finský academic fag
“COULD YOU PLEASE KILL ME?” – The virtues of violence in the virtual world of DayZ
I found that as a public space emptied of references to ultimate reality or God, the virtual world of DayZ and playing in it, could be interpreted as a search for morality for the individual player as well as for the community of players. It seemed to serve a purpose of a moral canvas for the players to experience violence in it. Violence, such as in the form of KOS, seemed to be an integral part of the game to the players, and even more so the freedom to choose violence or refrain from it. The nature of violence in DayZ seemed to be violence for its own sake, autotelic violence, with no end but to experience the violence itself. The game world of DayZ served a very flexible moral setting to different styles of play and expressions of violence as well as different moral approaches to the game.
This lead to a conclusion, that the measure of the morality of actions and events was their purpose in serving the ‘story’ or the ‘narrative’ created by the players in the multi-appreciator fiction the MMO provided. Virtues of a ‘good player’ do not necessarily aim for the refinement of the player directly, but for the fun and enjoyment of story the player’s of the game are creating and experiencing, making the appraisal of ethics of actions an aesthetical one.
http://epublications.uef.fi/pub/urn_nbn_fi_uef-20150874/urn_nbn_fi_uef-20150874.pdf