Imagining evil: from violent imaginings to violent extremist video games

Abstract In philosophical work on the ethics of video games, ludic amoralists argue that acts players perform in games are beyond moral scrutiny. This is chiefly supported by the following arguments: the fictional harm argument, the consequentialist rebuttal, and the moral exploration argument. The fictional harm argument supports ludic amoralism in principle: if all game actions are fictional, none can be immoral. The consequentialist rebuttal supports a defeasible default: if violent games do not reliably produce harmful outcomes, amoralism is the default position. The moral exploration argument provides an aesthetic reason for amoralism: play is beyond moral criticism insofar as the player engages with the game in an aesthetic, exploratory way. Drawing on Waltonian theories of fiction, I argue that players often imagine themselves as performing the fictional acts represented in games, ranging from heroic exploits to morally abhorrent deeds. When players do this, they can come to identify with, to varying degrees, their fictional exploits. Strong identification occurs when players interpret their fictional actions as satisfying real desires, such as the desire to harm others. Using examples from players of violent extremist games, as well as mainstream violent games, I show how such identification can arise in practice. Most importantly, I show that in cases of strong identification, all three justifications for ludic amoralism fail.