At the beginning of class on Tuesday, we talked a lot about whether or not games that reenacted various events from history were morally OK and the consensus seemed to be that they were not. On the other hand, we said that books that retold such events were morally OK.

I would like to contend that in some ways games are in fact more morally correct then books. As we mentioned in class, books typically draw on internal emotions and in the case of September 11^th may give the reader similar or even worse feelings then they experience on that day. This gives the reader no hope; the outcome is the outcome no matter what. The reader can only continue to read until the set ending is reached.

As for the videogame side, they generally represent external actions. If made correctly, a game could allow a played to truly act as though they were on a flight that is destined to crash into the World Trade Center, unless they do something. While a game like this may allow the player to reach a historically incorrect ending, wouldn’t seeing other people on the plane and being able to move about give you a historically accurate perspective of what really occurred on those flights? If a game can in fact do this, then morally isn’t it ok?

It is not striving to give you a false sense of what happened or lie to the game player. If they choose to doom the plane or act irrationally that is simply a part of the game, but the true purposeful winning route would hopefully give the game player a sense of reality. Perhaps, saving all those people in a game would give someone the true feeling of how terrible the loss of one flight of people is. Then, when the player compares this to the actual number of casualties during 9/11, maybe they will actually be able to absorb the entire scope of the attack.