Transformations of Pornography*

At the same time, just as with the transformations of pornography*, the range of ethical issues affiliated with computer-based games and the sophistication with which those issues are taken up have likewise developed in remarkable ways. A foundational contribution here is the work of Miguel Sicart, whose 2009 volume The Ethics of Computer Games develops an extensive and careful analysis of the game-player as an ethical subject. Sicart draws on phenomenology (including the work of Barbara Becker and her notion of the body-subject and virtue ethics to argue that game-playing requires game-players to “reflect critically on what we do in a game world during a game experience, and it is this capacity that can turn the ethical concerns traditionally raised by computer games into interesting, meaningful tools for creative expression, a new means for cultural richness”. Contrary, then, to the common critiques of violent video games, Sicart sees in them critical sites for the development of ethical judgment – Aristotle’s primary virtue of phronēsis – since “players present moral reasoning, a capacity for applying ethical thinking to their actions within a game, not only to take the most appropriate action within the game in order to preserve the game experience, but also to reflect on what kind of actions and choices she is presented with, and how her player-subject relates to them”.

To be sure, there are multiple national and international efforts to control and regulate games – somehow.