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Document Type

Article

Abstract

Media critics, notably Jean Baudrillard, have suggested that the environment of simulations are to be defined as something "more real than the real," or, in his terms, "hyperreal." If hyperrealities are indeed the way that we can define the environment of multimedia technologies like video games, what sorts of ethical considerations should exist in a place that gamers conceive as "more real than the real"? This essay considers what ethical considerations are worth contemplating as gamers begin to take on the roles of gods and heroes in multiplayer video games. The little gods and heroes whose identities gamers have begun to assume have evolved through a long history and experience of single player games. By examining this evolution it becomes clear how these single player experiences have helped to shape how gamers have come to see themselves in relation to the monsters and other non-player characters that they encounter in these games. The perceptions of a long-standing gaming culture continue to define encounters with these "others" that are a part of these gaming worlds as non-ethical –- the player may do as they will. So, how might ethics play themselves out in gaming worlds in which it is no longer pixels driven by limited artificial intelligence that these little gods and little heroes must contend with, but other players hidden somewhere behind the screen? In his discussion of such, Williams interrogates the efficacy Baudrillard and other media theorists hold on the virtual world of gaming in the twenty-first century as well as the deep interaction of real and virtual life.

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