Does morality matter in video games?

[SpeakKindly]

Is it possible to sin with choices made in a video game?

Many games are coming out these days that offer the player the option to steal, kill, lie, have casual sex, and do other things that aren’t good to do in real life.

Do these decisions matter in reality though, or are they like any fiction novel where we can place ourselves in the shoes of killers, con-men, liars, and adulterous people?

How should we view these works of fiction that allow us to choose to do things we usually wouldn’t?

 

[Potter]

I don’t play video games like I used to, but it’s not just a game. Playing certain kinds of games is unhealthy in the same way that reading gratuitously violent detective/thriller books is, or erotic fiction. I try to make moral choices even when I’m ‘gaming’; even in Civilization III, I won’t break a treaty dishonorably. (Sure, I’ll war with impunity, but I won’t sneak-attack or break trade agreements just to save money, nothing of that kind.) Even if you are pretending, the choices you make reflect who you are-- but you will tolerate.

 

[Lost_Wanderer]

You have to remember that choice isn’t actually so clear-cut in some games. In Skyrim for example, you really have no choice but to get a drunkard drunk in order to distract party attenders and sneak out with a prisoner in the dungeons. You also have cases where you end up exposing corruption in the city guard and become a wanted man as a result.

Other times, there could be people who create characters they normally wouldn’t be because said character is a work of fiction in of itself. Thus, they make choices based on what they believe their character would make, not because their character is their in-game counterpart. DnD is one example. It’s also not so far-fetched to believe that a seemingly moral decision turns out to have not-so-moral consequences later on.

Interestingly, real life is all the same. If you find that a mere video game challenges your convictions, it could actually reflect how you would deal with a real dilemma. Now that is something worth thinking about.

 

[OurLadysServant]

Yes!
Pornography is a sin. Impure explicit scenes on tv are a sin
So this content in a computer game is still a sin

If there is bad language or intercourse and adultery / scantily clad women , common throughout a video game then you should not play that game

Jesus said:
‘The eye is the light of the body. If your light is bright then the whole body is full of light. If your light is dark, how great is that darkness!’

Is it possible to sin with choices made in a video game?

Many games are coming out these days that offer the player the option to steal, kill, lie, have casual sex, and do other things that aren’t good to do in real life.

Do these decisions matter in reality though, or are they like any fiction novel where we can place ourselves in the shoes of killers, con-men, liars, and adulterous people?

How should we view these works of fiction that allow us to choose to do things we usually wouldn’t?

 

[SpeakKindly]

Yes!
Pornography is a sin. Impure explicit scenes on tv are a sin
So this content in a computer game is still a sin

If there is bad language or intercourse and adultery / scantily clad women , common throughout a video game then you should not play that game

Jesus said:
‘The eye is the light of the body. If your light is bright then the whole body is full of light. If your light is dark, how great is that darkness!’

Excluding the dress of some female characters, I’m pretty sure all of the bad things are optional.

Sex is an option if you pursue a “relationship” with a character, but it’s not just freely open to do.

So, wouldn’t that make the game itself not sinful, just parts? I’m not really tempted to choose those options, I’m more interested in the pretty looking attacks you can do in battle. Lol

 

[DepecheMode]

It’s just such a double standard how terrible acts of violence are acceptable in video games, often leading to a T for Teen rating, and even the M for Mature totals are full of pure shooting murder, explosions and violence.

Some would argue morality does not matter in a game/book/movie precisely because it is fiction and not real. Thus allowing you to do things you never would do in real life. And yes I really love to play Grand Theft Auto 3, 4 , and 5. Would I do any of those things in real life? Of course not, because it’s just a game.

 

[WildCatholic]

How does this work in video games and what counts as violence? For example is playing Mario Kart a sin because you can launch projectiles at other player so you will win? Is it wrong to say play games involving battles where the goal is to conquer territory or beat the zombies/nazis/whatever enemies there are? I know for sure that games like the GTA series are immoral but what about say Call of Duty or Assassins Creed? I really don’t know

 

[edwest2]

Is it possible to sin with choices made in a video game?

Many games are coming out these days that offer the player the option to steal, kill, lie, have casual sex, and do other things that aren’t good to do in real life.

Do these decisions matter in reality though, or are they like any fiction novel where we can place ourselves in the shoes of killers, con-men, liars, and adulterous people?

How should we view these works of fiction that allow us to choose to do things we usually wouldn’t?

It’s like meditating on doing bad things instead of filling your head with good things. Don’t become insensitive to games that allow you to do such things. In a novel, you don’t get to change the words around. In a video game, why would you choose to do wrong?

It’s just wrong.

Best,
Ed

 

[Robyn_p]

Is it possible to sin with choices made in a video game?

Many games are coming out these days that offer the player the option to steal, kill, lie, have casual sex, and do other things that aren’t good to do in real life.

Do these decisions matter in reality though, or are they like any fiction novel where we can place ourselves in the shoes of killers, con-men, liars, and adulterous people?

How should we view these works of fiction that allow us to choose to do things we usually wouldn’t?

Besides sex scenes, which really are practically porn, I say no. These things aren’t in themselves sinful to do in a game. Because they’re not real.

To put things in perspective, let’s say you play a perfectly virtuous character in a video game. You feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, all that jazz. You are a virtual Francis of Assisi. Are any of those things actually meritorious? Do these things actually make you a saint? No. Why? Because they are fake! The people you are helping are just pixels on a screen, they don’t exist in reality.

If virtue is false in video games, then so is vice. You’re not automatically sinning by robbing a bank or burning a house down or even mowing down a room full of innocents with a chainsaw for the same reason you are not doing anything praiseworthy by feeding a poor person in a video game. It’s fake.

Now with that said, it’s possible to sin in a video game. If you are doing these things to fulfill some kind of sick fantasy or satisfy some violent urges, then I would say that is wrong. But the sin there is in the heart, not in the fact that you are destroying pixels on a screen. If you are just doing these things to further the story, or even just to have fun with friends on a Saturday night, then it’s fine.

Of course, if I had kids, I probably wouldn’t let them play games like Grand Theft Auto because they are still learning the difference between right and wrong and there’s no reason to expose them to things like that. But a healthy, well-grounded adult doesn’t have to worry about that.

The key is being able to separate reality from fiction. If you can do that, you’re ok.

 

[Lost_Wanderer]

In a video game, why would you choose to do wrong?

It’s just wrong.

Because it’s still a choice. That’s the nature of the beast. Isn’t real life all the more the same? We don’t live on a pre-determined plot line any more than the latest games don’t want their players chained to either.

 

[AMFV]

Is it possible to sin with choices made in a video game?

Yes.

Many games are coming out these days that offer the player the option to steal, kill, lie, have casual sex, and do other things that aren’t good to do in real life.

True.

Do these decisions matter in reality though, or are they like any fiction novel where we can place ourselves in the shoes of killers, con-men, liars, and adulterous people?

That depends entirely on the person. Some people are led to sin by novels as well! Some people can play video games without ever being drawn into sin.

How should we view these works of fiction that allow us to choose to do things we usually wouldn’t?

It depends on you. Examine your conscience, if the game is a problem for you, stop doing it. If the game is not a problem for you, then don’t worry about it.

 

[Dtmccameron]

Interestingly, real life is all the same. If you find that a mere video game challenges your convictions, it could actually reflect how you would deal with a real dilemma. Now that is something worth thinking about.

The principle difference being that there’s no “Quests” screen in life reminding you of the various missions you have no intention of undertaking.

Cannibal cult? No, thank you. And yet, blasting the creeps counts as a quest “failure”!

Oh, well.

Sure, morality in games matters. Think of it like daydreaming. What you do in fantasy acts like a sort of practice for reality.

 

[1newcatholic]

This is one of those things that I suspect is a matter of personal conscience. There are people out there who have a hard time distinguishing between fantasy and reality, and when they play ultra-violent video games where you can murder prostitutes for fun (etc) they carry that kind of violence over into real life. But not everyone is like that. Some people get violent after playing football or watching a boxing match on TV. Playing or watching sports is not therefore sinful.

Anecdote: Once upon a time, I was a Sunday School teacher. I was in my apartment playing Grand Theft Auto III when one of my Sunday School students came over. He was about five or six years old. I was in the middle of the game, fleeing from the police in a stolen vehicle after a successful heist that was part of the main game (not one of the optional side missions). I felt bad for hogging the controller, so I gave it to the kid.

He stopped the car and got out. “You’re supposed to pull over for the police,” he explained. Mission Failed. This demonstrates that young children cannot always distinguish between fantasy and reality.

A video game is essentially a scripted story in which you play a character, a hero or anti-hero, in order to advance through the story line. Playing a video game with a violent or sexual story line is no more sinful than reading a book that is violent or sexual. While the scriptures encourage us to think on things that are good, pure, uplifting, and of good report, they don’t require us to abandon every venue of entertainment that has worldly elements–do they?

What I would really like to see is some real money put into Christian video games, so that Christians have a realistic alternative to destructive plot-lines that glorify the lifestyle of the wickedly wealthy and the criminally insane. Video games give us the chance to be heroes. They give us a feeling of being powerful and strong in a way that we cannot get in real life. While they can also become a drain on our social and spiritual lives, in moderation they are as harmless as TV shows with violence, profanity, or language. We can participate in this entertainment culture without becoming consumed by it–though obviously it would be better to fill our hours with prayer, study, and church. But it seems impractical to require superhero behavior from ordinary saints.

 

[BHL_20]

Some would argue morality does not matter in a game/book/movie precisely because it is fiction and not real. Thus allowing you to do things you never would do in real life. And yes I really love to play Grand Theft Auto 3, 4 , and 5. Would I do any of those things in real life? Of course not, because it’s just a game.

Besides sex scenes, which really are practically porn, I say no. These things aren’t in themselves sinful to do in a game. Because they’re not real.

To put things in perspective, let’s say you play a perfectly virtuous character in a video game. You feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, all that jazz. You are a virtual Francis of Assisi. Are any of those things actually meritorious? Do these things actually make you a saint? No. Why? Because they are fake! The people you are helping are just pixels on a screen, they don’t exist in reality.

Now with that said, it’s possible to sin in a video game. If you are doing these things to fulfill some kind of sick fantasy or satisfy some violent urges, then I would say that is wrong. But the sin there is in the heart, not in the fact that you are destroying pixels on a screen. If you are just doing these things to further the story, or even just to have fun with friends on a Saturday night, then it’s fine.

The key is being able to separate reality from fiction. If you can do that, you’re ok.

Anecdote: Once upon a time, I was a Sunday School teacher. I was in my apartment playing Grand Theft Auto III when one of my Sunday School students came over. He was about five or six years old. I was in the middle of the game, fleeing from the police in a stolen vehicle after a successful heist that was part of the main game (not one of the optional side missions). I felt bad for hogging the controller, so I gave it to the kid.

He stopped the car and got out. “You’re supposed to pull over for the police,” he explained. Mission Failed. This demonstrates that young children cannot always distinguish between fantasy and reality.

A video game is essentially a scripted story in which you play a character, a hero or anti-hero, in order to advance through the story line. Playing a video game with a violent or sexual story line is no more sinful than reading a book that is violent or sexual. While the scriptures encourage us to think on things that are good, pure, uplifting, and of good report, they don’t require us to abandon every venue of entertainment that has worldly elements–do they?

People everywhere make the argument that bad things in video games don’t matter because it’s just a game. Thank you all for making this argument on a Catholic forum, because here I can actually answer it.

Sin doesn’t come from a particular act, sin comes from the heart. Sin is committed when you choose a lesser good over the Greatest Good. If you were drugged with a substance which made you completely unaware of what you were doing and you went out and killed someone it wouldn’t be a sin. But yet lust is sin even though it’s “just in your imagination”, and you wouldn’t ever have sex outside of marriage in real life. Fantasizing over killing someone you don’t like, or causing them pain, even though you wouldn’t touch them in reality, is also wrong. Sin isn’t supposed to be simply a taboo, something you don’t do because you’ll be punished. It’s supposed to be something avoided above all else because it separates us from our Creator.

For those making the fiction novel argument: if you read a fiction novel which glorifies sin, for leisure (not simply to evaluate it or something), that’s a sin. The thing is, some novels show sin, but they also show the consequences of it and make us think. While, in a video game you’re not simply observing a sin and its consequences, you are partaking in it and being rewarded for it. You get in-game money, achievements, etc.

Desensitization is also a problem. “I wouldn’t do it in real life” doesn’t mean you haven’t been desensitized. Consider this: if you were to go through the torture scene in GTA 5 several times, were you disembowel, electrocute and waterboard the guy, you would eventually learn to ignore the victim’s very realistic pleading and begging for mercy, so as to make this scene less uncomfortable for yourself. Now yes, rationally you would still see torture as wrong, but you wouldn’t have as much emotional repulsion to it as before. Our emotions play a big role in our decision making process, and it’s better to have them on our side rather than against us. If after the said exercise, someone ever tried to coerce you, under threat, to torture a real person, it wouldn’t be as easy to resist them, even with the same rational convictions you always had.

 

[JackVk]

I, for one, can see both sides of the issue. Certainly, there are games that I have played that have eaten at my conscience, and that I have either sold or shelved. Grand Theft Auto V is one of those (but I also consider it a great piece of satire that mocks our hedonistic, self-centered, materialistic culture).

Yet, I think it is a matter of how mature a person is. You don’t take an 8-year-old to a Quentin Tarantino movie, so you shouldn’t buy anyone under 17 an M-rated game. An M game is like an R-rated movie. I’m 22 and most of the games I play are M-rated, but I will stop or avoid parts of a game if I find them troubling. If a certain part bothers me, I either a) steer clear, or b) try to “bite the bullet”, just so I can see what happens. If you go with b), keep your “spiritual gas mask” on, and take it all with a grain of salt.

My best advice: if it makes you feel hypocritical, then don’t play it. Find something you like that you can play in peace. To answer your question, I’d say doing bad things in games (like the Thieves Guild in Skyrim or the torture scene in GTA) is, at most, a venial sin. I consider such things like junk food for the soul; won’t kill you, but not good for you either.

(I will shamefully confess, however, that chasing a fleeing crowd of yuppies with a billy club and beating them into a pulp in GTA V felt good, even though that is misanthropic )

 

[Robyn_p]

People everywhere make the argument that bad things in video games don’t matter because it’s just a game. Thank you all for making this argument on a Catholic forum, because here I can actually answer it.

Sin doesn’t come from a particular act, sin comes from the heart. Sin is committed when you choose a lesser good over the Greatest Good.

I agree. And I actually made that point in my original reply. I said it is indeed possible to sin in a video game. If you are doing evil acts to satisfy some sick urges or fantasies for example.

But I still think my argument stands. There’s nothing objectively immoral about stealing or killing in a video game, for the same reason there is nothing objectively meritorious about being a Mother Teresa in a video game. The actions are not real.

But yet lust is sin even though it’s “just in your imagination”, and you wouldn’t ever have sex outside of marriage in real life. Fantasizing over killing someone you don’t like, or causing them pain, even though you wouldn’t touch them in reality, is also wrong.

Yes it is. But let me assure you, 99.999% of gamers are not playing for that reason. Most, like me, will play as a villain only because villains usually get better powers and/or have better dialogue lines. I’m not doing it out of hate or blood lust.

And sometimes, it’s fun to be in a car chase.

Desensitization is also a problem. “I wouldn’t do it in real life” doesn’t mean you haven’t been desensitized. Consider this: if you were to go through the torture scene in GTA 5 several times, were you disembowel, electrocute and waterboard the guy, you would eventually learn to ignore the victim’s very realistic pleading and begging for mercy, so as to make this scene less uncomfortable for yourself. Now yes, rationally you would still see torture as wrong, but you wouldn’t have as much emotional repulsion to it as before. Our emotions play a big role in our decision making process, and it’s better to have them on our side rather than against us. If after the said exercise, someone ever tried to coerce you, under threat, to torture a real person, it wouldn’t be as easy to resist them, even with the same rational convictions you always had.

I actually think you have a very valid point here. There is such a thing as too much violence and there is a serious risk of desensitization. I think if someone finds themselves constantly attracted to violent and gruesome acts in a video game like you just described, they need to do some serious soul searching. Because to me, that signals something is broken inside. Please don’t get me wrong, I don’t think what we watch and do in a game doesn’t matter at all. We shouldn’t be constantly filling ourselves with filth, because it does affect us.

But that said, morality in video games is still substantially different than in real life. Killing an animated figure on a screen is not equivalent to killing a person in real life. It’s not objectively immoral. And that’s all my point is. It can be wrong, for sure. But it’s not always a sin. It depends on the heart.

 

[CesarAugustus]

OurLadysServant, edwest2, BHL 20, thanks for your replies in this thread.

Something more to consider, because we have the “adequate” age for the content ratings, it doesn’t mean we aren’t going to sin by reading/playing/watching these “mature” productions.

God bless you!

 

[Nate8080]

Is it possible to sin with choices made in a video game?

Many games are coming out these days that offer the player the option to steal, kill, lie, have casual sex, and do other things that aren’t good to do in real life.

Do these decisions matter in reality though, or are they like any fiction novel where we can place ourselves in the shoes of killers, con-men, liars, and adulterous people?

How should we view these works of fiction that allow us to choose to do things we usually wouldn’t?

Having casual sex in a game word be a form of pornography and would be unallowable. Unfortunately, a lot of good games have stuff like that in them, but remember, you can easily skip or avoid these parts by turning off your monitor or hitting the ‘skip’ button.

As for there being a “sin” in doing other things in a game, like stealing or killing, remember, it’s a game not real life. I don’t really think God cares if you slash a pixel generated image to bits. When I’m playing Skyrim, I can pretty much slaughter everyone in Whiterun, pickpocket the local Priest of Tara, desecrate the altar by tee-bagging it, punch a quest-giving child in the face (for the lulz), FUS-RO-DAH my shield maiden off a cliff, and go to bed with a clean conscience. In short, other than the sex part, I wouldn’t worry.

P.S. If you are trolling teammates in League in a ranked game and cause them to lose, that would be a crime against God and humanity. That trolls in that game cause chronic depression, don’t be one. xD

 

[Lost_Wanderer]

The principle difference being that there’s no “Quests” screen in life reminding you of the various missions you have no intention of undertaking.

Cannibal cult? No, thank you. And yet, blasting the creeps counts as a quest “failure”!

Yeah but I’m just saying that games only emulate the erratic rigidity of cause-effect morality that’s often present in real-life. It’s not the problem of video games anymore but the Problem of Evil.

Sure, morality in games matters. Think of it like daydreaming. What you do in fantasy acts like a sort of practice for reality.

Whether or not that’s true, I think the real issue is what came first? Moral ambiguity or video games?

 

[Ositokc]

Having casual sex in a game word be a form of pornography and would be unallowable. Unfortunately, a lot of good games have stuff like that in them, but remember, you can easily skip or avoid these parts by turning off your monitor or hitting the ‘skip’ button.

As for there being a “sin” in doing other things in a game, like stealing or killing, remember, it’s a game not real life. I don’t really think God cares if you slash a pixel generated image to bits. When I’m playing Skyrim, I can pretty much slaughter everyone in Whiterun, pickpocket the local Priest of Tara, desecrate the altar by tee-bagging it, punch a quest-giving child in the face (for the lulz), FUS-RO-DAH my shield maiden off a cliff, and go to bed with a clean conscience. In short, other than the sex part, I wouldn’t worry.

P.S. If you are trolling teammates in League in a ranked game and cause them to lose, that would be a crime against God and humanity. That trolls in that game cause chronic depression, don’t be one. xD

So “Slaughtering everyone” in a video game is ok, but having sex in one is wrong?
sigh
Once again, Sex is not as remotely harmful or bad as graphic violence/murder is in movies, music, video games.