Week 9: There Are Wrongs and Then There Are Wrongs.

For week 9 reading for Ethics in the Virtual World was to read chapter 7: There are wrongs and then there are wrongs and answer the following question 

If you accept that it is OK to kill random people in a video game (if you do not think it is OK feel free to argue this point), would it be OK to seek out to intentionally kill only individuals identified as homosexual in the game? Why?

This is a tough question as my moral take on this is no it would not be ok to kill random people, but them in a game world can i justify that then maybe i can let me explain. 

Throughout the history of games one of the main aspects of these virtual worlds is defeating your enemy in order to complete levels or the game on the whole from Pac-Man devouring his enemies once he has eaten a power dot to now where we have skyrim, fallout 4, grand theft auto the list goes on where roaming these lands and worlds and killing npc or enemies are a regular occurrence especially if you gain new weapons/ loot that will help you further along in the game. so in that aspect of killing random there seems to be no issue with players and developers killing random's in games if its part of a quest or there is something to gain

so lets see about the second half of the would it be ok to seek out to intentionally kill only individuals identified as homosexual in the game? why? 

This is where the line is drawn for me personally my moral's would not allow myself to go hunting and intentionally kill someone for what is in effect who they are lets see the examples in two fictitious games talked about in the book S.H (Shit Happens) where you kill random people from all walks of live without knowing who they are or what you do then yes your brain or morals would not see a problem as it you can't associate with those characters and so the only association you can build is the fact they are just pixels or are just seen as targets and so no emotional ties are there to stop you from killing them. 

but the other fictitious game mentioned is called R.A.C.I.S.T (Rage Against Community: Intercept, Segregate and Terminate). In the book it uses Jews and that the object is to seek out discriminate so this game is all about killing identities either being gay or following a religion, this makes the game about killing generic people rather than nobody's. so if you do play this game your moral code is very accepting about discrimination or in fact you gain some pleasure from it. 

So lets put in a game that does exist what if in skyrim lets say you were ask by your Jarl to go out and hunt down every single khajiit because the Jarl did not like the smell of them, i personally would not be able to go along with that and would either quit the game and not go back or would end up fighting against the jarl for his view.

So i believe there is a difference to killing randoms to killing characters that have an identity as soon as that character has a identity or an close association that has been built it will put more meaning towards that character and killing them will mean more. 

But if i have such a problem with killing people with identities in games then how can i justify just killing a random in a game it would be like if i walked up to random and killed them on the street i don't know them so it should be no problem for me as i don't have a emotional connection to that person but i know myself and  my moral's that is wrong and would not do that but i have no problem in the game space world 

which also leads to virtual rape and pedophilla in games which are big social no's but why is murder more easily accepted i understand killing can happen either in self defence or in war but is still seen as an unacceptable act just like rape and pedophilla which has no place in a game worlds but there can be argument that if television and films can portray these social issue's why do games avoid it is it the fact as a player controlling these actions would be like doing it yourself and in that case why is their no problems murdering in games? 
It might be a time that what if these are put in games for educational purposes or to help recognize these issue's could take place.

For me and morally i hope these issue's are never brought into a game world as in my eye's games are for entertainment but ethically i can see you have to ask these questions and realise that these questions are there