Evil in Virtual Worlds
Carl David Mildenberger
The Philosophy of Computer Games, 7th International Conference
University of Bergen – 2-4 October 2013
Agenda
1. Introduction
2. Suicide ganking - an example of a virtual evil action?
3. Suicide ganking, Kantianism, and consequentialism
4. Evil in virtual worlds?
5. Conclusion
Agenda – 2/9
1. Introduction
 Purpose: showing that there is something similar to morally evil
actions in virtual worlds
- e.g. in the virtual worlds of online computer games
- my game of choice: EVE Online, CCP Games, 2003
 Motivation: a new dimension to a classical problem
- Evil is a classical problem in moral philosophy
- Evil often discussed in exemplary terms, notably example from real
world battlefields: World War II, 9/11, ...
- And: in the light of the information revolution new battlefields emerge
 Do we abolish evil just because we interact in virtual worlds?
- ≠ evil... or only extremely bad? I think that evil exists, but never mind.
- ≠ is there evil in games? I think that yes, but is EVE a game anyway?
Introduction – 3/9
2. A „Suicide Gank“ (SG) scenario
Suicide ganks – 4/9
2. Suicide ganks: a summary
 In purely material terms: on average victim loses €12, perpetrators lose
€0.5.
 No short-term/material or long-term/strategic benefit for perpetrators
 Hardly and act of self-defense
 No redistribution from the rich to the poor (in „Robin Hood“ style)
 Neither envy nor anger involved, rather boredom
- „Gankers enjoy to be mean, they like getting angry mails from the people
whose most precious ship they destroyed. The conflict itself is entertaining
to them. But suicide ganks are not a planned thing and there is nothing
personal in it. The victims have done nothing to make the gankers angry“
(Eriksen, 2011)
 Excessively more destructive than other forms of violence
 Rare phenomenon
 Predominantly young males involved
Suicide ganks – 5/9
3. SGs, Kantianism,
and consequentialism
 What does really count in evaluating evil actions? E.g. Kant vs
Arendt
 As for the intentions behind SGs
- neither frailty, nor impureness, nor the all too human motives of selfinterest, greed, covetousness, anger, envy, or cowardice underlie SGs
- rather: a rejection of the moral law in an act of rebellion using the
depraved motive of boredom as guiding principle
 As for the consequences of SGs
- both parties lose
- excessively more destructive even than instrumental violence: a 12:1
loss-redistribution ratio compared to 4:1 to piracy
- not the absolute amount counts but the fact that people are willling to
invest considerable amounts of effort and time, and to pay a certain
amount of money, so that other, innocent players lose 50 times their
investment
SGs, Kantianism, Conseqeuntialism – 6/9
4. The problem of evil in virtual worlds
Evil in virtual worlds – 7/9
4. Evil in virtual worlds
 Subjective experience matters
- the avatar is not a tool – it involves identity-building
- “The player is the character. You’re not role-playing as a being, you
are that being; you’re not assuming an identity, you are that identity;
you’re not projecting a self, you are that self” (Bartle, 2004, pp. 155)
- losing €12 or €0.5 is not the same as killing and being killed
 Virtual moral code matters
- some forms of violence are backed up by the in-game rules (cf. Chapman
and Mays: lethal fastball is not murder)
- making other people lose €12 might not be considered evil
- but: killing a ship is evil, as forum discussions show
 The nature of virtual space
- a space without physical boundaries
- analogy to states like „in war“, i.e. a temporal instead of a spatial relation
Evil in virtual worlds – 8/9
5. Conclusion
Conclusion – 9/9