Gamers bring their ethical values when playing computer games, and game developers need to respect this! Miguel Sicart has written a groundbreaking book on the ethics of computer games. 

Strangulations, blood covered chainsaws and assasinations with a rusty sickle. The computer game ”Manhunt” created a massive outrage when it was first released. But despite its gory content, “Manhunt” is a very ethical game.  On the other hand, family games like “Sing Star” and the popular multiplayer game World of Warcraft are very unethical. Confused? Then you have every reason to read Miguel Sicart’s book ”The Ethics of Computer Games”. The book was published last year by the prestigious publisher MIT Press, and it is the first scientific work on the ethics of computer games.

”I have always been interested in the ways in which literature, arts and media reflect moral values. The computer game is the most significant media of our time, so it is highly compelling to do a thorough study of their ethics. Sometimes, I tell my father, that all those hours spent in front of the screen finally pays off now,” says Miguel Sicart.

Miguel Sicart has been at the IT University for eight years. He first came to the university as a Ph.D. student in ”the good old days in Cophenhagen NW,” as he phrases it. Originally a student of literature, he found computer games more interesting and thus had to move to Denmark. The IT University was the only university in Europe with a centre for computer games research. Today it is no longer the only one, but still the best one, says Miguel Sicart. And he still enjoys being absorbed in a media, that still suffers from a bad reputation.

Elvis was dangerous

”Computer games are blamed for various bad things. Especially in the US. But fear of new media is not a new phenomenon. Plato wrote very unfavourably about poets, and this has been the perspective ever since.  Artistical expressions are always perceived as potentially dangerous. First, photography was seen as a danger because it would kill the art of painting. Then the dark cinema halls posed a threat to the impressionable youth. Since then, both jazz and rock music have been considered dangerous – just think of the outrage caused by Elvis. There is a long tradition for fear of new media, and these days, computer games are the center of attention”.

The bad reputation of computer games is partially motivated by the many violent games on the market.  Parents, authorities and journalists have often expressed fear that gruesome games such as Grand Theft Auto will make school children violent. However, Miguel Sicart argues that the relation between gameplay and ethics is no way as simple as that. For one thing, the ethics of computer games is not only a matter of violence within the game. Games can be ethical or unethical in more ways than that. Borh the gameplay and the narrative of the game can be either ethical or unethical.  Secondly, players bring their moral values and ethics with them when entering the game world and they take relate to the game world in a very ethical way. The fact that a player gets absorbed by e violent game on screen does not mean that she will commit acts of violence in the real world.

”Games are meant to cause excitement and arousal. Is somebody had studied me during Barcelona’s football match yesterday, they could very well conclude that I was  a psychopath. Games can create a runner’s high. But that does not make football an unethical game,” says Miguel Sicart.

From Bertolt Brecht to Manhunt

According to Miguel Sicart, an ethical game can be designed in several ways. It can either have an ”open ethical design”, that allows the player to act in ethical ways and according to her conscience.  Or it can have a ”closed ethical design”, where the player brings her ethical values with her, but is then forced to do ”evil” acts. The tension between the good intentions and the evil acts will then create reflection much like that found in the drama of Bertolt Brecht.  This is the reason why a violent game like ”Manhunt” can indeed be considered a very ethical game.

”The game designers behind Manhunt never try to convince you, that your character is a good man, or that his actions are justifiable. The convention in games is that you should continue collecting points and try to reach the next stages of the game. In “Manhunt”, however, the only way to achiece this is to become increasingly evil, and this poses an ethical dilemma. This leads to reflection, and this experience becomes a sort of catharsis,” says Miguel Sicart.
Unethical games, on the other hand, are games that ignore the player as a moral agent. If a game just tells the player what is right and wrong and does not give her the possibility to to use her morals in the game, the game is unethical.

”There are many games that do not enrich you as a player and do not reward you for your efforts. E.g. games that just make you take orders, or games in which you are suposed to sing for 90 hours without any change in the gameplay. This is patronizing, and that kind of game design is unethical,” says Miguel Sicart.

More ethical games, please

Often, the communitiy of players in a multiplayer game develop an ethical code. And if you give them the opportunity, they will develop certain rules of sportsmanship.  Therefore, it is highly unethical when the company behind the popular online game World of Warcraft force the players to play in a certain ”right” way thus destroying their carefully developed self-governed system of ethics.

Miguel Sicart does not deny that he wishes for more ethical game design in the future. His next book will be an actual manual on ethical game design targeted at the game industry.

”This book is very theoretic. It is the frist book on the subject, so it was important for me to supply a solid theoretic framework. But I know that some developers have read the book, and I hope that I have supplied them with a vocabulary for ethical game design. Hopefully, the industry will take some of the ideas to heart.”