As the gaming world grows in popularity, some are beginning to wonder how decisions and actions in the virtual world affect what players do in the real world, and many are wondering if video games encourage violence.
Andrew Weaver, professor of telecommunications at Indiana University, was the first speaker at the U’s Game Science Speaker Series, and has been conducting research that analyzes player response in games that require participants to make moral decisions. In the games, players determine the story and outcome of the game through their own decisions.
Weaver said it appears that taking away moral agency in a game disconnects players from the morals behind their actions.
“In that context, players are likely to see that as just a response to attack,” Weaver said. “It’s just, I have to push those buttons to make these things go away, so I can get to the next level.”
However, once moral agency is involved in the game, everything changes.
Still, Weaver’s research shows that when making moral decisions while gaming, 60 percent did not engage in antisocial behavior, and 50 percent of people chose not to harm other characters in the game when the option was presented. Of those players, 70 percent specifically talked about characters in the game as if they were real people and treated them accordingly.
When gamers had the opportunity to make their own decisions in a game, they were also more likely to experience guilt.
Weaver related a personal experience from playing Grand Theft Auto 4.
“The game actually says, ‘You can kill him, press this, or, you can let him go, press this. And I killed him, and I felt bad. And I felt bad for a few days after,” he said.
Weaver suggests that the morals of game play could have a different impact than is generally thought. His research group is thinking about using games to teach business ethics and other pro-social behavior.
“The way we teach business ethics, for example … they don’t get internalized at all,” Weaver said.
Whereas it may be difficult to teach consequences in a business ethics class, Weaver suggested giving gamers the opportunity to make moral decisions. Then having to deal with the consequences could get participants in the habit of considering the intrinsic tie between action and reaction.
“When we’re in the game, it matters,” Weaver said. “We care about the characters, we care about the consequences and we can shift these moral perspectives … so could we create a … game that would do business ethics in a way that would encourage sort of moral perspective taking, if only to get people to consider different points of view.”
Ashley Jessop, a junior in art, said she thinks there is a pro-social aspect to video games.
“I think there’s a lot of individual predisposition to things and cultures … that factor into how somebody interprets a game,” she said. “I think if there’s something violent in a game that affects somebody, that person’s already predisposed to that.”