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The student with a thousand faces: from the ethics in video games to becoming a citizen

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Abstract

Video games, as technological and cultural artifacts of considerable influence in the contemporary society, play an important role in the construction of identities, just as other artifacts (e.g., books, newspapers, television) played for a long time. In this paper, we discuss this role by considering video games under two concepts, othering and technopoly, and focus on how these concepts demand that we deepen our understanding of the ethics of video games. We address here how the construction of identities within video games involves othering process, that is, processes through which, when signifying and identifying ‘Ourselves’, we create and marginalize ‘Others’. Moreover, we discuss how video games can play an important role in the legitimation of the technopoly, understood as a totalitarian regime related to science, technology and their place in our societies. Under these two concepts, understanding the ethics of video games goes beyond the controversy about their violence. The main focus of discussion should lie in how the ethics of video games is related to their part in the formation of the players’ citizenship. Examining several examples of electronic games, we consider how video games provide a rich experience in which the player has the opportunity to develop a practical wisdom (phronesis), which can lead her to be a virtuous being. However, they can be also harmful to the moral experiences of the subjects when they show unethical contents related to othering processes that are not so clearly and openly condemned as violence, as in the cases of sexism, racism or xenophobia. Rather than leading us to conclude that video games needed to be banned or censored, this argument makes us highlight their role in the (science) education of critical, socially responsible, ethical, and politically active citizens, precisely because they encompass othering processes and science, technology, and society relationships.

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Acknowledgments

We are thankful to Catherine Milne and the reviewers of the original manuscript for commentaries that led to improvements of the paper and provided new ideas and insights for future works. We are thankful to the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) and the Research Support Foundation of the State of Bahia (FAPESB) for support during the development of the research reported in this paper.

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  1. History, Philosophy, and Biology Teaching Laboratory, Institute of Biology, Federal University of Bahia, Salvador, Bahia, Brazil

    Yupanqui J. Muñoz & Charbel N. El-Hani

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Correspondence to Charbel N. El-Hani.

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Muñoz, Y.J., El-Hani, C.N. The student with a thousand faces: from the ethics in video games to becoming a citizen. Cult Stud of Sci Educ 7, 909–943 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11422-012-9444-9

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