Thursday 8 November, 2018

In my last play session of Hitman, I completed a mission in the game and found the result of completing one to be quite interesting. As I’ve discussed, the aim of the game is to assassinate certain people, all while doing so undercover and escaping afterwords. After completing a mission, the game rewards the player for their performance and certain actions that were taken during the mission. These rewards are mostly based on actions taken directly related to the murder that is committed. However, something I also found interesting is that the game deducts points for kills that are not the target of the mission. This suggests a few things, namely that the player is meant to perceive that the targets are negative forces whose deaths will result in a positive outcome for the rest of the world, and that all non-targets are innocent people whose deaths would impact the world negatively or substantially to justify killing. It’s important to note that this is presumably what the organization that Agent 47 is working for wants.

This whole scenario brings up multiple questions. One, will killing the targets actually prove beneficial? If so, then this game would be perfectly ethical from a Utilitarian perspective. Two, does the organization have the right to determine who should and should not be killed, and can they know for sure of the impacts their deaths will have? Three, are assassinations the only method by which this organization can influence the world? These are all questions that important to consider.

Back to the mission complete reward system. Most of the challenges present in the game incentivise killing the targets. While this makes complete sense considering it is the entire point of the gameplay, it’s still questionable from an ethical perspective as killing is generally seen as immoral. A philosopher such as Kant would immediately point to this game is immoral, as the act of killing itself would inherently be considered wrong, but the game chooses to incentivise it, going as far as to reward the player.

Outside of the act of the assassinations I found interesting in my play session was how this game handles it’s suspension of disbelief. During the mission I played I chose a route that involved impersonating a famous runway model. I chose to subdue said model and use his clothing as a disguise. I was seen and his body was found, but I was able to make a retreat without being caught and proceeded the mission as planned. Naturally, I was afraid of actually continuing from this point, as I assumed all the guards would be on the lookout for a man wearing this models clothing, but I was able to complete the mission no problem, which I found particularly unrealistic and broke my suspension of disbelief. From a gameplay perspective, this could potentially create a more fun experience, as it makes the assassinations more manageable for people who presumably aren’t actually assassins, but whether this was the correct choice from a moral perspective from the developers is questionable.

There are some interesting analyses and questions throughout, such as analyzing agent 47 and the corporations actions from multiple moral frameworks and how their motives change the ethics of the situation as well as the question: does the organization have the right to determine who should and should not be killed, and can they know for sure of the impacts their deaths will have?
One thing to look out for is equating the game and the player themselves as being unethical when performing ethically questionable things in the game. Doing something unethical as Agent 47 in the game is not the same as doing that same act in real life because the representation of something (like doing something in a game) is not the same as actually doing it. If that were the case anyone who plays violent video games could be considered immoral. In general, if you’re making a case for something in the game being immoral, like Agent 47 motives for killing or the corporation using Agent 47 as a means to an end, make sure to analyze the character’s and the other things in the game world as unethical/immoral not the player or the game itself as unethical/immoral.