The general thesis of my proposed paper idea is that video games, as a form of rhetoric, can, like other forms of rhetoric, be used to 'teach' ethical thought and decision making. As such, I have done a good deal of browsing for research and publication already done on the subject and have found some interesting sites and books.
Perhaps the best of these is a blog run by a conglomerate of Harvard professors called "Valuable Games" (http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/games/). There are a number of interesting articles here, as well as some mixed media. The most useful to me, perhaps, was a video of a lecture that Harvard law professor Gene Koo gave at MIT on the presence of ethics and morality in video games. (Video found here: http://blip.tv/file/1480114?utm_source=player_embedded). Mr. Koo gives a brief but thorough overview of ethical systems within games, starting with Classical games and quickly moving forward to Dungeons & Dragons, and then the video games that attempt to emulate some of the moral paradigms that had been embedded in the paper and pencil role playing games.
Mr. Koo also makes brief forays into ethical theory, mentioning other scholars like his Harvard colleague Steven Pinker and others who have used more traditional thought experiments in the past to examine ethical reasoning and postulating that video games can provide a similar stimulus. Of special note is his use of two illustrations: First, his 'holocaust tetris' example, which, much like Sicart (2009, MIT Press) more extensively argues, conveys--rather shockingly--that video games are very much "moral objects" and that game designers have implied moral responsibility. Second, Mr. Koo goes 'old school' rhetorical with the famous "trolley car" thought experiment. Although I think there is far more mileage in considering video games as types of thought experiments, Mr. Koo is probably being deliberate when he brings it into his presentation here.
The final portion of Mr. Koo's presentation involves a fairly standard introduction to some of the controversy involving video games as a stimulus that provides negative, violent provocations in youth. The bulk of any inquiry into scholarship involving video games and ethics tends to this sort of slant and it is ultimately unfortunate that such an alarmist--and in my opinion, which seems to concur with Mr. Koo's--misguided stance is so widely represented in academic text.
Fortunately, in addition to Mr. Koo's presentation above, I have found a number of other resources that take a far more nuanced view of the ethics video games, as well as what I have summarized above. I will discuss those further in later blog posts. That stated, Mr. Koo seems to be one of the more serious scholars on the subject of ethics in video games-- it seems like Harvard/MIT faculty are leading the way on this subject as a whole--and this presentation serves as an excellent introduction to some of the more critical issues in game studies and moral thought.
References:
Koo, G. (2008, November 18) Talk on Games Morals and Ethics. [Blog Post]. Retrieved from
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/games/category/theory/morality-theories-of/
Sicart, M. (2009). The Ethics of Computer Games. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
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