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Book Cover for: Virtue Theory and Video Games: Level Up Your Character, Sarah C. Malanowski

Virtue Theory and Video Games: Level Up Your Character

Sarah C. Malanowski

This volume explores the intersection of virtue theory and video games. By bringing together emerging and established scholars analysing video game ethics from a virtue-theoretical perspective, this book both fills gaps in the literature and provides a foundation for advancing discussions in the emerging field of video game ethics.

The anthology covers a wide range of topics, offering both abstract analyses of the application of virtue theory to video game ethics and practical insights into the impact of gaming on our relationships, communities, and individual self-conception. The first part examines the advantages and limitations of virtue ethics as a normative framework in the context of video games. The second part delves into specific virtues and vices that emerge during gameplay, illustrating how virtue theory can enhance our understanding of the ethical dimensions of gaming. Finally, the third part addresses the social dimensions of gaming, focusing on the roles of friendship, relationships, and community. It demonstrates how the unique social contexts of gaming provide interesting opportunities for cultivating virtue and vice.

Virtue Theory and Video Games is essential reading for researchers and graduate students working in virtue ethics, philosophy of games, the ethics of technology, game studies, media studies, and communication studies.

Book Details

  • Publisher: Routledge
  • Publish Date: Mar 19th, 2026
  • Pages: 336
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 0.00in - 0.00in - 0.00in - 0.00lb
  • EAN: 9781041052630
  • Categories: Ethics & Moral PhilosophyVideo & Mobile

About the Author

Sarah C. Malanowski is Instructor of Philosophy at Florida Atlantic University, USA. She specializes in philosophy of cognitive science and biomedical ethics, and her work has appeared in Bioethics, Synthese, Journal of Medicine & Philosophy, and Neuroethics. She is the co-author, with Nicholas R. Baima, of Why It's OK to Be a Gamer (Routledge 2024).

Nicholas R. Baima is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Florida Atlantic University, USA. He works in ancient philosophy and ethical theory. He is co-author, with Sarah C. Malanowski, of Why It's OK to Be a Gamer (Routledge 2024), and co-author, with Tyler Paytas, of Plato's Pragmatism: Rethinking the Relationship Between Ethics and Epistemology (Routledge, 2021).

Praise for this book

"This volume opens up an important new area of inquiry. It makes a strong contribution to the broad project of understanding how we should live with electronic media."

Michael Madary, University of the Pacific, USA