Understanding Online Game Cheating: Unpacking the Ethical Dimension

ABSTRACT

Using an online survey approach, this study examines the ethical dimensions and factors operating behind the game cheating behavior. Although the data indicated that young gamers were overall critical of cheating behavior in online games, cheating was found to be a common practice in online gaming community. It is found that gamers tended to dismiss the cheating action as morally insignificant due to peer influence and the play nature of online gaming. With regard to the ethical antecedents of cheating decisions, our results revealed that the personal moral philosophy of idealism had both direct and indirect influence on game cheating intention and behavior (partial mediation), meanwhile, the personal moral philosophy of relativism had only significant indirect influence on game cheating intention (full mediation) and cheating behavior (distal mediation).

Notes

¹ A Chinese version was posted on gaming forums targeted at gamers in China.To ensure the functional and conceptual equivalence of the survey questions in both languages, the Chinese version was back translated to English by a second translator to discover any inconsistency and pilot-tested.

Additional information

Funding

The research reported in this article was funded by Shanghai Planning Office of Philosophy and Social Science [Grant No. 2014BXW002] and also supported in part by the National Research Foundation, Prime Minister’s Office, Singapore, under its IDM Futures Funding Initiative.

Notes on contributors

Yuehua Wu

Yuehua Wu is an associate professor at School of Media and Communication at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China. She received her Ph.D. degree in Media and Information Studies from Michigan State University, USA. Her main research interests are social impacts of new media, impacts of digital games, and new media law and policy.

Vivian Hsueh Hua Chen

Vivian Hsueh Hua Chen is an associate professor at Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. His research interests include new communication technologies, impacts of digital games, human–computer interaction, intercultural communication, and interpersonal communication.