Ethics in MUDs

Do online multiplayer games raise ethical issues?

We think of games as places free of ethics because they are isolated from the “real” world. Instead of ethics we have concepts like “fair play”. You don’t try to behave ethically in a game, but you are called upon to follow the rules and not cheat.

Lev Grossman has a good article on the ethical questions raised by games like Ultima that slip into becoming worlds for virtual living. See The Village Voice: Machine Age: Bloody Ethics by Lev Grossman.

-4 thoughts on “Ethics in MUDs”

  1. Wasn’t able to get this to work, Geoff–(“Resource not found” after I enter text, select parameters, and click “process”).

  2. You need to have a SVG plugin for your browser. Then make sure there is text in the first field and an integer in the fields for circles and triangles. Finally press process. You get something like the image on the home page to the site.

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