Should gamespace be a taboo-free zone? Moral and psychological implications for single-player video games

Abstract

When assessing the appropriateness of single-player video games, it is our contention that questions dealing with the morality of their content are the wrong sorts of questions to ask. Instead, a more informative strategy is to focus on what gamers are able to deal with psychologically, especially regarding taboo violation. Thus, we argue that there is nothing morally problematic with gamespace per se, no matter how prohibitive the actions engaged in are offline. Instead, we should concern ourselves with whether the potential moral freedom afforded within gamespace is psychologically healthy, for it is our contention that underlying any change to the gamer’s behaviour is the need to seek psychological parity across domains (between gamespace and the offline world). It is therefore not so much what games are doing to us that is of concern, but what we are doing to ourselves through the process of seeking psychological parity.