The moral cost of video games

Violence is bad enough. But here's the worst part.

from the January 7, 2008 edition

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Take, for instance, the idea of ruthless competition, that for every winner there are necessarily losers. Regardless of what game you're playing, the message is almost always the same: Do whatever it takes to win, even at the expense of everyone else.

Imagine if that were the moral of every movie and TV show you ever watched. Would the world be a better or worse place? Would you let your children play a game that promoted such a dog-eat-dog mentality?

Fundamentally, most games operate within a moral framework: good versus evil (or vice versa). But what games conspicuously lack is moral consequence. Once you've killed someone, stolen something, or blown up a building, that's usually the end of it – you'll rarely get to see the emotional impact of your actions on the characters around you.

Every bit of mayhem becomes just another item on a video-game to-do list. Games ignore moral consequence and emotional nuance to focus on the purely visceral. There are only two types of decisions you can really make: the strategically correct one or the strategically incorrect one. There is no "right" or "wrong" – only success or failure.

Unbridled competition combined with no moral consequence eventually leads to a lack of compassion. And without compassion, humanity is lost.

What games risk instilling, not just in kids, but in anyone who plays them, is a kind of sociopathy: a dearth of conscience. Whether this might be imitated outside of gaming is beside the point. What we should be asking ourselves is if we really want to spend ever more time playing things that encourage these values. That's a moral question, one that's easily sidelined in favor of simply having fun, but it's something we all must consider as the pastime grows more popular.

I'm not calling for stricter regulation of the video-game industry. Rather, I hope to widen the debate to include issues that might not be considered if we believe the sensational, trivial hysteria of the media. By concentrating so heavily on the immediate (and short-term) effects of video-game violence, we're distracted from discussing more important moral dimensions. It's time for parents to stop asking what is appropriate for their children and to start asking what is morally right.

• Matthew Devereux writes about the video-game industry and is a former staff writer of Edge magazine.

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