Environmental Ethics: Dimensions and Possibilities in Persistent Game Worlds. Matthew G. Kaplan. Stephen F. Austin State University

Transcription

1 Environmental Ethics 1 Running Head: ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS Environmental Ethics: Dimensions and Possibilities in Persistent Game Worlds Matthew G. Kaplan Stephen F. Austin State University

2 Environmental Ethics 2 Environmental Ethics: Dimensions and Possibilities in Persistent Game Worlds This paper discusses the potential for the virtual environments of MMORPGs to reflect our ethical relationship with real environments. Although they are undeniably commercial products, these games represent persistent environments in which millions around the world literally own a stake. While the issues discussed herein are pertinent to games of several different genres, the unique nature of MMORPG worlds make them ideal spaces for a new generation of ecocritical analysis: More so than with any other game genre, players of MMORPGs are invited to inhabit a virtual space for long periods of time, and this evolving, expanding relationship between humans and the spaces in which they find themselves may be able to tell us something about cultural attitudes towards environments both virtual and real. However, the potential for MMORPGs to directly reflect complex ethical relationships between humans and environment is currently limited. Using Everquest as a primary example, Stumpo (2008) argues that MMORPG worlds rarely change due to player interaction: the landscape really is nothing but backdrop for the real intentions of the game. This status is emphasized through a simple yet important characteristic: it cannot be affected (p. 34). Although he goes a step too far in claiming that such characteristics make the games antienvironmental, Stumpo does point out qualities that are undoubtedly non-environmental, at least where the real world is concerned. In World of Warcraft, for example, species and resources infinitely regenerate despite unlimited hunting and mining. Espen Aarseth (2008) goes so far to say that this lack of an impressionable landscape makes it questionable whether we can call virtual worlds like Azeroth

3 Environmental Ethics 3 actual worlds, or whether we should relegate them specifically to the realm of virtual theme park: Rhetorically, to call something a world is to give it a privileged status as a selfcontained, autonomous entity. As we have seen, the world in World of Warcraft is not a proper world, or even a fictional one, but a world in the theme park or zoo sense, a conglomerate or parkland quilt of connected playgrounds built around a common theme. Azeroth has been constructed to withstand the pressure and tampering of millions of visiting players, who are allowed to see, but not touch let alone build or destroy. The bears are over there, dinosaurs here, and wolves around the corner to the south. Like the robots in Michael Crichton s 1973 movie Westworld ( the vacation of the future, today ) the monsters we kill for sport and glory are revived by the system minutes later, ready for the next hunter-visitor. Compared to many single-player worlds (for instance, Oblivion s Cyrodil, where changes introduced by the player affect the gameworld permanently and have consequences for the remaining game experience), Azeroth is oblivious to its player inhabitants. They leave no lasting mark, monuments, or even graffiti, only what memories they may have instigated for other players, their fellow visitors. (pp ) While I stop short of labeling such attributes anti-environmental, I concur that such environmental rigidity says something rather puzzling about these games. While their intricately designed landscapes are imbued with the environmental values of designers and pervasive culture, they fail to reflect the most basic, essential observation about mankind and nature: Environments change based on human action and, in turn, we are affected by both environmental change and the change brought upon by other humans. This ability to change and be changed is the basis for environmental thought and philosophy, and in particular its ethical core.

4 Environmental Ethics 4 Rather than dismiss MMORPG worlds as hopelessly counter or irrelevant to real-world environmental ethics, I suggest that ecocritics use environmental ethics as a critical lens for illuminating both the current limitations and potential successes of these landscapes. By doing so, we invite designers, players, and all environmental stakeholders to see this technology not as throw-away pastimes absorbed in anthropocentric escapism but as virtual spaces of possibility. In this paper, I attempt such an analysis, using environmental ethics as a critical framework for the exploration of MMORPG worlds as potentially influential and ethically reflective landscapes. A Brief Overview of Environmental Ethical Philosophy Decidedly activist in spirit, ecocriticism focuses on the interrelationship of social and environmental concerns as they pertain to positive moral and environmental development. Often, the moral improvement prescribed by ecocritics entails increased concern for the environment and a disruption of the traditional, anthropocentric subject-object relationship (i.e., the use of environment as resource) between humanity and nature. In this sense, ecocriticism is a product of environmental writing such as John Muir s essays on the national parks, Aldo Leopold s Land Ethic, and Rachel Carson s Silent Spring powerful rhetorical works that argue for the inextricable relationship between human morality and a passionate stewardship for the environment that extends beyond base utilitarianism. Ecocriticism is also fundamentally concerned with environmental ethics, a field of ethical philosophy that emerged as a challenge to traditional anthropocentrism. In the first place, it questioned the assumed moral superiority of human beings to members of other species on earth. In the second place, it investigated the possibility of rational arguments for assigning intrinsic

5 Environmental Ethics 5 value to the natural environment and its nonhuman contents ( Environmental Ethics ). Most ecocritical analyses reflect an ethics concerned with identity, power relationships, regionalism, and more practical concerns such as population growth, environmental justice, and the effects of human behavior on future generations of human and non-human species. Below are some of the basic categories 1 into which environmental ethical philosophers and critics, past and present, can be sorted. Individualist Consequentialist According to Clare Palmer (2003), an individualist environmental ethic deals with the individual organism rather than, for instance, the ecosystem or the species. She continues, However, it is important to make a distinction here: while the individual organism is the unit of ethical concern, it is the state of affairs within the organism, rather than the organism itself, which generates value. In consequentialist ethical systems, it is always the states of affairs, rather than things in themselves that are valuable (p. 19). Ethical theories in this category include those of Peter Singer, who has suggested in works such as Animal Liberation and Practical Ethics that the most ethically valuable organisms feel pleasure and pain; Donald VanDeVeer, who attributes moral priority to the most psychologically complex organisms; and Gary Varner, who similarly establishes a value hierarchy based on the complexity of animal interests and desires (pp ). Individualist Deontological 1 While these are by no means the only possible categorical distinctions, I have found these particular categories to be helpful encapsulations of trends in environmental ethics. I borrow a few categories from Clare Palmer s rather thorough An Overview of Environmental Ethics, which I cite elsewhere in this section.

6 Environmental Ethics 6 In contrast, individualist deontological theories argue for the intrinsic worth of individual organic life: These environmental ethicists consider that individual organisms have value in themselves, value that is not necessarily linked with experience, nor to do with states of affairs within the organism. It is the organism itself which is valuable, not what it is doing (Palmer, p. 21). One of the most widely recognized deontological perspectives is held by Paul Taylor, who argues that all organisms are teleological centers of life, pursuing their own good in their own way. This telos gives each individual organism inherent worth; and this inherent worth is equally possessed by all living organisms, since all have a telos and a good of their own, a good which is as vital to them as a human good is to a human (Palmer, p. 22). Virtue Ethics Environmental virtue ethical philosophy is perhaps the most monistic, albeit rather vague, set of ethical principles in that it seeks to establish guiding virtues by which humans discern what is morally right and beneficial action. Philip Cafaro (2005) explains: First, in the absence of an environmental virtue ethics, environmental ethics itself is incomplete and unbalanced. Recent virtue ethics proponents have made the (general) case forcefully. An ethics that concentrates exclusively on rights and responsibilities, and judges our actions solely on whether they violate or uphold moral duty, ignores further, crucial ethical questions: What is the best life for a person, and how can I go about living it? What is a good society, and how can we move closer to achieving it? (p. 31) Given the focus on overriding principles that govern holistic views of man and nature, it is no surprise that Cafaro adopts Aldo Leopold as part of the fold:

7 Environmental Ethics 7 A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community, he writes. It is wrong when it tends otherwise. Leopold identifies these three qualities as key virtues of natural and mixed human/natural communities; in a sense they are supervirtues, which promote the continuous generation of virtue in individual species and organisms, including us. Recognizing nature s excellence and ability to generate excellence gives us strong reasons to preserve it, for nature s sake and for our own. (pp ) Environmental Justice and Cultural Issues Issues of environmental justice and the relationship between dominated cultures and environments have become particularly relevant to a discussion of environmental ethics as pollution continues to threaten marginalized communities all over the world. For example, those in the eco-feminist movement seek to resist forms of classically patriarchal oppression and pollution. Although environmental justice philosophy initially took the form of a discussion regarding the unequal distribution of resources and waste across human communities, David Schlosberg (2007) notes that thinking about injustice in terms of distribution alone is rather limited: Inequitable distribution, a lack of recognition, limited participation, and a critical lack of capabilities, at both the individual and group level, all work to produce injustice (p. 39). Schlosberg argues that the recognition, capabilities, and participation aspects fill in the missing causal portion left blank by distributive theories: we must still examine why we treat both exposed human communities and nature as we do to cause the environmental inequities we have. The misrecognition of

8 Environmental Ethics 8 communities, noted by the movement for environmental justice, and the misrecognition of nature, noted in a number of ecological discourses (social ecology, ecocentrism, and even ecological economics) are integral not only to the condition of human communities and of nature generally, but also to this distributive approach to conceptions of sustainability as well. Any attempt to find common ground between sustainability and justice necessitates an examination and understand of the misrecognition not just maldistribution of both those communities striving for environmental justice and the natural world. Likewise, any attempt to theorize doing justice to nature itself must focus on the capabilities necessary for that natural world to both flourish and be sustained. And all must address how we incorporate all of these concerns into just procedures for environmental decision-making, especially as we expand the concerns, and community of, justice. (p. 126) Issues of environmental justice and culture s relationship to the environment have transformed the way theorists consider the promotion of economic and communal sustainability, including through green building and sustainable urban development. For example, Sarah van Gelder (1999) states that we must build on the engineering savvy and scientific understanding of the industrial era using design principles based on natural systems (p. 59) and similarly advocates for emulating natural systems, sustainable economics, greater equity, and a less consumptive lifestyle (p. 69). For van Gelder, these are not merely fleeting or fashionable prescriptions but essential moral improvements with regard to mankind and its environment: The legitimacy of industrial era values and institutions is eroding as well, and it is unable to deliver sustainable livelihoods, equity, or meaningful lives (p. 70).

9 Environmental Ethics 9 Future Generations Related directly to the environmental justice movement, the Future Generations philosophical argument posits that human society has a moral obligation to protect the environmental and societal wellbeing of its descendants. Kristin Shrader-Frechette (2002) argues, Just as it is ethically improper to put an unknown living person in possible jeopardy, it is ethically improper, all things being equal, to place some known future person in possible jeopardy (p. 102). Citing the work of Brian Barry, Shrader-Frechette concludes that we are bound in equity to do whatever is necessary to provide future generations with the same level of opportunity as they would have had if we had not depleted some resources or polluted their environment (p. 103). More pragmatically, Shlosberg (2007) endorses Avner de-shalit s view that future generations are a kind of community to be considered when making environmental decisions because it is more firmly based in realistic political dialogue, which is often communitarian, not individualistic, in nature (p. 114). Environmental Ethics and MMORPGs Although the above is a very brief sampling of environmental ethical philosophy, it should suffice to provide a starting point from which we can begin to look at MMORPG landscapes from the perspective of environmental ethics. Before we move on, it is worth pointing out that MMORPGs are undeniably commercial products and are built, above all, in service to the experience of the player. There is little financial impetus for designers to create environments that change readily in response to player action or that, in turn, can affect entire

10 Environmental Ethics 10 communities of players. For some designers, the goal is to maintain some parity in the quality of experience for every consumer. And this is not to say that such designs have not been attempted. For example, Raph Koster has acknowledged 2 that the original environmental design for Ultima Online would have incorporated complex relationships between player interaction and environmental resources, as well as between AI-controlled nature and resources. However, the scope for incorporating these systems into the code became technologically untenable, and changes between alpha and beta code meant that the game s ecological system never found its way into the final product. Still, reflections of real-world environmental ethics may find their way into these games tangentially. Ultra-realism is not always the end-goal when designers set out to create a vibrant virtual game world. However, designers and their designs readily admit to a certain amount of realism, whether in their simulation of movement and natural environment or in their reference to pervasive social factors (e.g., race, war, social turmoil). If there exists no financial cause for including environments imbued with the ability to be impacted or protected, perhaps there is a creative one. Consequentialist and Deontological Ethics in MMORPGs It is difficult to argue for the intrinsic or operative worth of any organisms found in these worlds, quite simply because they are not actually living. In games like World of Warcraft, they are mere polygons, programmed to operate in a specific way using simple routines. Still, these landscape objects are receptive to player input, and it is with this sense of interaction the illusion of a living world that MMORPGs show the most promise. Indeed, as 2 See Koster s blog, and

11 Environmental Ethics 11 the routines for animals become more complex, chances increase that they become more subject of interaction than passive object. Imagine pre-programmed animals who give chase and flee from players due specifically to a player s proximity to a nest (as it stands, most hostile animals in these games chase players due only to a basic proximity; for example, get within a certain distance of a large snake and it will always chase you). In fact, these games rarely reflect actual growth cycles of living organisms, and including even a reference to vulnerable animal young may go some way to producing a sense of relatable environment. The same would go for cultivable food resources that can be consumed or sold via in-game economies; adding even the sense of real seasons or the idea that some resources must be nourished and/or maintained by players (ala Animal Crossing and Harvest Moon) would provide an increased sense of value and interdependence. These examples may seem like technological pipe dreams, but my point is simply this: The less predictable these routines become, the more likely that they will reflect the real-world sense of purpose and telos ascribed to living organisms by deontological ethicists. Consequentialist ethics in this sense would be slightly harder to wrap one s head around, although it could be argued that such ethical value could spring from possible relationships between programmed wildlife and its relationship to resources. This is to say nothing of these games unique ability to allow human players to become animalistic characters (e.g., the Tauren of World of Warcraft). Certainly, these characters have no analog in the real world, but if these games create deeper ties between such characters and increasingly interactive environments, then affecting an environment and its animalistic, sentient population would bring the interrelationship between player and environment to the forefront.

12 Environmental Ethics 12 More difficult to discern are the place of such values in MMORPGs with less conventional settings. For example, City of Heroes is set primarily in urban landscapes, and few, if any, interactive wildlife or resources exist. Yet just as urban environments are not bereft of nonhuman life, there is no reason why these environments cannot be more fully fleshed out. Perhaps wildlife in this case would not be prone to hunting/cultivation or the same set of interactions as in my hypothetical World of Warcraft, but if the urban environments themselves are ever made alterable, then there will be a place to demonstrate how increased or decreased pollution, urban expansion, and other human factors can directly affect organic populations. Virtue Ethics in MMORPGs In terms of interactions with MMORPG environments, it can be argued that a game like World of Warcraft encourages the player to kill wildlife and mine resources without consequence via its system of rules (e.g., those determining that obtaining experience points and resources is a highly valuable and rewarded motivation for the player). 3 However, Miguel Sicart (2009) notes that these kinds of rules do not provide the entire ethical experience of a game: This does not mean that designers are exclusively responsible for the entire value system of a game. As a matter of fact, their ethical responsibility is rather limited: a designer is responsible for the object, but the players and their communities are ultimately responsible for the experience. What ethical values a designer hardwires in a system are only relevant when seeing the game as an object when it comes to the act of playing, 3 One could argue that these same motivations are promoted by culturally-defined rules of human society. However, the key difference is that, in the case of World of Warcraft and similar games, formal rules preclude any experience of repercussions. For example, in the real world, the ability to collect resources or achieve prosperity can be limited by deforestation, pollution, etc.

13 Environmental Ethics 13 and being a player, those values are only relevant if they directly affect the experience. (p. 41) Thus, the player, too, bears some responsibility in creating the ethical experience. More to the point, Sicart uses Aristotelian virtue ethics to describe the player as moral agent: because the player is a subject that exists in a game situation, and because this subject operates by interpreting this situation both within the ethics and culture of her experience as player and as a human being, the player as subject can legitimately be considered a moral being. A computer game is then a moral object that is actualized by a moral agent. (p. 63) Here, Sicart seems to be attributing the brunt of ethical work to the player, who, by his very extension into the real world and role as willing subject in the game world, acts both as agent and interpreter of moral action. The game world s construction certainly plays an invaluable role in generating content that shapes the player s subjectivity within the game world, but the player must be the one to activate this ethical potential: I argue that a player becomes a player-subject upon entering the game experience, when actualizing the potentiality of the game into a concrete experience. A player can then be defined as the subject that comes into being when playing a game. The player does not exist before playing a game; that is, the player of Vib-Ribbon does not exist before playing Vib-Ribbon for the first time. But she certainly does during and after carrying through the truth or knowledge from one process of subjectivization to the next, thus establishing the cultural tradition and the repertoire allowing players to deduce rules when exposed to a game for the first time. (p. 72)

14 Environmental Ethics 14 Sicart establishes a continuity in which the newly created player-subject reflects upon, activates, and then carries forth a game world s ethical content into the real world, even if the end-use is merely to guide future experiences of games (and as Sicart notes repeatedly, these subjects are hardly activating and reflecting upon ethical systems in a vacuum; entire communities of players often discuss and aid each other in the employment of ethical systems). This does not mean, however, that such ethical activation is always achieved via what could be considered highly ethical actions or behaviors in the game world itself. Sicart uses the example of Super Columbine Massacre RPG!, an independently published role-playing game that casts players in the role of real-life killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold: By forcing the player to commit these [murderous] acts, the game designer forced players to reflect on the meaning of actions: as a player, you want to win, but as a human being, you have to think about what winning means, and what the actions are being simulated meant. As I have already mentioned, it is in this tension where thinking about the ethics of computer games is productive, and shows the potential of computer games for reacting rich moral experiences. (p. 101) How is this moral reflection activated within the individual player? Sicart uses Aristotle s theory of phronesis, or practical wisdom, to describe an innate, practical application of one s constantly developing morality in the player-subject position (here, in multiplayer games): Players use phronesis as a practical ability for the configuration of their being in the game. This moral wisdom is applied both to the experience of the game and to other agents that are immersed in it. Other players well-being has to prevail in order to enjoy a successful game experience; also, the game experience s well-being has to be respected for the experience of the game to take place. Winning is not always the most rational

15 Environmental Ethics 15 choice. This might be derived from the fact that players are moral beings who care for other players, acting with moral judgment when creating the game experience. (p. 103) Sicart s concepts of moral agency and phronesis suggest that no matter how potentially harmful the virtues (or lack thereof) in a game like World of Warcraft may seem, players will necessarily take into account their subject position in the game in relationship to their real-world lives. Again, it would be difficult to prove one way or another that designed virtues seemingly harmful or not would actually affect individual players in such a way that they would automatically become desensitized or more attentive to environmental issues. Yet because players in this virtue ethics model take their subject positions with them into the real-world, game virtues certainly influence knowledge and a sense of ethical purpose. Thus, there is certainly room for designed virtues that more clearly align with what, in terms of environmental virtue ethics, Cafaro identifies as Leopold s supervirtues : integrity, stability, and beauty. Non-MMORPG games like Harvest Moon and Afrika already allow for in-game virtue systems that promote stewardship via responsible farming, husbandry, and even photojournalism; there is no reason that MMORPGs cannot include virtue-bound systems of farming, hunting, and even rewards for a careful attentiveness to nature via ecological education missions. Many MMORPGs already reward players for exploring new territory; this would simply be a matter of rewarding a careful attenuation to the environments and wildlife found therein. Environmental Justice and Future Generations in MMORPGs With regard to models of environmental justice and future generations, we are faced with the same unfortunate limitation regarding the nature, so to speak, of MMORPG game designs:

16 Environmental Ethics 16 they are designed with parity of experience in mind. The more an individual player can affect an environment, the more the potential for inequity exists (needless to say, an unbalanced environment in this case would also be harder to program and it would be much more difficult to account for variables in player behavior). In a sense, this protection of parity can be almost be seen as a reaction to real-world inequity; it is doubtful that MMORPG designers have environmental justice issues in mind when creating these worlds, but they are protecting against such potential cross-cultural unfairness nonetheless. Yet if the technology exists and designers are willing to put in the programming effort, there is simply no gameplay-based reason to maintain this artificial parity. Let us imagine a game world that responds to the actions of entire player communities. Resources disappear. Animal populations dwindle. Or perhaps a portion of the environment flourishes based on responsible actions on the part of players. Perhaps some populations and future generations of players are left to struggle with environmental decisions of others. As curious as this scenario may seem to any avid player of these games, consider the sheer amount of expanded player-to-player interactions available as a result. Players must band together to strategize, not only how to territorialize and conquer, but also how to maintain and protect the very land that is being occupied. While having to share resources would certainly become ugly in certain situations (given the propensity of some malevolent players to troll or grief others), such a scenario simply provides other opportunities for players to self-govern and work together to safeguard against such instances. The result would be both a civics and environmental justice lesson under the guise of additional player efficacy and strategy aspects that the highly social players of these games tend to appreciate. However, given the impetus for more casual gamers to simply escape and

17 Environmental Ethics 17 engage in a world of fantasy, the popularity of such a game dynamic would be questionable. It would, after all, require more restraint, forethought, and realistic reflection from the average player. Yet this is by no means a formula for guaranteed failure. If such gameplay is supplemented by an intricate system of reward for individual and group efforts and well established in the lore of the game s narrative, it could turn out to seem like a natural progression for the genre. More importantly, while the ultimate purpose of such interactions would be admittedly anthropocentric, the underlying lesson of sharing resources would become one additional experience for players to take with them into the real world. Looking Forward Sadly, I am not a game designer. I obviously play these games I study them, I enjoy them but I lack the skill to build them. If I were a designer, I would be able to speak in far more concrete terms about building and implementing resource, quest, and environmental systems akin to those suggested above. Whether that is a limit of technological expertise or artistic creativity, I cannot say, but I must admit that much of the work I set out to accomplish is simply shining a light on such possibilities. For the most part, I must leave the fine details of imagined worlds to those with the acumen to both dream and realize them. What I as ecocritical scholar and ecocritical player can bring to the table, however, is perspective. Perhaps it is a perspective that gives rise to more questions than answers, but it is one I hope will speak to audiences both ecocritical and design-savvy. Part of the reason ecocritics seek to perform analyses such as these is because we encounter culture in such a way that we learn something about the tenuous relationship between humanity and environment

18 Environmental Ethics 18 and we want to give our lessons back to culture in hopes that something meaningful bubbles up to the surface. What happens next is largely dependent on game designers. Perhaps some will begin to create, for example, alterable landscapes tied explicitly to larger cultural concerns. Many will not and I would hardly consider that a failure of imagination. But if few were to realize the environmental and ethical possibilities inherent in these unique worlds, to fulfill the potential of work started by Koster and other ambitious MMORPG designers, it would certainly seem a wasted opportunity for a very different kind of fun and a very different sort of digital rhetoric. References Aarseth, E. (2008). A Hollow World: World of Warcraft as Spatial Practice. In H. Corneliussen and J. Rettberg (Eds.), Digital Culture, Play, and Identity: A World of Warcraft Reader (pp ). Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press. Cafaro, P. (2005). Thoreau, Leopold, and Carson: Toward an Environmental Virtue Ethics. In R. Sandler and Cafaro (Eds.), Environmental Virtue Ethics (pp.31-44). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Palmer, C. (2003). An Overview of Environmental Ethics. In A. Light and H. Rolston (Eds.), Environmental Ethics (pp ). Malden, MA: Blackwell. Shlosberg, D. (2007). Defining Environmental Justice: Theories, Movements, and Nature. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Shrader-Frechette, K. (2002). Environmental Justice: Creating Equality, Reclaiming Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

19 Environmental Ethics 19 Sicart, M. (2009). The Ethics of Computer Games. Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press. Stumpo, J. (2008). E-Cology: Everquest and the Environment(s). Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, 15(2), van Gelder, S. (1999). Environmental Ethics. In C. Kibert (Ed.), Reshaping the Built Environment: Ecology, Ethics, and Economics (pp ). Washington, D.C.: Island.