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These many hours we spend in games are experience just like walking in the woods or studying architecture. On our death beds, will we regret "wasting" so much of our lives in virtual worlds? I don't expect to! I will look back on my years in Duke Nukem, Age of Empires, Far Cry, and Minecraft as meaningful parts of my life-- as life well spent.
With me so far? Are we in agreement?
Then in some sense we need to think of games as part of "real life". In games we express ourselves and shape our way of seeing the world, of seeing ourselves and others. If game time counts as real experience, then our ways of being in games are part of our lives, part of who we are. If you choose to be a Griefer, taking pleasure in vandalism, that's both an expression of who you are and an experience that makes you more like that! There’s a common assumption that who you’ll be and what you’ll do in a game have no real consequences, and are therefore not subject to moral
restraint. When we validate game life as real life, however, our activities enter the moral sphere.
Have you seen the machines people make to farm cows in Minecraft? They’re horrible! Of course there is no conscious, real being to experience popping into existence only to be crushed, but there you are, hearing them cry out and rubbing your hands together over all the steak and leather piling up in your storage chests. You are having the experience, practicing using living beings without consideration.
You have the choice to live as a vegan in Minecraft. In my virtual worlds, I have often been a murderer and tyrant. But now that I'm all grown-up and
doing some of my living in Minecraft, it’s up to me whether I'm surrounded by caged, doomed animals, or respecting them as free beings.
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