Virtually No Morals

The Episode of Mr.Bungle is a questionable one to start up a debate on whether Game Designers are entirely responsible for moral actions within game environments. If one was being blatantly obvious they could say that the designers of lambdaMOO were entirely responsible for not coding limitations to the object of the VooDoo Doll, or even user content filters; which is an unfortunate foresight that is now ingrained with game designers -perhaps due to the influence of Mr.Bungle- and even the ESRB has to use this foresight by labeling warnings on any multiplayer game stating potential mature behaviors by other players. In this way, game designers have taken much responsibility for player decisions; but there is no content filter on life, nothing but upbringing and moral judgment that keeps a stranger in public from projecting profanity, say in front of small children.

There are certainly games that undeniably influence a range of moral decisions which are rated accordingly for raw content. Take Maple Story¹ for example, it is rated Everyone 10+. The game content is mild and childish; there is playful killing involved that is no more graphic than stomping goombas; there are comprehensive curse filters that will star out profanities; there is even a spam filter for the sake of netiquette that makes the user moderate the rate of text entry. Despite the clear intentions of community content, however, there are still immature players who will make questionable decisions in the game regarding player experiences. They will go to extremes to find ways of cursing, they will degrade and harass other players, abuse world speech items to prompt abuse of other players, and persist to find ways of perpetrating social ineptitude.

Maple Story provides a mild example of morally exploiting design boundaries. With other games, there are other boundaries to be tested. In some Teen rated games, users may take advantage of suggestive outfits, or they use actions like crouching to simulate dry humping. These are common examples, and the moral stretching of the games limits depends of the mentality of the player abusing said limits.

Game Designers are certainly responsible for the raw moral content of their games, and for the coded point and click decisions necessary from npc or plot content. That is where the line stops; when it comes down to the moral decisions and actions that players take against other players, the acting players are responsible. There will always be idiots, social retards, and profanely bored people in the world, and there is no thorough method of censoring their questionable actions from public places or virtual realms short of active eugenics -which of course doubles back on moral decision making. In the end, those who make the decisions are responsible for what they do; and if you happen to be targeted, your actions in retaliation -whether it be to ignore, or perhaps log off for an amount of time passing their attention span- are an important factor in whether or not you become a "victim."

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1: http://maplestory.nexon.net/Intro/