Video Game Violence from the Perspective of Utilitarianism Ethics

So this is a great example of how to do a geeky paper for a class. In a philosophy course I was given the task to take a modern moral issues and apply one of the philosophical theories that we had been studying to it. For me if I am going to be spending a lot of time researching something, it has to be a topic that will keep my attention. Since I am a geek, I thought that video games would be a good topic. This is what I came up with.

With all of the mass shootings in the US people are quick to blame the media for the violence. Trump also joined in when he blamed video games for the mass shootings in Texas and Ohio (Timm). Even though evidence to support this has not been found many people still blame video games for gun violence in the US (Timm). The question now is, if violent video games are stopped what influence will it have on our society? One way to approach this is to try and apply one of the many ethical theories to this case and see what the outcome is. When the utilitarianist perspective is applied to the debate about stopping violent video games, it would find that this would be unjust from this ethical stand point.

Utilitarianism basically has everyone focusing on bringing happiness to the most people possible (Fiala and MacKinnon, 586). It is a consequentialist theory in that it focuses on the outcomes of the actions taken instead of the action itself and actions are neither good nor bad (Fiala and MacKinnon, 93). Theorists even developed a special form of calculus that was divided into 5 main parts (net amount of pleasure or happiness, intensity, duration, fruitfulness, and likelihood) to try and figure out a way to calculate happiness (Fiala and MacKinnon, 96-97). Peter Singer is one of the most well know supporters of utilitarianism and he thought that equal consideration should be given to everyone’s personal interests (Fiala and MacKinnon, 93). John Stuart Mill was more of a political supporter and added to the base theory that social policy could be used to benefit everyone as well (Fiala and MacKinnon, 94). Jeremy Bentham also added an interesting take on this theory as well by including animals as beings that can feel pleasure and pain (Fiala and MacKinnon, 93). There are two main different types of utilitarianism, rule and act. Rule utilitarianism focuses on rules/guidelines or the reason for action (Fiala and MacKinnon, 101). Act utilitarianism on the other hand focuses on the consequences of a person’s actions (Fiala and MacKinnon 101). This helped the theory not only cover the reason why people do what they do, but also on the outcomes of their actions.

Utilitarianism would be against removing violence from video games and not for stopping the production of first person shooter games. This would be because of it taking away happiness from the many in the hopes of stopping the few that then go on to carry out harmful acts against others. Since this theory is about trying to bring about happiness to the most people, it would not make sense to take away happiness from the many in the hopes of stopping a few violent people. The principle of utility for this theory says “actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness” (Fiala and MacKinnon, 95). Since there is also not a strong correlation between video game violence and actual violence there would be no proof that reducing video game violence would improve people’s lives/happiness, but would at least cause the happiness to go down for people who enjoy those types of games (Kocurek, Carly).

This theory also focuses on that all sentient beings/people should have their ends matter. This applies to video game players who are not allows the majority of people and many times they represent people whose voices are not heard in the larger political circles that control the power in the U.S. Most people view video game players to mostly be young people that are not as active in politics. Even though this view is not correct since video game players come from all walks of life, it does still show that the population is broken into chunks (Yanev, Victor). Utilitarianism would then also allow these less vocal populations to get a say in what happens because their voice matters just as much as anyone else.

Another way the Utilitarianism theory could be applied to this argument would be when you look at restricting video games as a sort of deterrence for people who may commit acts of violence. This plays into the out of sight out of mind concept, where people are less likely to commit violence if they do not witness it. This restricting of video games would not only impact the people who may be violent, but would also punish all the good people that play violent games, but are not violent themselves. This perspective is taken in Ethics: Theory and Contemporary Issues, when it talks about deterrence forms of punishments. In chapter 15 the authors talk about how from the Utilitarian perspective that the punishment/pain must be outweighed by the good that it would cause (Fiala and MacKinnon, 365-366). When most people think of first person shooter games, they think of games like Halo and Doom. Here’s the catch though, Adam Lanza, who was the Sandy Hook shooter was ‘obsessed’ with the dancing game DDR (Pleasance, Adam). For the most part, people do not consider dancing as a danger inducing activity. Taking away violent video games would not have been a deterrence for this shooter since his preferred game was a dancing game.

Another interesting utilitarian approach to this subject is that they “do not think actions or policies are good or bad in themselves”, but that they focus on the outcome or consequence (Fiala and MacKinnon, 93). Based on this, it would only be acceptable to stop violent video games if it can be proved that they can cause violence. As of this time it is still unclear if there is any connection between video games and violence. A case example would be Japan. So of the most violent media, not just video games, comes out of Japan. Yet overall they have less mass shootings and an overall lower crime rate than America. Using this example the utilitarian approach could not support restricting violent video games since the policy seems to address something that does not have an effect on the overall outcomes and would then also cause people that enjoy these types of games to be unhappy.

One of the problems with using Utilitarianism theory with this issue would be trying to establish what makes people happy and how many people. In this case, how many people play violent/first person shooter games would have to be established and then compare that to the overall population. Then it would need to be established how many people from both players and non-players would be happy by allowing the games to continue vs. stopping them. The Utilitarians did develop a type of calculus to try and figure this out, but how can happiness really be rated and then applied to rules and laws. This calculus would then get even more complicated because the Utilitarian theory could be applied to different sides of this problem and then the math would have to be compared.

Building on the pervious problem to this, would be which side would the Utilitarianism perspective really be on. They could decide that the safety of everyone (both video game players and non-players) would then have a larger impact on the overall happiness of the population. If the Utilitarianism perspective found a correlation between video games and mass violence, they would then side on stopping these games since no one wants to be killed and death would impact not only the happiness of the person who died, but also their families and others connected to them. Even one person being killed will impact many more lives because of just how many people everyone interacts with, whereas the happiness of video game players would just impact the player. A new calculation could be made from this perspective and then compared to the equation from the previous problem.

Another issue with looking at this from the Utilitarian perspective is that happiness does not equal morality. This means that even if there was a direct link between video games and violence/mass shootings, that as long as more people were happy playing video games than those who would want to stop them, it would then be wrong to stop violence in video games even if it does cause violence in the real world. From this perspective immoral acts could be accepted as long as they bring the most happiness to the most people. So if video game violence was officially deemed immoral it could still be acceptable to the Utilitarian perspective because of the amount of happiness it brings people.

Utilitarians could also apply the trolley problem to this situation. Instead this could be extended to take into the account of possible harm. In the original problem you have to choose to kill one person or 5 (Fiala and MacKinnon, 99-101). When looked at this as the one person being the video game player and the 5 being the ones that could die in a mass shooting, the Utilitarians would pick to make the one person unhappy to possibly save the lives of the 5. This would be because they would think that the five people being able to live would have a greater overall impact on happiness than the one who no longer has access to violent video games.

To look at this problem a little closer we can compare the violence here in the US with Japan. Japan is known for making some of the most violent video games and movies. One interesting statistic to back this up is if you look at the murder rate with firearms per million for each country. Japan has .369 whereas the US has 32.57, or 88 times higher than Japan (“Japan vs United States Crime Stats Compared”). With this hard data showing that there is no direct connection between video game violence and gun violence we can remove the possibility of the link when trying to run the situation through the ethical theory. This means that according to Utilitarianism theory it would be unethical to stop violent video games due to the amount of happiness that they bring people.  Some people may still reject this, but many studies have been trying to find the link between video games and real world violence, but the connection still has yet to be found even with many studies trying to prove it.

After analyzing this topic from the utilitarianist perspective, it would find that stopping violent video games would be unjust. The key points here being that it would take away happiness from a lot of people to try and stop a few, that there is no direct link between playing violent games and actually carrying out violent acts, and that other factors could be in play. There are additional things that need to be looked at/done in the US to address this issue. First, people need to stop blaming video games and making players look like they are criminals. Second, we as a country need to address mental health and bullying which seem to have a stronger correlation with violence then video games. Lastly, we all need to do a personal check to see how mass media impacts and make adjustments so that we can each live as balanced a life as possible. Maybe this balance may help to bring that happiness that the utilitarianist focus on into each of our lives.

Works Cited

Fiala, Andrew and MacKinnon, Barbara, Ethics: Theory and Contemporary Issues (Stamford:

Cengage Learning, 2015), 586

Kocurek, Carly. “Why we scapegoat video games for mass violence and why it’s a mistake.” The

Washington Post, 11/1/19. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/08/09/why-

we-scapegoat-video-games-mass-violence-why-its-mistake/

Pleasance, Adam. “How Sandy Hook school shooter Adam Lanza whiled away his life: Video

emerges of him playing arcade game Dance Dance Revolution that he practiced for up to

30 hours every weekend.” Daily Mail, 12/1/19. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-

3462980/Video-shows-mass-killer-Adam-Lanza-playing-arcade-game-Dance-Dance-

Revolution-practiced-30-hours-weekend.html

Timm, Jane C. “Fact Check: Trump Suggests Video Games to Blame for Mass Shootings.”

NBCNews.com. NBCUniversial News Group, August 5, 2019.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/fact-check-trump-suggests-video-

games-blame-mass-shootings-n1039411

Yanev, Victor. “Video Game Demographics – Who Plays Games in 2019.” Tech Jury, 11/5/19.

https://techjury.net/best-video-streaming-services/

 “Japan vs United States Crime Stats Compared.” NationMaster.com. NationMaster. Accessed

November 27, 2019. https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/Japan/United-

States/Crime.