This is really interesting actually 🤔. This happens all the time in ethics. I find myself drawing arbitrary distinctions based on what is normalised in society. My brain tells me that there is nothing wrong with allowing anything in media as long as no one is actually hurt in the process but my heart says there is something vile about simulating something like violence against ch!ldren, you know?
10:15 While there would definitely be backlash, how many of them would be a moral one. I would be part of that backlash,sure, but not because i think the option itself is a problem because games with sexual assault as an option do exist already, maybe not to the amount of freedom as this theoretical GTA off the top of my head, im pretty sure tsukihime is an old VN game that actually has a bunch of endings where the mc r*pes one of the heroines. Some of these have excuse like, uh, the guy was possessed by a rapist demon thingy, some of them were choice you could pick and usually these lead to bad ending Im pretty sure if i searched up "Porn game" i could probably find plenty of games that include sexual assault as an option(tbh tsukihime was part of the 2000 VN games, which were basically half porn game aswell) We can also extend this to porn gerne like BDSM, is indulging in rape fantasy wrong? The assumption that "most people watching" will be disgusted and agree with you that this theoretical GTA is immoral isnt very well placed here, because i think the exception to that number would be bigger than you realized. This only proves it to people that are hypocritical with their thought process, whereas people who genuinely think real world effects are the only things that matter and would be unironically fine with murder AND sexual assault as an option in video games like me kinda sit here with no actual argument presented Of course you can also make it like 20x more horrid, like instead of sexual assault, how about sexual assault but with children, or what about torturing children the- and by this point half of me would be inclined to agree with you, but the problem remain that there really isnt a reasonable justification i can point to. And supposed this game were released into the internet, it would get plenty of backlashed, definitely alot more backlash than your example but...just because everyone hates it...does that make the game wrong? Suppose if im willing to defend edp445 simulator coming out in 2025, what possible argument could you have presented that doesnt need a real world effects as a reason?
Personally i feel that if simulated immorality prevents real-world immorality, bu giving antisocial personalities an outlet, then it actually becomes moral. 🤷♂️
I still remember that my favorite minigame in GTA Vice City was driving an ambulance to save people, but then again it didn't matter if you ran people over on the way to the hospital lol.
Yes, I've wondered this myself: there is a clear distinction made between (non-sexual) violence against adults and children. One is acceptable to depict in movies and games while the other is very rarely depicted and considered vastly more disturbing. We are also inherently more disturbed with children vs adults suffering in real life. It is a bit arbitrary in logical terms, but undeniably a fact. Maybe a genetical trait or something. But it bugs me sometimes how much of a contrast there is, as if a person's life decreases in value when they get older. It's an interesting dichotomy to think about, though.
I wonder why we consider it morally worse to harm a female or a child vs a man? Like we are all conscious beings, it seems strange that mens ability to suffer is kind of not seen as important as females. Like you said I think it links to the history of warfare in which men were seen as fair game but women were not. It’s just kind of strange really tho
I believe it has to do with the instrumental value of these crimes. Sexual violence and violence against children are unseperable to a purely instrumental cause. You can overlook the identity of any adult you commit violence over, but there is no ambiguity in the age and innocence of a child, and thus the crime can't be made abstract. The same goes for sexual violence, which is usually committed for the sake of the crime itself and not for a reason that could be made absurd by the game.
@@benhallo1553 the answer to this comes from our evolutionary past. Once you understand natural selection properly, it’s actually obvious that men will seem intuitively expendable (to both other men and women), as men’s contribution to reproduction is far more easy to replace (just because sperm is infinitely “cheaper” than eggs). Thus our intuitions were literally built, through evolution, to reflect that. Same reason why sexual violence tends to be intuitively “stronger” than ordinary violence, even when the first is moderate and the later fatal: reproduction, not life itself, is the core of evolution. And our brains were built accordingly. So there’s no logical or coherent moral structure underlying the collective brute feelings here. Kids and sexual violence are out of GTA just because our nature is that way. It turns out that manifests as both seeming more gruesome and unacceptable to many and, precisely because of that, being felt as more thrilling and power-trip inducing to others. Currently, the delicate social balance between those conflicting desires is allowing non-sexual violence in GTA. I see Alex as pushing to move that balance to be more restrictive. I can only hope he fails. People differ in such desires and, yes, if no real world damage is being caused, it shouldn’t be the business of the more sensitive group to impose itself on the less sensitive one. Just don’t play it.
@@benhallo1553 well, the new transgender movement is just one of the new TRIBALISTIC movements, which, yes, are products of evolution in our social species: any lame excuse for passionately joining “our” group, against “their” group, will do - including painting the nails of the hand with different colors, as tested with groups of women. As for gay people, whatever the explanation for why 2-3% of the population is gay, that didn’t really change across time and cultures (supergay ancient Greece, for example, being a myth). It just seems that the process behind the masculinization or feminization of bodies and brains, which happens to everyone, goes a bit astray in 2-3% of cases.
04:35 There were studies (I’m sure in Germany and Sweden around ‘maybe 5 years ago) that found people who listen to rock and metal are genuinely happier people - because their pastime allowed them to get rid of their anger in a way that they enjoyed - and this study done away with the angry rocker in one study. The study also found that, in discussion, many of these people played violent video games. As part of the study, they introduced questions about video games and, though it was an addendum and never part of the study and it was introduced late therefore barring it from being a proven quantitative study of the information, it was found that people who played violent video games also enjoyed similar happiness to those who listened to metal but that they, in the words of one of the authors, ‘were able to scratch an itch if they’d had a bad day’ and were found to be ‘almost to a person unlikely to perpetrate violence in the real world. I think there’s a lot to take in on these studies and I think everyone would welcome a full and in-depth study into the phenomena For what it’s worth: I fully consider myself a decent person. I learned to box and moved into Muay Thai in my younger years and have always been really good at controlling my anger: metal and games a good outreach for anger and Muay Thai for frustration. When I play faves, there are ethics I have in life that I transport into games: I don’t like to see animals mistreated and, in games, I struggle with needlessly killing animals. In games with an honour system, I struggle to move into dishonourable intentionally (though my incompetence plants me well into it). For many, games may be an escape but they take themselves into the game and are not immoral. Others use games to clear that part of themselves they cannot in the real world. Others again just see it as fantasy. There’ll always be people out there who’ll copy what they see but, make no mistake, those who kill because they saw it in a game will do so because they saw it in a movie, read it in a book or saw it on the news. People aren’t killing because Pac Man
@@freeyourmind7538 that’s an interesting question. I don’t think we can reasonably say any video game company “should” do anything beyond making games that entertain their customers. That said, perhaps they are in a unique position to explore the potential positive effects of providing games that can be an outlet for persons who have a desire to commit crimes, so ideally they don’t commit the crime in real life. Since a digital character can never be a real victim, this kind of scenario can be studied in depth.
@@freeyourmind7538 A tough and uncomfortable question, but ultimately a valid one. What if studies came out and showed you could almost entirely eliminate "P-dough" activity in the real world, by letting them do it in a fictional one?
@@Majorfuckinghero i'm muslim, regardless of studies, any sexual content is indecent according to the moral standard that i follow, and not my personal opinion. P-dough game would fall into that category too. So, that is a no for me. what's next? Incest is fine and we have studies to back that too? Where do you draw the line and why is everyone obliged to follow your line? It may sound like i am being aggressive but i am just being a liberal
@@Majorfuckinghero i'm muslim, regardless of studies, any s3xu4l content is indecent according to the moral standard that i follow, and not my personal opinion. P-dough game would fall into that category too. So, that is a no for me. what's next? Inc3st is fine and we have studies to back that too? Where do you draw the line and why is everyone obliged to follow your line? It may sound like i am being aggressive but i am just being a liberal
When I was a kid, before I played video games, I was obsessed with armies and guns and used to dream about being a hero in WW1 and 2. Since I started playing video games from about 8 this quickly disappeared and games like Battlefield 1 actually made me start to realise how horrible violence is in the real world.
@@arthurfleck629The intro alone is shocking. It brought me to tears. No matter the political justifications of the war, in the heat of battle the violence is brutally senseless. There’s a giving over of yourself to the story so you feel emotion. But when it cones to the multi-player aspect the focus changes to skilled gameplay and completing objectives. I don’t agree with boiling games down to simple “fun.” They can be complex works of art.
Just playing advocatus diaboli here: One could also just say that you grew up and are not a young boy anymore. Of course you know better now. Also: Even if it actually helped you grow up, it is not said, that these kind of games would have been the only thing that could have done it.
This is like when you see a 'mutual friend' on social media and you try to wrap your brain around how those two people know each other. In a million years I did not think I would find Alex and GTA in the same video. I feel like something has aligned in my universe.
I know Alex is not a literary historian or a media historian, but i wish this discussion was expanded to discuss how Treasure Island or On Stranger Tides trivialized the actions of Pirates and turns real world murderers into fun villains or heroes. How The Great Train Robbery (the silent film) allowed its audience to get wrapped up in the murder of civilians by bandits. Literature and Media have always walked this line, and while I know Alex doesn't do four hour long video essays, if I were in the room with him, i would love to discuss all of these things in detail, and how they all comnect to the modern day and Grand Theft Auto
In treasure island, the ‘pirates’ were cast as the villains. The former crew of captain flint was portrayed as being willing to kill one of their own to recover the millions of coins they helped steal from the guilty and the innocent alike, and it was a child who stood in their way. I suppose you haven’t even read it, and if you had you wouldn’t be characterizing it as trivializing of the crimes of entirely fictional individuals. By the way, historically, privateers were a lot worse simply by being on the same side as an imperial power that was in the process of or on its way to a litany of crimes against which those of buccaneers would pale in comparison.(and let’s also note that the crimes of buccaneers were overstated through propaganda routinely even before the golden age) All that aside, it is generally a mistake to take the mere depiction of violence, entertaining tough it may be in the moment, out of the context of surrounding themes, which either condemn or contextualize it, invalidating any impulse to actually replicate any of it in reality. To do so is to pretend the average reader/viewer has less media literacy than a conservative who loves (insert left wing media here). (I am in fact saying that even small children aren’t that stupid)
@@jaredgreen2363 It is funny that you would suggest that I haven't read a book after I just mentioned it by name. It would be funnier if it weren't so insulting.
You could make an audio response to this video, I would certainly watch it, as what you say sounds interesting, and I think other people who liked your comment would agree :)
It's worth mentioning that Treasure Island is a children's book to begin with and so by its very nature is going to downplay and romanticize its subject matter. But more importantly, if we're talking specifically about historical and media literacy, it's important to emphasize that Golden Age pirates were really no more violent or dangerous than the average military man in that same time period - in fact there's good evidence to support they were less violent and more democratic and egalitarian than most in society. If you consider the historical record carefully, in fact, there was a time when the average soldier or sailor was considered to be little better than any other violent mercenary. This is the reason class differentiation exists between officers and enlisted men in the military to this day. I'm not suggesting that all pirates were angels, but it bears consideration that most of what modern society believes about Golden Age pirates is patently corporatist propaganda pushed by the trade organizations and state powers of the time.
Alex, you should also do a video about the ethics of combat sports (MMA/Boxing/Muay Thai etc) for entertainment. I'd be so curious to hear your thoughts.
I know no one asked, but that seems like a short video. If two adults consent to physically fight each other, and each have something to gain from it *and* enjoy what they do as a hobby and sport; what's wrong with that? It's obviously entertaining to other people. Ethically I see no issues
Hey Alex, behind you your lights are probably flickering because your exposure on your camera is not set to 1/50. If you experiment changing that setting while filming those lights you will find the sweet spot where they stop flickering, probably 1/50, and keep that setting moving forward. They are a bit distracting unfortunately. There is a small possibility that the lights flicker no matter what, in that case you'll have to change the lights at some point in the future unfortunately ...
To me doing crazy things in video games activates the same part of my brain as absurdist humor like The Eric Andre Show. It’s just entertaining to see or do something so over the top and insane. Something about that break from what makes sense or is at all consistent with how you actually are as a person is attractive to the human mind I believe.
I almost didn’t watch this video. I assumed this would be one of the many similarly titled videos that continue to make attempts at crucifying violent video games and the people who enjoy them. Imagine my surprise when I found out it wasn’t. You bring up a ton of incredibly valid concerns and ask quite a few good questions without ever shoving an opinion down my throat. You made me think. You made me set aside my personal biases and think and for that I am grateful. You’ve done an incredible job covering the many ethical grey areas that this game series tends to find itself in and for that I salute you. Needless to say you’ve made a subscriber out of me. Cheers!
I'm surprised by some of the comments lol Alex posed a pretty interesting question. Why are some acts of violence permissible within a simulated reality, but others, such as sexual assault and violence upon children are not? If there are no real consequences in GTA and the game is not forcing you to commit these acts of violence, what makes these acts more morally repugnant?
I think some people aren't really paying attention to the video and just automatically respond with the pre-loaded arguments in support of violent video games.
imo because in the normal zeitgeist, physical violence is already glorified, we have had violent films where the pfotagonist commit mass murder, mowing down armies of nameless goons for decades now, and it has grown into a cultural norm to see depictions of physical violence, which can sometimes be justifiable (self defense, revenge, military duty). we have basically manufactured our tolerance to depictions of physical violence. people can go on power fantasies in some extreme cases. while sexual violence is totally unjustifiable and has always carried a negative meaning behind it. the thrill seems to stop when the opponent is entirely helpless to the violence that will be inflicted upon them.
@@nguyen-vuluu3150 Alot of games allow you to kill civilians (i presume the GTA games do, i havent actually played them). If we are defining whether or not its justifiable by the helplessness of the victim, surely violence against innocents would still come under the same category as sexual violence?
I suppose that's cuz sexual assault is more gendered, and targets more vulnerable populations. Same with if a game had pdf-characteristics. In terms of making a virtual environment where you can challenge moral boundaries, it's the same as a game where you can be a terrorist. But the victims of pdf filia are a more vulnerable population. And hence we have created a society where it's much more normalised to say " I like illegal violence though I won't cause it" than "I like non consensual sex with hot women though I won't do it".
I do think this is more about sales potential than it is about the underlying ethics of the inclusion of certain forms of violence. It sells better if they don't include some forms of violence, whether that is ethical or not, and it sells better if they do include other forms of violence that many other titles shy away from. They draw the line where they lose money... But it is interesting that the audience draws the line there.
But that line is fluid. As violence is becoming more ubiquitous on our screens, (see Ukraine and Gaza) some people will normalize the de-humanizing aspects more than others. Game developers will follow the money. If the trend is for more and more violence, and less and less ethical consideration, the games will become more extreme to garner market share. For those that are less socially engaged, the contrast between real life and the virtual could become blurred. If a person who is not in regular contact with many different groups (age, social , racial, sexual, etc.), and spends large amounts of time on forums, where being edgy and flexing is currency, anti-social tendencies can grow to unmanageable levels...combine this with prescription and illicit drug use, and access to lethal weaponry...what could possibly go wrong?
@@curmudgeon1933 _"For those that are less socially engaged, the contrast between real life and the virtual could become blurred."_ In that case I'd argue that this the problem in need of addressing though, rather than the potential cracks those people may fall down. I'm aware that "muh mental health" is a bit of a meme now in regards to a specific one of those issues you mentioned lol, but it genuinely is the foundation level problem responsible for every danger you mentioned and you identified that pretty clearly yourself.
@@curmudgeon1933 Bro it's a game. Why are people over-analyzing this and making half hour long videos, when the reality is simple. It's fun. That's it. And people know that "strippers" in GTA aren't strippers at all. They're a bunch of pixels. It's not real - c'mon people. Your character can die in GTA a million times and nothing will happen to you, the player. Because you didn't die. But people tend to treat their own death a bit different in real life. And it's the same with robbing banks, stealing cars or shooting gang members. What is fun in vide game is not always fun in real life - and this is most often the case. That's why video games exist .So people can have fun doing stuff, they wouldn't want to in real life. Case in point - most players who play military shooter would never consider enlisting in military themselves. Because guess what - military isn't fun for them in real life - it is fun in a video game though. First there was books, then there was music, then there was movies, and now it's video games. It's always the same - and it was always GTA and a few other games. And Rockstar are used to it and if anything it brings them good publicity. GTA 6 will have a record sales thanks to this publicity xD. So for GTA this is only positive news.
@@Member_zerobooks, movies have caused outrages and scandals before video games you know ? It’s normal to analyse what art means, how it reflects on society. Video game is no exception and not everything should be accepted because « it’s fun ». Would you say it’s normal to write child pornography books ? No harm is made, it’s all fun.. I am not saying GTA should be cancelled, I just like that this conversation exists and I find it very interesting
I think that Red Dead Redemption 2’s morality booster makes the game not only more interesting but makes the consequences of your actions more meaningful for some reason. Not exactly sure why
The explicit UI for morality serves as an assurance to players that what they have done was not fleeting or inconsequential directly when they do it, but even more importantly, the game story hinges quite a lot by the ending on your chosen moral path. This is the ultimate consequence of all your previous minor actions, akin to your biblical judgement by st Peter as to whether you will get to heaven after dying.
@samwize28I don’t think it is pointless. I always return the money because believe it or not, my brain rewards me for being a good person when I see the npc being grateful that I returned his savings.
Your point about hypothetical sex crimes in GTA really stumped me, honestly. It's nasty to think about, but if such a feature were implemented the resultant uproar would probably be more motivated by our innate discomfort with sexual assault than its objective moral reprehensibility. Although murder is probably worse than rape, murder doesn't carry that same inexplicable grossness and I would be much more comfortable committing it in a videogame than the latter.
I think the question is more “principle violation vs an objective violation”. Both scenarios of simulated rape & murder have no objective violation in reality, but we feel more inclined to condemn the simulated rape based on principle than we are to condemn the simulated murder based on principle.
@@jessecuevas6456that seems true in movies too right? Like many movies are ok with showing killing people in gruesome ways but I can’t recall many instances of seeing r*** in movies
I think part of the reason for this is a lot of the murder in gta happens in a slapstick comedy type of way: running someone over with a car, cartoonishly large explosions. It’s so outlandish sometimes that it feels much less real than sexual violence would
This is possible in the game Bully. Also by Rockstar. Surely, grape is not possible, but for example, touching a girl's posterior without her consent is possible
I think part of the reason why it's distinct for us is that there are potential reasons why killing is justified (or at least framed as justified) fairly often. There is already a bit of allowance in our heads towards murder and violence because it may occasionally be needed. If not against people, then at least against animals for eating or products (at least, if you aren't vegan). Of course, the more pointlessly cruel something is, the more likely you are to accept it, but it's at least something where we have some framing of 'it's permissible' even if the action is portrayed as bad. We obviously don't have that for sexual violence since sexual violence isn’t. Really ever justified in real life. The closest we get if 'corrective' stuff related to spouses or lgbt people- but these are more so post-hoc justifications that are. Bad. And we have been moving away from those practices because we know they're bad. So we have no in to sexual violence. So even fictionalized sexual violence is feels like it's breaking our morals since sexual violence has such a thin line of justification to begin with
I remember my grandma's face when she saw me playing GTA San Andreas. She was utterly completely horrified in a real sense. I told her that it's not real and it's just a game and then she answered me; Why would you be watching people die for fun? Her reaction shook me actually. She couldn't even understand that I was playing a character, she thought I was merely watching this and yet she found it unthinkable that this could ever be fun. I still love GTA of course, can't help myself, but she did have a point.
So just a few things point by point. People don’t always play video games because they are fun. Video games are an art form and like all art people engage with it for various reasons. I didn’t read Beloved because I found it entertaining; it’s a deeply troubling but thought provoking novel. But I did read Code of the Woosters only because it was entertaining. Both books are great and both are works of art and I adore both works. However, I did read One Hundred Years of Solitude and was both immensely entertained and found it a piece of deeply challenging art. Likewise, there are many video games that are entertaining just for entertainment’s sake while there are others that are difficult and then there are others that are both entertaining and deeply thought provoking. As to why simulated sexual violence is different from simulated murder, there are two reasons why I think that is. First of all, and what I think is the most obvious to most people, gratuitous violence is often really funny. Just look at the three flavours Cornetto trilogy. GTA has always been satire and therefore funny. Sexual violence, like you pointed out in the video, is personal in a way that just seeing someone’s head explode is not. Also, physical violence has, historically, been necessary. Allied soldiers had to kill axis soldiers in order to defeat fascism. Raping them was, to say the least, unnecessary. So our history of violence as a species has delineated necessary violence from unnecessary violence and sexual violence has yet to make its case that it could ever be necessary. This doesn’t mean that the violence in GTA is necessary but because similar acts of violence have been used necessarily, it feels far more permitted. Brutalizing a sex worker or a person of colour in the game is similar to misreading Lolita as a manifesto for pedophilia. It’s not how you’re supposed to play the game just like it’s not how you’re supposed to read the novel. Yes, some people will read Lolita wrong and some people will play GTA wrong. People misread works of art all the time but that doesn’t mean the work of art is saying what the idiots want it to say. Children are likely not included as potential murder victims for a similar reason why sexual violence isn’t permitted. There’s never been a reason for it historically and it’s never funny. The torture scene is meant to make you feel uncomfortable and is a good example of art that one engages with without liking. If one plays that scene in the game and enjoys it, not only have they missed the social commentary of the game, but are also lunatics, in a similar way that readers who like Rorschach in Watchmen made Alan Moore want to get as far away from them as possible. To say that the only reason GTA kept the worst things you can imagine out is because they were afraid of getting an Adults Only stamp is like saying the only reason Apocolypse Now didn’t get an X rating was because Francis Ford Coppola decided to cut out all the scenes where they fucked the cow before they chopped its head off. As if he would have included entire cow-penetrating-man orgies if he could have but he was worried about the censures. The reason he didn’t is because it would have made no sense to the story or the themes he was exploring. This reading of GTA is like any other misreading of art. The creators might just have put what they did into their work of art for a reason and kept out what they did for a reason. And maybe you only see bad things in the artwork because you haven’t spent enough time trying to understand it as an art form. Yes, some game violence is treated differently than others in the public perception, in the same way the violence of the Turner Diaries is treated differently than the violence in the Handmaid’s Tale. Because the two books are trying to say different things and so use violence in their works differently. Basically, it seems like you don’t see video games as anything but fantasy fulfillment and therefore can’t imagine that a video game might be a work of art with something to say. In this case, a work of satirical art which attempts to make comments about everything from American exceptionalism to torture. It reminds me of all those old white men who thought the emergence of the novel would corrupt innocent young women. Video games are an emerging art form and they are far more than just entertainment at this point.
Good analysis, but in my opinion the historical necessity, comedy, and normality of something are orthogonal qualities. I basically agree with Alex's conclusion here: depictions of some type of violence are not inherently more or less ethical than depictions of some other type of violence. Whether these depictions are funny is irrelevant, as you already said yourself: games don't have to be fun all the time, so comedy is not a necessity either. Similarly, whether the depicted acts of violence have been historically necessary in the real world is also irrelevant. An art form has the right to imagine and explore beyond the real world to engage and provoke its audience. So I disagree that because "There’s never been a reason for it historically and it’s never funny", ergo children are unlikely to enter GTA. (FWIW, the more I think about it, the more I believe that children in GTA would be a goldmine of comedic situations and interactions.) It just so happens that we (almost) all agree that violence against adults in GTA is normal, and violence against children in GTA would not be normal.
Yes! Wanted to say a similar thing, but you said it better then I ever could. Alex made a thought provoking video here, but these thoughts were also in my mind then playing the mentioned Airport scene in CoD and the torture scene in GTA 5. I didn’t have fun playing those, but the experience was so thought provoking because it was uncomfortable. I don’t think any other medium could pull that off. The lines are arbitrary, as Alex points out. But to excuse movies, series, and books (sexual violence against children is considered normal in Game of Thrones…) and then go after video games, is an arbitrary line in and of itself.
most of your points are good, but it is worth noting that while video games are a valid art form that can make a viewer think and question, they primarily are made for fun. as you say, most of the violence in gta is seen as funny. yes the torture scene is not supposed to be fun, but at the end of the day, the main difference between that violence, and the violence of mowing down civilians, is that it lingers, forcing you to think, not that it is inherently worse. overall, almost all the violence is not to teach a lesson, but for fun.
I have an additional point that could be contributory: A fairly practical, gameplay point: respawning. As the primary character (let's say Tommy Vercetti, my favourite) we do not "die" even when we're shot and run out of "health" he only gets "wasted" and ends up at hospital. The implication being not that you died, but that you were merely very badly hurt indeed, which is in fact pretty funny. The same can be said for NPCs. Although Tommy may be able to take their head clean off with a sniper rifle, the ambulance will pull up and fully resuscitate the NPC back to life. This is also, if not even more, comical. I think in this piece of gameplay we're truly aware that this is slapstick (albeit very gory) violence. In counterpoint to that, we know that despite Tommy's multiple "wasted" moments, his personal timeline continues. We move through missions, buy properties, build alliances and open parts of the map chronologically. So Tommy experiences the world in real time. So while Tommy can be knocked down, he can get up again. But if Tommy were to be sexually assaulted, this would remain with him as a horrific part of his story. And since we know our NPCs can also be revived from even the most brutal physical attack, we perhaps implicitly know that their internal world continues as well. Meaning that if they were to experience a sexual assault, this would stay with them, unlike their "death" which they completely bounce back from. I'd be interested to hear if this holds any water.
It’s just happens to be the case that physical violence is much more comfortably baked into pop culture compared to the other type of violence that you mentioned. Go to the movie theater and you’ll see that most movies involve gun , car, or sword violence. We just don’t care that much about that type of fantasy and we understand it’s for play, where as the other form of violence is seen as a much more personally disturbing thing for kids to fantasize about. Kids play with toy guns or swords or just play fight all the time.
I think setting matters. Gunning someone down in Cyberpunk or RDR2 feels different than doing the same in a real life analogue like Liberty City or Los Santos. Also, I think the GTA games have a cathartic effect on those that have to deal with real life city issues. Personally I love to cut loose in traffic (GTA not RL) and get the police to chase me as long as possible. Helps me deal with the idiocy of real life drivers.
As someone who drives for a living, being able to play BeamNG Drive in VR and flip cars on the highway with a truck that has a wedge on the front is soooooo cathartic. And they're just cars too so I see absolutely no moral dilemma lmao.
it can't, but there are still those uneducated old fashioned idiots who still have the childish mentality of ''videogames are for kids'' or ''cartoons are for kids'' and dont think adults should like those things because they don't.
I think the important difference is that in video games, the atrocities occur as a result of the player's agency. Even the no-choice atrocities like the torture scene are meant to imitate agency by PoV cinematography, forcing the player to press buttons to proceed, etc.
@@hydra70 fair enough. I'm not entirely convinced the difference is big enough to amount for an entirely different ethical stature since interpretating art is still an active, arguably more imaginative (and thus demanding), way to interact with art that I would not consider passive
I think it's really more difficult to videogames. like person above. it's an interactive media so we get more involved than other. but the real problem of this media than other is that it's high demanding of 'fun' it's easier to talk about how bad sexual assault is and not fantasizing from other media it but freakily hard for videogames (especially openness freedom videogames) if it not especially design you to disgust of what you're done or maybe our interpret of videogames media to being 'fun' are narrow view because Yume Nikki wouldn't be so popular lol
I feel like the question you brought up on sexual violence in games is very compelling and I think there’s one argument I can think of: Killing as a game mechanic is and has always been a balanced and intuitive way to implement game features. Even in non-gruesome games, a character can have a health bar, and the objective is to not lose all of your health, or, not to die. If you’re playing vs other players then it is very intuitive to also give them a health bar and make that the main objective to win over the other. Over time, because it was so normalized, it became normal to use death and violence as a normal and balanced game mechanic. (I do think it’s balanced but if it wasn’t normalize I can definitely see myself not liking it). Now, the thing with sexual violence or a button in the game to do so is, what exactly? The whole point people commit such a crime in real life is for the pleasure, and that can’t be replicated in game. And because it is seen as a terrible act to commit, it’s then hard to justify another reason to have it in game, as opposed to killing (reasons stated above). It’s hard to justify sexually assaulting someone with a reward in a way that feels necessary. Anyone agrees/disagrees? I’d love Alex to tell me his thoughts if you’re reading
I think the difference between melee combat style games (like street fighter, smash bros, mortal combat etc.) or shooter games (goldeneye, Halo, Call of Duty) etc. and something like GTA is quite a contrast. Having a contest of strength even to the death implies putting your own skills against someone with similar skills, even if death is a consequence. Intentionally harming people who are defenseless is something I will never be comfortable with in real life or in games. I don’t enjoy UFC in real life but I can respect aspects of the sport. Things like GTA to me have no redeeming qualities. I played GTA V at a friend’s house years ago and while I did kill NPC’s and stole vehicles etc. I enjoyed the novelty of it in the moment, but afterwards I felt a kind of remorse and never had a desire to play it again. One of my son’s friends brought his X-Box and Red Dead Redemption and the first thing I asked was if it was like GTA. He replied that I wasn’t but the first thing he did when he started the game was run up to an NPC and put a shot gun under its chin and execute them. I told him to turn the game off. The kid was 11 and my son was 10 at the time. I don’t see the appeal to it and to me it crosses a line of senselessness I won’t allow.
@@christhetanman2639, bingo. I think this distills the problem even better than Alex did. The problem is the normalization of randomized and intentional acts of violence against otherwise innocent individuals. War, for all its chaos, has rules--very important ones at that. It is a contest between powers. Indiscriminate, randomized, unprompted violence has as little point as sexual assault. It is an attempt to create (or, in this instance, simulate) human suffering simply because it is in one's potency to do so. If Rockstar somehow got away with including sexual assault in GTA VI, I could see the dialogue massively shifting over the next decade or two. It won't be immediate, but as those who played it (as adolescents) come to retroactively justify it as adults, it will likely come to be seen as just as permissible as anything else in the GTA universe.
@vergils_plastic_chair it seems to me like the main focus but I do see what you’re saying. Though Even then what way can u implement domination and control in a game? It doesn’t seem to me like an essential game design property. Thanks for the input though! I didn’t think of it perhaps because it’s just such an unthinkable thing to do in my head
@@christhetanman2639 beautifully written. It highlights my point that there’s no intrinsic need for a game feature like sexual violence and that’s also the reason why it feels wrong to have an implementation of the killing of innocent people as a game feature in a place where it shouldn’t be necessary. Sadly though normalized enough. Thank you for that! :v
@@christhetanman2639 In defense of the Red Dead Games, it uses an honor system, meaning the actions you do in the game can effect the story as a whole. Not saying that you're wrong not to like it, just want to point it out. (Also it's Mortal Kombat, just had to correct this outta impulse)
First off, what an excellent and unexpected video. Great job Alex! Ultimately I do not think there is any principled exclusion of the forms of violance which are excluded, they are not worse in my mind than mass murder, including walking into the hospital in GTA IV, for example, and gunning or stabbing everyone down (amongst which, elderly, sick and injured). I do believe that when it comes down to it, it is all about public perception and marketability, since some things are deemed more viscerally unacceptable for personal and societal reasons, rather than principled, and so for Rockstar, including those things in the game would be committing suicide for the game's marketability and selling opportunities. On an additional note, the mass killing and physical violance "barrier", for lack of a better term, was broken a long time ago, so we no longer really question that it was fine breaking, while the same cannot be said for violance against kids or se* crimes, but if those barriers will be broken in the future, who knows 🤷♂️. There are p*rn games that do allow se* crimes but they aren't really sold anywhere, except perhaps being funded indirectly through patreon and such through their creators, which goes to show that these things do exist, and probably don't do any real harm, but just aren't marketable to wider public marketplaces. Just my thoughts.
@@viewsandrates I'm just so tired of people attacking video games and porn without basically any experience and knowledge in either one. I honestly expected more of him.
@AmirhoseinHerandy he didn't, wtf!? Did you even watch the video? He has played gta and is gonna play the new one too when it comes out, he even said so in the video. It seems like you saw the title and got annoyed.
I'm much more interested in examining why we have harsher "gut" reactions to certain acts than others, rather than leaping to the conclusion that this must mean that one of the acts is objectively more immoral than the other. (I'm not accusing Alex of doing this.) I don't think our gut reactions should decide what we ban, though surely I think it should affect where we place our warning labels as a courtesy.
If you asked anyone 30 years ago if the thought of simulated murder on a civilian made them sick, they would prob answer that it does. Just because something is currently acceptable in society doesn't change the logical morality of it.
Precisely, how is it that we someone take sexual violence and worse than murder and torture, heck, by movies and cartoons' standards, normal consensual sex is not a okay to show to children while violence is.
The problem with this take is you're placing no value on gut reactions. There are just some things that hold no value existing and we shouldn't allow them to.
I feel it is a cultural norm and a western values thing rather than an ethics thing. There is nothing inherently wrong with exploring violence of any kind in media of any kind it is artistic expression and most people would know the difference. I dont think a hipothetical rape simulator could not be made today in fact it probably exists somewhere but it will be something most if not all platforms does not want to associate with for obvious reasons ( my cynical mind would say mostly financial reasons) responsible, as itis ‘just art’ and art is supossed to make you think about things not instruct you.
I mean, remember the infamous Rapelay? Rapeplay? I don't remember. Point is, Japan has a _bunch_ of these. And a bunch that involve children. And a bunch that involve torturing women. And a bunch that involve torturing _children._
I think in some way the difference between the violence of murder and physical aggression versus the sexual violence button you propose is immersion. While playing a game, the player operates with the assumption everything they encounter is simply a character, and therefore any actions are inconsequential, almost like an interactive action film. However, with sexual violence there is an inherent humanization that takes place. It is no longer removing NPC’s from a play space, but is now a power dynamic that is inflicting trauma on a “person” and finding enjoyment in doing so. When killing NPCs there isn’t a consideration of the NPC’s wife and children at home or the broader effects of their removal. Sexual violence is tied to humanity in a way that sickens most people regardless of the medium it is portrayed in.
i agree, but it is interesting that it would be worse news that your loved one was exploded in his car for no reason, instead of finding out your loved one had been raped.
There is a simple answer to the questions posed in the videos however (at least from a practical perspective) - humanity and its gamers amongst us have simply become numb and immune to certain types of violence : those which are more broadly explored in the average video game such as shooting and killing civilians etc. Overtime video games have become more lenient with the scope of the violence which can be explored in the game - I think it is completely reasonable to suggest that parents were absolutely mortified at the thought of their children playing any form of shooting game back in the 90s when they were first surfacing - however overtime gamers were so entertained by it that companies knew it was profitable and therefore put it into more games and therefore shooting in games became much more a status quo amongst popular games. One reason why we draw this 'red-line' as you describe it is simply because we must remember video games at the end of the day are solely a form of entertainment at their premise - therefore we much measure the successfulness and acceptableness of a video game against how entertaining it is. People can easily find entertainment in shooting people, but find it absolutely repugnant when it comes to s*xually assaulting someone in game. At the end of the day all aspects of a video game should be judged against how entertaining they are - we know there is no conclusive evidence to prove violence in video games translates to real life violence : however it is imperative to recognise that if an aspect of video games such as s*xual assault are (for obvious reasons) not found that entertaining then why on earth would we include it in a game for the sake of it. If s*xual violence for some very disturbing reason were to become entertaining for future generations 'indulging in things they would never do in real life' then I find it a complete possibility that s*xual violence could be included in the games of the future as long as future generations become numb to it with it being included in more games.
Been recently reading Joe Schmid’s “the majesty of reason” book, he talks a lot about using parallel or parody arguments, and the sexual violence argument is such a perfect application of that.
Irrespective of whatever opinion I can contribute, I just want to convey my astonishment at this remarkable commentary. After over a decade of widespread justification on the grounds that violent games don’t have real world consequences, Alex has just virtually blown the debate on the ethics of violent video games wide open. Bravo Alex, thank you for your thorough analysis on an issue that most of us have considered irrelevant for years now.
There is a simple answer - humanity and its gamers amongst us have simply become numb and immune to certain types of violence : those which are more broadly explored in the average video game such as shooting and killing civilians etc. Overtime video games have become more lenient with the scope of the violence which can be explored in the game - I think it is completely reasonable to suggest that parents were absolutely mortified at the thought of their children playing any form of shooting game back in the 90s when they were first surfacing - however overtime gamers were so entertained by it that companies knew it was profitable and therefore put it into more games and therefore shooting in games became much more a status quo amongst popular games. One reason why we draw this 'red-line' as you describe it is simply because we must remember video games at the end of the day are solely a form of entertainment at their premise - therefore we much measure the successfulness and acceptableness of a video game against how entertaining it is. People can easily find entertainment in shooting people, but find it absolutely repugnant when it comes to s*xually assaulting someone in game. At the end of the day all aspects of a video game should be judged against how entertaining they are - we know there is no conclusive evidence to prove violence in video games translates to real life violence : however it is imperative to recognise that if an aspect of video games such as s*xual assault are (for obvious reasons) not found that entertaining then why on earth would we include it in a game for the sake of it. If s*xual violence for some very disturbing reason were to become entertaining for future generations 'indulging in things they would never do in real life' then I find it a complete possibility that s*xual violence could be included in the games of the future as long as future generations become numb to it with it being included in more games.
@@all-caps3927 sexual violence is already entertaining to a relatively large audience which is evident through its large and growing presence in porn. To be honest, I think its inclusion into mainstream video games is innevitable. I just wonder how far it goes and if there are any bigger implications in the long run. Maybe it begins with minor forms of SA such as groping, maybe it grows into much more serious forms, such as r*pe. And if the trend continues, I can't help but imagine games begin to trivialize sex trafficking and more. I feel like in the future, the same justifications we use now for violence will be used for SA. I just wonder, is there a hard line that must be drawn somewhere? If there is no evidence for videogame violence correlating to real-world violence, then does it actually matter how vile videogames become?
@@johnmisley5411 I absolutely agree, I think the p*rn industry (what a disgusting and terrible place it is) has unfortunately trivialised bdsm and other genres where s*xual violence is acceptable. I think many people, just as they have become numb to shooting, have become numb to these acts of violence as well. Now, in terms of real world consequences - the real world consequences of s*xual violence within video games hasn't been studied as in depth as shooting have as they are obviously two completely different things. However the real world consequences of s*xual violence in games will actually be incredibly severe just as they have been with p*rn genres which have resulted in many people thinking it is ok to treat women/men in that specific way. At that point, a red line will absolutely be drawn. As I stated earlier - it is all about weighing up the consequences and deciding whether or not the entertainment value of a video game feature will cause too many real world repercussions. if this is found to be the case in the real world then I can be sure that these features will be kept out of games. I think it is still imperative to note that whilst the minority (I hope) find s*xual violence entertaining, it is still a very disgusting and horrible topic which I hope people will find poorly entertaining outside of p*rnography and one's s*xual desires.
Cosmic Skeptic? Definitely interested. GTA and other video games? Pretty intriguing. FEAT. MATPAT?? This is indubitably my favorite RUclips video and I'm not even halfway through. Thank you, Alex
3:05 Couldn't this argument be used for most media? Most media is, I assume, consumed for "fun", therefore I suppose you could say that about any games with a message such as MW2
Yeath Rage Against The Machine's debut album has that discussion of whether it was right of the band to put a activist burning himself as the cover art of an album people will be "rocking out" to.
Yeah. Horror movies for example. Why are we entertained & thrilled by something that would cause the whole world to come together in prayer if we witnessed in reality?
I remember many late night weekend video game sessions in the mid 90s where my friends and I would all fantasize about being able to go into buildings, or walk off the path in our favorite games. Eventually someone would say, "they need to make a game where you can do anything you want"... When I first played GTA 1 on a pc, I nearly cried 😂
The question that bugs me the most is, why are movies often exempt from this discussion. How are movies, books paintings and any other form of art different from videogames and have the priviledge to portrait whatever they want and are often even considered meaningfull because of it? Theres a reason why the genre of war movies is so meaningfull and there seems to be some worth people find in depictions of horrible things and i think it can be translated to videogames as well.
Because videogames give you a perfect target for all moral "concerns": The player themselves. Because they engaged with the videogame, they now carry the sin. It makes it easier to demonize than the passive consumption of a film.
it's cuz SA doesn't have a purpose except your pleasure on the back of someone's pain while murder sometimes people consider justified... if it's both done for personal pleasure alone, then murder is worse morally imo but people think otherwise even about that idk how tho
@@godassasin8097 but the violence people often commit in GTA is not justified. It’s unnecessary and uncritical. They just do it because there is an option to do it. And I think people are afraid that if given the option to SA women and children in video games most players would at least attempt to try it, not because they enjoy it and wish to do it. Simply because the choice is there. And this might lead to the normalisation of it similar to murder in video games. Which is a reality nobody wishes to see.
@@godassasin8097 I disagree since psychology tells us, that sexual assault mostly is not about sexuality but about power - on this ground I would argue, that the assertion of power can be seen as justified or not in both cases.
I feel like its pretty unfair to say making the game in the first place is making light of what its about, games arent necessarily always fun, even the great ones sometimes more engaging than fun and i get that both arent that different
An argument against your point is that the generations who didn't play video games would disagree vehemently. You are arguing "the effect isn't so bad" from the standpoint of having already been affected by it.
You are suggesting that jokes can't be a work of art. Stop. Videos games can be considered works of art, in the same way that if you throw shit at a wall, put a frame around it, you can call it art as well. I am not disagreeing with such an attitude by the way. I am saying that accusing something of being "art" is the easiest and laziest thing one can say about art. I suggest that perhaps some art is more [something] than other art, yes? And that's where the question starts, not whether it is art or not. As a massively ad hoc, deliberately consumerist piece of media, video games are very far away from the art that you would find in a Bach Cantata or a painting by Rembrandt or a play by Shakepeare or a performance of an Indian raga. I'm not talking about sheer "quality" here. A work of art that is "fun" qualitatively differs from a work of art that is "disturbing," I would think. And if you are not having "fun" or not being "disturbed" by said work of art then, in those terms, it's already bad art. You don't laud bad music because it's bad, so why excuse video games in the same terms? Plus, art is never only about what you make of it; it's more than that. When the only thing you are trying to get out of media is pleasure, that's what pornography is. The experience is tantamount to masturbation (again, I'm not opposed to masturbation)--very often highly bored masturbation, pay-to-play masturbation, auto-bot hands-off masturbation, etc. I assume when you jerk off to don't tell yourself, "This is true love" (and, actually, maybe it's kind of tragic that it's not) so, again, why praise video games in those terms? @@APaleDot
@@talastra That isn't an argument though, that's just saying a bunch of people have a different conclusion. Also comparing an entire genre to specific works of art is a fallacy. Certain games are "more artistic" than others.
I was having a discussion on the subject a couple days ago with my wife (psychologist with philosophy background, I'm a programmer who has worked with games). We didn't went that deep into it, but on our brief discussions we couldn't draw a line either so, I truly appreciate what you brought to table here. Coming from Alex, a masterpiece as usual. **My thoughts:** - Humans are strange things, who evolve and change, we cannot draw a straight line on a mutating sheet of paper. - Historically we had several cases of weird/dark entertainment forms, sex abuse, hanging someone by the neck in a public place, putting slaves to fight to death, putting a severely i'll or deficient/deformed person in a stage... and it was REAL (not simulated) - As we evolve, our "line/bar" has been raising on what is acceptable and what is not. - Almost, if not always, when a line gets drawn that separate things/behaviors/color/gender in society, some actors will be left on the "wrong" side and suffer from the effects that drawing a line has. So the only answer, from my point of view, is consensus on what society (in its majority) values at that moment. ... oh humans, having a hard time trying to agree with each other on any given subject through history of humanity, I have a feeling it'll be like this for all existence of human kind... On a side note, when I played This War of Mine, I thought dang, this was an impressive/violent/emotional journey, it successfully delivers a violent game, in a way you feel bad about the war, cause it wasn't fun, it demonstrates that yes you can be entertained with something that makes you feel bad about something. I advocate that more of the violent games, have things just like this, that well you can be violent to some extent (our impossible line), but you'll feel bad for it. This will put our kids in a more correct track for the future, they should know, violence exist, and apparently it will forever be around humanity, but making sure they understand the consequences of war and violence. Dang, could go down this rabbit hole for ages, such a deep topic. but stopping here. Thanks Alex, for the amazing content you make.
The children argument is interesting, because violence against them does occur in some movies (think of Gladiator or Schindlers list or The boy in the striped pyjamas for example) and it is also in the storyline of some video games (for example The Last of Us with Sara dying and Ellie almost getting molested). Those violent acts themselves however are often not showed on screen because like with GTA it will get worser ratings. But is that the only thing holding them back? If putting children in the game didnt result in an Adult-Only rating would Rockstar be willing to put them in? And then if they did how would violent acts against innocent children be any different than acts against innocent elderly people f.e. or any innocent people for that matter?
@@chrisoezReading through the comments, I agree with some who said it all comes down to what the masses thinks. Like any society, Whats considered a norm is what passes. Most (key word most) humans hate the thought of harming children for understandable evolutionary reasons. Of course it still exists in real life and people who dont mind that stuff are a minority. But they dont make an impact since, you know, theyre a minority. If it was flipped things would be different. This also applies to sexual violence and others etc.
@@ray17506the question then is - why does the majority think certain violence is more unacceptable than othet kinds of violence. This doesn't answer what the debate is all about
Super interesting video! I think one of the reasons why sexual content has always been more stigmatized than violent content is the risk of sexual arousal in the viewer. When a viewer or player engages with an act of violence in media they may get a dopamine rush, but there's nothing socially taboo about this feeling. Attacking a civilian in GTA produces a similar chemical rush to winning a sports game, finding the courage to ask out a prospective partner, getting a promotion, or enjoying a really delicious meal. In the case of video games, the feeling often comes from a sense of asserted power and dominance which is often rewarded in the real world as well as in most fictional worlds. Your real world physiological response doesn't feel socially alienating, and so you delve deeper into the fiction without consideration. It's just fiction. By contrast, sexual arousal is viewed as socially deviant, perverse, and disgusting. There's social risk to people knowing that you are experiencing arousal in a given moment. It's why people might feel uncomfortable watching a sex scene in a movie with friends or family around. It can be anxiety inducing. As a result, choosing an action in a video game that could result in real world sexual stimulation dismantles the illusion of fiction as you're forced to contend with IRL discomfort. And with acts of sexual violence, suddenly the viewer is confronted both with sexual stimulation as well as the moral disgust which their brain can no longer disassociate with.
“Theophrastus says that offences of lust are graver than those of anger: because it is clearly some sort of pain and involuntary spasm which drives the angry man to abandon reason, whereas the lust-led offender has given in to pleasure and seems somehow more abandoned in his wrongdoing”. - Marcus Aurelius, Meditations.
While I agree to alot of your points, we know that some people do get sexual arousal over death. Look at many serial killers for confirmation. The argument would be the scale isn't there. I do not believe the reason why we feel disgust towards sexual violence portrayed in video games is because we worry we or others would get aroused. Most pornography has forms of violence in it, though usually consensual. I think it's not exactly a video game issue to begin with. We see sexual violence as worse than other forms of violence. It's been drummed into us that it's the case. So logic hasn't got much to do with it. It's now a biological instinct response. Example: I used to be a Jehovah's witness. I am no longer one. I do not believe anymore that the bible is real in the sense of there being a god. So the rules set in the bible that I used to have to obey don't apply to me anymore... Like having blood transfusions. However I still can't have a blood transfusion. I don't want it. Because it was drummed into me for years that that is wrong. It became a subconscious biological response rather than with any thinking. So I feel the same is likely true to our view of violence in games.
Red Dead Redemption 2 has no Native American NPC characters that can be killed, and when entering the Wapiti Indian Reservation your firearms are locked from use.
I like that Alex when that one step further and shot the video, looking like someone who's been playing GTA 5non-stop for the last few days. It's this level of authenticity, that really makes Alex's channel pop out in a sea of other content!
@@ilovethesmelloffire It's odd for you to make a comment about my usage of grammar, only to lack using it properly for yourself? 1.) Your response should have begun with the word: It a) 'it would be nice', the subject of your comment, is the wording of my comment, as such, to use grammar properly, you should be referencing it properly. b) More properly this comment should have been worded as: 'It would have been nice...' - You're responding to a comment, that I have made, in past tense, ergo you should refer to this comment in the past tense properly. 2.) After the word nice, you should have placed a comma: "would be nice, if you went one step further..." - You are making two different points here, not one: a) "Would be nice" b) "if you went one step further" To use grammar properly, you should separate these two points with a comma. 3.) The bracketed comment should have been placed before the full stop, as the point therein, is an expansion of the same point. To place the bracketed content, outside of the sentence, is grammatically speaking, to create an additional point: a) 'Would be nice if you went one step further and checked comments for grammar before posting (I hate you put when not went).' b) You could have left the comment after the full stop, but to be correct grammatically, you should not have used brackets for the point. 4.) The bracketed content should also have a comma separating: "you" and "put", as again, these are two separate points: a) The first is your emotional view of my comment: "I hate you" b) The second is what I should have done, versus what I did do: "put when not went" 5.) After "put", grammatically speaking: You should have used a colon, as you are explaining the issue you have: 'you put: when not went' 6.) When quoting someone, grammatically speaking, you should use speech marks, to denote their quotation: 'you put: "when" not went' 7.) After denoting what I put, you should have placed a comma, as again, you are making two points, not one: 'you put: "when", not went' My understanding of grammar is actually very competent, demonstrably better than your own. The actual issues with my comment, (that you are unaware of/ unable to grasp) are threefold: a) I have dyslexia b) As "when" is a word, the RUclips spell checker didn't flag it up, as an issue, for me to see, before posting. c) It is very common, with dyslexia, to read what you think you have said, versus reading what you have actually written. Were my comment, something I had planned to present as a formal piece of writing, I would have used a 'read aloud' software, to identify this issues. "People in glass houses, should not throw stones." Fail
@@jacobusvisser6428 No, I wrote that, on the train ride home. Personally, I'm not a fan of someone responding to me, with a point unrelated to mine, voicing criticism: That they themselves equally suffer from!
fucking nailed it. was expecting a much different video but you were very nuance and actually engaged with the arguments and counter arguments equally. earned a sub off of how you engage with this topic alone, gonna checkout more of your videos for sure !!
This is so interesting how we would categorise sexual violence as far more shocking and unacceptable in media, and yet it is arguably more prevalent and 'socially acceptable' in real life.
@@homemovelha4173 I apologise if my wording came off wrong, but what I meant is in regards to media there follows the same taboos of SA, but in 'real' conversations it is much easier to overlook something as part of a systemic issue. SA could be seen as more 'normalised' as it is so prevalent that no one wishes to draw specific attention to it.
"Mario, the Idea vs Mario, the Man" Everyone knows Mario is cool as fuck. But who knows what he's thinking? Who knows why he crushes turtles? And why do we think about him as fondly as we think of the mythical (nonexistent?) Dr.Pepper? Perchance. I believe it was Kant who said "Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play." Mario exhibits experience by crushing turts all day, but he exhibits theory by saying "Let's-a-go!" Keep it up, baby! When Mario leaves his place of safety to stomp a turty, he knows that he may Die. And yet, for a man who can purchase lives with money, a life becomes a mere store of value. A tax that can be paid for, much as a rich man feels any law with a fine is a price. We think of Mario as a hero, but he is simply a one percenter of a more privileged variety. The lifekind. Perchance.
Have you played bioshock? It’s full of thought provoking ideas, but I would love to hear your take on one of the central game mechanics: choosing to “harvest” or “rescue” little girls, the first rewarding you with more points to be spent on upgrades. There is no practical benefit to rescuing the “little sisters”, yet many people choose to.
That is more of a choice about instant vs delayed gratification. If you rescue them, you get a reward later on that's more powerful. And they only look innocent...
I'm not concerned about the ethical dilemma so much as I care about the value of the art I'm consuming and what intention went behind making it. For example, Cyberpunk 2077 features a lot of sex workers but when you play the game, you get to see the world through their eyes and witness the aftermath of sexual violence done against them. In GTA, sex workers are convenient AI objects that you can pay money to suck you off and then once they've finished their sexual task they essentially stop existing. You know they're going to get out of your car, walk away and despawn so you may as well shoot them to get your money back because your interaction with them begins and ends with the sexual transaction. My point is that both games feature sex works and "freedom" around how you can interact with them but where Cyberpunk allows you to literally see the world through the eyes of the sex workers and puts a lot of work into humanizing them and telling their story, GTA only allows you to see the world through the eyes of a middle aged white man who doesn't even think about what happens to a sex worker once she's done serving him. After she walks out of sight, she might as well despawn and the game reflects that. I think we shouldn't focus on ethics in terms of censorship but rather we should genuinely engage with the media and ask why they made it this way and why we consume it this way. GTA 5 is supposed to be a "satirical reimagining" of Los Angeles but what exactly is it satirizing in this scenario? The game's target demographic is men and boys who don't really have a reason to care about sex workers and if they've ever interacted with them in the real world it's probably been a similar experience to Michael or Franklin's. Games like GTA call themselves satire when in reality, they're not challenging anyone's perception of the world. They're merely checking off a box so the game can feature in more news headlines. GTA is the videogame embodiment of a provocateur and framing all of its discussions around ethical questions of censorship rather than artistic critiques does a disservice to how soulless these games are and it actually give GTA more validity as a piece of satire then it deserves. Calling for it to be banned for a pointless torture scene is almost proof that that torture should exist and does have artistic value because at least now we're talking about it. I see that as such a shame because games like Cyberpunk have the same messed up elements but they actually use those elements to say something. To tell a story. To encourage the audience to think about how this relates to the real world. By comparison, GTA is mindless indulgence. If you've ever played a game that allows you be a good or evil character such as in David Cage games or Baldurs Gate, players almost always choose to be good characters and when they try to do a second playthrough where they're evil, they often have a tough time picking the evil options. Why is it so hard to be evil in those games when it's so easy to be an apathetic psychopath in games like GTA? What makes GTA NPCs easy to kill and Baldurs Gate 3 NPCs incredibly difficult to kill? Is it just because they're different genres? Maybe now that character models are becoming more realistic, we should question whether or not the open world city simulator genre is outdated? I don't know, these questions are more interesting to me than questions surrounding censorship and ethics.
I sometimes poder the same thing about MK and it's super realistic violence now. I grew up playing the original 2 on Genesis and it was violent but not nearly as visually detailed and while it was interesting to see at first is it too much now? I'm not a proponent of censorship really but I do wonder sometimes 🤷
You make a good point. The same ethical/censorship issues can and have been applied to movies, comics, music, visual art, and really any form of media that depicts violent acts and isn't strictly educational. I find that even in RPGs that allow evil playthroughs, committing acts of violence for their own sake only detracts from the believability and depth of your character. Hence the general disdain for "murder hobos" in such games.
The way I see it, your take can be turned and put back to square one, about questioning not a specific thing in a game, but the reason for its portrayal (storytelling/reflecting vs mindless indulgence) Think of a game where you play a child that is a victim of sex trafficking. The game does all it can to show their suffering. You can't play the game without being broken by all the pain. But, chances are you would not pick the game up in the first place...and most likely join a petition for banning it. See how it relates to your post? It came down to your gut reaction which was literally said in the end of the video. Even if this hypothetical game showed the world through the eyes of this child, and humanized them all through, the game would still be repulsive to think about.
Along your lines of "we're just most used to it", I think a lot of people base their ideas around what is permissible to portray in games on what has historically been permissible in films and even books. Violence can add to the tension, pacing and excitement of a story, and has done for as long as stories have been around. The protagonist of an action packed story often engages in violence, and the protagonist does not always have to be a good person. But there are some things that people find too uncomfortable to show or describe explicitly, though these things can change with the age and culture. So in a new medium where you are not necessarily observing another character perform the action, but are directly controlling the protagonist of the story, the acceptable actions haven't really changed much from what is acceptable in other mediums but the storytelling method simply feels more personal.
I'm not sure... In books, the aim is often to showcase interactions that could plausibly happen in real life, given the situation. As such, if the portrayed situation is brutal, the book shouldn't - and usually doesn't - shy away from mentioning suffering of children, or sex crimes. The book might be portrayed as an adult book because of that, but not to the degree of preventing its success completely.
@jakistam1000 I don't know, I feel like those things can happen in a story but rarely perpetrated by the protagonist. I'll go with movies as the characters are more widely known. John Wick kills a bunch of people, but if he just shot a defenceless child we would feel very differently about him. It's why when Anakin Skywalker kills a bunch of kids we know he's turned full villain. Austin Powers is a horny, sexual character constantly making advances as women, but if he ever forced himself on a lady the whole vibe would change. We don't want our protagonists do be doing despicable acts, or we don't want them to succeed. And when we're playing a game we're playing AS the protagonist.
In Red dead redemption 2 you actually do interact with with feminists during the story. The main character acts as a bodyguard during a marching protest for women’s suffrage.
Do these same arguments apply to movies which people watch for entertainment and could be argued to be also indulgence in the acts, characters, stories and images of the movie. Movies do much the same as video games by glorifying violence, sexual assault and violence, creating characters who are dangerously and violently mentally ill and who become favorites of the audience?
In principle yes, but some of the questions posed like repulsion towards a hypothetical sexual assault button, or being able to attack children are specific to interactive media like games.
A story with dark elements as key parts of the plot is very different from simply having the option to assault people for no reason other than enjoyment of causing harm. It requires no skill and does nothing to explain the plot or end message. It exists only to fulfill a fantasy.
@@barleyteaa What about horror? When you watch a Saw movie, is the violence written around the plot or is the plot written around violence? It seems like these are essentially the same.
Non-mandatory violence in games is an interesting example. It's no different than life itself, where you simply have the options, but it's up to you. If life was analogous to these games, should life be banned, and the supposed god who created it be prosecuted for it? Or do we focus on the individuals abusing the mechanics?
Interesting! i normally try to act as morally as i can in games, trying to avoid civilians and so forth. The mechanics of a game should be persecution enough where consequences for actions and present
GTA's setting, whilst established in real World, still has a lot of fictionalised elements. I mean you can't die infinite times and resurrect in a hospital every time in real life. Nor can you get access to a variety of ammo just like that.
Sexual violence I've always held is in a much more egregious category of its own. There are instances in real life where you can justify taking someone's life- necessary/just war, or taking out a tyrannical dictator for example. There is never an instance where sexual violence can ever be morally justified. Its closer to the category of 'torture', but even worse than that. Some would argue that in a very very rare circumstance, even torture is justified. Infact, with the example of GTA itself, there was a mission that had one of the protagonists torture another character. It came under controversy and yes the devs did try to not glorify it or make it indulging but rather serving to the plot. Rightly on your critique, that was hanging on the line. But even there, in comparison, there is literally no circumstance that would justify sexual violence. Therefore, the difference of outlook in this context.
I have a couple of problems with this argument. Firstly, it's totally possible to imagine a scenario where sexual violence is morally justified. As an example, say you've been kidnapped by some crazy person and they tell you to sexually assault someone or they'll blow up a bus full of children. I'd say you'd be justified then. Granted that's not a realistic situation, the point is that it's not impossible to justify. Second is that even if you CAN find justification for murder sometimes, much of the violence in GTA has no or very little moral justification. If the characters want money they'll shoot up a bank without a second thought. There are innumerable more examples of this you can't seriously argue that every death in GTA 5 is justified. So the problem becomes that if you don't have a problem with GTA's random unjustified violence, why is sexual violence different?
@@Baset_ 1. On the first point, I completely disagree with the analogy. "they tell you to sexually assault someone or they'll blow up a bus full of children" Sexual assault would still not be justified in this situation. 2. The point is that the act of taking a life does not belong in the same moral category as committing sexual violence(one is always far more egregious than the other), thus the difference in larger attitudes towards each of those. 3. As for the specific nature of violence in GTA. There are two elements here: One is the scripted curated content, situation and scenes, where sure, criticisms equivalent to movies that glorify gangsters, outlaws, mafia and criminality in general get can be levied. The other element is the sandbox where the player can choose to be as civil or as nasty as they would like to be. Its interesting to explore how much of that part of the game and how people choose to engage with it can be put as a question of morality on the game itself. Especially when people will have vastly different interactions with it. Even with similar kinds of actions in-game, people can have totally distinct ways of looking at it: An act of violence in-game for one could be a way to simply blow off steam, for another with a taste for dark humor it could be a laugh out loud moment. You can choose to be a nice moral cowboy in Red Dead Redemption, or a total nasty psychopath. How much of this, if at all, brings to question the morality of the larger piece of media itself.
@Alduizard I'm curious about your reasoning for saying sexual violence is worse than murder. I'm inclined to argue that it's the other way round, that murder is worse. Obviously, both are horrible to do, but with sexual assault atleast you're alive afterward. I think the reason murder is less taboo is because it's a lot easier to come up with justification for it. I want to be clear that I'm specifically talking about random killing and random sexual violence when I say one is better than the other. Also, as a quick side thing, if you don't like my last analogy here's another. You've been kidnapped by another even crazier guy and he says you have to sexually assault someone or he'll sexually assault a bus full of children. You're justified then yes?
I want to see Alex interview Bo Burnham. It might wind up just being two ships passing in the night but I feel like it has the potential to be amazing.
really great video, one of your best. i think this topic is actually very simple and not complicated and tbh, i think you summed it up yourself right at the end. there are 2 different parts of this, what should the limitations be and why do we categorise them the way we do? the first part is the one i think is easiest. the answer is yes, we should have no limits on what horrible things we can portray in these games and that includes violence towards children. now personally, i would not want to buy a game that has such things and i would be repulsed by it. but, it doesn't matter, because as long as there's a market for something, then freedom of choice is more important than personal revulsion. i'm also repulsed by tomato ketchup, but i don't think it should be illegal. i'll just continue my life living as i do not playing that game and if someone else has that game, then i'll just simply not want to watch them play it. i'll talk to that person about other things not the game and i think life will just carry on and it's very easy. the only objection one could have to that person playing that game is about whether or not he would do it in real life, but if the evidence and data says, no, then the only objection is purely an emotional one and imo, that's not a good enough reason to say that someone can't play it, it amounts to thought crime as far as i'm concerned. that brings us to the topic of why is torturing a guy okay, but murdering a prostitute isn't? tbh, this is the more interesting topic and this goes beyond GTA, this is about the way we view morals period and probably is deserving it's own videos on it. it certainly is interesting the way some things pass and others don't and as you said, sexual violence seems to be particularly unique and is treated as worse than murder, why why is it and should it be? that's too much to discuss in this comment and is probably something that needs many different videos and conversations about and it's all about human psychology and the way we think and feel about things, some of which you summed up at the end. anyway hope this comment was informative/helpful and i apologise if it was too long
"as long as there's a market for something, then freedom of choice is more important than personal revulsion." So you'd be okay with hyper-realistic animated child p0rn?
"personally, i would not want to buy a game that has such things" I'm not so sure this would be everyone's reaction. Part of the immersion and indeed the "fun" of playing a game that includes the option of immorality is that we have the choice *not* to indulge in such behaviour. There are plenty of instances in game quests where you are invited to take the moral high ground and even rewarded for doing so. Many games e.g. Mass Effect even have some sort of morality mechanic that rewards the player based on whether they play as evil or good. The irony is that the "evil" path is usually the least attractive because it resorts to stereoypes and cariacatures of evil - who wants to play as an asshole? Portrayals of real evil - sociopathic or psychopathic evil - are AFAIK non-existent.
there should absolutely be limitations to what we can portray in fiction or games. it's not a matter of "if you don't like it then don't buy it" but rather "are we normalising immoral things in society?". letting games like gta slide without consequences will give rise to more targeted violence games like "lgbt torture simulator" or "alone children r@pe simulator". people will be repulsed by these titles, but this is no different from gta in terms of crimes. at the very least games like this should not exist on popular sites which children also use.
the way i see it. there are 2 reasons to be opposed. one is if it has a consequence in which someone will do something in real life and the other is a purely emotional one because the person just finds those things horrible and hates the idea and doesn't want to see that in a game. based on your "normalising immoral things in society" am i to understand that you think that people will copy this?@@MorbiusBlueBalls
These videos remind me of quote from John Green on Crashcourse "If these are easy questions to answer then I have not been doing my job correctly" aka these videos should not give you answer but they should make you think, and yours truly do, well done.
(TW) About the children point: One thing I've always found very interesting is that child abuse perpetrators are basically universally bullied (or worse) by other criminals in prison. Child abusers are criminals among criminals. And it's not at all uncommon to hear the most compassionate people of our everyday lives saying that they would castrate or burn pedophiles alive without batting an eye if only they got their hands on them. Another thing I always pick up on is that female violence on men (although often considered bad) is generally viewed as more acceptable than male violence against women, regardless of the damage done or the disparity between each person's physical strength. Personal experience: I'm a fairly lightweight guy and I was once forcefully dragged across the street by a drunk girl I had never met and everyone there (even my friends) just let it happen because they figured I knew her and that she was just joking around, even though I was constantly telling her to please not be violent because I didn't want to hurt her. People often raise an eyebrow and tell me I'm exaggerating when I refer to this story as "being molested", but when I tell them to swap the genders suddenly it turns into a horror story. To me, it's obvious that society assigns somewhat clear tiers of disturb to different morally reproachable acts. Some acts are definitely considered worse than others. Our reaction also probably depends on the context these acts are shown in and how used we are to witnessing them. Note for some people (you know who you are): No, I don't condone child abuse or violence of any kind 🙄
I think the idea behind the reasoning for the difference in severity assigned to the two scenarios you pointed out is because people often view these things through the lens of power even when it isn't appropriate. A man is seen as powerful, a woman is seen as weaker, and a child is seen as powerless. So when a man attacks a woman, it is a grave injustice because of the power imbalance, and similarly when a man attacks a child it is seen as even worse. But when a woman attacks a man like in your own experience, people get confused because they cannot conceive that a person playing the weaker role could successfully violate the rights of the stronger person. The kneejerk reaction is to not take it seriously, because there is this underlying thought that perhaps the victim deserved it because they let a weaker person infringe upon them. If a child attacks a man it is seen as even more of a joke for that same reason, and another category you missed, violence against the elderly is impermissible because they are seen as powerless like children. But obviously the lens of power is an incongruent way of viewing justice, because not everyone exploits imbalances of power. The more powerful person might even restrain their strength when getting in a fight, for example a domestic situation between a man and a woman, if a woman slaps a man, most men know not to do anything back. So if a strong person is expected to hold back their strength, it should be that any form of violence is treated equally, that is the obligation that society has to uphold if people are expected to disarm themselves. But that hasn't happened yet.
the reason people view a woman being violent towards a man as less serious can be summed up by : “i was constantly telling her to not be violent because i didn’t want to hurt her.” the vast majority of women (i believe i read somewhere the approximation was 97% but i’m not too sure) who find themselves in a situation where a man is harming them will never be able to say this. this level of complete helplessness makes male violence against women worse than the other way around. the vast majority of men would be able to defend themselves easily if a women attacked them (assuming there are no weapons involved). women have no such assurance. and then ofc there’s the fact that historically men have taken advantage of sexual dimorphism, demonstrated in intimate partner violence rates, femicide, etc.
@@---ul9eq You're right, there's this perception that men can _really_ hurt women while women can't _really_ hurt men. And, for the most part, it's true. But why is it mostly true? I don't think it boils down to pure sexism. I think it's because men are generally stronger than women. It's easier to picture a woman as being weaker and, thus, the victim. However, if the argument is about power disparity, it really has nothing to do with gender. IIRC, when Terry Crews was sexually molested by another man, many people asked him why he didn't resist using force, and he replied that he didn't want to hurt the guy for fear of being considered the aggressor. (And, I mean, look at the man, he could kill someone with a slap) But does this mean we should condemn the violence of the strong against the weak while turning a blind eye to the violence of the weak against the strong? (Not talking about self defense here) At the end of the day, even though it's more _likely_ for a weaker person to be seriously hurt by a stronger person, violence is still violence. Should "how likely it is you'll be seriously harmed" be a factor in determining how we view the issue? Thought experiment: 1. A strong man willfully pushes a weak woman with the intent to hurt her, the woman then loses balance, hits her head, and dies. 2. A weak woman willfully pushes a strong man with the intent to hurt him, the man then loses balance, hits his head, and dies. Which one is worse? (Sure, 1 Is way more likely to happen than 2, but which one is _worse_ ?)
@@mrmoonlight1001 Not understanding the severity of violence is exactly why you have situations where absolute fuckheads and non-humans think it's ok for a wife to slap her husband but not the other way around in retalation. It is unacceptable.
Much of my thought on ‘what makes certain forms of simulated violence acceptable’ revolves around the idea of ‘basic human instincts’. While I’m a big fan of boxing, wrestling, and fighting sports more generally, I‘ve wondered about the ethics of people who actively enjoy participating in those sports and get a thrill out of striking and hurting another human being. I’ve come to the understanding that humans have what I call “the instinct to violence” or “the instinct to aggression”-somehow we evolved this affinity towards acts of violence and aggression that some people manifest more strongly than others. If such an instinct is natural, I ask, why shouldn’t they find a healthy, consensual, and safe outlet to deal with those aggressive instincts, where specific rules maintain the safety of the combatants? I personally wouldn’t argue for a corresponding “instinct to sexual violence”. There’s an “instinct to sex”, yeah, but the manifestation of sexual violence is a combination of the two-and, and this is the other important prong of my argument, relies on an unethical attitude toward people, whether all people or certain groups. I think we understand and empathise with people who play violent video games because we understand the instinct to violence, aggression, and power. At the same time, I think we’re revolted at the presence of sexual violence, ethnic violence, or violence against children in video games because we see evidence of unethical attitudes, like misogyny or racism. The indiscriminate violence of GTA games is, for many people, fun-and for many people, it’s fun because it’s so indiscriminate. Bad actors, however, can use the freedom of GTA to reinforce their bad attitudes towards marginalised groups. What can a game developer do about this? I could imagine implementing a system that tracks whether people are generally indiscriminate their violence or appear to heavily target a certain demographic, and then warn them about those attitudes, educate them, and bar them from certain in-game actions for a period of time. That would probably be pretty controversial, but I don’t know, I don’t think it’s the worst idea in the world.
There’s two really crucial points of research I think Alex forgot to explore as he seemed to be equivocating feeling entertained by media as the media being fun or enjoyable, rather than stimulating. The first is around how pain can be used to relieve boredom, showing people do activities sometimes not because they are fun but that curiosity and other factors are also a relief of boredom (which, to Alex’s credit, was explored in the video by saying we do things in GTA that we don’t do in real life). The second is that there are quite a few other reasons we consume media, as proposed in the Uses and Gratification Theory. For example, playing Battlefront isn’t much about it being fun, but about it being stimulating from the escapism into a different situation and the focus on the objective and the competitive nature of it. It’s more about actually being a different person away from the mundane of reality. It’s not even necessarily about acting and being yourself but sometimes/often about being someone else entirely and driving the story from their perspective.
Great video, very thoughtful. One thing worth considering that wasn’t mentioned- GTA is a highly cynical parody of the real world. The random NPCs that populate Los Santos are all caricatures of worst Californians (I live in LA myself), and if you listen to the conversations they have with each other or on their cellphones, they often materialistic, self-absorbed, stupid, or whatever. I think this makes them less sympathetic and does at least in part permit the violence against them on an emotional level (not saying that it should, but it does). RDR games are more grounded than GTAs, and this is reflected in the NPCs. When I play either series I don’t really ever indulge in senseless violence unless I’m trying to explore the mechanics, the implementation of the AI, etc., but whenever I accidentally kill a RDR NPC I feel more regret and guilt than I do for a GTA one, and I think this is the reason.
Hi Alex, I am ex military and have fought in 4 frontline conflicts. in 2001 I was in East Timor, I entered a house and saw a family of 4 had been executed with a 7.62mm round at point blank with the rounds shot in the back of the head, while the victims kneeled. To give a more graphic idea there is on face, just a hollow cavity where the face once was, and I was not bothered by this. 2 out of the 8 members of my section have severe PTSD as a result of seeing this but not me...... why? Well I am not without trauma but here is where it gets really f@cked up. As a gamer I was ripping heads of in Mortal Kombat on the Super Nintendo, I recall the first time I ever saw this, I was in shock, after a few thousand heads removed and bodies burned to a crisp, it became normal. Fast forward 3 years and I am in East Timor I see this scene with the family of 4, and it was just like the game. The real kicker is prior to entering this house with the bodies I was pretty hungry obviously 4 murders meant missing my lunch and in my ammo pouch was a ration pack meal waiting to be eaten. Once I walked in the house the smell of human brains was overpowering, I wanted to vomit, but the sight of the bodies did not worry me. You see I was not desensitised to the smell we do not have smellovison. This smell meant I was no longer hungry, but then we went outside, went into a protection formation and waited for the intelligence core to do their investigation. As I am sitting outside this house this beautiful fresh ocean breeze blew over me, and guess what? I was hungry again. I sat there eating my dehydrated spaghetti whilst my number 2 gunner was still vomiting. You see I was also desensitised to seeing people vomit, so I did not care. My concern was, while he was vomiting, we had a weak spot, and our section was vulnerable. I lay behind the machine gun and ate my food. I put my lack of empathy down to video games, after all I did not know this family. Extra part: in 2016 I was working as a concierge in a motel, we had a woman die of a stroke, the pressure in her head was so bad that the cranial fluid poured from her eye socket, I had my first flashback ever. It was the smell that did this, not the sight of the fluid.
i´m pretty sure that´s just you, i´ve heard many stories of vets who liked violent video games before joining the military but couldn´t play them after due to having seen violence and murder IRL. also, thank you for your service.
@@homemovelha4173 please don't thank me for my service, everything I did probably got you 2 cents a gallon cheaper fuel. I was led to believe I was stopping terrorism, and making the world a better place, while I watched, truck after truck empty oil derricks. I never march with WW2 vets, I'm not worthy of such an honour. As for violence, I still enjoy watching it, but I know I would never hurt anyone innocent. It's strange, but watching violence stops me being violent.
I wasn't expecting this video from Alex, but it is certainly worthwhile! This was a thoroughly interesting analysis with many important questions brought up. It does sway me even further towards emotivism because I simply can't come up with valid justifications for why any one act of violence that does not have a real-world impact would or would not be permissible.
@googlefaps5883 Emotivism is a view within metaethics that claims that moral judgments are simply an expression of individuals' personal feelings. That means that making a moral statement such as "stealing is wrong" essentially boils down to "I don't like stealing." It also means that the distinction we draw between right and wrong is arbitrary, based on our own emotions and preferences. I'm no expert, but that's how I understand it to be.
@@JeremyCanned well holy fuck. This literally coincides with my current beliefs. When I tell people morals don’t exist and murder isn’t wrong. It’s based on perspective They’re like “well let me kill u”. And I’m like. U missed the whole point. Are u aware of any good counter arguments to the idea of emotivism
@googlefaps5883 Haha, glad to put a term to it, then. I'm not sure if I've heard any (what I'd consider) "good" arguments against it, but then again I haven't done a complete deep dive into it. I need to do more research for sure. The main arguments I've heard are basically just pragmatic ones, like you named- 'then anyone can do anything they want' 'you mean you don't think murder is wrong', etc. As you said, they're missing the point. I had a conversation with my deeply Evangelical father about it and he said "so why doesn't everyone just eat each other then? What's to stop me from murdering whoever I meet?" And I was kind of flabbergasted...
@@JeremyCanned I can understand why people would be confused. When asked those questions I often get a knot in my throat. I know objectively the truth. But I don’t want to say murder isn’t wrong. That’s how strong emotions are. But objectively. Murder is as natural as everything else. People decide what’s murder and what’s justified killing. But in the end it’s like a belief u choose to follow. Not a objective truth like physics
@CosmicSkeptic I stumbled across your videos just recently and find myself thoroughly interested in what you have to say. I like your willingness to play devil's advocate as well your well-mannered approach to debates and willingness to entertain other points of view aside from your own...a level-headedness sorely lacking by many others, especially when it comes to online content creation.
What always left me conflicted on GTA is how these games' stories tend to portray protagonists as just criminals with just a skewed moral compass, yet we are allowed to do anything in gameplay without real consequences. GTA 4 is probably the clearest example of this. Niko despises senseless violence and if you choose to kill an enemy on one of the first missions, Niko says something like "I promised myself I wouldn't kill anyone here!". But during gameplay, you can just run over pedestrians and shoot up hospitals and the only penalty is wanted level. I think RDR1 and 2 does this stuff better. In RDR1, the story doesn't really portray John Marston in any favorable way and the gameplay doesn't conflict with the story in any way. There is also honor system, which awards you based on your behavior. In RDR2, the story can change based on your honor and a lot of stuff you do in gameplay is commented on by your gang's members. There is also a lot of cool events you can do to improve your honor, like helping the poor or saving people. I think there is still a lot of room for improvement, but I found myself trying to minimize collateral damage a lot more in RDR2 missions, because killing civilians in this game seems just wrong. I also think RDR2 gameplay is just boring on killing sprees just on innocents, I tend to instigate fights with gangsters or cops and it is a lot more fun IMO.
It is hard indeed to figure out why we're okay with murder and not with SA in video games. It seems to me that people are more repulsed by SA than other kinds of violence in general. For example, we wouldn't bat an eye at a true crime video about a serial killer, but people would certainly make a fuss over someone explaining in detail some horrible act of sexual violence. I don't know why this is. Technically it's way worse to be killed, severely maimed or tortured but our emotional responses to stories about SA tend to be worse than for the former. When it comes to the children question, that one is obvious. Children are generally helpless and innocent and also the future of our species so we are really against them being hurt. This instinct is so strong many people think it's unacceptable even when simulated in media. Now imagine how controversial it would be for a game to allow you to sexually assault children. Unironically someone might just shoot up the studio that made it. Finally, there's also the fact that violence in games like GTA 5 is sort of cartoonish and over the top. There are ways video games depicted violence before that have been reviled a lot more, like Hatred, where you are playing as an edgy dude going on a mass shooting. There was also Postal 1, where the premise is similar. But then, in contrast, we have Postal 2 where you can indeed go postal in even more brutal ways than the first game but it's way more cartoonish, so people were more accepting of it. In conclusion I want to mention that I think our views on simulated violence is inconsistent. We tolerate murder to a high degree but when it comes to tying a woman to train tracks or SAing a dog we get our panties in a bunch. I'd say it should all be permitted since there is no real life impact, in my opinion, and doing anything to an NPC is amoral. It may concerning that one may wish to do such horrible actions to something that looks like a human or an animal, but we've already normalized killing people in video games. So fuck it, let's normalize ALL of it.
I believe that sex and everything around the topic of sex is heavily stigmatized and kept behind doors, people don't generally talk about it. There is a reason victims of sexual violence often don't report it. If it was completely unstigmatized, while it would be still disgusting to depict such acts, I imagine it having a different effect on people as it would today.
"For example, we wouldn't bat an eye at a true crime video about a serial killer" There are actually people who are uncomfortable with this, and there would far more if any such video showed footage of the actual killing. I know this second part is likely true, because the games journalist James Stephanie Sterling demonstrated it with clips of an actual on-air suicide and then reported on the number of audience members that complained.
I agree, but with the language you are using, I feel like you are just undermining the both the short term and long lasting effects of sexual assault and rape. Sure, it might not be the same as physical violence (even though in a lot of causes of sexual assault and rape, the victim is also physically abused) but there is still massive mental health effects that ensue. Maybe I’m wrong, or misinterpreting what you are saying, please do correct me if that’s the case.
@@zyplixx1415 I may have phrased my comment poorly. I recognize the long term effects of SA. It's not like just taking a beating or being stabbed and surviving, it's a much more traumatic even, depending on the circumstances. I am simply saying that on an individual level, we seem to be more repulsed by SA than other highly traumatic events, like loosing a limb or dying(traumatic in the sense that they damage your body and mind(not in the case of death lol))
In Fable 2 if you try and attack a child, it simply doesn't work. Bullets bounce off of them, fire just burns around them, enemies ignore them, a sword just doesn't even leave a mark. Probably for the best.
Questions if it's okay to play a video game with violence but murders innocen animals with his food choices. Definitely this generation's leading moral philosopher.
The only thing I could think of as to why murder is more accepted vs sexual violence is because of the history/stigma that has existed with both. I think there's a stronger connection to acceptance in life or death since it's a dark reality that HAS to be accepted whether you like it or not in every life. With that stigma attached, it makes the acceptance of murder a lot more likely to happen since the harsh reality of death was going to be accepted at one point. In comparison to sex, it isn't normally a dark reality until violence is added to the equation, which means it never had to be accepted as a dark reality until someone made it that way (in that given situation). So the acceptance of murder and sexual violence isn't going to be treated the same.
No Russian absolutely accomplished the goal of being memorable. All these years later, it’s still one of the most haunting experiences I’ve had playing video games and one of the few parts of MW2 that I still remember.
The MW2 campaign as a whole was ingenious - the best story line campaign ever in my opinion. Just brilliant plot twists from left to right with the death of Ghost and roach and of course finding Cpt Price in the prison, a purely entertaining game that unfortunately in todays landscape of COD games is unlikely to be replicated
What I find really interesting is that you can do the entire mission without ever killing a non-combatant. You do have to kill the police that arrive to stop you, but you never have to shoot any civilian at all in order to complete the mission. But if you watch people play it, basically everyone immediately opens fire as soon as Makarov and his men do. You jump straight into massacring civilians with almost no prompting.
I think the big difference between "making fun of WW1 in an advert" and "making WW1 fun in a game" is that people can choose to play the game, or not, but adverts are thrust upon everyone; there is a different level of acceptable when people can opt in.
darkmatter2525 had a video about games and mortality, I recommend it. One thing he pointed out, is that we seem to not have a problem with actions in a game if we know we absolutely would never take that action irl (like mass shooting). But we seem to have a problem with things that we are not entirely unlikely to do (like minor theft).
Really interesting to hear this perspective! Thoughts: 1) What is the difference between spending an evening playing Battlefield, and spending an evening watching the movie 1917? There is obviously the fact that you are in control of the character in Battlefield. But going to the cinema with friends, to watch 1917 is as much using the drama of war for entertainment, isn't it? Also, the actual game, Battlefield doesn't (I imagine) make light of the situation by satirizing the actual killing, etc. So I'm confused about the difference between movies and video games in this case. And if there isn't one, I guess watching war movies is wrong, but it doesn't feel like that. 2) If all GTA characters were just square pixels in a 2d world, but they still "represented" civilian npc's, etc. would the points made in this video still apply to that, or is there something about graphics/how realistic the game is, that introduces these problems? Also, would it make a difference if the square pixel people had titles like "prostitute" and were different colours? 3) I wonder if the point about the school shooting game is a fair parallel to draw. The outrage there may stem from the controversial setting, more than the actual killing. It seems to matter wether the game setting is "school shooting" or "random gangster in fictitious city" and so on. You could also make a racist game based solely on whites killing black people in 19th century America, and that would obviously be immoral. But not on the basis of being able to kill people in the game; it would be because it was a racist game. This also goes back to why some things may be more morally questionable than others in GTA. And for this reason it seems like some things can be wrong in video games, while other, equally violent things may not necessarily be wrong. Or what?
1) Movies and video games are different because in one the audience is an observer, but in the other the audience is a participant. In the context of real-world violence, I'm sure you can agree that there is a fundamental difference between witnessing a murder and actually committing one. Even if someone purposely seeks out real-world violence to watch for entertainment, that's still fundamentally different than actually committing the violence themselves. I don't see why the observer-participant distinction would go away just because the violence is fake. 2) I think this touches on the difference between "represented" violence and "depicted" violence. For example, in the game DEFCON the whole point of the game is to massacre hundreds of millions of innocent people in a full-scale nuclear exchange. Nuclear war is the maximum level of violence that humanity is capable of. But DEFCON is different than something like GTA because it represents violence instead of depicting it. You don't see millions of people die, you see a triangle hit a diamond, and a bright flash with text saying "New York City Hit, 10M Dead". I think that representation of violence is different than the depiction of violence you see in GTA, where very realistic images of people are depicted being shot, stabbed, run over, etc. 3) I think this touches on historical context as an important factor in this discussion. If school shootings weren't a real thing that happened, people would probably be less concerned about a game depicting a school shooting. Another example of this is Stellaris vs Hearts of Iron 4. Stellaris lets you commit genocide against entire species of aliens, killing trillions of people, and no one really cares. It's a fictional sci-fi setting that is almost entirely divorced from historical context. Meanwhile, HoI4 being set in the historical context of WW2 completely evades the issue of the Holocaust. It doesn't depict it at all. I think most people would agree that having a "press here to commit the Holocaust" button in HoI4 would be abhorrent. But that's mainly because of the historical context of the Holocaust rather than the level of violence such a button would represent.
@@hydra70 Thanks for this long and thoughtful answer! 1) I agree with there being a meaningful distinction, and that it wouldn't necessarily disappear in the case of video games vs movies. This point was mainly meant as a response to when Alex talks about the ethical considerations of "indulging" in violence, like in GTA (I should have specified this). On that level, if you agree that watching violent movies is to "indulge" in violence in some sense, then it would be as morally questionable to play violent video games and watch violent movies. 2) You're totally right in the difference between representing/depicting violence. The point I tried to make here (poorly) was that anything in a video-game is necessarily a representation of something that, in reality, is nothing like the representation. So a dot character and a high-res human-looking character are in fact both equally representations. It's just that one is more advanced than the other. So I was wondering how graphics play into this, and how refined/lifelike a representation has to be before it gets upsetting. 3) If I understand you correctly, I totally agree, and this is the same point I was trying to make. Thanks again for taking time to answer! Best, Ragnar Finsson
Thanks Alex, I really enjoyed the video and didn't expect you to cover this topic. I would like to point out two things. You implied that games are played because they are fun and that they trivialize and gamify violence. This is actually not true for a significant portion of games, because it's a common misconception that games are just about fun. There is a competing strategy called aesthetic friction. Games designed with this strategy create meaning by forcing the player into frustrating or uncomfortable situations. Some examples would be Dark Souls, Spec Ops: The Line, or Outer Wilds. And I strongly suspect that this is what the designer of the infamous CoD mission meant by "something memorable". I really like this design and can recommend the paper "Designing games that prioritize meaning over fun" to anyone interested in the subject. Maybe the line we draw is realism/fidelity. You mentioned players being able to kill children in Fallout 1. I saw a clip of that and the presentation alone didn't affect me emotionally. It looked and sounded very cartoony and reminded me of the video "id's Hugo Martin on Doom Eternal's Lighthearted Gore" where Hugo said that they intentionally made the violence more "cartoony" so that it would not feel "off" or "inappropriate". In GTA V, there is not much realism in how characters react to being shot or run over. The ragdoll physics also make it quite cartoony. Now imagine what we can do when GTA VI comes out. When you run people over, you could have the sound of bones cracking, you could simulate twisted limbs, ripped skin, and blood trails on the ground. But it would be so realistic that it would cross the line and make you feel disgusted.
yes thank you i've always wondered about this!!! i remember there was a huge controversy when yandere simulator was supposed to include the possibility to kill a kitten and there was such an outrage about it, which was CRAZY to me because it's literally a game where you kill and sexually harrass high school kids lmao. also the discrimination between non-sexual vs. sexual violence and between violence against children vs. adults has always struck me as a bit illogical. when i talk about this with people there are usually some arguments that can be made but none of them really justify just how extreme this distinction is made in society. i really hope more people will discuss this in the future
Listening to this gives me the strong sense that Alex doesn’t play games. Games are not always meant to be “fun” in the same way a film doesn’t need to be fun. People don’t watch grave of the fireflies for example because it’s fun, but because it shows them uncomfortable truths about human nature, games, especially violent ones can do this too. For me I felt sick after finishing the “no Russian” mission, it made me a stronger opponent of violence generally, and it was certainly memorable
I think by fun he means enjoyable. Same thing goes for movies. Grave of the fireflies wasn't fun but it was enjoyable. You can argue that it isn't actually enjoyable but I don't think that's the case.
It also ignores how some societies treat a flash of boob as adult only content. Which to me begs the question. Is our abhorrence to sexual violence compared to any other form of violence just an extension from sex being seen as taboo in general?
Sure but the issue wasn’t really ever with the no Russian mission. GTA in the freedom aspect is most definitely a game which has its primary goal set as fun
While it has a weird instinctual feeling about it, I don’t think that granting a sexual assault action within GTA is any different from people who role play sexual assault situations with their partner. Many people will find it disturbing, but there is no actual harm being done. In this case, the video game character cannot consent because it is simply an npc, but it also doesn’t need consent because it is an npc. It might “feel wrong” but that doesn’t necessarily make it wrong. These two actions are morally identical in my view
Go to ground.news/AlexOC to see through media bias. Subscribe through my link this month only for 40% off unlimited access.
Just downloaded it😊.
This is really interesting actually 🤔.
This happens all the time in ethics. I find myself drawing arbitrary distinctions based on what is normalised in society.
My brain tells me that there is nothing wrong with allowing anything in media as long as no one is actually hurt in the process but my heart says there is something vile about simulating something like violence against ch!ldren, you know?
10:15 While there would definitely be backlash, how many of them would be a moral one. I would be part of that backlash,sure, but not because i think the option itself is a problem
because games with sexual assault as an option do exist already, maybe not to the amount of freedom as this theoretical GTA
off the top of my head, im pretty sure tsukihime is an old VN game that actually has a bunch of endings where the mc r*pes one of the heroines. Some of these have excuse like, uh, the guy was possessed by a rapist demon thingy, some of them were choice you could pick and usually these lead to bad ending
Im pretty sure if i searched up "Porn game" i could probably find plenty of games that include sexual assault as an option(tbh tsukihime was part of the 2000 VN games, which were basically half porn game aswell)
We can also extend this to porn gerne like BDSM, is indulging in rape fantasy wrong?
The assumption that "most people watching" will be disgusted and agree with you that this theoretical GTA is immoral isnt very well placed here, because i think the exception to that number would be bigger than you realized. This only proves it to people that are hypocritical with their thought process, whereas people who genuinely think real world effects are the only things that matter and would be unironically fine with murder AND sexual assault as an option in video games like me kinda sit here with no actual argument presented
Of course you can also make it like 20x more horrid, like instead of sexual assault, how about sexual assault but with children, or what about torturing children the- and by this point half of me would be inclined to agree with you, but the problem remain that there really isnt a reasonable justification i can point to. And supposed this game were released into the internet, it would get plenty of backlashed, definitely alot more backlash than your example
but...just because everyone hates it...does that make the game wrong? Suppose if im willing to defend edp445 simulator coming out in 2025, what possible argument could you have presented that doesnt need a real world effects as a reason?
Personally i feel that if simulated immorality prevents real-world immorality, bu giving antisocial personalities an outlet, then it actually becomes moral. 🤷♂️
Do something similar with Minecraft.
Never in a million years did I ever think Alex would make a video entirely about GTA.
Neither did I 😂
Bro I swear 💀
The GTA VI effect
I'm so grateful he did. As a gamer, this is an ethical dilemma I face often.
and THIS 24:42
I still remember that my favorite minigame in GTA Vice City was driving an ambulance to save people, but then again it didn't matter if you ran people over on the way to the hospital lol.
...reach level 11 and the ambulance rolls over and gets stuck on its flat roof!
My favorite minigame was doing taxi missions.
@@nosouponhead taxi gang
Omg you’re such a hero
Yes, I've wondered this myself: there is a clear distinction made between (non-sexual) violence against adults and children. One is acceptable to depict in movies and games while the other is very rarely depicted and considered vastly more disturbing. We are also inherently more disturbed with children vs adults suffering in real life. It is a bit arbitrary in logical terms, but undeniably a fact. Maybe a genetical trait or something. But it bugs me sometimes how much of a contrast there is, as if a person's life decreases in value when they get older. It's an interesting dichotomy to think about, though.
I wonder why we consider it morally worse to harm a female or a child vs a man? Like we are all conscious beings, it seems strange that mens ability to suffer is kind of not seen as important as females. Like you said I think it links to the history of warfare in which men were seen as fair game but women were not. It’s just kind of strange really tho
I believe it has to do with the instrumental value of these crimes. Sexual violence and violence against children are unseperable to a purely instrumental cause. You can overlook the identity of any adult you commit violence over, but there is no ambiguity in the age and innocence of a child, and thus the crime can't be made abstract. The same goes for sexual violence, which is usually committed for the sake of the crime itself and not for a reason that could be made absurd by the game.
@@benhallo1553 the answer to this comes from our evolutionary past. Once you understand natural selection properly, it’s actually obvious that men will seem intuitively expendable (to both other men and women), as men’s contribution to reproduction is far more easy to replace (just because sperm is infinitely “cheaper” than eggs). Thus our intuitions were literally built, through evolution, to reflect that.
Same reason why sexual violence tends to be intuitively “stronger” than ordinary violence, even when the first is moderate and the later fatal: reproduction, not life itself, is the core of evolution. And our brains were built accordingly.
So there’s no logical or coherent moral structure underlying the collective brute feelings here. Kids and sexual violence are out of GTA just because our nature is that way. It turns out that manifests as both seeming more gruesome and unacceptable to many and, precisely because of that, being felt as more thrilling and power-trip inducing to others. Currently, the delicate social balance between those conflicting desires is allowing non-sexual violence in GTA.
I see Alex as pushing to move that balance to be more restrictive. I can only hope he fails. People differ in such desires and, yes, if no real world damage is being caused, it shouldn’t be the business of the more sensitive group to impose itself on the less sensitive one. Just don’t play it.
@@SelbyClaude good point. yeah just like how people being gay and the new transgender movement are products of evolution (sarcasm btw lol)
@@benhallo1553 well, the new transgender movement is just one of the new TRIBALISTIC movements, which, yes, are products of evolution in our social species: any lame excuse for passionately joining “our” group, against “their” group, will do - including painting the nails of the hand with different colors, as tested with groups of women. As for gay people, whatever the explanation for why 2-3% of the population is gay, that didn’t really change across time and cultures (supergay ancient Greece, for example, being a myth). It just seems that the process behind the masculinization or feminization of bodies and brains, which happens to everyone, goes a bit astray in 2-3% of cases.
Alex should do a play through when GTA VI comes out and ponder the morals of the game as he plays through it 😎
Borrrring
@@TyTy-cx7rp you're boring
@@peepeepoopoo9113 you’re boring
@@TyTy-cx7rp bro u don't know wut u talking about
@@ocean34560 neither do you
Petition for Cosmic Gaming to be a second channel
Signed.
SIGNEDDDD
+1
Gleefully inscribed!
And on this channel, he should review the ethics of each game as he plays them
04:35 There were studies (I’m sure in Germany and Sweden around ‘maybe 5 years ago) that found people who listen to rock and metal are genuinely happier people - because their pastime allowed them to get rid of their anger in a way that they enjoyed - and this study done away with the angry rocker in one study. The study also found that, in discussion, many of these people played violent video games. As part of the study, they introduced questions about video games and, though it was an addendum and never part of the study and it was introduced late therefore barring it from being a proven quantitative study of the information, it was found that people who played violent video games also enjoyed similar happiness to those who listened to metal but that they, in the words of one of the authors, ‘were able to scratch an itch if they’d had a bad day’ and were found to be ‘almost to a person unlikely to perpetrate violence in the real world.
I think there’s a lot to take in on these studies and I think everyone would welcome a full and in-depth study into the phenomena
For what it’s worth: I fully consider myself a decent person. I learned to box and moved into Muay Thai in my younger years and have always been really good at controlling my anger: metal and games a good outreach for anger and Muay Thai for frustration.
When I play faves, there are ethics I have in life that I transport into games: I don’t like to see animals mistreated and, in games, I struggle with needlessly killing animals. In games with an honour system, I struggle to move into dishonourable intentionally (though my incompetence plants me well into it).
For many, games may be an escape but they take themselves into the game and are not immoral. Others use games to clear that part of themselves they cannot in the real world. Others again just see it as fantasy.
There’ll always be people out there who’ll copy what they see but, make no mistake, those who kill because they saw it in a game will do so because they saw it in a movie, read it in a book or saw it on the news. People aren’t killing because Pac Man
So by your conclusion, EA Sports should make a VR game for P-Doughs?
Let out all that aggression in a game and prevent them from doing it in real?
@@freeyourmind7538 that’s an interesting question.
I don’t think we can reasonably say any video game company “should” do anything beyond making games that entertain their customers. That said, perhaps they are in a unique position to explore the potential positive effects of providing games that can be an outlet for persons who have a desire to commit crimes, so ideally they don’t commit the crime in real life. Since a digital character can never be a real victim, this kind of scenario can be studied in depth.
@@freeyourmind7538 A tough and uncomfortable question, but ultimately a valid one. What if studies came out and showed you could almost entirely eliminate "P-dough" activity in the real world, by letting them do it in a fictional one?
@@Majorfuckinghero i'm muslim, regardless of studies, any sexual content is indecent according to the moral standard that i follow, and not my personal opinion.
P-dough game would fall into that category too. So, that is a no for me.
what's next? Incest is fine and we have studies to back that too?
Where do you draw the line and why is everyone obliged to follow your line?
It may sound like i am being aggressive but i am just being a liberal
@@Majorfuckinghero i'm muslim, regardless of studies, any s3xu4l content is indecent according to the moral standard that i follow, and not my personal opinion.
P-dough game would fall into that category too. So, that is a no for me.
what's next? Inc3st is fine and we have studies to back that too?
Where do you draw the line and why is everyone obliged to follow your line?
It may sound like i am being aggressive but i am just being a liberal
When I was a kid, before I played video games, I was obsessed with armies and guns and used to dream about being a hero in WW1 and 2. Since I started playing video games from about 8 this quickly disappeared and games like Battlefield 1 actually made me start to realise how horrible violence is in the real world.
exactly the realism is a huge part too. i physically couldnt finish the first level of battlefield 1 because that shit was horrifying
@@jaws5671Jeez, is it as bad as No Russian from the original Modern Warfare 2?
@@arthurfleck629The intro alone is shocking. It brought me to tears.
No matter the political justifications of the war, in the heat of battle the violence is brutally senseless.
There’s a giving over of yourself to the story so you feel emotion.
But when it cones to the multi-player aspect the focus changes to skilled gameplay and completing objectives.
I don’t agree with boiling games down to simple “fun.”
They can be complex works of art.
@@arthurfleck629 i mean nothing is that bad tbh but it is fucking terrifying like it made me promise myself to dodge the draft lol
Just playing advocatus diaboli here:
One could also just say that you grew up and are not a young boy anymore. Of course you know better now.
Also: Even if it actually helped you grow up, it is not said, that these kind of games would have been the only thing that could have done it.
Would be great to see Alex and Peter Hitchens do a live stream playing GTA. 😁
Peter Hitchens would give a demonstration of a "proper" war on drugs
This made me laugh quite loudly at 1am
Hitchens to the arresting officer: "You have LURED me here under FALSE PRETENSES!!"
You guys crack me up
Lol
This is like when you see a 'mutual friend' on social media and you try to wrap your brain around how those two people know each other. In a million years I did not think I would find Alex and GTA in the same video. I feel like something has aligned in my universe.
I know Alex is not a literary historian or a media historian, but i wish this discussion was expanded to discuss how Treasure Island or On Stranger Tides trivialized the actions of Pirates and turns real world murderers into fun villains or heroes. How The Great Train Robbery (the silent film) allowed its audience to get wrapped up in the murder of civilians by bandits. Literature and Media have always walked this line, and while I know Alex doesn't do four hour long video essays, if I were in the room with him, i would love to discuss all of these things in detail, and how they all comnect to the modern day and Grand Theft Auto
In treasure island, the ‘pirates’ were cast as the villains. The former crew of captain flint was portrayed as being willing to kill one of their own to recover the millions of coins they helped steal from the guilty and the innocent alike, and it was a child who stood in their way. I suppose you haven’t even read it, and if you had you wouldn’t be characterizing it as trivializing of the crimes of entirely fictional individuals. By the way, historically, privateers were a lot worse simply by being on the same side as an imperial power that was in the process of or on its way to a litany of crimes against which those of buccaneers would pale in comparison.(and let’s also note that the crimes of buccaneers were overstated through propaganda routinely even before the golden age)
All that aside, it is generally a mistake to take the mere depiction of violence, entertaining tough it may be in the moment, out of the context of surrounding themes, which either condemn or contextualize it, invalidating any impulse to actually replicate any of it in reality. To do so is to pretend the average reader/viewer has less media literacy than a conservative who loves (insert left wing media here). (I am in fact saying that even small children aren’t that stupid)
@@jaredgreen2363 It is funny that you would suggest that I haven't read a book after I just mentioned it by name. It would be funnier if it weren't so insulting.
You could make an audio response to this video, I would certainly watch it, as what you say sounds interesting, and I think other people who liked your comment would agree :)
It's worth mentioning that Treasure Island is a children's book to begin with and so by its very nature is going to downplay and romanticize its subject matter. But more importantly, if we're talking specifically about historical and media literacy, it's important to emphasize that Golden Age pirates were really no more violent or dangerous than the average military man in that same time period - in fact there's good evidence to support they were less violent and more democratic and egalitarian than most in society. If you consider the historical record carefully, in fact, there was a time when the average soldier or sailor was considered to be little better than any other violent mercenary. This is the reason class differentiation exists between officers and enlisted men in the military to this day.
I'm not suggesting that all pirates were angels, but it bears consideration that most of what modern society believes about Golden Age pirates is patently corporatist propaganda pushed by the trade organizations and state powers of the time.
Ever read the pilots of spaceship earth?
Alex, you should also do a video about the ethics of combat sports (MMA/Boxing/Muay Thai etc) for entertainment. I'd be so curious to hear your thoughts.
seconded!
Thirded!!
This would be a very interesting video
Fourthed!
I know no one asked, but that seems like a short video. If two adults consent to physically fight each other, and each have something to gain from it *and* enjoy what they do as a hobby and sport; what's wrong with that? It's obviously entertaining to other people. Ethically I see no issues
Hey Alex, behind you your lights are probably flickering because your exposure on your camera is not set to 1/50. If you experiment changing that setting while filming those lights you will find the sweet spot where they stop flickering, probably 1/50, and keep that setting moving forward. They are a bit distracting unfortunately. There is a small possibility that the lights flicker no matter what, in that case you'll have to change the lights at some point in the future unfortunately ...
Seconding this [distracting] motion!
I honestly didn’t notice them but handy info anyway 🙏
ngl I dont see the flickering
1/60 presumable in Europe and the UK cause the grid runs at 60Hz iirc
I don't see flickering and I've tried 1x and 2x speed on my phone
Damn Alex, this was very well done, got me thinking pretty hard about the inconsistency on controversial things being criticized on games.
To me doing crazy things in video games activates the same part of my brain as absurdist humor like The Eric Andre Show. It’s just entertaining to see or do something so over the top and insane. Something about that break from what makes sense or is at all consistent with how you actually are as a person is attractive to the human mind I believe.
I almost didn’t watch this video. I assumed this would be one of the many similarly titled videos that continue to make attempts at crucifying violent video games and the people who enjoy them. Imagine my surprise when I found out it wasn’t. You bring up a ton of incredibly valid concerns and ask quite a few good questions without ever shoving an opinion down my throat. You made me think. You made me set aside my personal biases and think and for that I am grateful. You’ve done an incredible job covering the many ethical grey areas that this game series tends to find itself in and for that I salute you. Needless to say you’ve made a subscriber out of me. Cheers!
Alex is an incredibly levelheaded and thoughtful guy. Always interested in hearing his takes. :)
I'm surprised by some of the comments lol Alex posed a pretty interesting question. Why are some acts of violence permissible within a simulated reality, but others, such as sexual assault and violence upon children are not? If there are no real consequences in GTA and the game is not forcing you to commit these acts of violence, what makes these acts more morally repugnant?
I think some people aren't really paying attention to the video and just automatically respond with the pre-loaded arguments in support of violent video games.
imo because in the normal zeitgeist, physical violence is already glorified, we have had violent films where the pfotagonist commit mass murder, mowing down armies of nameless goons for decades now, and it has grown into a cultural norm to see depictions of physical violence, which can sometimes be justifiable (self defense, revenge, military duty). we have basically manufactured our tolerance to depictions of physical violence. people can go on power fantasies in some extreme cases. while sexual violence is totally unjustifiable and has always carried a negative meaning behind it. the thrill seems to stop when the opponent is entirely helpless to the violence that will be inflicted upon them.
@@nguyen-vuluu3150 Alot of games allow you to kill civilians (i presume the GTA games do, i havent actually played them). If we are defining whether or not its justifiable by the helplessness of the victim, surely violence against innocents would still come under the same category as sexual violence?
Well I think some moral traits are hardwared into us by evolution. Maybe because protecting females and children is beneficial for our survival
I suppose that's cuz sexual assault is more gendered, and targets more vulnerable populations. Same with if a game had pdf-characteristics. In terms of making a virtual environment where you can challenge moral boundaries, it's the same as a game where you can be a terrorist. But the victims of pdf filia are a more vulnerable population.
And hence we have created a society where it's much more normalised to say " I like illegal violence though I won't cause it" than "I like non consensual sex with hot women though I won't do it".
I do think this is more about sales potential than it is about the underlying ethics of the inclusion of certain forms of violence. It sells better if they don't include some forms of violence, whether that is ethical or not, and it sells better if they do include other forms of violence that many other titles shy away from. They draw the line where they lose money... But it is interesting that the audience draws the line there.
But that line is fluid. As violence is becoming more ubiquitous on our screens, (see Ukraine and Gaza) some people will normalize the de-humanizing aspects more than others. Game developers will follow the money. If the trend is for more and more violence, and less and less ethical consideration, the games will become more extreme to garner market share. For those that are less socially engaged, the contrast between real life and the virtual could become blurred. If a person who is not in regular contact with many different groups (age, social , racial, sexual, etc.), and spends large amounts of time on forums, where being edgy and flexing is currency, anti-social tendencies can grow to unmanageable levels...combine this with prescription and illicit drug use, and access to lethal weaponry...what could possibly go wrong?
@@curmudgeon1933 _"For those that are less socially engaged, the contrast between real life and the virtual could become blurred."_
In that case I'd argue that this the problem in need of addressing though, rather than the potential cracks those people may fall down.
I'm aware that "muh mental health" is a bit of a meme now in regards to a specific one of those issues you mentioned lol, but it genuinely is the foundation level problem responsible for every danger you mentioned and you identified that pretty clearly yourself.
@@curmudgeon1933 but that would mean we need to censor everything based on the common denominator, the weakest link. What would remain? Nothing
@@curmudgeon1933 Bro it's a game. Why are people over-analyzing this and making half hour long videos, when the reality is simple. It's fun. That's it. And people know that "strippers" in GTA aren't strippers at all. They're a bunch of pixels. It's not real - c'mon people. Your character can die in GTA a million times and nothing will happen to you, the player. Because you didn't die. But people tend to treat their own death a bit different in real life.
And it's the same with robbing banks, stealing cars or shooting gang members. What is fun in vide game is not always fun in real life - and this is most often the case. That's why video games exist .So people can have fun doing stuff, they wouldn't want to in real life. Case in point - most players who play military shooter would never consider enlisting in military themselves. Because guess what - military isn't fun for them in real life - it is fun in a video game though.
First there was books, then there was music, then there was movies, and now it's video games. It's always the same - and it was always GTA and a few other games. And Rockstar are used to it and if anything it brings them good publicity. GTA 6 will have a record sales thanks to this publicity xD. So for GTA this is only positive news.
@@Member_zerobooks, movies have caused outrages and scandals before video games you know ?
It’s normal to analyse what art means, how it reflects on society. Video game is no exception and not everything should be accepted because « it’s fun ».
Would you say it’s normal to write child pornography books ? No harm is made, it’s all fun..
I am not saying GTA should be cancelled, I just like that this conversation exists and I find it very interesting
I think that Red Dead Redemption 2’s morality booster makes the game not only more interesting but makes the consequences of your actions more meaningful for some reason. Not exactly sure why
The explicit UI for morality serves as an assurance to players that what they have done was not fleeting or inconsequential directly when they do it, but even more importantly, the game story hinges quite a lot by the ending on your chosen moral path.
This is the ultimate consequence of all your previous minor actions, akin to your biblical judgement by st Peter as to whether you will get to heaven after dying.
@samwize28I don’t think it is pointless. I always return the money because believe it or not, my brain rewards me for being a good person when I see the npc being grateful that I returned his savings.
A yes, the reason postal 3 is the best one as said by everyone
Wow, it's as if you connect with the character the more you play and later feel the impact of the consequences.
Your point about hypothetical sex crimes in GTA really stumped me, honestly. It's nasty to think about, but if such a feature were implemented the resultant uproar would probably be more motivated by our innate discomfort with sexual assault than its objective moral reprehensibility. Although murder is probably worse than rape, murder doesn't carry that same inexplicable grossness and I would be much more comfortable committing it in a videogame than the latter.
I think the question is more “principle violation vs an objective violation”. Both scenarios of simulated rape & murder have no objective violation in reality, but we feel more inclined to condemn the simulated rape based on principle than we are to condemn the simulated murder based on principle.
@@jessecuevas6456that seems true in movies too right? Like many movies are ok with showing killing people in gruesome ways but I can’t recall many instances of seeing r*** in movies
I think part of the reason for this is a lot of the murder in gta happens in a slapstick comedy type of way: running someone over with a car, cartoonishly large explosions. It’s so outlandish sometimes that it feels much less real than sexual violence would
This is possible in the game Bully. Also by Rockstar. Surely, grape is not possible, but for example, touching a girl's posterior without her consent is possible
I think part of the reason why it's distinct for us is that there are potential reasons why killing is justified (or at least framed as justified) fairly often. There is already a bit of allowance in our heads towards murder and violence because it may occasionally be needed. If not against people, then at least against animals for eating or products (at least, if you aren't vegan).
Of course, the more pointlessly cruel something is, the more likely you are to accept it, but it's at least something where we have some framing of 'it's permissible' even if the action is portrayed as bad.
We obviously don't have that for sexual violence since sexual violence isn’t. Really ever justified in real life. The closest we get if 'corrective' stuff related to spouses or lgbt people- but these are more so post-hoc justifications that are. Bad. And we have been moving away from those practices because we know they're bad. So we have no in to sexual violence. So even fictionalized sexual violence is feels like it's breaking our morals since sexual violence has such a thin line of justification to begin with
Late contender for the most anticipated beard of 2023
Hey Chris, love your channel!
Can you get Alex back on the channel
Found your work very helpful Chris. Thanks.
Extremely thought provoking. Thank you Alex and Happy New Year to everyone.
This is a fantastic idea for a video. I'd love to see him do a series like it.
I remember my grandma's face when she saw me playing GTA San Andreas. She was utterly completely horrified in a real sense. I told her that it's not real and it's just a game and then she answered me; Why would you be watching people die for fun? Her reaction shook me actually. She couldn't even understand that I was playing a character, she thought I was merely watching this and yet she found it unthinkable that this could ever be fun. I still love GTA of course, can't help myself, but she did have a point.
Indulgence in fictional violence has been a staple of every human civilization even going back to Mesopotamia.
She has never seen any movie?
Not ones where death happens. She was only into comedies.@@kapoioBCS
Well, her question contains facts not in evidence. You are not watching people die for fun, you are interacting with virtual assets.
She definitely has a point.
Unsurprisingly, Alex has created the best video on this topic I’ve ever seen. Well done 👍
I've never been so genuinely stumped and thought provoked, great video!
So just a few things point by point.
People don’t always play video games because they are fun. Video games are an art form and like all art people engage with it for various reasons. I didn’t read Beloved because I found it entertaining; it’s a deeply troubling but thought provoking novel. But I did read Code of the Woosters only because it was entertaining. Both books are great and both are works of art and I adore both works. However, I did read One Hundred Years of Solitude and was both immensely entertained and found it a piece of deeply challenging art. Likewise, there are many video games that are entertaining just for entertainment’s sake while there are others that are difficult and then there are others that are both entertaining and deeply thought provoking.
As to why simulated sexual violence is different from simulated murder, there are two reasons why I think that is. First of all, and what I think is the most obvious to most people, gratuitous violence is often really funny. Just look at the three flavours Cornetto trilogy. GTA has always been satire and therefore funny. Sexual violence, like you pointed out in the video, is personal in a way that just seeing someone’s head explode is not. Also, physical violence has, historically, been necessary. Allied soldiers had to kill axis soldiers in order to defeat fascism. Raping them was, to say the least, unnecessary. So our history of violence as a species has delineated necessary violence from unnecessary violence and sexual violence has yet to make its case that it could ever be necessary. This doesn’t mean that the violence in GTA is necessary but because similar acts of violence have been used necessarily, it feels far more permitted.
Brutalizing a sex worker or a person of colour in the game is similar to misreading Lolita as a manifesto for pedophilia. It’s not how you’re supposed to play the game just like it’s not how you’re supposed to read the novel. Yes, some people will read Lolita wrong and some people will play GTA wrong. People misread works of art all the time but that doesn’t mean the work of art is saying what the idiots want it to say.
Children are likely not included as potential murder victims for a similar reason why sexual violence isn’t permitted. There’s never been a reason for it historically and it’s never funny.
The torture scene is meant to make you feel uncomfortable and is a good example of art that one engages with without liking. If one plays that scene in the game and enjoys it, not only have they missed the social commentary of the game, but are also lunatics, in a similar way that readers who like Rorschach in Watchmen made Alan Moore want to get as far away from them as possible.
To say that the only reason GTA kept the worst things you can imagine out is because they were afraid of getting an Adults Only stamp is like saying the only reason Apocolypse Now didn’t get an X rating was because Francis Ford Coppola decided to cut out all the scenes where they fucked the cow before they chopped its head off. As if he would have included entire cow-penetrating-man orgies if he could have but he was worried about the censures. The reason he didn’t is because it would have made no sense to the story or the themes he was exploring. This reading of GTA is like any other misreading of art. The creators might just have put what they did into their work of art for a reason and kept out what they did for a reason. And maybe you only see bad things in the artwork because you haven’t spent enough time trying to understand it as an art form.
Yes, some game violence is treated differently than others in the public perception, in the same way the violence of the Turner Diaries is treated differently than the violence in the Handmaid’s Tale. Because the two books are trying to say different things and so use violence in their works differently.
Basically, it seems like you don’t see video games as anything but fantasy fulfillment and therefore can’t imagine that a video game might be a work of art with something to say. In this case, a work of satirical art which attempts to make comments about everything from American exceptionalism to torture. It reminds me of all those old white men who thought the emergence of the novel would corrupt innocent young women. Video games are an emerging art form and they are far more than just entertainment at this point.
brilliant, thanks for taking the time to put all of this into a comment.
Good analysis, but in my opinion the historical necessity, comedy, and normality of something are orthogonal qualities. I basically agree with Alex's conclusion here: depictions of some type of violence are not inherently more or less ethical than depictions of some other type of violence. Whether these depictions are funny is irrelevant, as you already said yourself: games don't have to be fun all the time, so comedy is not a necessity either. Similarly, whether the depicted acts of violence have been historically necessary in the real world is also irrelevant. An art form has the right to imagine and explore beyond the real world to engage and provoke its audience.
So I disagree that because "There’s never been a reason for it historically and it’s never funny", ergo children are unlikely to enter GTA. (FWIW, the more I think about it, the more I believe that children in GTA would be a goldmine of comedic situations and interactions.) It just so happens that we (almost) all agree that violence against adults in GTA is normal, and violence against children in GTA would not be normal.
Yes!
Wanted to say a similar thing, but you said it better then I ever could.
Alex made a thought provoking video here, but these thoughts were also in my mind then playing the mentioned Airport scene in CoD and the torture scene in GTA 5. I didn’t have fun playing those, but the experience was so thought provoking because it was uncomfortable. I don’t think any other medium could pull that off.
The lines are arbitrary, as Alex points out. But to excuse movies, series, and books (sexual violence against children is considered normal in Game of Thrones…) and then go after video games, is an arbitrary line in and of itself.
most of your points are good, but it is worth noting that while video games are a valid art form that can make a viewer think and question, they primarily are made for fun. as you say, most of the violence in gta is seen as funny. yes the torture scene is not supposed to be fun, but at the end of the day, the main difference between that violence, and the violence of mowing down civilians, is that it lingers, forcing you to think, not that it is inherently worse. overall, almost all the violence is not to teach a lesson, but for fun.
I have an additional point that could be contributory:
A fairly practical, gameplay point: respawning. As the primary character (let's say Tommy Vercetti, my favourite) we do not "die" even when we're shot and run out of "health" he only gets "wasted" and ends up at hospital. The implication being not that you died, but that you were merely very badly hurt indeed, which is in fact pretty funny.
The same can be said for NPCs. Although Tommy may be able to take their head clean off with a sniper rifle, the ambulance will pull up and fully resuscitate the NPC back to life. This is also, if not even more, comical.
I think in this piece of gameplay we're truly aware that this is slapstick (albeit very gory) violence.
In counterpoint to that, we know that despite Tommy's multiple "wasted" moments, his personal timeline continues. We move through missions, buy properties, build alliances and open parts of the map chronologically. So Tommy experiences the world in real time. So while Tommy can be knocked down, he can get up again. But if Tommy were to be sexually assaulted, this would remain with him as a horrific part of his story.
And since we know our NPCs can also be revived from even the most brutal physical attack, we perhaps implicitly know that their internal world continues as well. Meaning that if they were to experience a sexual assault, this would stay with them, unlike their "death" which they completely bounce back from.
I'd be interested to hear if this holds any water.
It’s just happens to be the case that physical violence is much more comfortably baked into pop culture compared to the other type of violence that you mentioned.
Go to the movie theater and you’ll see that most movies involve gun , car, or sword violence. We just don’t care that much about that type of fantasy and we understand it’s for play, where as the other form of violence is seen as a much more personally disturbing thing for kids to fantasize about. Kids play with toy guns or swords or just play fight all the time.
I think setting matters. Gunning someone down in Cyberpunk or RDR2 feels different than doing the same in a real life analogue like Liberty City or Los Santos. Also, I think the GTA games have a cathartic effect on those that have to deal with real life city issues. Personally I love to cut loose in traffic (GTA not RL) and get the police to chase me as long as possible. Helps me deal with the idiocy of real life drivers.
As a non-american, gta is like a fantasy world to me.
@@bactrosaurus this comment is so funny
By the way, to me Cyberpunk feels way more real than red dead 2, a cynical view of what may come rather than a realistic view of what has.
As someone who drives for a living, being able to play BeamNG Drive in VR and flip cars on the highway with a truck that has a wedge on the front is soooooo cathartic. And they're just cars too so I see absolutely no moral dilemma lmao.
@@bactrosaurus😂😂😂
It is hard to put into words how much I love this video
It is truly great.
He just puts everything so much better than 99% of children.
Isn't this essentially a question that can be asked about censorship on any artistic media? If not how could it be considered differently?
it can't, but there are still those uneducated old fashioned idiots who still have the childish mentality of ''videogames are for kids'' or ''cartoons are for kids'' and dont think adults should like those things because they don't.
I think the important difference is that in video games, the atrocities occur as a result of the player's agency. Even the no-choice atrocities like the torture scene are meant to imitate agency by PoV cinematography, forcing the player to press buttons to proceed, etc.
Video games are unique compared to other art forms because you are a participant instead of just an observer.
@@hydra70 fair enough. I'm not entirely convinced the difference is big enough to amount for an entirely different ethical stature since interpretating art is still an active, arguably more imaginative (and thus demanding), way to interact with art that I would not consider passive
I think it's really more difficult to videogames. like person above. it's an interactive media so we get more involved than other.
but the real problem of this media than other is that it's high demanding of 'fun'
it's easier to talk about how bad sexual assault is and not fantasizing from other media it but freakily hard for videogames (especially openness freedom videogames) if it not especially design you to disgust of what you're done
or maybe our interpret of videogames media to being 'fun' are narrow view because Yume Nikki wouldn't be so popular lol
I feel like the question you brought up on sexual violence in games is very compelling and I think there’s one argument I can think of:
Killing as a game mechanic is and has always been a balanced and intuitive way to implement game features. Even in non-gruesome games, a character can have a health bar, and the objective is to not lose all of your health, or, not to die. If you’re playing vs other players then it is very intuitive to also give them a health bar and make that the main objective to win over the other. Over time, because it was so normalized, it became normal to use death and violence as a normal and balanced game mechanic. (I do think it’s balanced but if it wasn’t normalize I can definitely see myself not liking it). Now, the thing with sexual violence or a button in the game to do so is, what exactly? The whole point people commit such a crime in real life is for the pleasure, and that can’t be replicated in game. And because it is seen as a terrible act to commit, it’s then hard to justify another reason to have it in game, as opposed to killing (reasons stated above). It’s hard to justify sexually assaulting someone with a reward in a way that feels necessary.
Anyone agrees/disagrees? I’d love Alex to tell me his thoughts if you’re reading
I think the difference between melee combat style games (like street fighter, smash bros, mortal combat etc.) or shooter games (goldeneye, Halo, Call of Duty) etc. and something like GTA is quite a contrast.
Having a contest of strength even to the death implies putting your own skills against someone with similar skills, even if death is a consequence.
Intentionally harming people who are defenseless is something I will never be comfortable with in real life or in games.
I don’t enjoy UFC in real life but I can respect aspects of the sport.
Things like GTA to me have no redeeming qualities. I played GTA V at a friend’s house years ago and while I did kill NPC’s and stole vehicles etc. I enjoyed the novelty of it in the moment, but afterwards I felt a kind of remorse and never had a desire to play it again.
One of my son’s friends brought his X-Box and Red Dead Redemption and the first thing I asked was if it was like GTA. He replied that I wasn’t but the first thing he did when he started the game was run up to an NPC and put a shot gun under its chin and execute them.
I told him to turn the game off. The kid was 11 and my son was 10 at the time.
I don’t see the appeal to it and to me it crosses a line of senselessness I won’t allow.
@@christhetanman2639, bingo. I think this distills the problem even better than Alex did. The problem is the normalization of randomized and intentional acts of violence against otherwise innocent individuals. War, for all its chaos, has rules--very important ones at that. It is a contest between powers. Indiscriminate, randomized, unprompted violence has as little point as sexual assault. It is an attempt to create (or, in this instance, simulate) human suffering simply because it is in one's potency to do so. If Rockstar somehow got away with including sexual assault in GTA VI, I could see the dialogue massively shifting over the next decade or two. It won't be immediate, but as those who played it (as adolescents) come to retroactively justify it as adults, it will likely come to be seen as just as permissible as anything else in the GTA universe.
@vergils_plastic_chair it seems to me like the main focus but I do see what you’re saying. Though Even then what way can u implement domination and control in a game? It doesn’t seem to me like an essential game design property. Thanks for the input though! I didn’t think of it perhaps because it’s just such an unthinkable thing to do in my head
@@christhetanman2639 beautifully written. It highlights my point that there’s no intrinsic need for a game feature like sexual violence and that’s also the reason why it feels wrong to have an implementation of the killing of innocent people as a game feature in a place where it shouldn’t be necessary. Sadly though normalized enough. Thank you for that! :v
@@christhetanman2639 In defense of the Red Dead Games, it uses an honor system, meaning the actions you do in the game can effect the story as a whole. Not saying that you're wrong not to like it, just want to point it out. (Also it's Mortal Kombat, just had to correct this outta impulse)
First off, what an excellent and unexpected video. Great job Alex!
Ultimately I do not think there is any principled exclusion of the forms of violance which are excluded, they are not worse in my mind than mass murder, including walking into the hospital in GTA IV, for example, and gunning or stabbing everyone down (amongst which, elderly, sick and injured). I do believe that when it comes down to it, it is all about public perception and marketability, since some things are deemed more viscerally unacceptable for personal and societal reasons, rather than principled, and so for Rockstar, including those things in the game would be committing suicide for the game's marketability and selling opportunities.
On an additional note, the mass killing and physical violance "barrier", for lack of a better term, was broken a long time ago, so we no longer really question that it was fine breaking, while the same cannot be said for violance against kids or se* crimes, but if those barriers will be broken in the future, who knows 🤷♂️.
There are p*rn games that do allow se* crimes but they aren't really sold anywhere, except perhaps being funded indirectly through patreon and such through their creators, which goes to show that these things do exist, and probably don't do any real harm, but just aren't marketable to wider public marketplaces.
Just my thoughts.
100% Agreed.
Very true, I feel like Alex is basically just making a huge appeal to authority fallacy.
@@AmirhoseinHerandy Or perhaps argumentum ad populum.
@@viewsandrates I'm just so tired of people attacking video games and porn without basically any experience and knowledge in either one. I honestly expected more of him.
@AmirhoseinHerandy he didn't, wtf!? Did you even watch the video? He has played gta and is gonna play the new one too when it comes out, he even said so in the video. It seems like you saw the title and got annoyed.
Love videos on your thoughts on these new topics Alex.
I'm much more interested in examining why we have harsher "gut" reactions to certain acts than others, rather than leaping to the conclusion that this must mean that one of the acts is objectively more immoral than the other. (I'm not accusing Alex of doing this.) I don't think our gut reactions should decide what we ban, though surely I think it should affect where we place our warning labels as a courtesy.
Espacially since some peoples gut reaction to gay people are sometimes the same as something like SA or some other "sexual immorality".
If you asked anyone 30 years ago if the thought of simulated murder on a civilian made them sick, they would prob answer that it does.
Just because something is currently acceptable in society doesn't change the logical morality of it.
Precisely, how is it that we someone take sexual violence and worse than murder and torture, heck, by movies and cartoons' standards, normal consensual sex is not a okay to show to children while violence is.
@@Adammarshall2341 There were plenty of violent video games in 1993 bud.
The problem with this take is you're placing no value on gut reactions. There are just some things that hold no value existing and we shouldn't allow them to.
I feel it is a cultural norm and a western values thing rather than an ethics thing. There is nothing inherently wrong with exploring violence of any kind in media of any kind it is artistic expression and most people would know the difference. I dont think a hipothetical rape simulator could not be made today in fact it probably exists somewhere but it will be something most if not all platforms does not want to associate with for obvious reasons ( my cynical mind would say mostly financial reasons) responsible, as itis ‘just art’ and art is supossed to make you think about things not instruct you.
100% agree
I mean, remember the infamous Rapelay? Rapeplay? I don't remember. Point is, Japan has a _bunch_ of these. And a bunch that involve children. And a bunch that involve torturing women. And a bunch that involve torturing _children._
There are games like that in Japan
@@JamesMacdonald-iu3gp makes sense as the culture is radically different the taboos would be different as well
@@JamesMacdonald-iu3gp yup exactly
I think in some way the difference between the violence of murder and physical aggression versus the sexual violence button you propose is immersion. While playing a game, the player operates with the assumption everything they encounter is simply a character, and therefore any actions are inconsequential, almost like an interactive action film. However, with sexual violence there is an inherent humanization that takes place. It is no longer removing NPC’s from a play space, but is now a power dynamic that is inflicting trauma on a “person” and finding enjoyment in doing so. When killing NPCs there isn’t a consideration of the NPC’s wife and children at home or the broader effects of their removal. Sexual violence is tied to humanity in a way that sickens most people regardless of the medium it is portrayed in.
i agree, but it is interesting that it would be worse news that your loved one was exploded in his car for no reason, instead of finding out your loved one had been raped.
It is very interesting how those questions finding logic gets harder the closer you look and try to define borders. That was very eye opening. Thanks.
There is a simple answer to the questions posed in the videos however (at least from a practical perspective) - humanity and its gamers amongst us have simply become numb and immune to certain types of violence : those which are more broadly explored in the average video game such as shooting and killing civilians etc. Overtime video games have become more lenient with the scope of the violence which can be explored in the game - I think it is completely reasonable to suggest that parents were absolutely mortified at the thought of their children playing any form of shooting game back in the 90s when they were first surfacing - however overtime gamers were so entertained by it that companies knew it was profitable and therefore put it into more games and therefore shooting in games became much more a status quo amongst popular games.
One reason why we draw this 'red-line' as you describe it is simply because we must remember video games at the end of the day are solely a form of entertainment at their premise - therefore we much measure the successfulness and acceptableness of a video game against how entertaining it is. People can easily find entertainment in shooting people, but find it absolutely repugnant when it comes to s*xually assaulting someone in game.
At the end of the day all aspects of a video game should be judged against how entertaining they are - we know there is no conclusive evidence to prove violence in video games translates to real life violence : however it is imperative to recognise that if an aspect of video games such as s*xual assault are (for obvious reasons) not found that entertaining then why on earth would we include it in a game for the sake of it. If s*xual violence for some very disturbing reason were to become entertaining for future generations 'indulging in things they would never do in real life' then I find it a complete possibility that s*xual violence could be included in the games of the future as long as future generations become numb to it with it being included in more games.
Been recently reading Joe Schmid’s “the majesty of reason” book, he talks a lot about using parallel or parody arguments, and the sexual violence argument is such a perfect application of that.
It feels like such a trip seeing Alex referencing MatPat
Irrespective of whatever opinion I can contribute, I just want to convey my astonishment at this remarkable commentary. After over a decade of widespread justification on the grounds that violent games don’t have real world consequences, Alex has just virtually blown the debate on the ethics of violent video games wide open. Bravo Alex, thank you for your thorough analysis on an issue that most of us have considered irrelevant for years now.
Gotta say Alex certainly is one of the subscriptions I was more than happy with in 2023.
There is a simple answer - humanity and its gamers amongst us have simply become numb and immune to certain types of violence : those which are more broadly explored in the average video game such as shooting and killing civilians etc. Overtime video games have become more lenient with the scope of the violence which can be explored in the game - I think it is completely reasonable to suggest that parents were absolutely mortified at the thought of their children playing any form of shooting game back in the 90s when they were first surfacing - however overtime gamers were so entertained by it that companies knew it was profitable and therefore put it into more games and therefore shooting in games became much more a status quo amongst popular games.
One reason why we draw this 'red-line' as you describe it is simply because we must remember video games at the end of the day are solely a form of entertainment at their premise - therefore we much measure the successfulness and acceptableness of a video game against how entertaining it is. People can easily find entertainment in shooting people, but find it absolutely repugnant when it comes to s*xually assaulting someone in game.
At the end of the day all aspects of a video game should be judged against how entertaining they are - we know there is no conclusive evidence to prove violence in video games translates to real life violence : however it is imperative to recognise that if an aspect of video games such as s*xual assault are (for obvious reasons) not found that entertaining then why on earth would we include it in a game for the sake of it. If s*xual violence for some very disturbing reason were to become entertaining for future generations 'indulging in things they would never do in real life' then I find it a complete possibility that s*xual violence could be included in the games of the future as long as future generations become numb to it with it being included in more games.
@@all-caps3927 sexual violence is already entertaining to a relatively large audience which is evident through its large and growing presence in porn. To be honest, I think its inclusion into mainstream video games is innevitable. I just wonder how far it goes and if there are any bigger implications in the long run. Maybe it begins with minor forms of SA such as groping, maybe it grows into much more serious forms, such as r*pe. And if the trend continues, I can't help but imagine games begin to trivialize sex trafficking and more.
I feel like in the future, the same justifications we use now for violence will be used for SA. I just wonder, is there a hard line that must be drawn somewhere? If there is no evidence for videogame violence correlating to real-world violence, then does it actually matter how vile videogames become?
@@johnmisley5411 I absolutely agree, I think the p*rn industry (what a disgusting and terrible place it is) has unfortunately trivialised bdsm and other genres where s*xual violence is acceptable. I think many people, just as they have become numb to shooting, have become numb to these acts of violence as well.
Now, in terms of real world consequences - the real world consequences of s*xual violence within video games hasn't been studied as in depth as shooting have as they are obviously two completely different things. However the real world consequences of s*xual violence in games will actually be incredibly severe just as they have been with p*rn genres which have resulted in many people thinking it is ok to treat women/men in that specific way.
At that point, a red line will absolutely be drawn. As I stated earlier - it is all about weighing up the consequences and deciding whether or not the entertainment value of a video game feature will cause too many real world repercussions. if this is found to be the case in the real world then I can be sure that these features will be kept out of games.
I think it is still imperative to note that whilst the minority (I hope) find s*xual violence entertaining, it is still a very disgusting and horrible topic which I hope people will find poorly entertaining outside of p*rnography and one's s*xual desires.
We weren't ready to handle Gamergate and ethics in gaming.
Cosmic Skeptic? Definitely interested. GTA and other video games? Pretty intriguing. FEAT. MATPAT?? This is indubitably my favorite RUclips video and I'm not even halfway through. Thank you, Alex
such high quality work, well done
3:05 Couldn't this argument be used for most media? Most media is, I assume, consumed for "fun", therefore I suppose you could say that about any games with a message such as MW2
Yeath Rage Against The Machine's debut album has that discussion of whether it was right of the band to put a activist burning himself as the cover art of an album people will be "rocking out" to.
Yeah. Horror movies for example. Why are we entertained & thrilled by something that would cause the whole world to come together in prayer if we witnessed in reality?
I remember many late night weekend video game sessions in the mid 90s where my friends and I would all fantasize about being able to go into buildings, or walk off the path in our favorite games. Eventually someone would say, "they need to make a game where you can do anything you want"... When I first played GTA 1 on a pc, I nearly cried 😂
Damnnnnnnn you’re old
The question that bugs me the most is, why are movies often exempt from this discussion. How are movies, books paintings and any other form of art different from videogames and have the priviledge to portrait whatever they want and are often even considered meaningfull because of it? Theres a reason why the genre of war movies is so meaningfull and there seems to be some worth people find in depictions of horrible things and i think it can be translated to videogames as well.
maybe its something to do with not being a passive observer, like with books, art, movies etc, and instead be an active participant.
Because videogames give you a perfect target for all moral "concerns": The player themselves. Because they engaged with the videogame, they now carry the sin. It makes it easier to demonize than the passive consumption of a film.
Why would sexual assault be a larger immorality than murder? It's not. But the question, why it might feel like that to many people is spot on.
I agree, so based on that should we put rape in GTA or take murder out of GTA?
it's cuz SA doesn't have a purpose except your pleasure on the back of someone's pain
while murder sometimes people consider justified...
if it's both done for personal pleasure alone, then murder is worse morally imo but people think otherwise even about that idk how tho
@@godassasin8097 but the violence people often commit in GTA is not justified. It’s unnecessary and uncritical. They just do it because there is an option to do it. And I think people are afraid that if given the option to SA women and children in video games most players would at least attempt to try it, not because they enjoy it and wish to do it. Simply because the choice is there. And this might lead to the normalisation of it similar to murder in video games. Which is a reality nobody wishes to see.
@@the1stmetalhead i was just talking about how it's perceived
@@godassasin8097 I disagree since psychology tells us, that sexual assault mostly is not about sexuality but about power - on this ground I would argue, that the assertion of power can be seen as justified or not in both cases.
I feel like its pretty unfair to say making the game in the first place is making light of what its about, games arent necessarily always fun, even the great ones sometimes more engaging than fun and i get that both arent that different
Games are works of art. Whether they are fun, or disturbing or whatever, it's quite a different thing from cracking a joke about the topic.
An argument against your point is that the generations who didn't play video games would disagree vehemently. You are arguing "the effect isn't so bad" from the standpoint of having already been affected by it.
You are suggesting that jokes can't be a work of art. Stop. Videos games can be considered works of art, in the same way that if you throw shit at a wall, put a frame around it, you can call it art as well. I am not disagreeing with such an attitude by the way. I am saying that accusing something of being "art" is the easiest and laziest thing one can say about art. I suggest that perhaps some art is more [something] than other art, yes? And that's where the question starts, not whether it is art or not. As a massively ad hoc, deliberately consumerist piece of media, video games are very far away from the art that you would find in a Bach Cantata or a painting by Rembrandt or a play by Shakepeare or a performance of an Indian raga. I'm not talking about sheer "quality" here. A work of art that is "fun" qualitatively differs from a work of art that is "disturbing," I would think. And if you are not having "fun" or not being "disturbed" by said work of art then, in those terms, it's already bad art. You don't laud bad music because it's bad, so why excuse video games in the same terms? Plus, art is never only about what you make of it; it's more than that. When the only thing you are trying to get out of media is pleasure, that's what pornography is. The experience is tantamount to masturbation (again, I'm not opposed to masturbation)--very often highly bored masturbation, pay-to-play masturbation, auto-bot hands-off masturbation, etc. I assume when you jerk off to don't tell yourself, "This is true love" (and, actually, maybe it's kind of tragic that it's not) so, again, why praise video games in those terms? @@APaleDot
@@talastra That isn't an argument though, that's just saying a bunch of people have a different conclusion.
Also comparing an entire genre to specific works of art is a fallacy. Certain games are "more artistic" than others.
@@talastrayou’re using a logical fallacy, how would you determine the games were the root cause of this change and not many other things?
I was having a discussion on the subject a couple days ago with my wife (psychologist with philosophy background, I'm a programmer who has worked with games). We didn't went that deep into it, but on our brief discussions we couldn't draw a line either so, I truly appreciate what you brought to table here. Coming from Alex, a masterpiece as usual.
**My thoughts:**
- Humans are strange things, who evolve and change, we cannot draw a straight line on a mutating sheet of paper.
- Historically we had several cases of weird/dark entertainment forms, sex abuse, hanging someone by the neck in a public place, putting slaves to fight to death, putting a severely i'll or deficient/deformed person in a stage... and it was REAL (not simulated)
- As we evolve, our "line/bar" has been raising on what is acceptable and what is not.
- Almost, if not always, when a line gets drawn that separate things/behaviors/color/gender in society, some actors will be left on the "wrong" side and suffer from the effects that drawing a line has.
So the only answer, from my point of view, is consensus on what society (in its majority) values at that moment.
... oh humans, having a hard time trying to agree with each other on any given subject through history of humanity, I have a feeling it'll be like this for all existence of human kind...
On a side note, when I played This War of Mine, I thought dang, this was an impressive/violent/emotional journey, it successfully delivers a violent game, in a way you feel bad about the war, cause it wasn't fun, it demonstrates that yes you can be entertained with something that makes you feel bad about something.
I advocate that more of the violent games, have things just like this, that well you can be violent to some extent (our impossible line), but you'll feel bad for it. This will put our kids in a more correct track for the future, they should know, violence exist, and apparently it will forever be around humanity, but making sure they understand the consequences of war and violence.
Dang, could go down this rabbit hole for ages, such a deep topic. but stopping here.
Thanks Alex, for the amazing content you make.
The children argument is interesting, because violence against them does occur in some movies (think of Gladiator or Schindlers list or The boy in the striped pyjamas for example) and it is also in the storyline of some video games (for example The Last of Us with Sara dying and Ellie almost getting molested). Those violent acts themselves however are often not showed on screen because like with GTA it will get worser ratings.
But is that the only thing holding them back? If putting children in the game didnt result in an Adult-Only rating would Rockstar be willing to put them in? And then if they did how would violent acts against innocent children be any different than acts against innocent elderly people f.e. or any innocent people for that matter?
Because children are unique.
@@LeanAndMean44 Please elaborate, everybody is unique. Yeah children in general are more vulnerable, but some adults can be as or even more vulnerable
@@chrisoezReading through the comments, I agree with some who said it all comes down to what the masses thinks. Like any society, Whats considered a norm is what passes. Most (key word most) humans hate the thought of harming children for understandable evolutionary reasons. Of course it still exists in real life and people who dont mind that stuff are a minority. But they dont make an impact since, you know, theyre a minority. If it was flipped things would be different. This also applies to sexual violence and others etc.
@@ray17506the question then is - why does the majority think certain violence is more unacceptable than othet kinds of violence. This doesn't answer what the debate is all about
@@dkane2040 Feels basically. People evolved to be more empathetic and protective of children over adults
Super interesting video! I think one of the reasons why sexual content has always been more stigmatized than violent content is the risk of sexual arousal in the viewer. When a viewer or player engages with an act of violence in media they may get a dopamine rush, but there's nothing socially taboo about this feeling.
Attacking a civilian in GTA produces a similar chemical rush to winning a sports game, finding the courage to ask out a prospective partner, getting a promotion, or enjoying a really delicious meal. In the case of video games, the feeling often comes from a sense of asserted power and dominance which is often rewarded in the real world as well as in most fictional worlds. Your real world physiological response doesn't feel socially alienating, and so you delve deeper into the fiction without consideration. It's just fiction.
By contrast, sexual arousal is viewed as socially deviant, perverse, and disgusting. There's social risk to people knowing that you are experiencing arousal in a given moment. It's why people might feel uncomfortable watching a sex scene in a movie with friends or family around. It can be anxiety inducing. As a result, choosing an action in a video game that could result in real world sexual stimulation dismantles the illusion of fiction as you're forced to contend with IRL discomfort. And with acts of sexual violence, suddenly the viewer is confronted both with sexual stimulation as well as the moral disgust which their brain can no longer disassociate with.
Very good point.
“Theophrastus says that offences of lust are graver than those of anger: because it is clearly some sort of pain and involuntary spasm which drives the angry man to abandon reason, whereas the lust-led offender has given in to pleasure and seems somehow more abandoned in his wrongdoing”. - Marcus Aurelius, Meditations.
While I agree to alot of your points, we know that some people do get sexual arousal over death. Look at many serial killers for confirmation. The argument would be the scale isn't there. I do not believe the reason why we feel disgust towards sexual violence portrayed in video games is because we worry we or others would get aroused. Most pornography has forms of violence in it, though usually consensual. I think it's not exactly a video game issue to begin with. We see sexual violence as worse than other forms of violence. It's been drummed into us that it's the case. So logic hasn't got much to do with it. It's now a biological instinct response. Example: I used to be a Jehovah's witness. I am no longer one. I do not believe anymore that the bible is real in the sense of there being a god. So the rules set in the bible that I used to have to obey don't apply to me anymore... Like having blood transfusions. However I still can't have a blood transfusion. I don't want it. Because it was drummed into me for years that that is wrong. It became a subconscious biological response rather than with any thinking. So I feel the same is likely true to our view of violence in games.
Red Dead Redemption 2 has no Native American NPC characters that can be killed, and when entering the Wapiti Indian Reservation your firearms are locked from use.
The Ability to scrutinize such a seemingly mundane or simply topic, a true philosopher!
I like that Alex when that one step further and shot the video, looking like someone who's been playing GTA 5non-stop for the last few days. It's this level of authenticity, that really makes Alex's channel pop out in a sea of other content!
Would be nice if you went one step further and checked comments for grammar before posting. (I hate you put when not went)
@@ilovethesmelloffire It's odd for you to make a comment about my usage of grammar, only to lack using it properly for yourself?
1.) Your response should have begun with the word: It
a) 'it would be nice', the subject of your comment, is the wording of my comment, as such, to use grammar properly, you should be referencing it properly.
b) More properly this comment should have been worded as:
'It would have been nice...' - You're responding to a comment, that I have made, in past tense, ergo you should refer to this comment in the past tense properly.
2.) After the word nice, you should have placed a comma:
"would be nice, if you went one step further..." - You are making two different points here, not one:
a) "Would be nice"
b) "if you went one step further"
To use grammar properly, you should separate these two points with a comma.
3.) The bracketed comment should have been placed before the full stop, as the point therein, is an expansion of the same point. To place the bracketed content, outside of the sentence, is grammatically speaking, to create an additional point:
a) 'Would be nice if you went one step further and checked comments for grammar before posting (I hate you put when not went).'
b) You could have left the comment after the full stop, but to be correct grammatically, you should not have used brackets for the point.
4.) The bracketed content should also have a comma separating: "you" and "put", as again, these are two separate points:
a) The first is your emotional view of my comment: "I hate you"
b) The second is what I should have done, versus what I did do: "put when not went"
5.) After "put", grammatically speaking: You should have used a colon, as you are explaining the issue you have:
'you put: when not went'
6.) When quoting someone, grammatically speaking, you should use speech marks, to denote their quotation:
'you put: "when" not went'
7.) After denoting what I put, you should have placed a comma, as again, you are making two points, not one:
'you put: "when", not went'
My understanding of grammar is actually very competent, demonstrably better than your own. The actual issues with my comment, (that you are unaware of/ unable to grasp) are threefold:
a) I have dyslexia
b) As "when" is a word, the RUclips spell checker didn't flag it up, as an issue, for me to see, before posting.
c) It is very common, with dyslexia, to read what you think you have said, versus reading what you have actually written. Were my comment, something I had planned to present as a formal piece of writing, I would have used a 'read aloud' software, to identify this issues.
"People in glass houses, should not throw stones."
Fail
@@johnduffy3878 Jesus you spent a long time typing that out. You need a hobby
@@jacobusvisser6428 No, I wrote that, on the train ride home. Personally, I'm not a fan of someone responding to me, with a point unrelated to mine, voicing criticism: That they themselves equally suffer from!
😅
You are a brave man to talk on these topics during these times
fucking nailed it. was expecting a much different video but you were very nuance and actually engaged with the arguments and counter arguments equally. earned a sub off of how you engage with this topic alone, gonna checkout more of your videos for sure !!
He goated alright
Hi Alex. Very good idea for a video, creative and original. We need more dissection of everyday culture with philosophy!
This is so interesting how we would categorise sexual violence as far more shocking and unacceptable in media, and yet it is arguably more prevalent and 'socially acceptable' in real life.
i strongly disagree
just because it happens more often dosen´t mean it´s more socially acceptable
@@homemovelha4173 I apologise if my wording came off wrong, but what I meant is in regards to media there follows the same taboos of SA, but in 'real' conversations it is much easier to overlook something as part of a systemic issue. SA could be seen as more 'normalised' as it is so prevalent that no one wishes to draw specific attention to it.
I would like to see a video about the ethics of Super Mario next.
"Mario, the Idea vs Mario, the Man"
Everyone knows Mario is cool as fuck. But who knows what he's thinking? Who knows why he crushes turtles? And why do we think about him as fondly as we think of the mythical (nonexistent?) Dr.Pepper? Perchance.
I believe it was Kant who said "Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play." Mario exhibits experience by crushing turts all day, but he exhibits theory by saying "Let's-a-go!" Keep it up, baby!
When Mario leaves his place of safety to stomp a turty, he knows that he may Die. And yet, for a man who can purchase lives with money, a life becomes a mere store of value. A tax that can be paid for, much as a rich man feels any law with a fine is a price. We think of Mario as a hero, but he is simply a one percenter of a more privileged variety. The lifekind. Perchance.
And the ethics of Tetris as well.
As a lover of the series Grand Theft Auto and Alex O'Connor this video is going to be very interesting
And? What is your personal verdict? On both.
Guilty. I will not elaborate. @@QuintarFarenor
Have you played bioshock? It’s full of thought provoking ideas, but I would love to hear your take on one of the central game mechanics: choosing to “harvest” or “rescue” little girls, the first rewarding you with more points to be spent on upgrades. There is no practical benefit to rescuing the “little sisters”, yet many people choose to.
That is more of a choice about instant vs delayed gratification. If you rescue them, you get a reward later on that's more powerful.
And they only look innocent...
I'm not concerned about the ethical dilemma so much as I care about the value of the art I'm consuming and what intention went behind making it. For example, Cyberpunk 2077 features a lot of sex workers but when you play the game, you get to see the world through their eyes and witness the aftermath of sexual violence done against them.
In GTA, sex workers are convenient AI objects that you can pay money to suck you off and then once they've finished their sexual task they essentially stop existing. You know they're going to get out of your car, walk away and despawn so you may as well shoot them to get your money back because your interaction with them begins and ends with the sexual transaction.
My point is that both games feature sex works and "freedom" around how you can interact with them but where Cyberpunk allows you to literally see the world through the eyes of the sex workers and puts a lot of work into humanizing them and telling their story, GTA only allows you to see the world through the eyes of a middle aged white man who doesn't even think about what happens to a sex worker once she's done serving him. After she walks out of sight, she might as well despawn and the game reflects that.
I think we shouldn't focus on ethics in terms of censorship but rather we should genuinely engage with the media and ask why they made it this way and why we consume it this way. GTA 5 is supposed to be a "satirical reimagining" of Los Angeles but what exactly is it satirizing in this scenario? The game's target demographic is men and boys who don't really have a reason to care about sex workers and if they've ever interacted with them in the real world it's probably been a similar experience to Michael or Franklin's. Games like GTA call themselves satire when in reality, they're not challenging anyone's perception of the world. They're merely checking off a box so the game can feature in more news headlines.
GTA is the videogame embodiment of a provocateur and framing all of its discussions around ethical questions of censorship rather than artistic critiques does a disservice to how soulless these games are and it actually give GTA more validity as a piece of satire then it deserves. Calling for it to be banned for a pointless torture scene is almost proof that that torture should exist and does have artistic value because at least now we're talking about it.
I see that as such a shame because games like Cyberpunk have the same messed up elements but they actually use those elements to say something. To tell a story. To encourage the audience to think about how this relates to the real world. By comparison, GTA is mindless indulgence.
If you've ever played a game that allows you be a good or evil character such as in David Cage games or Baldurs Gate, players almost always choose to be good characters and when they try to do a second playthrough where they're evil, they often have a tough time picking the evil options. Why is it so hard to be evil in those games when it's so easy to be an apathetic psychopath in games like GTA? What makes GTA NPCs easy to kill and Baldurs Gate 3 NPCs incredibly difficult to kill? Is it just because they're different genres? Maybe now that character models are becoming more realistic, we should question whether or not the open world city simulator genre is outdated? I don't know, these questions are more interesting to me than questions surrounding censorship and ethics.
About the first playthrough is good and the second is evil, that reminded me about undertale and how it uses that concept
I sometimes poder the same thing about MK and it's super realistic violence now. I grew up playing the original 2 on Genesis and it was violent but not nearly as visually detailed and while it was interesting to see at first is it too much now? I'm not a proponent of censorship really but I do wonder sometimes 🤷
You make a good point. The same ethical/censorship issues can and have been applied to movies, comics, music, visual art, and really any form of media that depicts violent acts and isn't strictly educational. I find that even in RPGs that allow evil playthroughs, committing acts of violence for their own sake only detracts from the believability and depth of your character. Hence the general disdain for "murder hobos" in such games.
@@treadstoned9915I cant play modern MK, it makes me feel sick
The way I see it, your take can be turned and put back to square one, about questioning not a specific thing in a game, but the reason for its portrayal (storytelling/reflecting vs mindless indulgence)
Think of a game where you play a child that is a victim of sex trafficking. The game does all it can to show their suffering. You can't play the game without being broken by all the pain. But, chances are you would not pick the game up in the first place...and most likely join a petition for banning it.
See how it relates to your post? It came down to your gut reaction which was literally said in the end of the video. Even if this hypothetical game showed the world through the eyes of this child, and humanized them all through, the game would still be repulsive to think about.
Along your lines of "we're just most used to it", I think a lot of people base their ideas around what is permissible to portray in games on what has historically been permissible in films and even books. Violence can add to the tension, pacing and excitement of a story, and has done for as long as stories have been around. The protagonist of an action packed story often engages in violence, and the protagonist does not always have to be a good person. But there are some things that people find too uncomfortable to show or describe explicitly, though these things can change with the age and culture.
So in a new medium where you are not necessarily observing another character perform the action, but are directly controlling the protagonist of the story, the acceptable actions haven't really changed much from what is acceptable in other mediums but the storytelling method simply feels more personal.
I'm not sure... In books, the aim is often to showcase interactions that could plausibly happen in real life, given the situation. As such, if the portrayed situation is brutal, the book shouldn't - and usually doesn't - shy away from mentioning suffering of children, or sex crimes. The book might be portrayed as an adult book because of that, but not to the degree of preventing its success completely.
@jakistam1000 I don't know, I feel like those things can happen in a story but rarely perpetrated by the protagonist. I'll go with movies as the characters are more widely known.
John Wick kills a bunch of people, but if he just shot a defenceless child we would feel very differently about him. It's why when Anakin Skywalker kills a bunch of kids we know he's turned full villain.
Austin Powers is a horny, sexual character constantly making advances as women, but if he ever forced himself on a lady the whole vibe would change.
We don't want our protagonists do be doing despicable acts, or we don't want them to succeed. And when we're playing a game we're playing AS the protagonist.
In Red dead redemption 2 you actually do interact with with feminists during the story. The main character acts as a bodyguard during a marching protest for women’s suffrage.
Do these same arguments apply to movies which people watch for entertainment and could be argued to be also indulgence in the acts, characters, stories and images of the movie. Movies do much the same as video games by glorifying violence, sexual assault and violence, creating characters who are dangerously and violently mentally ill and who become favorites of the audience?
In principle yes, but some of the questions posed like repulsion towards a hypothetical sexual assault button, or being able to attack children are specific to interactive media like games.
A story with dark elements as key parts of the plot is very different from simply having the option to assault people for no reason other than enjoyment of causing harm. It requires no skill and does nothing to explain the plot or end message. It exists only to fulfill a fantasy.
@@barleyteaa What about horror? When you watch a Saw movie, is the violence written around the plot or is the plot written around violence? It seems like these are essentially the same.
This is the colab i never knew i needed
I'd actually enjoy more of these kind of videos. Great work as always Alex.
Seeing Matpat in an Alex O'conner video made me flinch lol.
He’s got to cite his sources, heh. Plagiarism is now the biggest no-no of all! :)
And not even just mentioned, MatPat was cited, as a source. What a time
Non-mandatory violence in games is an interesting example. It's no different than life itself, where you simply have the options, but it's up to you. If life was analogous to these games, should life be banned, and the supposed god who created it be prosecuted for it? Or do we focus on the individuals abusing the mechanics?
Exactly. Just bc you can do it, doesn't mean you have to.
Games make it so that there are no real world consequences for the actions though so it’s a bit different
Interesting! i normally try to act as morally as i can in games, trying to avoid civilians and so forth. The mechanics of a game should be persecution enough where consequences for actions and present
@@Nitroade24Tell me you haven't played GTA without telling me you haven't played GTA.
@@baonemogomotsi7138. Not having played GTA...what are the REAL WORLD consequences?
we got alex's deconstruction of the ethics of GTA before GTA 6
GTA's setting, whilst established in real World, still has a lot of fictionalised elements. I mean you can't die infinite times and resurrect in a hospital every time in real life. Nor can you get access to a variety of ammo just like that.
Sexual violence I've always held is in a much more egregious category of its own. There are instances in real life where you can justify taking someone's life- necessary/just war, or taking out a tyrannical dictator for example. There is never an instance where sexual violence can ever be morally justified.
Its closer to the category of 'torture', but even worse than that. Some would argue that in a very very rare circumstance, even torture is justified. Infact, with the example of GTA itself, there was a mission that had one of the protagonists torture another character. It came under controversy and yes the devs did try to not glorify it or make it indulging but rather serving to the plot. Rightly on your critique, that was hanging on the line. But even there, in comparison, there is literally no circumstance that would justify sexual violence. Therefore, the difference of outlook in this context.
Wow! In my opinion, very interesting point of view
I have a couple of problems with this argument. Firstly, it's totally possible to imagine a scenario where sexual violence is morally justified. As an example, say you've been kidnapped by some crazy person and they tell you to sexually assault someone or they'll blow up a bus full of children. I'd say you'd be justified then. Granted that's not a realistic situation, the point is that it's not impossible to justify.
Second is that even if you CAN find justification for murder sometimes, much of the violence in GTA has no or very little moral justification. If the characters want money they'll shoot up a bank without a second thought. There are innumerable more examples of this you can't seriously argue that every death in GTA 5 is justified.
So the problem becomes that if you don't have a problem with GTA's random unjustified violence, why is sexual violence different?
Bad take
@@Baset_
1. On the first point, I completely disagree with the analogy. "they tell you to sexually assault someone or they'll blow up a bus full of children" Sexual assault would still not be justified in this situation.
2. The point is that the act of taking a life does not belong in the same moral category as committing sexual violence(one is always far more egregious than the other), thus the difference in larger attitudes towards each of those.
3. As for the specific nature of violence in GTA. There are two elements here: One is the scripted curated content, situation and scenes, where sure, criticisms equivalent to movies that glorify gangsters, outlaws, mafia and criminality in general get can be levied. The other element is the sandbox where the player can choose to be as civil or as nasty as they would like to be. Its interesting to explore how much of that part of the game and how people choose to engage with it can be put as a question of morality on the game itself. Especially when people will have vastly different interactions with it. Even with similar kinds of actions in-game, people can have totally distinct ways of looking at it: An act of violence in-game for one could be a way to simply blow off steam, for another with a taste for dark humor it could be a laugh out loud moment. You can choose to be a nice moral cowboy in Red Dead Redemption, or a total nasty psychopath. How much of this, if at all, brings to question the morality of the larger piece of media itself.
@Alduizard I'm curious about your reasoning for saying sexual violence is worse than murder. I'm inclined to argue that it's the other way round, that murder is worse. Obviously, both are horrible to do, but with sexual assault atleast you're alive afterward.
I think the reason murder is less taboo is because it's a lot easier to come up with justification for it. I want to be clear that I'm specifically talking about random killing and random sexual violence when I say one is better than the other.
Also, as a quick side thing, if you don't like my last analogy here's another. You've been kidnapped by another even crazier guy and he says you have to sexually assault someone or he'll sexually assault a bus full of children. You're justified then yes?
I want to see Alex interview Bo Burnham. It might wind up just being two ships passing in the night but I feel like it has the potential to be amazing.
really great video, one of your best.
i think this topic is actually very simple and not complicated and tbh, i think you summed it up yourself right at the end. there are 2 different parts of this, what should the limitations be and why do we categorise them the way we do?
the first part is the one i think is easiest. the answer is yes, we should have no limits on what horrible things we can portray in these games and that includes violence towards children. now personally, i would not want to buy a game that has such things and i would be repulsed by it. but, it doesn't matter, because as long as there's a market for something, then freedom of choice is more important than personal revulsion. i'm also repulsed by tomato ketchup, but i don't think it should be illegal. i'll just continue my life living as i do not playing that game and if someone else has that game, then i'll just simply not want to watch them play it. i'll talk to that person about other things not the game and i think life will just carry on and it's very easy. the only objection one could have to that person playing that game is about whether or not he would do it in real life, but if the evidence and data says, no, then the only objection is purely an emotional one and imo, that's not a good enough reason to say that someone can't play it, it amounts to thought crime as far as i'm concerned.
that brings us to the topic of why is torturing a guy okay, but murdering a prostitute isn't? tbh, this is the more interesting topic and this goes beyond GTA, this is about the way we view morals period and probably is deserving it's own videos on it. it certainly is interesting the way some things pass and others don't and as you said, sexual violence seems to be particularly unique and is treated as worse than murder, why why is it and should it be? that's too much to discuss in this comment and is probably something that needs many different videos and conversations about and it's all about human psychology and the way we think and feel about things, some of which you summed up at the end.
anyway hope this comment was informative/helpful and i apologise if it was too long
"as long as there's a market for something, then freedom of choice is more important than personal revulsion." So you'd be okay with hyper-realistic animated child p0rn?
To be fair, the torture was highly controversial throughout GTA 5’s existence. So, a lot of people don’t think that’s okay.
"personally, i would not want to buy a game that has such things" I'm not so sure this would be everyone's reaction. Part of the immersion and indeed the "fun" of playing a game that includes the option of immorality is that we have the choice *not* to indulge in such behaviour. There are plenty of instances in game quests where you are invited to take the moral high ground and even rewarded for doing so. Many games e.g. Mass Effect even have some sort of morality mechanic that rewards the player based on whether they play as evil or good. The irony is that the "evil" path is usually the least attractive because it resorts to stereoypes and cariacatures of evil - who wants to play as an asshole? Portrayals of real evil - sociopathic or psychopathic evil - are AFAIK non-existent.
there should absolutely be limitations to what we can portray in fiction or games. it's not a matter of "if you don't like it then don't buy it" but rather "are we normalising immoral things in society?". letting games like gta slide without consequences will give rise to more targeted violence games like "lgbt torture simulator" or "alone children r@pe simulator". people will be repulsed by these titles, but this is no different from gta in terms of crimes. at the very least games like this should not exist on popular sites which children also use.
the way i see it. there are 2 reasons to be opposed. one is if it has a consequence in which someone will do something in real life and the other is a purely emotional one because the person just finds those things horrible and hates the idea and doesn't want to see that in a game. based on your "normalising immoral things in society" am i to understand that you think that people will copy this?@@MorbiusBlueBalls
It’s not my problem people can’t separate fiction from reality.
Yeah, might as well ban action and crime movies, or any movie that has violence in it.
🤓🤓🤓🤓
You would expect somebody knowing the most violent work of fiction, aka the Bible, to understand the difference between fiction and reality.
@@ChristianIcenot even close to the most violent but keep going
So what's your position on the sexual assault button? Allow it?
These videos remind me of quote from John Green on Crashcourse "If these are easy questions to answer then I have not been doing my job correctly" aka these videos should not give you answer but they should make you think, and yours truly do, well done.
(TW) About the children point:
One thing I've always found very interesting is that child abuse perpetrators are basically universally bullied (or worse) by other criminals in prison. Child abusers are criminals among criminals. And it's not at all uncommon to hear the most compassionate people of our everyday lives saying that they would castrate or burn pedophiles alive without batting an eye if only they got their hands on them.
Another thing I always pick up on is that female violence on men (although often considered bad) is generally viewed as more acceptable than male violence against women, regardless of the damage done or the disparity between each person's physical strength. Personal experience: I'm a fairly lightweight guy and I was once forcefully dragged across the street by a drunk girl I had never met and everyone there (even my friends) just let it happen because they figured I knew her and that she was just joking around, even though I was constantly telling her to please not be violent because I didn't want to hurt her. People often raise an eyebrow and tell me I'm exaggerating when I refer to this story as "being molested", but when I tell them to swap the genders suddenly it turns into a horror story.
To me, it's obvious that society assigns somewhat clear tiers of disturb to different morally reproachable acts. Some acts are definitely considered worse than others. Our reaction also probably depends on the context these acts are shown in and how used we are to witnessing them.
Note for some people (you know who you are): No, I don't condone child abuse or violence of any kind 🙄
I think the idea behind the reasoning for the difference in severity assigned to the two scenarios you pointed out is because people often view these things through the lens of power even when it isn't appropriate. A man is seen as powerful, a woman is seen as weaker, and a child is seen as powerless. So when a man attacks a woman, it is a grave injustice because of the power imbalance, and similarly when a man attacks a child it is seen as even worse. But when a woman attacks a man like in your own experience, people get confused because they cannot conceive that a person playing the weaker role could successfully violate the rights of the stronger person.
The kneejerk reaction is to not take it seriously, because there is this underlying thought that perhaps the victim deserved it because they let a weaker person infringe upon them. If a child attacks a man it is seen as even more of a joke for that same reason, and another category you missed, violence against the elderly is impermissible because they are seen as powerless like children. But obviously the lens of power is an incongruent way of viewing justice, because not everyone exploits imbalances of power. The more powerful person might even restrain their strength when getting in a fight, for example a domestic situation between a man and a woman, if a woman slaps a man, most men know not to do anything back. So if a strong person is expected to hold back their strength, it should be that any form of violence is treated equally, that is the obligation that society has to uphold if people are expected to disarm themselves. But that hasn't happened yet.
the reason people view a woman being violent towards a man as less serious can be summed up by : “i was constantly telling her to not be violent because i didn’t want to hurt her.”
the vast majority of women (i believe i read somewhere the approximation was 97% but i’m not too sure) who find themselves in a situation where a man is harming them will never be able to say this. this level of complete helplessness makes male violence against women worse than the other way around. the vast majority of men would be able to defend themselves easily if a women attacked them (assuming there are no weapons involved). women have no such assurance.
and then ofc there’s the fact that historically men have taken advantage of sexual dimorphism, demonstrated in intimate partner violence rates, femicide, etc.
@@---ul9eq You're right, there's this perception that men can _really_ hurt women while women can't _really_ hurt men. And, for the most part, it's true.
But why is it mostly true? I don't think it boils down to pure sexism. I think it's because men are generally stronger than women. It's easier to picture a woman as being weaker and, thus, the victim. However, if the argument is about power disparity, it really has nothing to do with gender.
IIRC, when Terry Crews was sexually molested by another man, many people asked him why he didn't resist using force, and he replied that he didn't want to hurt the guy for fear of being considered the aggressor. (And, I mean, look at the man, he could kill someone with a slap)
But does this mean we should condemn the violence of the strong against the weak while turning a blind eye to the violence of the weak against the strong? (Not talking about self defense here)
At the end of the day, even though it's more _likely_ for a weaker person to be seriously hurt by a stronger person, violence is still violence. Should "how likely it is you'll be seriously harmed" be a factor in determining how we view the issue?
Thought experiment:
1. A strong man willfully pushes a weak woman with the intent to hurt her, the woman then loses balance, hits her head, and dies.
2. A weak woman willfully pushes a strong man with the intent to hurt him, the man then loses balance, hits his head, and dies.
Which one is worse? (Sure, 1 Is way more likely to happen than 2, but which one is _worse_ ?)
@@---ul9eq That may be the case but it doesn't make it right in any way whatsoever.
@@mrmoonlight1001 Not understanding the severity of violence is exactly why you have situations where absolute fuckheads and non-humans think it's ok for a wife to slap her husband but not the other way around in retalation. It is unacceptable.
Much of my thought on ‘what makes certain forms of simulated violence acceptable’ revolves around the idea of ‘basic human instincts’. While I’m a big fan of boxing, wrestling, and fighting sports more generally, I‘ve wondered about the ethics of people who actively enjoy participating in those sports and get a thrill out of striking and hurting another human being. I’ve come to the understanding that humans have what I call “the instinct to violence” or “the instinct to aggression”-somehow we evolved this affinity towards acts of violence and aggression that some people manifest more strongly than others. If such an instinct is natural, I ask, why shouldn’t they find a healthy, consensual, and safe outlet to deal with those aggressive instincts, where specific rules maintain the safety of the combatants?
I personally wouldn’t argue for a corresponding “instinct to sexual violence”. There’s an “instinct to sex”, yeah, but the manifestation of sexual violence is a combination of the two-and, and this is the other important prong of my argument, relies on an unethical attitude toward people, whether all people or certain groups.
I think we understand and empathise with people who play violent video games because we understand the instinct to violence, aggression, and power. At the same time, I think we’re revolted at the presence of sexual violence, ethnic violence, or violence against children in video games because we see evidence of unethical attitudes, like misogyny or racism.
The indiscriminate violence of GTA games is, for many people, fun-and for many people, it’s fun because it’s so indiscriminate. Bad actors, however, can use the freedom of GTA to reinforce their bad attitudes towards marginalised groups. What can a game developer do about this? I could imagine implementing a system that tracks whether people are generally indiscriminate their violence or appear to heavily target a certain demographic, and then warn them about those attitudes, educate them, and bar them from certain in-game actions for a period of time. That would probably be pretty controversial, but I don’t know, I don’t think it’s the worst idea in the world.
There’s two really crucial points of research I think Alex forgot to explore as he seemed to be equivocating feeling entertained by media as the media being fun or enjoyable, rather than stimulating. The first is around how pain can be used to relieve boredom, showing people do activities sometimes not because they are fun but that curiosity and other factors are also a relief of boredom (which, to Alex’s credit, was explored in the video by saying we do things in GTA that we don’t do in real life). The second is that there are quite a few other reasons we consume media, as proposed in the Uses and Gratification Theory. For example, playing Battlefront isn’t much about it being fun, but about it being stimulating from the escapism into a different situation and the focus on the objective and the competitive nature of it. It’s more about actually being a different person away from the mundane of reality. It’s not even necessarily about acting and being yourself but sometimes/often about being someone else entirely and driving the story from their perspective.
Great video, very thoughtful.
One thing worth considering that wasn’t mentioned- GTA is a highly cynical parody of the real world. The random NPCs that populate Los Santos are all caricatures of worst Californians (I live in LA myself), and if you listen to the conversations they have with each other or on their cellphones, they often materialistic, self-absorbed, stupid, or whatever. I think this makes them less sympathetic and does at least in part permit the violence against them on an emotional level (not saying that it should, but it does).
RDR games are more grounded than GTAs, and this is reflected in the NPCs. When I play either series I don’t really ever indulge in senseless violence unless I’m trying to explore the mechanics, the implementation of the AI, etc., but whenever I accidentally kill a RDR NPC I feel more regret and guilt than I do for a GTA one, and I think this is the reason.
Hi Alex, I am ex military and have fought in 4 frontline conflicts. in 2001 I was in East Timor, I entered a house and saw a family of 4 had been executed with a 7.62mm round at point blank with the rounds shot in the back of the head, while the victims kneeled. To give a more graphic idea there is on face, just a hollow cavity where the face once was, and I was not bothered by this. 2 out of the 8 members of my section have severe PTSD as a result of seeing this but not me...... why? Well I am not without trauma but here is where it gets really f@cked up. As a gamer I was ripping heads of in Mortal Kombat on the Super Nintendo, I recall the first time I ever saw this, I was in shock, after a few thousand heads removed and bodies burned to a crisp, it became normal. Fast forward 3 years and I am in East Timor I see this scene with the family of 4, and it was just like the game. The real kicker is prior to entering this house with the bodies I was pretty hungry obviously 4 murders meant missing my lunch and in my ammo pouch was a ration pack meal waiting to be eaten. Once I walked in the house the smell of human brains was overpowering, I wanted to vomit, but the sight of the bodies did not worry me. You see I was not desensitised to the smell we do not have smellovison. This smell meant I was no longer hungry, but then we went outside, went into a protection formation and waited for the intelligence core to do their investigation. As I am sitting outside this house this beautiful fresh ocean breeze blew over me, and guess what? I was hungry again. I sat there eating my dehydrated spaghetti whilst my number 2 gunner was still vomiting. You see I was also desensitised to seeing people vomit, so I did not care. My concern was, while he was vomiting, we had a weak spot, and our section was vulnerable. I lay behind the machine gun and ate my food. I put my lack of empathy down to video games, after all I did not know this family.
Extra part: in 2016 I was working as a concierge in a motel, we had a woman die of a stroke, the pressure in her head was so bad that the cranial fluid poured from her eye socket, I had my first flashback ever. It was the smell that did this, not the sight of the fluid.
i´m pretty sure that´s just you, i´ve heard many stories of vets who liked violent video games before joining the military but couldn´t play them after due to having seen violence and murder IRL.
also, thank you for your service.
@@homemovelha4173 please don't thank me for my service, everything I did probably got you 2 cents a gallon cheaper fuel. I was led to believe I was stopping terrorism, and making the world a better place, while I watched, truck after truck empty oil derricks.
I never march with WW2 vets, I'm not worthy of such an honour. As for violence, I still enjoy watching it, but I know I would never hurt anyone innocent. It's strange, but watching violence stops me being violent.
Wow!, I didn't expect such an entertaining video, the low view count on this is so unjustified. Excellent video Alex.
I wasn't expecting this video from Alex, but it is certainly worthwhile! This was a thoroughly interesting analysis with many important questions brought up. It does sway me even further towards emotivism because I simply can't come up with valid justifications for why any one act of violence that does not have a real-world impact would or would not be permissible.
What does emotivism mean
@googlefaps5883 Emotivism is a view within metaethics that claims that moral judgments are simply an expression of individuals' personal feelings. That means that making a moral statement such as "stealing is wrong" essentially boils down to "I don't like stealing." It also means that the distinction we draw between right and wrong is arbitrary, based on our own emotions and preferences. I'm no expert, but that's how I understand it to be.
@@JeremyCanned well holy fuck. This literally coincides with my current beliefs. When I tell people morals don’t exist and murder isn’t wrong. It’s based on perspective They’re like “well let me kill u”. And I’m like. U missed the whole point. Are u aware of any good counter arguments to the idea of emotivism
@googlefaps5883 Haha, glad to put a term to it, then. I'm not sure if I've heard any (what I'd consider) "good" arguments against it, but then again I haven't done a complete deep dive into it. I need to do more research for sure. The main arguments I've heard are basically just pragmatic ones, like you named- 'then anyone can do anything they want' 'you mean you don't think murder is wrong', etc. As you said, they're missing the point. I had a conversation with my deeply Evangelical father about it and he said "so why doesn't everyone just eat each other then? What's to stop me from murdering whoever I meet?" And I was kind of flabbergasted...
@@JeremyCanned I can understand why people would be confused. When asked those questions I often get a knot in my throat. I know objectively the truth. But I don’t want to say murder isn’t wrong. That’s how strong emotions are. But objectively. Murder is as natural as everything else. People decide what’s murder and what’s justified killing. But in the end it’s like a belief u choose to follow. Not a objective truth like physics
Love these kinds of videos. More "The Ethics of..." please!
@CosmicSkeptic I stumbled across your videos just recently and find myself thoroughly interested in what you have to say. I like your willingness to play devil's advocate as well your well-mannered approach to debates and willingness to entertain other points of view aside from your own...a level-headedness sorely lacking by many others, especially when it comes to online content creation.
What always left me conflicted on GTA is how these games' stories tend to portray protagonists as just criminals with just a skewed moral compass, yet we are allowed to do anything in gameplay without real consequences. GTA 4 is probably the clearest example of this. Niko despises senseless violence and if you choose to kill an enemy on one of the first missions, Niko says something like "I promised myself I wouldn't kill anyone here!". But during gameplay, you can just run over pedestrians and shoot up hospitals and the only penalty is wanted level.
I think RDR1 and 2 does this stuff better. In RDR1, the story doesn't really portray John Marston in any favorable way and the gameplay doesn't conflict with the story in any way. There is also honor system, which awards you based on your behavior. In RDR2, the story can change based on your honor and a lot of stuff you do in gameplay is commented on by your gang's members. There is also a lot of cool events you can do to improve your honor, like helping the poor or saving people.
I think there is still a lot of room for improvement, but I found myself trying to minimize collateral damage a lot more in RDR2 missions, because killing civilians in this game seems just wrong. I also think RDR2 gameplay is just boring on killing sprees just on innocents, I tend to instigate fights with gangsters or cops and it is a lot more fun IMO.
It is hard indeed to figure out why we're okay with murder and not with SA in video games. It seems to me that people are more repulsed by SA than other kinds of violence in general. For example, we wouldn't bat an eye at a true crime video about a serial killer, but people would certainly make a fuss over someone explaining in detail some horrible act of sexual violence.
I don't know why this is. Technically it's way worse to be killed, severely maimed or tortured but our emotional responses to stories about SA tend to be worse than for the former.
When it comes to the children question, that one is obvious. Children are generally helpless and innocent and also the future of our species so we are really against them being hurt. This instinct is so strong many people think it's unacceptable even when simulated in media.
Now imagine how controversial it would be for a game to allow you to sexually assault children. Unironically someone might just shoot up the studio that made it.
Finally, there's also the fact that violence in games like GTA 5 is sort of cartoonish and over the top. There are ways video games depicted violence before that have been reviled a lot more, like Hatred, where you are playing as an edgy dude going on a mass shooting. There was also Postal 1, where the premise is similar. But then, in contrast, we have Postal 2 where you can indeed go postal in even more brutal ways than the first game but it's way more cartoonish, so people were more accepting of it.
In conclusion I want to mention that I think our views on simulated violence is inconsistent. We tolerate murder to a high degree but when it comes to tying a woman to train tracks or SAing a dog we get our panties in a bunch. I'd say it should all be permitted since there is no real life impact, in my opinion, and doing anything to an NPC is amoral. It may concerning that one may wish to do such horrible actions to something that looks like a human or an animal, but we've already normalized killing people in video games. So fuck it, let's normalize ALL of it.
I believe that sex and everything around the topic of sex is heavily stigmatized and kept behind doors, people don't generally talk about it. There is a reason victims of sexual violence often don't report it. If it was completely unstigmatized, while it would be still disgusting to depict such acts, I imagine it having a different effect on people as it would today.
"For example, we wouldn't bat an eye at a true crime video about a serial killer" There are actually people who are uncomfortable with this, and there would far more if any such video showed footage of the actual killing. I know this second part is likely true, because the games journalist James Stephanie Sterling demonstrated it with clips of an actual on-air suicide and then reported on the number of audience members that complained.
@@biggerdoofus Which is still more socially acceptable than even normal sex to be shown to children.
I agree, but with the language you are using, I feel like you are just undermining the both the short term and long lasting effects of sexual assault and rape. Sure, it might not be the same as physical violence (even though in a lot of causes of sexual assault and rape, the victim is also physically abused) but there is still massive mental health effects that ensue. Maybe I’m wrong, or misinterpreting what you are saying, please do correct me if that’s the case.
@@zyplixx1415 I may have phrased my comment poorly. I recognize the long term effects of SA. It's not like just taking a beating or being stabbed and surviving, it's a much more traumatic even, depending on the circumstances.
I am simply saying that on an individual level, we seem to be more repulsed by SA than other highly traumatic events, like loosing a limb or dying(traumatic in the sense that they damage your body and mind(not in the case of death lol))
In Fable 2 if you try and attack a child, it simply doesn't work. Bullets bounce off of them, fire just burns around them, enemies ignore them, a sword just doesn't even leave a mark. Probably for the best.
Questions if it's okay to play a video game with violence but murders innocen animals with his food choices. Definitely this generation's leading moral philosopher.
Preach
facts
Murder tho innocent tho
Nice buzzwords still no arguments try again crybaby
@@Stichting_NoFa-pfacts don’t care about vegan cult feelings
YOURE STILL ON THE INTERNET?
Wait until Alex discovers the Warhammer 40K universe :)
Exterminatus is the easiest issue but the penitent engines?... Nightmare fuel.
its so weird watching alex mentioning mattpatt, its like two corners of my youtube i never thought id see meet
The only thing I could think of as to why murder is more accepted vs sexual violence is because of the history/stigma that has existed with both.
I think there's a stronger connection to acceptance in life or death since it's a dark reality that HAS to be accepted whether you like it or not in every life. With that stigma attached, it makes the acceptance of murder a lot more likely to happen since the harsh reality of death was going to be accepted at one point. In comparison to sex, it isn't normally a dark reality until violence is added to the equation, which means it never had to be accepted as a dark reality until someone made it that way (in that given situation). So the acceptance of murder and sexual violence isn't going to be treated the same.
No Russian absolutely accomplished the goal of being memorable. All these years later, it’s still one of the most haunting experiences I’ve had playing video games and one of the few parts of MW2 that I still remember.
The MW2 campaign as a whole was ingenious - the best story line campaign ever in my opinion. Just brilliant plot twists from left to right with the death of Ghost and roach and of course finding Cpt Price in the prison, a purely entertaining game that unfortunately in todays landscape of COD games is unlikely to be replicated
What I find really interesting is that you can do the entire mission without ever killing a non-combatant. You do have to kill the police that arrive to stop you, but you never have to shoot any civilian at all in order to complete the mission. But if you watch people play it, basically everyone immediately opens fire as soon as Makarov and his men do. You jump straight into massacring civilians with almost no prompting.
I think the big difference between "making fun of WW1 in an advert" and "making WW1 fun in a game" is that people can choose to play the game, or not, but adverts are thrust upon everyone; there is a different level of acceptable when people can opt in.
darkmatter2525 had a video about games and mortality, I recommend it. One thing he pointed out, is that we seem to not have a problem with actions in a game if we know we absolutely would never take that action irl (like mass shooting). But we seem to have a problem with things that we are not entirely unlikely to do (like minor theft).
i love darkmatter
Really interesting to hear this perspective! Thoughts:
1) What is the difference between spending an evening playing Battlefield, and spending an evening watching the movie 1917? There is obviously the fact that you are in control of the character in Battlefield. But going to the cinema with friends, to watch 1917 is as much using the drama of war for entertainment, isn't it? Also, the actual game, Battlefield doesn't (I imagine) make light of the situation by satirizing the actual killing, etc. So I'm confused about the difference between movies and video games in this case. And if there isn't one, I guess watching war movies is wrong, but it doesn't feel like that.
2) If all GTA characters were just square pixels in a 2d world, but they still "represented" civilian npc's, etc. would the points made in this video still apply to that, or is there something about graphics/how realistic the game is, that introduces these problems? Also, would it make a difference if the square pixel people had titles like "prostitute" and were different colours?
3) I wonder if the point about the school shooting game is a fair parallel to draw. The outrage there may stem from the controversial setting, more than the actual killing. It seems to matter wether the game setting is "school shooting" or "random gangster in fictitious city" and so on. You could also make a racist game based solely on whites killing black people in 19th century America, and that would obviously be immoral. But not on the basis of being able to kill people in the game; it would be because it was a racist game. This also goes back to why some things may be more morally questionable than others in GTA. And for this reason it seems like some things can be wrong in video games, while other, equally violent things may not necessarily be wrong.
Or what?
1) Movies and video games are different because in one the audience is an observer, but in the other the audience is a participant. In the context of real-world violence, I'm sure you can agree that there is a fundamental difference between witnessing a murder and actually committing one. Even if someone purposely seeks out real-world violence to watch for entertainment, that's still fundamentally different than actually committing the violence themselves. I don't see why the observer-participant distinction would go away just because the violence is fake.
2) I think this touches on the difference between "represented" violence and "depicted" violence. For example, in the game DEFCON the whole point of the game is to massacre hundreds of millions of innocent people in a full-scale nuclear exchange. Nuclear war is the maximum level of violence that humanity is capable of. But DEFCON is different than something like GTA because it represents violence instead of depicting it. You don't see millions of people die, you see a triangle hit a diamond, and a bright flash with text saying "New York City Hit, 10M Dead". I think that representation of violence is different than the depiction of violence you see in GTA, where very realistic images of people are depicted being shot, stabbed, run over, etc.
3) I think this touches on historical context as an important factor in this discussion. If school shootings weren't a real thing that happened, people would probably be less concerned about a game depicting a school shooting. Another example of this is Stellaris vs Hearts of Iron 4. Stellaris lets you commit genocide against entire species of aliens, killing trillions of people, and no one really cares. It's a fictional sci-fi setting that is almost entirely divorced from historical context. Meanwhile, HoI4 being set in the historical context of WW2 completely evades the issue of the Holocaust. It doesn't depict it at all. I think most people would agree that having a "press here to commit the Holocaust" button in HoI4 would be abhorrent. But that's mainly because of the historical context of the Holocaust rather than the level of violence such a button would represent.
@@hydra70 Thanks for this long and thoughtful answer!
1) I agree with there being a meaningful distinction, and that it wouldn't necessarily disappear in the case of video games vs movies. This point was mainly meant as a response to when Alex talks about the ethical considerations of "indulging" in violence, like in GTA (I should have specified this). On that level, if you agree that watching violent movies is to "indulge" in violence in some sense, then it would be as morally questionable to play violent video games and watch violent movies.
2) You're totally right in the difference between representing/depicting violence. The point I tried to make here (poorly) was that anything in a video-game is necessarily a representation of something that, in reality, is nothing like the representation. So a dot character and a high-res human-looking character are in fact both equally representations. It's just that one is more advanced than the other. So I was wondering how graphics play into this, and how refined/lifelike a representation has to be before it gets upsetting.
3) If I understand you correctly, I totally agree, and this is the same point I was trying to make.
Thanks again for taking time to answer!
Best,
Ragnar Finsson
Thanks Alex, I really enjoyed the video and didn't expect you to cover this topic. I would like to point out two things. You implied that games are played because they are fun and that they trivialize and gamify violence. This is actually not true for a significant portion of games, because it's a common misconception that games are just about fun. There is a competing strategy called aesthetic friction. Games designed with this strategy create meaning by forcing the player into frustrating or uncomfortable situations. Some examples would be Dark Souls, Spec Ops: The Line, or Outer Wilds. And I strongly suspect that this is what the designer of the infamous CoD mission meant by "something memorable". I really like this design and can recommend the paper "Designing games that prioritize meaning over fun" to anyone interested in the subject.
Maybe the line we draw is realism/fidelity. You mentioned players being able to kill children in Fallout 1. I saw a clip of that and the presentation alone didn't affect me emotionally. It looked and sounded very cartoony and reminded me of the video "id's Hugo Martin on Doom Eternal's Lighthearted Gore" where Hugo said that they intentionally made the violence more "cartoony" so that it would not feel "off" or "inappropriate". In GTA V, there is not much realism in how characters react to being shot or run over. The ragdoll physics also make it quite cartoony. Now imagine what we can do when GTA VI comes out. When you run people over, you could have the sound of bones cracking, you could simulate twisted limbs, ripped skin, and blood trails on the ground. But it would be so realistic that it would cross the line and make you feel disgusted.
yes thank you i've always wondered about this!!! i remember there was a huge controversy when yandere simulator was supposed to include the possibility to kill a kitten and there was such an outrage about it, which was CRAZY to me because it's literally a game where you kill and sexually harrass high school kids lmao. also the discrimination between non-sexual vs. sexual violence and between violence against children vs. adults has always struck me as a bit illogical. when i talk about this with people there are usually some arguments that can be made but none of them really justify just how extreme this distinction is made in society. i really hope more people will discuss this in the future
Children can’t defend themselves which is why they are a protected class.
Listening to this gives me the strong sense that Alex doesn’t play games. Games are not always meant to be “fun” in the same way a film doesn’t need to be fun. People don’t watch grave of the fireflies for example because it’s fun, but because it shows them uncomfortable truths about human nature, games, especially violent ones can do this too. For me I felt sick after finishing the “no Russian” mission, it made me a stronger opponent of violence generally, and it was certainly memorable
I think by fun he means enjoyable. Same thing goes for movies. Grave of the fireflies wasn't fun but it was enjoyable.
You can argue that it isn't actually enjoyable but I don't think that's the case.
It also ignores how some societies treat a flash of boob as adult only content. Which to me begs the question. Is our abhorrence to sexual violence compared to any other form of violence just an extension from sex being seen as taboo in general?
I feel gta is incredibly boring, and the freedom to do anything kinda takes away from the immersion
@@xorsamaOk, but most people prefer freedom over handholding
Sure but the issue wasn’t really ever with the no Russian mission. GTA in the freedom aspect is most definitely a game which has its primary goal set as fun
While it has a weird instinctual feeling about it, I don’t think that granting a sexual assault action within GTA is any different from people who role play sexual assault situations with their partner. Many people will find it disturbing, but there is no actual harm being done.
In this case, the video game character cannot consent because it is simply an npc, but it also doesn’t need consent because it is an npc. It might “feel wrong” but that doesn’t necessarily make it wrong. These two actions are morally identical in my view