The Gamer’s Dilemma

Chad Vance / Professor / William & Mary College - The Dilemma: We’ll start with two assumptions: Murder is morally wrong. Also, pedophilia (i.e., sexually molesting a child) is morally wrong.

In the real world, the verdict is the same: Both acts are wrong. Now imagine a VIDEO GAME where the gamer’s objectives involve molesting children. Very likely, you are morally opposed to such a game, and believe they should not be made or sold. If so, then consider the following argument:

1.Committing virtual pedophilia (e.g., in a video game) is morally wrong.

2.However, there are no morally relevant differences between committing a virtual act of pedophilia and committing a virtual act of murder.**

3.Therefore,committing virtual murder in a video game is also morally wrong.

[* Note: By ‘virtual murder it is meant an act of killing that would clearly be morally wrong were it committed in the real world. For instance, in Grand Theft Auto, players control criminal characters who drive around hitting and killing pedestrians. Contrast this with, say, those versions of Call of Duty where players control U.S. soldiers whom (we may presume) are killing enemy soldiers in a just war. Assume also that the person killed in the game stays dead—i.e., they do not “re-spawn”.]

[* Why morally equivalent? Well, in the real world, both actions are seriously morally wrong. And, in the virtual world, no one is actually harmed. You’re just manipulating pixels on a screen. Initially, there don’t seem to be any obvious moral differences.]

The conclusion here is that playing games like Grand Theft Auto is morally wrong! And yet, it is one of the best-selling game franchises of all time, with Grand Theft Auto V alone having sold over 100 million copies! (source) It seems that quite a few people must believe that committing virtual murder is morally permissible.

Kate Connell / Fred Nadis / Antiwar.com / español - In 2016-17, the U.S. Army visited Santa Maria High School and nearby Pioneer Valley High School in California over 80 times. The Marines visited Ernest Righetti High School in Santa Maria over 60 times that year. One Santa Maria alumnus commented, “It’s as if they, the recruiters, are on staff.” A parent of a high school student at Pioneer Valley commented, "I consider recruiters on campus talking to 14 year olds as "grooming" young people to be more open to recruitment in their senior year. I want my daughter to have more access to college recruiters and for our schools to promote peace and nonviolent solutions to conflict."

This is a sample of what high schools, particularly in rural areas, experience nationwide, and the difficulty of confronting the presence of military recruiters on campus. While our nonprofit counter-recruitment group, Truth in Recruitment, based in Santa Barbara, California, views such military access as beyond excessive, as far as the military is concerned, now that the pandemic has closed campuses, those were the good old days. The Air Force’s Recruiting Service Commander, Maj. Gen. Edward Thomas Jr., commented to a journalist at Military.com, that the Covid-19 pandemic and high school shutdowns nationwide have made recruiting more difficult than previously.

Thomas stated that in-person recruiting at high schools was the highest yield way to recruit teenagers. “Studies that we’ve done show that, with face-to-face recruiting, when somebody is actually able to talk to a living, breathing, sharp Air Force [noncommissioned officer] out there, we can convert what we call leads to recruits at about an 8:1 ratio,” he said. “When we do this virtually and digitally, it’s about a 30:1 ratio.” With closed recruiting stations, no sporting events to sponsor or appear at, no hallways to walk, no coaches and teachers to groom, no high schools to show up at with trailers loaded with militarized video games, recruiters have shifted to social media to find likely students.