"Dual wielding" morality
"Dual wielding" is an expression from the action movie genre that refers to holding a weapon in each hand and being prepared to use either, or both. Rather wittily, Goguen borrows this term to refer to a new moral predicament faced by those who live in a world where digital technology provides alternate virtual realities, such as networked multiplayer games or online alternative worlds like Second Life.
In any multi-player environment of this kind, Goguen suggests, a person may find that they are simultaneously operating in two separate moral spheres, because they are relating socially both (1) as an avatar with other avatars in the playing space and (2) as a non-virtual human being with the other non-virtual human players who are behind the other avatars in the game. Goguen uses a comparatively famous incident in the lore of the online multiplayer action game World of Warcraft to make her point.
Sometime in the spring of 2006, World of Warcraft players in a guild called Serenity Now made game history by launching an ambush on players of the opposing faction in a high-level war zone. Most if not all of the ambushed players were unaware, possibly unarmed, and died quickly. What made this event news-worthy was that the ambushed players were assembled for an in-game memorial service for a player named Fayejin who passed away IRL (in real life). (Goguen 2009)
As Goguen explains, many people in the WoW community found this example of "ganking" (short for "gang killing") problematic because the occasion was the in-game funeral of a real-life person who had really died. The person had died IRL, in real life. But the funeral was held in WoW, and - a questionable decision on the part of the organizers - in a war zone. So two different realities overlay each other: the game reality and the outside reality where someone had died.
The defenders of the ganking tend to argue that the players who chose to publicize and hold a funeral in a war zone were "asking for it," while those who have condemned Serenity Now's actions feel that it was supremely insensitive to the feelings of the team members and the memory of the dead player, because real people were ultimately grieving the real death of a real person.
Kissing and killing
But Goguen thinks something more interesting is going on here - a new moral dilemma that she refers to as "dual wielding." She suggests that when someone - that is,someone's avatar - kills a rival player (avatar) in a virtual reality game, one knows that one has not actually killed the person behind the other avatar. She adds that when one's avatar kisses someone else's avatar, one has not in fact kissed the other person behind the avatar.
For Goguen, the moral implications of either act (your avatar killing or kissing someone else's avatar) do not transcend the moral universe of the game. In the ethical universe of WoW, "ganking" a rival clan is perfectly acceptable moral behaviour. Thus, there is only one morality one needs to worry about: the in-game morality. Similarly, if the player met one of the players from the rival band on the street in the real world and started punching the person, they would be acting (badly) according to the moral standards of the single world in which they were morally present at that point: the physical world.
As Goguen sees it, then, a player has two separate moral "agencies," as the philosophers say (ways of acting and spheres of action): one is in the virtual world and one is in the real world. Kissing and killing have different moral meanings in the two worlds.
But then Goguen goes on to suggest that sometimes things are not so clear cut:
There are other types of actions, however, in which players necessarily "dual wield" their moral agencies—meaning, they necessarily wield both at the same time. When one tells a joke to or berates another player, one has conversed with or berated a physical person as well as a game avatar, in a way that killing, kissing, or turning that avatar into a sheep does not have a likewise analog. To show how subtle this boundary line can be, I will use the example of kissing. As mentioned above, kissing is an action that a player within an MMO [massively multiplayer online game] single wields. However, if that player is joking with another player by kissing their avatar, or harassing them, their action becomes one which is dual wielded. They have not kissed the actual person, but they have actually told a joke to them or harassed them. (Goguen 2009)
Goguen wants us to ask ourselves if the gankers at the funeral were not in fact simultaneously acting in two different moral spheres, and if their behaviour can be considered morally acceptable "on the one hand," and at the same time morally wrong "on the other."
The future promises more - and ever more realistic - virtual worlds for us to inhabit, and as we come to spend more time in such worlds, the question of who we "really" are is likely to become harder to answer with certainty. Most people seem to be attracted to such worlds as an "escape" from reality. But as we spend more time in those worlds and more energy developing our online identities in them they become a separate reality, and the idea of a real self that is only playing in the virtual reality worlds becomes harder to defend. It is not clear whether we will ultimately be able to escape the responsibilities of human interaction by claiming that "it's only a game." Goguen seems to warn us of this return of the moral sphere in virtual worlds in her conclusion:
As the computer game development expands and enriches the magic circle for players, players (and philosophers) in turn will have to reflect on their moral obligations within that circle, even though computer games serve for many a form of escapism. Unfortunately, as long as we remain in interaction with other people, we never get to fully escape our status as moral beings.