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This is a very interesting question. I'm sitting in on a philosophy course right now and keep thinking that every question the prof raises was discussed in Star Trek: Next Generation. Here's another one. Since Data is an android is there anything unethical about messing with his programming or shutting him down?

One question it seems to me is whether or not intention/feelings is enough to make something problematic - Jesus saying, if you look at a woman with lust in your heart you've committed adultery. So if you trample gardens in your heart are you already a hooligan. Or the argument could be made (and frequently is made about violence in games or in the media) that if you play at it enough it normalizes it and makes it more likely that you will do it in real life. The counter argument is made that kids have been playing war games for ever and rarely did that ever translate into actual violence. Witness your own testimony.

Remember in the movie Witness where the grandfather is explaining to his grandson that when you hold the gun you take it into your heart? Intuitively, like you, I think somehow if you trample in your video game you take trampling into your heart...

Having said that I love the computer game Civilization and wipe out "barbarian" tribes without a second thought.

Hoisted on my own video game...

Ha ha, I actually think thats kind of cute.
I have never subscribed to the theory that what kids do in games carries over into real life. I know I am in the minority, but I strongly belive that unless a child is mentally unstable, they know the difference between reality and a game.
Remeber all the heat video games took after columbine?
I dont think you have much to worry about.

It is an interesting issue isn't it. My concern is the level of disassociation that we can develop by creating a "virtual" character and a "real" character. If we can easily flip between two distinct characters, which have different ethics and morals and behaviour - is this a form of split personality.

Ten years ago, my husband and I met and courted online. One of the commitments we made to each other was that we wouldn't behave in a manner online that we wouldn't do in real life. Did we manage it? Almost. Well perhaps he was a little more romantic online than in real life - or is that a typical change that happens after the first flush of romance anyhow!

I am not completely negative on this - but it leaves some questions doesn't it.

Janet McKinney

Interesting that you chose the example of SecondLife. Should be be looking out for a Gordon avatar? :-)

Why is the SecondLife example so apt? Because the issue of what people do in there and its real life repercussions has been very prominent in the past few months, especially with regards to illegal activity. SecondLife does stand apart from computer games, however, in that there is no goal, no set of steps to follow other than the ones you set yourself. In that way SecondLife is a lot like the first life we inhabit every day, the choices of how we act are before us constantly and we live with the outcome of those decisions.

Its interesting that in my near 2 years in SecondLife I've met the same variety of people I'd expect to meet in real life. Those who love, those who are motivated by fear, those who help, those who hinder and seek to cause harm. Perhaps, when it comes to anytime we sit down at a computer, to read, write, play a game or log into SecondLife, all we really have is a new expression of old temptations, problems, opportunities and possibilities we have in real life. First life or SecondLife, there's nothing new under the sun.

Maybe see some of you in SecondLife, look up topmate Newchurch if you're ever in there.

The difference between stomping on the flower gardens and shooting computer people lies in what's on the other end. Is Lillian stomping on the flowers of other players in the game? Are there people on the other side of the screen?

If it's a situation, like shooting computer-generated "people," where she's the only sentient being participating, then no one is hurt by her actions. It's all just pretend, and that's fine. But if it's a virtual world like Second Life, and there are real people who create the virtual gardens that she stomps on, then she is causing harm to others. Not good.

I'd worry, even for virtual people, about destructive rather than constructive actions, just because of what it encourages in the thought process.

If it were real people on the other end, however, I think the feedback cycle would hit her pretty quickly with the consquences of her actions.

Interesting topic - after years of reading your blog, this topic is what drove me to register here.

Dale

I'm puzzled by the assertion that "England" (sic) has banned purely virtual child porn. It has certainly been discussed here, many times, but I don't think it has actually been done yet.

The US, however, passed the Child Pornography Protection Act of 1996 which *did* make this change (though it was subsequently struck down by the Supreme Court).

Felix

Basically what these games do is put readers in the seat writers have historically occupied: Making fictional characters up and deciding what they do to each other.

So I don't think the questions are new; it's just that a quantitative change becomes a qualitative change. Piracy is a similar example; it used to be that it took some work, some money, and specialized equipment to pirate a record, and it could only be disseminated in a small circle of people with similar equipment. Now it takes no knowledge and no special gear, and can be disseminated worldwide to a huge waiting audience. Things change when suddenly everybody can do them and spread the results everywhere.

The ethical questions aren't new--do mystery novels glorify murder? does piracy hurt anybody?--but the sheer numbers have changed drastically. It's the numbers that make the questions more urgent, and the ease, lack of expense, time required, and loss of a need for specialized knowledge mean teenagers are a huge part of the mob doing it.

Ethics?

Teenagers?

Doubt it.

My daughter was very active for a while in an online virtual community centered around pets. She had amassed quite a bit of virtual money, and she told me one day--straight out, without shame--that she was paying other (real human) players to vote for her in some election or contest in the community. That gave me pause.

She was a smart 11 or 12-year-old at the time, so we had a discussion of this. She was clear that this wasn't appropriate in the real world, but she didn't really see it as a problem online since it was only a game.

When it came down to it, though, I concluded that her behavior wasn't much different than some of the wheeling-and-dealing I do while playing Monopoly that I would never dream of in real life.

no artificial intelligence? i thought that's what seminaries produced...

Quite some time back I heard Henry Kissinger in a presentation comment: "Problems are easy to identify, it's their solutions that are difficult and create conflict."

That thought has stuck with me for more than a dozen years now. I occasionally see examples of its validity. This strikes me as one.

No easy answers here.

I played monopoly and occasionally won all the dough. I hated it. I liked playing because all the family would get together and have fun during holidays. I liked the winning, but I always thought, "I am taking everyone's money. I just made everyone poor." It felt wrong. I still feel uncomfortable when I win at some board game. Sometimes I stop answering correctly so that I don't have too many more points or whatever than others. Board games can be a chore. Very rarely, they are fun with the right people.

I don't think that everyone who stomps on flowers or kills people in a virtual world is going to do that in real life. I think most people keep fantasy and reality well separated. It still makes me uncomfortable to know that someone would get joy out of playing games in virtuality in a way that I would abhor in reality. I think of how much better you can be at a task if you have practiced in a simulator, like with pilots and police. I just don't want to be good at some things.

You raise an interesting question of dehumanization, which is what I think makes war and oppression possible -- the enemy is not human in the same way that you are so it's okay to eliminate him and her. I grew up in a small town in Oklahoma and in our neighborhood everything was unlocked, houses, cars with the keys in the ignition, bicycles. No one thought of stealing because the cars and bikes and houses were all connected to people who we knew to be like us.

I'm no thief, but I no longer live in the kind of community where you know everybody and in the rare event when I see an untethered bike, I sometimes think "Look! Free bike!" Of course, I don't steal the bike, but the fact that it occurs to me that it is "free" is significant, I think.

So I think it is easier to be ethical on one hand in a less complex society on one level. But there is still the challenge of how to overcome our resistance to thinking of the "other" as less than we are ...

I'm not a "gamer" anymore, so maybe I'm not qualified to answer, but it seems to me that there's an important difference between the computer war games that you and I played and the role-playing games your daughter (and mine) are now playing. Although we probably never gave it this much thought, the idea behind the war games was that we were fighting "the enemy." Leaving aside for now the point mentioned above about whether that in and of itself is dehumanizing and/or unethical, the point was we were "killing" the bad guy, not some innocent on the street. Depending on one's view of war and self-defense, the killing in the war games if translated into real life could still be argued to be ethical along the lines of self-defense, defense of country, etc. Stomping on neighbor's flowers so you can win yard of the month seems to me to be simply cheating, whether you do it virtually or in the real world. While property damage certainly doesn't hold a candle to killing, in one game the damage is done solely for personal gain and at the expense of "others," whereas at least in the games I played, the premise of the killing was for an arguably ethical reason. I'm not saying that our daughters are morally or ethically deficient based on the choices they make while playing these games. I suspect, like us and our wars, they don't really give it any serious thought. But it does open a door for some very interesting conversations with them.

Travis

RLP - My daughter also likes Animal Crossing. She has even tried to "explain" it to me in detail...fascinating game! However, I will ask her if she has ever won the best flower garden contest. If not, she may have a "new" strategy now! Your daughter may not be the only one that stomps on the flowers of others!

ps. How is your daughter's fishing? How is her house coming? She will know what I mean!

Wow. Stomping on other people's flowers. Bad Girl! Actually, I would probably do the same thing in a game, I used to be a ruthless Monopoly player, no pity on nobody, at no time.

But I'm hardly like that in real life.

IF I had a fantasy person, she would definitely be the total opposite of what I am, probably she would be what I wished I were.

I don't think games or music or anything for that matter would cause someone to do something that they wouldn't already do in "real life" the first place.

I'm a heavy duty rocker, and I know some lyrics have been blamed for causing suicides, but honestly, I don't buy that at all. I'm sure Ozzie Osbourne has never held a gun to somebody's head....

I suppose things could get dangerous if someone can't differentiate between fantasy and reality though..... but those people, hopefully, are few.

Shalom, Nancy in San Antonio

RLP

I think it's interesting that those who comment are focused on whether the actions in the virtual world transmit to the physical world. That may be of concern but that isn't the measure of whether it's acceptable for us to participate.

It would seem that our hearts are the center of sinful activity and our actions are merely the expression of it. If so, what does stomping on someone's flowers say about our hearts or shooting someone in a game? I have to admit I don't have the answer but your example of outlawing virtually created child porn illustrates this point. From God's perspective, is wickedness only measured by the "real harm" inflicted on others or is it also measured by the response of our hearts before God.

Thanks for making us think

Every Square Inch

I work in the video game industry!

I remember coming back from college for the summer, and playing some video games with a high school friend. We were playing Grand Theft Auto III and he was explaining that he wouldn't play because he decided it was wrong to kill characters in a video game. Here was my argument in response:

These character's are designed to die, unless the designer gave them hit points and made them susceptible to attack and death. By not killing them you are denying them their right to fulfill their programming behaviors. Also the character never really dies, anyway, he is an instance of a pre-designed object, and will be spawned again and again as often as is called for.

NPC AI is very simplistic and saying that it is wrong to stomp a non-player character's flowers is like saying that it would be wrong to take a pawn in chess. It's how the game is played.

I sometimes wonder if our world is designed the same way, all the suffering and pain just a method by which god adds flavor to his little puppet drama.

I've heard - and said - the old lines about how online life is "only typing" and "doesn't count." I've learned, through hard experience, to disagree. No action is consequence-free. If you treat someone cruelly or inconsiderately online just because you can - because the other players are "just bots" and it's not real, there is one person absolutely guaranteed to be harmed by that: you. As the poster above said, what is at stake is the state of our own hearts. And hearts are fragile.

You should REALLY read Marva Dawn's - unfettered hope, A call to faithful living in an affluent society, it talk about the technological 'realities' and much more!!

ohh the marva dawn comment was left by me Paul - www.paulmorgun.blogspot.com

My daughters are invested in Runescape (Ruint-scape, as I call it). Same premise.

I am reminded of a Stargate: Atlantis episode entitled "The Game" where two of the characters were playing this cool virtual reality game -- it turned out not to be a game, but the 'controls' for two villages on a planet.

To quote SciFi "On a recon mission, Maj. Lorne's team discovers a primitive planet with Ancient satellites hovering overhead. But what intrigues Lorne most isn't the satellites; it's a portrait hanging in one of the planet's major villages. The portrait is of Dr. Rodney McKay.

In fact, while exploring Atlantis a few years ago, McKay and Sheppard discovered what they thought was an Ancient computer game in which two players compete to build the best society. Since then, they've played the game frequently, with Sheppard designing a militaristic medieval culture and McKay methodically advancing his people into the technological future. Both men now recognize that the planet's two societies are exact duplicates of those in their so-called game. Along with Teyla and Ronon, they visit the planet to investigate."

The gist of the episode was that virtual reality actions will effect our own reality. Mindsets, relationships, ethics -- all spill over.
Another sentence from the synopsis, "Their feelings, however artificially caused, are now very real."

Something to think about.

Your friend Michael mentioned this post on his blog which directed me here as well as to a wall street journal article that raises the
virtual morality question to the extreme.

You might find it interesting

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB118670164592393622.html?mod=blog

My response to the "no one was hurt" excuse is the same as the "it was okay to hurt them because they are bad people" excuse. It's not about who "they" are. It's about who I am. If I do something bad, then I am a person who does bad things. The responsibility for my actions lies with me, not with any "them."

I don't know that I have anything substantive to add to this thread other than to say that I find the various arguments fascinating and thought-provoking. My own inclination is to dismiss the connections. However I am persuaded by the biblical argument about the state of one's heart and Jesus' words from the Sermon on the Mount. As was alluded with the Kissinger quote, it is how we propose to solve such quandries that seems to cause even more trouble. Do we impose regulation on all because of the fragility of the few, or do we regulate our own behavior (as Paul suggests to the Corinthians) in recognition that while the behavior may be spiritually harmless, it has communal implications that can be destructive. Thanks for making us think about this Preach.
-mattman (not signed in)

Interesting to see what you're writing about these days, Gordon... I haven't been around in a long time.

The more real we try to make our online worlds, the more the lines between virtual and actual actions blur. I think that's more an issue with Second Life, et al, rather than the game your daughter is playing, but it's a starting point.

It's interesting to see how differently people behave when they can disappear behind a character or an avatar or a screen name. We do and say things on the Web we'd never say to our neighbours, and find things humourous and acceptable online that would probably shock us face to face.

When I work and talk with kids, I always make a point of telling them not to do take risks online or communicate online any differently than they would if they came across a stranger on a street, or conversely, to treat people with just as much respect as they would offline.

But this generation finds it so easy to disappear into other realities and exist in digital parallels. I think a time is coming when it will seem pretty Luddite to say, "Don't do it in a game or on a website if you wouldn't do it in real life."

Once you add the natural invincibility kids feel to the anonymity of the Internet, it's pretty irresistible to do whatever the hell you want to whoever the hell you want.

(that was me, Meg at http://www.megfowler.com)

are our motivations and actions in this virtual world beyond the scope of paul saying that whatever is not from faith is sin?

Just a side note:

When I first got Animal Crossing for the Gamecube, some years back, I was pretty enthused about it. It starts out with this thing where your character shows up in a strange town, and doesn't know about houses or anything, but someone offers to sell him a house, and let him pay it off over time. I thought, hey, cool. Sort of a prep for the idea of getting a mortgage.

So I spent a couple of days happily playing the game. Fishing. Searching for sand dollars. Digging up buried treasures. And, after a week or two, I could pay off my house. So I did.

The next time I talked to the little animal dude that sold me the house, he said that he could make my house bigger, although it would cost money. And I thought about it, and I decided, well, I can always do it later, but right now, I haven't even got much furniture in my house as is. And I'd rather save the money. So I said "no thanks" (one of the options on the menu).

The little dude laughed at me. "Ha ha," he said. "You must be joking. Everyone wants a larger house." And he gave me a larger house anyway, and I owed him a lot of in-game currency.

I never got back into the game after that. It's funny, because I'll play violent games without a moment's hesitation, even though I don't much care for violence. And I'll play games with magic in them, despite hordes of people telling me how bad they are. I'll play a warlock in World of Warcraft, and make jokes about her summoned demons feasting on the souls of innocent children, even though (don't look surprised!) I don't do that in real life.

But the thing is, I am a lot more materialistic than I really think I should be, in real life. In fact, I'm just in the middle of buying a new house (more for neighborhood than for size, but...)

And somehow, it just rubbed me the wrong way.

I dunno. I don't much like Animal Crossing, because it seems to be built around a core of competitive crass materialism; your story just feeds into that sense that there's something very wrong with a world where we uphold a game like Animal Crossing as good for children, because it's cutthroat materialism without any swear words, but we are terrified at the possibility that children might play a game in which there are real consequences for actions, or in which people die, or people have sex.

I think it's probably a game some people can play safely, but for me, it's a bit too close to my weaknesses.

I am interested in a computer game that has scenarios that to go forward in the game you must use the Word of God to go forward.

Thierry
thierry.bras@us.army.mil

Computer games are just a fancy way of playing 'let's pretend'. The same as role playing games. We do things in play we wouldn't do in reality.

When you play chess, you're a warlord, deciding how to win and the 'lives' of your men are only of strategic importance. If you can win ground by sacrificing them, you do. There is no moral quandry because it's a game and the 'lives' sacrificed are just tokens.

When you're a kid playing 'pirates', you make your friends walk the plank and shoot them after they've buried the treasure because dead men tell no tales. It's fun because it's not real. If it was real you'd gain a whole host of psychological problems from your actions - not to mention losing all your friends.

Having worked in the computer game industry for a number of years, I've read an awful lot about how games affect people - some articles from uninformed opinionists and some from serious scientists. The only real problem I can see with computer games currently is;

A) The amount of time people spend playing them needs to be in proportion to the other duties in their lives. Many hobbies have this problem of sometimes crossing over into the compulsive.

B) People shouldn't let their kids play games above their age rating. If it has an 18 or an M on it, you should not be buying it for your 12 year old - yet so many people do because it's 'just a game'. The largest age demographic for gamers is between 18 and 35, so a lot of games are made for adults with some (or a lot of) violent or sexual adult content. Many comics, cartoons and games are aimed at adults these days and you have to watch what you buy little Timmy.