Moral question

[seanom]

So my friend has a business aimed at young people. Basically they set up a room in a hotel and set up video games to play so others can pay and come. They make money from this. My friend is quite a young man. Is this still moral to do on a Sunday?

 

[Allegra]

I find it really difficult to believe that with the price of hotel rooms, your friend is making a profit when all he supplies is video games. Most people who play video games have them at home. And a hotel room only has one small TV. Do they bring other TVs so they can set up a whole lot of video games? How many people can play one video game at a time? maybe four? I have to wonder what sort of video games would compell young people to pay the amount of money it would take for your friends to make a profit in such a senario in order to cram into a tiny hotel room to do something they could do at home or in a legitimate arcade that has pizza and soda. I have a feeling that the answer to that question pretty much makes the question of working on a sunday a non issue.

 

[cheezey]

I find it really difficult to believe that with the price of hotel rooms, your friend is making a profit when all he supplies is video games. Most people who play video games have them at home. And a hotel room only has one small TV. Do they bring other TVs so they can set up a whole lot of video games? How many people can play one video game at a time? maybe four? I have to wonder what sort of video games would compell young people to pay the amount of money it would take for your friends to make a profit in such a senario in order to cram into a tiny hotel room to do something they could do at home or in a legitimate arcade that has pizza and soda. I have a feeling that the answer to that question pretty much makes the question of working on a sunday a non issue.

and then there may be the legal issue…

 

[aspirant]

and then there may be the legal issue…

That was my first thought.

 

[Gorgias]

I find it really difficult to believe that with the price of hotel rooms, your friend is making a profit when all he supplies is video games. Most people who play video games have them at home. And a hotel room only has one small TV. Do they bring other TVs so they can set up a whole lot of video games? How many people can play one video game at a time? maybe four? I have to wonder what sort of video games would compell young people to pay the amount of money it would take for your friends to make a profit in such a senario in order to cram into a tiny hotel room to do something they could do at home or in a legitimate arcade that has pizza and soda. I have a feeling that the answer to that question pretty much makes the question of working on a sunday a non issue.

Umm… I’m thinking ‘conference room’, not ‘sleeping room’. The draw would be the networked play, without lag, etc.

The question would be whether legal copies of the games were being used, and whether the games’ licenses prohibited this type of use. It might depend on whether he spun it as a rental fee for PC use, aside from the software being used (and how the laws in Ireland saw this usage).

Now that we’ve got that covered, how about the moral question? Would it be immoral for a football team to have a match on a Sunday? If not, then this too wouldn’t be immoral.

 

[Allegra]

Umm… I’m thinking ‘conference room’, not ‘sleeping room’. The draw would be the networked play, without lag, etc.

The question would be whether legal copies of the games were being used, and whether the games’ licenses prohibited this type of use. It might depend on whether he spun it as a rental fee for PC use, aside from the software being used (and how the laws in Ireland saw this usage).

Now that we’ve got that covered, how about the moral question? Would it be immoral for a football team to have a match on a Sunday? If not, then this too wouldn’t be immoral.

One would also have to ask if the games themselves were moral. (violent or pornographic in natue?) Are they supplying games to underage kids that they wouldn’t be able to get for themselves because of their age? (Although I don’t know if they even have laws in Ireland that require a certain age to buy certain games.)