The moral cost of video games

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With a huge projected screen replacing my perspective of the world around me, I jumped right into the immersive experience of playing one of the most realistic war games on the market: “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2”. Inside a fiery world of smoke, smog, and tall abandoned houses, adrenaline rushed through my brain and tensed my body with excitement as I followed a team of nine through a maze of doorways and alleys. I quickly lost track of them and I hid at the end of a small dead alley while I waited for something to move or make a sound. The sounds of action were in the distant; but this bunker, which seemed like an ideal hiding place, caught my attention. When I was going to run towards the bunker, movement to my right made me jump; and with a terribly aimed shot, I fired the majority of a round from my machine gun at my target until I eventually shot and killed it. “Headshot” huge words flashed for a second in the middle of the screen making me hungry for my next kill. A child having this same immersive experience would get used to destructing all these monsters, and will ruthlessly learn to put everyone else aside and focus on themselves winning (MC 10). Children would become selfish as they venture into a virtual world where accumulating grenades and throwing them into mobs of people actually builds up a higher score. “There is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’–only success or failure” (MC 13). Because of the obscene immorality of video games, there should be a fresh genre of video games with unquestionable moral aspects. In Matthew Devereux’s essay “The moral cost of video games”, he describes this horrible game called “Manhunt 2” as a game where the player has to sneak up on innocent victims and use a garden spade to kill and deca... ... middle of paper ... ...eract positively with other characters to accomplish a common goal can teach people values such as teamwork and positive interaction with others. Having a concept in a game where players selflessly work together to achieve a common goal is a much better construction of a game than the point hoarding of kills. Throughout the gaming community, a genre should be created that casts out immorality and replaces it with an integrity that fulfills the player’s immersive experience. With the terrible immorality of video games as a blame for the Littleton Shootings, children are being restricted from their media and entertainment. Instead of having mostly immoral games, game developers should create new and immersive games with ethical values. A new generation of games with undeniable ethics, including but not glamorizing violence, should overshadow the gaming industry.

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