According to Young, the fact that people can rationally disagree about the morality or immorality of a game implies a constructivist meta-ethical theory he calls “constructive ecumenical expressivism” or short “CEE” (Young 2017a, p. With his second objection, Young attacks the claim that games themselves can be immoral. Young, however, believes that the notion of strong enjoyment is “too crude” (Young 2017a, p. And the mere fact that someone is playing a computer game does not tell us which type of enjoyment is involved. Ostritsch argues against this view by pointing out that enjoying a computer game of questionable moral content like RapeLay (Illusion 2006) is only immoral if the enjoyment is of a “strong” and not of a “weak” kind (Ostritsch 2017, p. Young’s first objection targets an argument made by Ostritsch against the expressivist view that playing certain games (like the notorious rape game RapeLay) is wrong because it is expressive of an immoral character (Patridge 2011, p. The moral wrongness in turn depends not on the representations shown on the screen but on a potential endorsement of an immoral worldview (Ostritsch 2017, pp. Ostritsch then goes on to argue that the moral wrongness is to be located not in the virtual actions of the player but in the game itself. In his original paper, Ostritsch first defends the amoralist as far as virtual acts are concerned: Neither the utilitarian nor the Kantian nor the virtue ethicist can show why carrying out certain virtual acts like virtual murder or virtual pedophilia is inherently immoral (Ostritsch 2017, pp. This statement captures the very spirit of the amoralist position.

Faced with moral criticism for playing violent or otherwise seemingly immoral games, gamer’s will often reply by stating that “It’s just a game”. a reality of their own within which the moral norms of the real world are not in effect (Ostritsch 2017, p. The latter consists in the observation that games constitute an amoral reality, i.e.

Ostritsch develops the endorsement view as an answer to the amoralist challenge. However, he has a moral obligation to detect, reflect on and reject any immoral real-world attitudes, beliefs and values that an immoral game might endorse (Ostritsch 2017, pp. According to the endorsement view, the player may play any computer game without any moral blame. Endorsement is different from mere representation insofar as it suggests certain attitudes, beliefs or values with respect to reality. According to the endorsement view, computer games Footnote 1 are immoral in case they endorse an immoral worldview. Garry Young has made three objections against Sebastian Ostritsch’s endorsement view on the immorality of computer games.

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