Using these Examples as a Starting Point

(i) Develop with your cohorts a continuum of games familiar to you. (At the time of writing in the English-speaking world, a list of popular games includes: Dota2, League of Legends, Fortnite, Player Unknown Battlegrounds (PUBG), Red Dead Redemption 2, God of War, Overwatch, Counter Strike: Global Offensive, Fallout, Assassin’s Creed, Apex Legends, and Heartstone.)6 At the same time, consider games such as RapeLay and Custer’s Revenge and/or their more recent counterparts.

(ii) Using Sicart’s approach, can you identify which games indeed seem to foster the development of important habits and virtues, including the primary virtue of practical wisdom or phronēsis, and which don’t? Insofar as you can do so, you would then have a way of “drawing the line” between games that could be defended on ethical grounds – even if they include striking levels of violence and violent sex – and those that are on the other side of the line.

(iii) Given the line(s) that you and your cohorts draw, are you comfortable and persuaded that this/these would be useful as (a) way(s) of offering ethically informed advice to friends and family, including younger folk, as to what games would be worth their while – and which might not? Especially if you think additional considerations need to come into play in offering such advice, articulate these as best you can.

(iv) Insofar as you have managed to develop what appears to be an ethically defensible set of lines regarding commendable and non- commendable games, are you comfortable and persuaded that these would further be useful as ways of developing legal guidelines for, say, age-appropriate ratings of games and/or other forms of legislation and regulation (including voluntary codes) on a national level (meaning, first of all, your country and culture of origin) and/or at an international level?