Like traditional video games or other interactive media, there are certain lines that just shouldn’t be crossed for a number of very fair reasons.
Although often skirting the boundaries of what’s deemed acceptable, plenty of video games have made headlines over the years for allowing players to participate in extreme violence, sex or other unsavoury behaviours.
Context plays a big role in what’s waved through and what gets pulled up by security. Most notably, Grand Theft Auto 5 copped a whole lotta flack when its creators included a segment in which players had to torture a captive, but it’s the context of why this person is being tortured that makes the difference. The character the player embodies doesn’t have a choice, he’s been coerced into the situation and as such, it can be justified. Barely.
The difference with Virtual Reality (VR) is that you as a person are almost always at the centre of the experience and that experience is completely encompassing.
According to the recent journal, Real Virtuality: A Code of Ethical Conduct. Recommendations for Good Scientific Practice and the Consumers of VR-Technology, this gives the technology a unique ability influence us in some pretty heavy ways.
“It is not excluded that extended interactions with VR environments may lead to more fundamental changes, not only on a psychological, but also on a biological level,” it says.
What this means is that VR experiences feel realer and as a result, are much more influential on our thoughts and behaviours. It’s you hacking up that zombie with an axe and it’s you driving that car into a gaggle of pedestrians in GTA. So, many of the acceptable actions carried out in video games currently may no longer be appropriate in a VR setting.
With that terrifying little thought in mind, here are a couple of the ethical problems we should probably talk about.
WHAT’S ACCEPTABLE IN A VIRTUAL WORLD?
This question is probably best answered by stating what is not acceptable in a virtual world.
This. Being able to sexually assault an in-game character is not acceptable.
To be fair, this wouldn’t be acceptable in a traditional video game format, either, but the ability to put your hands directly into the experience makes it way more disturbing.
According to a translation by Engadget, the virtual woman in Dead Or Alive VR tells the player “I don’t like it” along with a word that translates to “bad” and often used to straight up deny permission. Despite her protests, the player is allowed to continue harassing the character, which, to be honest, is completely fucked up.
At what point do we draw the line and like many before it, will that line become blurred as the technology matures? Will the same level of ultra-violence displayed in current titles be appropriate in a setting where you’re not merely pressing buttons, you’re hurling the grenades and all manner of deadly weapons at realistic human models with your hands?
With little or no legislation around VR currently, we reckon it’s going to take some time for us to fully realise the effects these experiences have on us as a society and act according to those results.
MANIPULATION
The human mind is pretty easy to manipulate. In fact, you likely cop it on a daily basis via the thick layer of advertising you have to wade through to do life.
Advertisers will use any and all mediums available to them to subtly influence your thinking towards their product or service.
For example, if you see a giant, frosty looking can of Coke on a billboard on a scorching hot day, they want you to associate the feeling of cool relief with their product because it may well influence you to buy it.
This is some pretty Inception-esque shit, but we’re about to go deeper, so buckle the fuck up.
According to the Real Virtuality journal:
“One central result of modern experimental psychology is that human behaviour can be strongly influenced by external factors while the agent is totally unaware of this influence. Behaviour is context sensitive and the mind is plastic, which is to say that it is capable of being continuously shaped and re-shaped by a host of causal factors.”
Now, if you can be influenced by a billboard, imagine what can be done within an immersive experience where any number of stimuli can be used to influence what you think or feel on an emotional level. This gives companies that use VR a tremendous opportunity to market their products and push their political or even religious values on users.
At what point is it ethically ok for this to happen? If a company pays the makers of a video game to include immersive advertising subtly into their game, is that level of commercial manipulation fair?
This isn’t a long-term effect, either. VR can influence behaviour after even a short session:
“But perhaps even more concerning for our purposes is evidence that behaviour while in the virtual environment can have a lasting psychological impact after subjects return to the physical world. Hershfield et al. (2011) found that subjects embodying avatars that look like aged versions of themselves show a tendency to allocate more money for their retirement after leaving the virtual environment. Rosenberg et al. had subjects perform tasks in a virtual city. Subjects were allowed to fly through the city either using a helicopter or by their own body movements, like Superman. They found that subjects given the superpower were more likely to show altruistic behavior afterwards – they were more likely to help an experimenter pick up spilled pens.”
For us, this is a particularly heavy brand of mind-fuck and one that’s sure to drag a heap of other issues along with it. Extensive research should be used to justify the implementation of consumer protection legislation.
Photo: Dead Or Alive VR.
