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Not Just a Game

Researcher Theresa Bell says playing violent video games may say something about you. But it depends on the game you play—and the way you play it.

Do you wish you could ride dragons? Fight zombies? Go on epic quests? Movies, books, video games, and other types of entertaining media give you the chance to do just that from the comfort of your own home. However, out of all those genres, one type of media rules the world when it comes to vicarious living: video games. They entertain us in a way that other media can’t. In a video game, you control the outcome. But do the choices made during video games really say anything about the player? After all, it’s just a game. HUM Grant researcher Theresa Bell (Philosophy ’25) says the actions we take when there are no consequences, like in video games, say more about a person than what meets the eye.

Exposing What’s Within

Bell’s interest in this topic sparked as she watched her friends jokingly play a dating simulator game. She says that it was funny at first, but the more she watched them play, the more she began to question the purpose of the game and intent of the players. She says that she thought, “This is kind of disturbing that people are outsourcing their pleasure and enjoyment to this totally fictional existence.” Although she acknowledged that the way the fictional person was treated in the game didn’t actually impact anyone in the real world, it still felt wrong. She wondered, “Why would you choose to be mean? What does it mean to be able to turn empathy off?”

Man playing video game
Photo by Alexander Andrews on Unsplash

Bell’s idea pulls from Christopher Bartel’s (a professor of philosophy at Appalachian State University) research, which focuses on the moral implications of identifying with a fictional character—especially a violent one. He also explores, through others’ empirical research, if video games can make players more innately violent. In his study, Bartel ultimately concludes that players cannot be made more violent through video games.

Like Bartel, Bell does not think that playing violent video games can make someone more violent—rather, they just expose tendencies that were already there. She says, “I think what you’re going to get out of the video game is likely going to be something that already exists within you.” She continues, “I think that deriving pleasure or enjoyment from the violence of a video game is indicative that that’s something you might also enjoy in real life.”

How You Choose to Play

Bell believes there’s a line between imagination and fantasizing. She says that using imagination to put yourself in another person’s shoes “is a really good tool for moral education.” When we imagine something, it may not always be gratifying or pleasurable, it just serves the purpose of picturing ourselves in an alternate situation. Bell says that imagining something does not necessarily say anything about who we are as people—the issue comes when we begin to fantasize. When we fantasize about something, we may derive pleasure from it, and Bell argues that these desires do not exist in a vacuum: they indicate something very real. If someone is playing a violent video game and fantasizing about being in the character’s situation, then that person’s ability to enjoy inflicting meaningless pain may say a lot about them and their inherent attitude toward violence.

These desires don't exist in a vacuum: they indicate something very real.
Man playing a video game at a computer
Photo by Sean Do on Unsplash

As part of Bell’s study, she sent out a poll to players on many different video game servers and got hundreds of responses. She asked participants whether they thought the way they played first person shooter games was indicative of their character, and the results were varied. She says that many thought there was no correlation between innate morality and how one plays video games, while others felt “that even just the video games you choose to play—not even how you choose to play them—indicates the kind of person you are morally.”

Context Matters

Bell thinks the games that players choose aren’t necessarily evidence of poor morals, especially with games where violence is imperative to the plot. She says, “In those stories, you’re usually somewhat adjacent to a hero; you’re not kind of willy-nilly murdering people.” However, she does acknowledge that the choices people make while playing games where the character’s role has more gray area may say something about the person playing. She says, “I think in games where the narrative [pushes the player] to commit violent acts for fun [are not good]. The narrative and intention matter a lot.”

Bell says that this project has helped her more intentionally seek out media that will uplift her rather than cause her to question her own moral intention. She plans to publish her research paper in the near future and hopes the topic will continue to be discussed among new forms of media. She says, “I think that it’s something that we should be thinking about more [when it comes to] video games and more broadly in fiction. What are we interacting with? What do we derive enjoyment from? What does that mean for us as people?”

To learn more about HUM Grants and the amazing research students do, click here.