, relating to kids and technology, and claiming that gaming is morally neutral. I'm surprised by my own bourgeois opinions...

I would challenge the claim that 'gaming is morally neutral'. It is as morally neutral as surfing the web. Both activites (indeed most activities) reflect our moral propenstities. It would be more accurate to state that video games are morally neutral, in the same way that the web or TV is morally neutral. Video games consitute nothing more than this: an intersection of the age-old pursuit of rules-based competition with modern technology (it would be difficult to argue that chess or ludo encourage violence in children.) But the content of video games (and the web) determines whether the medium has a greater or lesser capacity to morally degrade its users. It is difficult to argue that the accelerated sexualisation of, for instance, teenage girl's fashion, is not in some way attributable to the web as a distribution mechanism for porn - something unthinkable ten years ago when the availability of explicit imagery was restricted primarliy to sex shops (to which a degree of stigma was attached - this is also becoming eroded.)
Back to the argument - the content of video games requires players to make moral decisions; if the majority of video games constitute decisions such as 'shall I mug this old lady?' or 'shall I use my chainsaw on this single mum?' - and if the same games reward users for negative behaviour - then it could be argued that they are capable of inducing a kind of moral decrepitude. It should be noted that GTA: San Andreas is exactly such a game. Furthermore, the same game was withdrawn from a number of stores after it was discovered that the game contains a locked level where players can perform pornographic acts on polygonal women. Video games might not be solely responsible for society's apparent moral degradation, but they often pander to it and reinforce it.
Herein lies the problem with the industry, namely it's low-brow nature (I don't care what Stephen Poole says - most games appeal to humanity's baser instincts.) It has often been lamented that modern video games are an innovation waste-land, and that the industry desperately needs an avant garde (of course, many historical avant garde movements have pushed the norms of decency and taste, but they were also overtly intellectual and catholic in their sources of inspiration.) The games industry is on the receiving end of a degree of snobbery as a result. Games producers cannot be trusted because they are outside the canon of traditional arts, where a work might be considered morally questionable, but would also possess some intellectual and artistic merit. Games producers don't do themselves any favours by pandering to lowest-common-denominator principles. If there is evidence that kids crave a media-diet broader than killing stuff with large swords, then the industry should be more sensitive to those needs. Then we might see some products on the market with real depth that can present moral scenarios to players, without being didactic in their moral instruction or morally reprehensible. Games would then become morally neutral, and all the better for it - see Lionhead Studio's Black and White and Fable for example.

May 05, 2006