Killing Them Slowly: A comparative phenomenological analysis of time-based ethical engagement in video games and cinema
by Jakob Boer, Thomas MontefioreAbstract
This article provides a comparative phenomenological analysis of the ethical significance of temporality in video games and cinema. We argue that the way time is experienced in the reception of both media can evoke reflective thinking and hence carries ethical potential. In video games, this relates to the temporal experience of players performing morally challenging virtual acts, while in films it involves the temporality of viewers’ affective response to witnessing characters’ ethically challenging actions. Our approach adds a novel temporal perspective to the existing scholarship on the ethical relevance of gameplay, which has previously focused on contextual factors like agency, realism and gaming conventions. Through a conceptual analysis of two contrasting gameplay approaches -- speedrunning and slow play -- we show how the temporality comes to bear of virtual wrongdoing in video game play and thus raises distinct ethical concerns. To develop the mode of slow gameplay, we draw on the literature from film studies, particularly the idea of cinematic slowness. This comparison highlights both similarities and differences in the ethical implications of temporality across these two media, based on their formal features and the distinct user experiences they afford. We contribute to the discourse on the ethics of gaming by proposing that temporality should be considered a morally relevant feature of playing video games.
Keywords: video games; cinema; slowness; ethics; spectatorship; gameplay; phenomenology
Introduction
For both film and video games, temporality is a central feature. The question this article raises is to what extent the experience of time in film and video games ought to shape our moral appraisal of acts within these media. We argue that moral appraisal of video game engagement (or “gameplay”) that involves engaging with virtual acts of immorality -- such as virtual murder -- shouldn’t be abstracted away from the temporal character that those acts are couched in [1]. That is, to the extent that we can justifiably deliberate over the moral character of virtual wrongdoings, we ought to consider the moral relevance, if any, of temporal features of video game play and film viewing. A general appeal to the moral relevance of context when assessing the ethics of virtual wrongdoings is not novel. Others have pointed to the ethical relevance of contextual features, such as perceived agency (Ali, 2015), realism (Ramirez, 2020), level of abstraction (Öhman, 2020) and conventional norms (Montefiore & Formosa, 2022; 2023b). Work on the nature of time in video games also exists (Bódi, 2022). However, an explicit focus on the ethics of the temporal aspects of gameplay is yet to be considered, and is prima facie warranted, given its moral salience in other media forms, specifically film.
Importantly, we are not arguing that temporal features of players’ experiences do play a role in justifying the moral (im)permissibility of virtual wrongdoings -- in fact, we remain agnostic here as to whether any gameplay is immoral (see Ostritsch, 2017; Young, 2017). Instead, we are arguing that if we are to be engaged in a moral analysis of virtual wrongdoings, then in the same way that it would be misguided to ignore the role that perceived agency or realism might play in our moral assessments, it would be misguided to fail to consider the temporal aspects of virtual wrongdoings.
Empirically, we have evidence that contextual features (such as agency and realism) do shape moral attitudes regarding the moral permissibility of fictional acts (see Formosa et al., 2023; Montefiore et al., 2024), and while this does not show that such moral attitudes are justifiably held, it does give us reason to think that contextual features play some role in shaping our moral attitudes towards virtual wrongdoings. The conceptual contribution of this article is to extend this consideration through an analysis of the moral dimensions of an additional contextual feature -- the experience of temporality.
We consider two conflicting orientations that underlie varying temporal approaches to gameplay. We do this by considering the phenomenon of “speedrunning” standing in contrast to what we will call “slow play” as two paradigmatic temporal expressions of gameplay. The former we align with what Sicart (2013) calls reactive play, being the kind of play solely concerned with the ludological, ergodic, or systems elements of a game. The latter we align with what is known as reflective play, which concerns itself with a game’s content (see Formosa et al., 2016; Sicart, 2013; Tavinor, 2017; Aarseth, 1997; Juul, 2005). What motivates speedrunners, we argue, is, inter alia, a focus on mastering a game’s systems, despite its content. For example, completing The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (Nintendo, 1998) as quickly as possible involves understanding how to most optimally engage its systems. The content of the game, on the other hand, such as its storyline, or the aesthetic quality of its soundtrack, are peripheral to this orientation. By contrast, the impetus for slow players is to be immersed in a game’s content and, as a result, inter alia, play reflectively [2]. Through this analysis of these two temporal approaches to gameplay, we show how, in addition to players’ orientation towards gameplay, video game design patterns that promote slowness in conjunction with virtual wrongdoing raise distinct ethical concerns compared to video game design patterns which promote fastness in conjunction with virtual wrongdoing.
To develop the mode of slow gameplay, we draw on literature from film studies and compare it to the cinematic mode of slow looking. Analogous to slow gaming, in this slow spectatorial mode -- which contrasts with an action-oriented (fast) mode of viewing focused on plot progression and character evolvement -- temporality takes on an ethical saliency, if, and to the extent that, it fosters a reflective or contemplative type of viewing. Our analysis of slow or reflective gameplay, therefore, gains relief through a comparison with the aesthetics and ethics of slowness in film spectatorship. That is to say, the comparison allows us to discern both similarities and differences in the ethical salience of temporality as a constitutive feature of users’ experiences in both media.
In section 1, we consider two distinct orientations towards gameplay and their ethical affordances. In section 2, we single out how film aesthetics contribute to its ethical significance, more specifically the feature of temporality. We use a case study to flesh out the possible ethical saliency of the experience of cinematic slowness. We then focus on the moral permissibility of viewing modes (orientations) spectators employ in response to a film’s mode of address (aesthetics). We focus specifically on slow looking as an appropriate response, but we also outline other strategies of speed viewing and disengagement and discuss their moral relevance. In section 3, we contrast ethical film spectatorship with gameplay. We will argue how temporality in both media elicits responses that can be conducive to reflective thinking, which might have ethical implications too -- insofar as it relates to morally challenging content. In video games, this pertains to the temporality of ethically challenging virtual acts of players, while in films this relates to the temporal structuring of viewer’s emotional engagement with characters and ethically challenging actions.
1. Reactive and Reflective Gameplay
To what extent should one reflectively engage with virtually immoral acts in single player video games, where the subject of wrongdoing is not a moral patient? That is, first, are virtual wrongdoings wrong per se, and second, does how one engages with virtual wrongdoings bear on their wrongness? There is little consensus regarding the first question if we take the Gamer’s Dilemma (Luck, 2009) literature to be an exploration of it, with views varying from amoralist, where no limit to virtual behaviour can be identified, and all virtual wrongdoings are, per se, morally permissible (see Montefiore & Formosa, 2025; Montefiore & Luck, 2025), to various moral accounts which appeal to ways in which virtual wrongdoings might be justifiably considered wrong (see Luck, 2022 for an example). The first question may be approached via the second, where how one engages with virtual wrongdoings contributes to the wrongness of a virtual act. For example, what motivates an individual to enact virtual wrongdoings may justify the wrongness of the virtual act (see Young, 2013). However, while a player may be motivated to engage with a game for a variety of reasons (some possibly immoral) independently of the game, design patterns of video games may also play a role in encouraging kinds of ethically salient gameplay (see Ryan et al., 2020; Sicart, 2013). So, while the virtual wrongness of a virtual act might be agent-focused, insofar it is not the virtual act in the context of the video game that is wrong, how it is an individual engages with a game will be, at least in part, informed by what the design patterns of the video game encourage.
The aim of this section is to capture two distinctive orientations towards gameplay identified by Sicart (2013) -- reactive and reflective gameplay -- with which we hope to lay the conceptual groundwork for considering the ethical differences that arise from each orientation.
Gameplay is often understood to involve a competing synthesis between two ontological positions towards video games: that games are constituted by both systems and content (see Formosa et al., 2016; Sicart, 2013; Tavinor, 2017; Juul, 2005). That is, a player experiences their engagement with a game as simultaneously orientated towards a system (see Aarseth, 1997; Juul, 2005; Klevjer, 2002) and via the way the system is expressed -- its content (Aarseth, 1997; see also Tavinor, 2014; Atkins, 2003; Brey, 2003). Following Aarseth (2014), this synthesis is realised through gameplay. Gameplay introduces a fundamental feature of video games that characterises them in a way that is especially salient to the medium. That is, it is not how we read or watch video games that characterises them, but rather how we play them. In this way, following the distinction endorsed by Björk & Holopainen (2005), we can focus our analysis on gameplay rather than games themselves. That is, via the experience of a game as a played object and their associated design patterns, rather than on games themselves and their associated components.
Gameplay can be both reflective and reactive [3], where through gameplay one contributes in constructing the meaning of a video game via engaging with its systems -- reactive gameplay -- while at the same time making sense of the video game as it is being presented to them via engaging with its content -- reflective gameplay. Depending on the video game, and depending on the player, these two interlocking orientations -- the reactive and the reflective -- will often come into tension, where one wins out over the other. A player, by engaging in gameplay, considers both simultaneously in order to achieve, what Sicart (2013) calls an “appropriate” encounter with the work. It is possibly through this uneasy relationship between what one must do to win and the narrative cost that comes with winning -- this kind of dilemma arising in games like BioShock 2 (Irrational Games, 2010) and The Last of Us (Naughty Dog, 2013) -- that ethically reflective gameplay may be experienced in some games. We will consider this ethical dimension shortly.
Once again, the reactive orientation adopts a systems-first ontological view, sidelining the content of the video game in favour of its underlying mechanics. The reflective orientation adopts a content-first ontological view, preferencing what the video game affords representationally rather than just via its systems. The reflective orientation belongs to what Sicart calls the “appropriately engaged” player. To call the reflective orientation the “appropriate” way to engage with a video game is to minimally indicate that part of what it is to play certain games may be to engage with it in this way. To adopt a reactive orientation, therefore, is not to engage with a video game in the wrong kind of way, but is merely to play in a way that fails to fully capture the meaning of the game in those games where engaging with their content contributes to their meaning. Formosa et al., (2016) capture this notion by considering the phenomenon of “speedrunning” ethically notable video games such as Papers, Please (3909 LC, 2013). To do so is to engage with the systems of the video game alone and fail to capture the ethical dimension of the game that the content of the game is exposing for the player. To play this video game “appropriately” is to play reflectively. Of course, for other video games, playing reactively is appropriate. For example, playing StarCraft (Blizzard, 1998) appropriately may not involve considering the ethics of war, but in striving to effectively outplay your opponents via engaging with its systems.
2. The Ethics of Film Spectatorship
Much like the way both the game’s design patterns and the player’s orientation together constitute gameplay, film spectatorship (and its associated ethical significance) arises out of the interaction between, on the one hand, the film’s formal features, and, on the other hand, the viewer’s engagement with or actualisation of those formal features [4]. In this section, we will argue that temporality impacts spectatorship and explore various ways in which it does so. From this, we will build our case that due consideration of temporality can (and should) also inform moral appraisal of films.
The ethical potential of film is often explained in terms of transmedial textual features like story elements or character engagement (Plantinga and Smith, 1999; Plantinga, 2009; Smith, [1995] 2022). In addition to such features, we propose that specifically cinematic aspects should also be considered ethically relevant -- and our focus here is on temporality as one such salient formal element to consider. Robert Sinnerbrink (2019) introduces the helpful concept of “cinematic ethics” with which he calls attention to the various aesthetic ways cinema engages with ethics through the particular aesthetic-ethic experiences it affords viewers. Film “communicate[s] ethical meaning via aesthetic means” (ibid., p. 196). Film’s ethical potential is therefore (at least partly) constituted by its aesthetic design. To phrase this differently, we suggest that film does not merely present a world with moral actors and events in it. It is also ethically salient how a film presents that world. Hence, its ethical potential does not merely pertain to the level of representation/content but also relates to the level of presentation/form/discourse [5]. Again, we will focus specifically on the formal feature of temporality here, insofar as it impacts viewers’ experiences. So, our main focus here will be on the phenomenology of film viewing.
To understand how cinematic temporality comes to bear on spectators’ ethical responses to film, we will outline the various aesthetic means film has at its disposal to modulate the viewer’s time experience. Film is a medium that can powerfully play with temporality for various aesthetic effects. Broadly speaking, film time can refer to image time and experienced time (Wahlberg 2003, p. 15). The former pertains to the objective time in the film world depicted on screen, while the latter refers to the subjectively felt time as it is experienced by the spectator. These relate to each other in complex ways [6]. In this article, our focus will be on the latter category of experienced time, more specifically the experience of cinematic slowness. This is a case in which an interval of time seems longer than it objectively lasts according to the measured time of the clock. Hence, it feels as if time has slowed down (Flaherty, 2000; Wittmann, 2016). The experience of cinematic slowness, we will argue, results in the challenging spectatorial position of witnessing morally complicated content that we call slow looking. We will build our argument through an analysis of a case study: French director Gaspar Noé’s controversial film Irréversible (2002). We will show how filmic features of cinematography and temporality address or position the viewer (emotionally and bodily), and how they together facilitate a mode of slow looking -- which we consider an appropriate response or morally salient form of spectatorship.
2.1 Case study: The Slow Violence of Irréversible
In a thirteen-minute-long, continuously shot scene, we follow an unfortunate female character (played by Monica Bellucci) as she falls victim to a horrendous rape and physical assault that leave her badly injured and in an ensuing coma. The scene is part of the film Irréversible (Noé, 2002). The story depicts a violent night in Paris as two men are on a hunt to avenge the brutal rape and beating of Marcus’ girlfriend. The film consists of thirteen parts of the story that is told in reverse order, with each scene taking place chronologically before the one that precedes it in the film.
The scene we discuss here is a graphic rape scene, which is located somewhere in the middle of the film. This placement as a central scene is fitting, as the events in it are the catalyst for the unfolding revenge plot; it is indeed the pivot around which the rest of the film turns. The twisting and turning of the plot is represented by and viscerally constituted through the literal twists and turns of the agile mobile camera that contributes to the frenetic energy of the film. Its unusual narrative structure, visceral impact, and ethically challenging content have made the film a controversial contemporary cult classic.
The fiercely realistic presentation of the flagrant crime with a handheld camera that stays close to the audio-visually explicitly depicted action, and the filming of it in one uninterrupted long take, places viewers in the midst of it all. The scene pulls viewers into the raw intensity of the present moment and addresses them in a multimodal sensory manner. The cinematography thus imaginatively positions viewers in an ethically conflicting situation as a witness [7]. They are put in a vulnerable position, as they are forced to look at, feel and think about the revolting onscreen acts in a prolonged and heightened way.
Not just the content of the scene is offensive and revulsive, but also the way it is presented contributes to the ethical saliency of the scene: the lengthy presentation results in a subjective time experience of slowness or “protracted duration” (Flaherty, 2000) [8]. The unadulterated temporality of the horrific, violent situation contributes to both the scene’s affective appeal and its ethical potential. This is an effect of the formal presentation of the scene in a continuous long take.
The experience of slowness pertains, firstly, to the way the scene is framed: an uninterrupted ten-minutes long take that centres the viewer’s attention on the sexual assault in a pointedly prolonged manner [9]. Viewers are likely to identify with the female character in this scene. It starts with a “follow shot”: a mobile, handheld long take tracking the female character from behind as she walks the streets and then descends a subterranean passageway which will turn out to be the scene of the crime [10]. This closely tethers the viewer to the character spatially, but it also fosters some kind of identification or empathetic and perhaps sympathetic closeness to the character [11]. As the violent rape and the subsequent brutal physical assault unfold, the initially mobile camera, which tracked the female character, remains rested statically on the ground showing the scene from an unusually (and therefore noticeable) low angle that embodies for the viewers a submissive position [12]. Hence, through the framing of the scene, viewers are subjected to the assault too, albeit in a way that is emphatically not comparable to the actual victim of the heinous sexual and physical crime committed on-screen. Nonetheless, it puts viewers considerably close to the scene and offers no sense of relief from the unbearable and unspeakable violence they are forced to witness.
Related to this, the extended duration of the scene intensifies the film’s affective impact on the viewer. The film shows the villainous acts in their real-time, unadulterated temporal horror in a continuous long take of ten minutes. Hence, the temporality of the viewers’ experience adds to the already troubling graphic quality of the scene. As the revulsive scene unfolds, time seems to stretch or thicken until it becomes uncomfortably or even excruciatingly slow. It seems as though no end will come. For the agitated viewers, time decelerates as they grapple with their growing discomfort with the scene [13].
Central to this scene is the affective response it provokes in viewers [14]. They experience a sense of unease, at the very least, or even full-blown disgust or other ethically relevant emotions. Not only are we made to watch a situation of sexual violence we would normally wish to avoid in everyday live: our gaze is held in time too. These scenes come uncomfortably close to cinematic torture, in the vein of how the protagonist of Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange (1971) is made to watch scenes of horror during his torturous process of re-education. We want to look away, but we can’t (unless we tune out and walk off). The viewer has an unpleasantly strong and strongly unpleasant “feeling that accompanies [their] inability to attend” (Frey, 2012, p. 95). This inability derives from the extended duration in combination with the inability to act while observing an ethically challenging depiction of sexual violence. It makes the scene “unwatchable,” so to say (Baer et al., 2019; Grønstad, 2011).
In sum, the slowness of the scene engenders an affective response and subsequently might provoke a reflective attitude of the viewer [15]. We have argued that a film can manipulate viewers’ time experiences in such a way that a scene, depicting morally conflicting contents, can seem to last too long; uncomfortably and confrontationally. In that case, this type of slowness can then create room for moral reflections through the production of affective responses. In other words, we have demonstrated that the aspect of temporality therefore constitutes an ethically significant feature of the film experience -- amongst, or possibly in conjunction with, other relevant contextual features. With this framework in place, we can now proceed by assessing the moral saliency of a range of possible audience responses.
2.2 Cinematic Viewing Modes: Slow Looking and Speed Viewing
So far, we have only considered a particular kind of spectatorial response (which we deemed appropriate) to the temporal features of a film: a sustained and undivided attention of a viewer enduring the challenge of witnessing (fictional) morally compromising onscreen actions. We close off this section on film spectatorship with a brief discussion of other possible viewing strategies and their moral character.
In contrast to the previous mode of endurance, viewers might recourse to a strategy of disengagement. The film asks them to witness morally challenging content, but the viewer then would prefer not to watch it [16]. For instance, analogous to the speedrunner strategy that some gamers adopt (which we will develop further below in the next section), speed viewing spectators might choose to fast forward through a film scene when confronted with a morally challenging depiction such as the one we discussed in the case study. Phenomenologically speaking, this alleviates their discomfort and gives them a sense of regained control or mastery over the image [17]. This is of course only possible when watched on an interactive platform like remote controlled television screen or a smaller touch screen (phone, tablet). In the cinema, the equivalent would be to walk out on a screening. One could argue that such Bartlebyan refusal to watch a horrific act of sexual violence (even when it is clearly recognisable as fictitious) may actually be an ethically sound response. When feeling sufficiently repugnant, this argument would have it, one cannot but tune out, walk off, and leave the movie theater in somatic disgust and moral indignation (Frey, 2012) [18].
To conclude, we have shown how our case study, through its formal features of cinematography and duration, results in an experience of slowness that, under certain circumstances, might promote ethically salient spectatorial engagement. However, we have also demonstrated that other types of response are always (however minimally) possible, like speed watching or tuning out and walking off. Depending on the constraints the formal features of a film pose on the viewer, these alternative responses become more or less likely [19]. This goes to show that, when considering the ethical saliency of the temporal dimension of film viewing, an easy normative opposition of virtuous slowness and unethical speed does not hold. Instead, both slow looking and speed viewing take on their respective ethical saliency in various modes of reception. Regardless, we have shown that temporality matters for the ethics of film spectatorship. Next, we will explore the temporal dimension of gameplay experiences in order to argue for the ethical appeal video games can make to their players.
3. Temporality Ethically Matters: Speedrunning and Slow Play
Having demonstrated the sense in which different temporal orientations towards engaging with film -- slow looking and speed viewing -- are taken to be ethically salient, we will now consider how temporal features of playing video games might contribute towards an analogous pair of orientations: a reactive or reflective approach. These can be expressed through two corresponding forms of gameplay, speedrunning and slow play. We will identify what is shared and distinct in drawing this analogy to film. Then, having put these orientations in place, we will interrogate their perceived ethical differences.
It is our claim that through unpacking the temporal design patterns of gameplay we might better understand the role temporality plays in influencing the ethics of engaging with fictional acts. This is in the same spirit as others, such as Ali (2015), focusing on player agency, and Ramirez (2020), focusing on virtually real experiences, have argued for the ethical salience of other dimensions of video game experience. Given that temporality takes on an ethical dimension in other media, as has been demonstrated in the previous sections, we have reason to pursue this claim.
Consider the “speedrunner” and the “slow player” as two paradigm player types which capture the two fluctuating orientations that players experience in gameplay. The speedrunner is the reactive player that engages with the systems of a game to maximally reduce real-world time. They play through the game as quickly as possible, despite the representational features of the game. Reflection on the content layer of the game, let alone the fictive temporal layers of the game (what time it is in the game, for example), is radically diminished, if nonexistent. Of course, the speedrunner may need to master a game by playing through it several times before being able to speedrun the game. We are here referring to the speedrunner qua the player actively engaged in the speedrun process itself. Further, the speedrunner is deeply reflective in regard to the ludic temporal features of the game. It is their sole concern. So, when considering the speedrunner as reactive rather than reflective, we are referring to their approach to the content aspects of their media engagement. That is, the speedrunner reflects, just not on the game’s content.
On the other hand, the slow player plays with less regard towards mastery of the game’s systems. The player may configure their gameplay in light of the game’s internal, fictive, temporal affordances. For example, one might configure their play to the time of day in the gameworld, seeking a place to sleep for example at night, in Red Dead Redemption 2 (Rockstar, 2018). However, the game’s systems may also contain temporal affordances that encourage a reflective orientation. For example, also in Red Dead Redemption 2, one cannot easily “fast travel” through the world, but must make their way through the virtual environment, stopping to rest, cook food, and maintain themselves and their horse, all of which takes time. The player is punished for fast paced careless behaviour, and rewarded for careful exploration. When taking on such a reflective orientation towards their gameplay, one might also behave in morally abhorrent ways. For example, it is possible to direct Arthur to tie up innocent people and kill them by burning them over a fire. This as well takes time -- one must construct their campfire, for example, if they are to use it as a murder weapon.
Temporality provokes ethically notable player experience in other ways. For example, in Papers, Please, the player is constantly working against the clock processing migration papers. This systems-level constraint is contrasted, impossibly, at the content-level, where the player is asked to sympathise with migrants by learning of their dire situations, but without the time to reflectively consider or safely act on their concerns. If one was to take the time to engage in ethical decision making, the player would simply run out of time, and lose the game. Crucially, it is only through reflectively orienting one’s gameplay towards both the plight of the migrants and the constraints of the game’s systems can one appreciate the ethical salience of the game. That is, the ethical experience at the centre of the game, is that even you, the player, can be compelled to act immorally; that the temporal systemic constraints of one’s work can force one to engage immorally, by say, dismissing a mother and child in desperate need (Formosa et al., 2016).
Finally, consider The Punisher (Deep Silver Volition, 2005) which affords the player the choice to kill fictional characters quickly, called a “quick kill” or slowly, called a “special kill.” A special kill involves the Punisher (or you) brutally killing fictional people, who are often begging for mercy, in a way where the Punisher takes their time in killing. One special kill, for example, involves drilling through a person’s forehead. The quick kill option, on the other hand, is comparatively benign (while still incredibly violent), allowing the player to continue through the level swiftly, drawing little attention to the act of killing itself. It is, at least in part, in the player’s taking the time to stop and kill the fictional character via a special kill that might contribute to the virtual acts being morally objectionable. The quick kill, while also an engagement with virtual murder, on the other hand, does not focus on the act of killing to nearly the same extent. It is a reactive way of progressing through the game, rather than a way of playing that invites reflection over the method by which one is killed.
3.1 Ethics of Speedrunning and Slow Play
Each of these cases, as with the earlier film example from Irréversible, demonstrate how the player, as a participant in the media, may go on to not only reflect on the ethics of the virtual acts themselves, but the ethical status of their engagement with the media. The ethics of media engagement are particularly salient for video games because the interactivity of the medium seems to break down the distinction between fictional acts and media engagement in a way that other “non-interactive media,” may be able to prima facie maintain.
Ethically appraising temporally reflective gameplay appears to run in two opposing directions. On one hand, temporal design patterns appear to expose ethical criticism that may be otherwise hidden, and so drawing attention to their moral salience through encouraging reflective play, may be ethical. For example, the reactive Punisher player may fail to register anything notable in their play, and this may be itself morally problematic. This raises the question as to whether or not the speedrunner ought to reflectively engage with virtual content that demands ethical reflection.
On the other hand, however, as our analysis has shown, it also isn’t the case that engaging reflectively with morally objectionable content is always the most ethical approach to media engagement. Consider again the fictional sexual assault in Irréversible. In this case, it appears that the demand to engage reflectively with the sexual assault -- it’s being treated slowly -- at least in part, contributes to its repugnance. The reactive participant on the other hand, who merely engages with the fiction via its formal features, seems to avoid the moral challenge presented by the fictional act [20].
In the case of The Punisher, the choice to (special) kill slowly not only realises a virtual wrongdoing, but also generates the temporal resources (the time) to ethically reflect on what you are doing [21]. In this way, temporal design patterns draw the reflective player into their wrongdoings in a way that reactive gameplay avoids, exposing them to a distinct kind of ethical criticism generated through an engagement with the ethical salience of the content of a game. Slow play in Red Dead Redemption 2 forces you to slow down and consider the world you are in; that your horse isn’t just a vehicle to help you traverse the world quickly, but also an animal that will get tired if overworked. And similarly, the punisher’s special kill isn’t just a way to deal with a hostile systemic element to help progress through the game, but also a gratuitously violent engagement with fictional murder.
Additionally, as a consequence of their respective formal characteristics, film and video games may bring about distinct ethical concerns. For example, video games afford a perceived agency to the gamer -- through game design patterns such as perspective fidelity and reactive real time prompting (pushing buttons) -- which, inter alia, allows for one to position themselves alongside (if not also identify) with one’s avatar who might then enact (by proxy) morally conflicting actions in the game world. This affordance involves the player as the perpetrator of morally impermissible acts. In films, by contrast, moral salience comes about via the mere witnessing (as opposed to actively enacting) scenes of horror and violence. That is not to say that the film viewer places the ethical responsibility completely outside of the self. As the case studies have made clear, cinematic slowness can directly address spectators by viscerally and perceptually implicating or including them in the morality of the fictional act. Processes of embodied and imaginative simulation result in a phenomenological closeness or proximity to the world of film (and the characters and actions in it) that implicates or attunes the viewer not only sensorily but also ethically. This affective, embodied address constitutes a specifically cinematic ethics.
However, while each medium brings about distinct kinds of perceived ethical engagement (perpetrator and witness), the shared capacity for films and video games to enable ethical engagement through slowness highlights the role that temporality plays in users’ moral appraisal of ethically challenging content in both media. So, wherever we may land on an ethical assessment of different temporal experiences in media engagement, it seems at least minimally clear that a central feature of any ethical analysis ought to consider the temporal affordances that influence player/viewer experience; that temporality is ethically relevant in moral theorising over media engagement.
4. Conclusion
While video games and films have their own unique, medium-specific affordances or aesthetic strategies of provoking slowness, they nevertheless engender a structurally similar (phenomenal) slow, reflective response in viewers/gamers. For games, it pertains mostly to agential/ludic elements (e.g., making choices, performing actions). For cinema, the ethical saliency of slowness relates to the strong sensory, affective address of the viewer who imaginatively and bodily simulates actions in the film world.
We have made an intervention in the discourse on the ethics of gaming by proposing that we ought to consider temporality, as one of many morally relevant experiential elements of gameplay when assessing the moral status of engaging with virtual wrongdoings. With the help of the theoretical framework of cinematic slowness, we have advanced the understanding of the work temporality does in video game contexts. Our analysis of temporality in film and video games suggests that it is capable of, perhaps justifiably, shaping users' moral attitudes towards virtual wrongdoings. Our article’s conceptual contribution thus opens up new areas of exploration for future research that can, in turn, aim to empirically substantiate the extent to which it does so for actual viewers and players. Future research in video game ethics would benefit from more comparative work of this kind.
Endnotes
[1] We are restricting our consideration of virtual acts to refer to those acts that take place within the context of single-player video games. We focus on singleplayer video games to avoid the additional, and peripheral, ethical issues raised by multiplayer video games which involve interactions with multiple moral agents. Doing so allows us to focus on the moral salience of temporal engagement, our primary focus. However, we accept that other forms of gaming may be relevantly applicable to our analysis, for example, how the temporality of mobile gaming may raise distinct ethical concerns. These are avenues for future research beyond the scope of this study.
[2] Of course, slowness is not necessary or sufficient for reflective play to be realised. We take it however that, under certain conditions, slowness is conducive to reflective play.
[3] Or what Klevjer (2002) calls an interpretive and configurative practice.
[4] Adaptation scholar Linda Hutcheon similarly proposes to consider the “modes of engagement” which amounts to consideration of “a wider communicative context that [...] will change with the mode of presentation or engagement” (2012, p. 26).
[5] Joerg Fingerhut and Katrin Heimann similarly call this the “configurational” and “recognitional” level of the film experience (2022, p. 120).
[6] A comprehensive formal discussion of temporality in film is beyond the scope of this article, for this we refer readers to Carruthers, 2016 and Mroz, 2012.
[7] We are aware that this term witness is not entirely felicitous, as it carries connotations of contemplative distance. Instead, as our analysis will demonstrate, the viewer rather feels phenomenologically close and is made complicit -- deliberately, as an aesthetic strategy that the film employs -- through their act of viewing. We are still in search for a better term that adequately captures this double position of being both closely involved emotionally, but unable to act due to the ontological (spatial and temporal, as well as fictional) distance from the morally challenging content depicted on screen.
[8] De Luca and Barradas Jorge similarly argue that slowness arises from the “disjunction between shot duration and audiovisual content” or the “unjustifiably long time to show an event” (2016, p. 5). We agree and argue that under certain circumstances -- inter alia, the presentation of ethically challenging content -- this slowness can give way to ethical reflection.
[9] The total duration of the whole scene, including the segment that leads up to the part we discuss here in which the rape takes place, is approximately 13 minutes and 40 seconds.
[10] On the “follow shot” see Barker and Cottrel, 2015; Schonig, 2022, p. 125 ff.
[11] On the complexity of the relation between the camera and the viewer’s attachment to the film world or identification with characters, see Morgan, 2021. For instance, the fact that we don’t know the character well at this point in the film is a complicating factor for our identification with her. This relates to the reverse chronology of the film, which lets us get to know her more closely only later in the film after this scene.
[12] It has been argued that this submissive position results in a masochistic viewing mode (Russo, 2015). On the phenomenology of the “film’s body,” see Sobchack 1992.
[13] We assume that this effect of altered time consciousness is most notable during the viewer’s first-time viewing. Not knowing when (one even starts to wonder if) the scene will ever end exacerbates the dreadful feelings. But even upon repeated viewings, as we can testify ourselves, the effect remains firmly in place. See Wittmann (2016) and Flaherty (2000), for psychological explanations for why time seems to slow down under circumstances like stress and anxiety.
[14] Geoff King points out that it can be emotionally and mentally challenging for viewers if a film “withhold[s] clear indicators of preferred orientation” (2021, p. 2). This also goes for our example: the film does not clearly indicate to viewers how they are supposed to react mentally and emotionally to the scene and this can be both thought-provoking and “uncertainly [sic] feeling-provoking” (ibid., p. 3). Viewers can consequently feel conflicted about how they feel or think about the scene, which, in turn, could encourage ethical reflection.
[15] Again, to be sure, we do not argue that slowness necessarily leads to ethical responses, nor does our narrow focus on temporality imply that we consider temporality the only or even the most relevant factor to consider in this scene (and for the ethics of film more generally). We merely wish to highlight the ethical significance of the feature of temporality, for we believe it is generally overlooked and hence warrants due attention.
[16] Bartleby, the nay-saying character from a short story (“Bartleby, The Scrivener: A Story from Wall Street”) by Herman Melville, is known for his catchphrase: “I would prefer not to.”
[17] In this respect of interactivity, feminist film scholar Laura Mulvey (2006) made an influential distinction between cinema (as in an analogue film projected in a movie theatre) and other media like television. She argues that the latter, interactive form makes for a more possessive (and importantly, masculine) spectatorship focused on fetishistic (and ultimately unattainable) mastery and control.
[18] The act of demonstratively walking out on a film in the movie theatre in this case is likely also performative: it is intended as a kind of virtue signalling towards other spectators too. Besides speed viewing (fast forwarding), and speed walking out of the theatre, other forms of disengagement are also imaginable that vary in their efficaciousness. Here we envision viewers looking away or closing their eyes and shielding their ears. Moreover, we can also consider coping strategies of mental and affective redirection: deliberate distraction by thinking about other things or attempts to alleviate negative emotions by, for instance, attending to a second screen during a film. Moss-Wellington (2024) conducted an ethnographic study on users’ motivations for multiscreen use. His results indicate that one function of resorting to a second screen is affective relief.
[19] Vice versa, we expect a variation between viewers too, in the extent to which they are more or less prone to adopt one viewing strategy over another. Here, contextual factors like personality type, taste, viewing motivation, socio-cultural background, etc. need to be considered. This is beyond the scope of this article.
[20] A similar phenomenon may occur in professional e-gaming contexts (Montefiore & Formosa, 2023a).
[21] Of course, our analysis here may be best applied to cases where it is unambiguously you qua player that is engaging in virtual wrongdoing. There are many cases of gameplay (if not most) where your involvement with the virtual act is unclear. For example, in any one game you may take on multiple interactive stances: from bystander, to witness, to voyeur; and from different agential stances, from player qua player to player qua avatar and so on. These dimensions of gameplay, as we have indicated their relevance in the context of film watching, are of course additionally relevant to how we morally appraise virtual wrongdoings.
References
2K Marin. (2010). Bioshock 2 [Microsoft Windows]. Digital game directed by Jordan Thomas, published by 2K.
3909 LLC. (2013). Papers, Please [Microsoft Windows]. Digital game directed by Lucas Pope, published by 3909 LLC.
Aarseth, E. J. (1997). Cybertext. Johns Hopkins University Press.
Aarseth, E. J. (2014). Ontology. In B. Perron & M. J. P. Wolf (Eds.), The Routledge companion to video game studies. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203114261
Ali, R. (2015). A new solution to the gamer’s dilemma. Ethics and Information Technology, 17(4), 267-274. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-015-9381-x
Atkins, B. (2003). More than a game. Manchester University Press.
Baer, N., Hennefeld, M., Horak, L., & Iversen, G. (Eds.). (2019). Unwatchable. Rutgers University Press. https://doi.org/10.36019/9780813599625
Barker, J. M., & Cottrel, A. (2015). Eyes at the back of his head. Paragraph, 38(1), 86-100.
Björk, S., & Holopainen, J. (2005). Games and design patterns. In K. Salen & E. Zimmerman (Eds.), The game design reader: A rules of play anthology (pp. 410-437). MIT Press.
Blizzard Entertainment. (1998). StarCraft [Microsoft Windows]. Digital game directed by Chris Metzen and James Phinney, published by Blizzard Entertainment.
Bódi, B. (2023). Videogames and agency. Taylor & Francis. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003298786
Brey, P. (2003). The Social Ontology of Virtual Environments. The American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 62(1), 269-282. https://doi.org/10.1111/1536-7150.t01-1-00011
Carruthers, L. (2016). Doing time. State University of New York Press.
Elverdam, C., & Aarseth, E. (2007). Game classification and game design. Games and Culture, 2(1), 3-22. https://doi.org/10.1177/1555412006286892
Deep Silver Volition. (2005) The Punisher [PlayStation 2]. Digital game directed by Jeff Carroll, published by THQ.
Fingerhut, J., & Heimann, K. (2022). Enacting moving images: Film theory and experimental science within a new cognitive media theory. Projections, 16(1), 105-123. https://doi.org/10.3167/proj.2022.160107
Flaherty, M. G. (2000). A watched pot. NYU Press.
Formosa, P., Ryan, M., & Staines, D. (2016). Papers, Please and the systemic approach to engaging ethical expertise in videogames. Ethics and Information Technology, 18(3), 211-225. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-016-9407-z
Formosa, P., Montefiore, T., Ghasemi, O., & McEwan, M. (2023). An empirical investigation of the gamer’s dilemma: A mixed methods study of whether the dilemma exists. Behaviour & Information Technology, 43(3), 571-589. https://doi.org/10.1080/0144929X.2023.2178837
Frey, M. (2012). Tuning out, turning in, and walking off. In A. Grønstad & H. Gustafsson (Eds.), Ethics and images of pain. Routledge.
Grønstad, A. (2011). Screening the unwatchable. Palgrave Macmillan.
Hutcheon, L. (2012). A theory of adaptation (2nd ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203095010
Juul, J. (2005). Half-real: Video games between real rules and fictional worlds. MIT Press.
King, G. (2021). The cinema of discomfort. Bloomsbury Academic. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781501359279
Klevjer, R. (2002). In defense of cutscenes. In F. Mäyrä (Ed.), Proceedings of the computer games and digital cultures conference. Tampere University Press.
Luck, M. (2009). The gamer’s dilemma. Ethics and Information Technology, 11(1), 31-36. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-008-9168-4
Luck, M. (2022). The grave resolution to the gamer’s dilemma. Philosophia. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-021-00455-y
De Luca, T., & Barradas Jorge, N. (2016). Introduction: From slow cinema to slow cinemas. In T. De Luca & N. Barradas Jorge (Eds.), Slow cinema (pp. 1-21). Edinburgh University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780748696031-006
Montefiore, T., & Formosa, P. (2022). Resisting the gamer’s dilemma. Ethics and Information Technology, 24(3). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-022-09655-w
Montefiore, T., & Formosa, P. (2023a). Can e-sport gamers permissibly engage with off-limits virtual wrongdoings? Philosophy & Technology, 36(4), 66. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-023-00667-y
Montefiore, T., & Formosa, P. (2023b). Crossing the fictional line. Philosophy & Technology, 36(3), 58. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-023-00660-5
Montefiore, T. (2025). Dark patterns meet the gamer’s dilemma: Contrasting morally objectionable content with systems in video games. Games and Culture. https://doi.org/10.1177/15554120251319173
Montefiore, T., Formosa, P., & Polito, V. (2025). Extending the gamer’s dilemma: Empirically investigating the paradox of fictionally going too far across media. Philosophical Psychology, 1-22. https://doi.org/10.1080/09515089.2024.2354432
Montefiore, T., & Luck, M. (2025). The permissible play principle: How to ensure you are playing videogames permissibly. Analysis. https://doi.org/10.1093/analys/anaf072
Morgan, D. (2021). The lure of the image. University of California Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1r2xxhn
Moss-Wellington, W. (2024, June). Multiscreen emotions [Conference paper]. SCSMI Conference, Budapest.
Mroz, M. (2012). Temporality and film analysis. Edinburgh University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780748643479
Mulvey, L. (2006). Death 24x a second: Stillness and the moving image. Reaktion Books.
Naughty Dog. (2013). The Last of Us [PlayStation 3]. Digital game directed by Neil Druckmann and Bruce Straley, published by Sony Interactive Entertainment.
Nguyen, C. T. (2019). The right way to play a game. Game Studies, 19(1). http://gamestudies.org/1901/articles/nguyen
Nintendo EAD. (1998). The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time [Nintendo 64]. Digital game directed by Eiji Aonuma, Toru Osawa, Yoichi Yamada, Yoshiaki Koizumi and Toshio Iwawaki, published by Nintendo.
Noé, G. (Director). (2002). Irréversible [Film]. Mars Distribution.
Öhman, C. (2020). Introducing the pervert’s dilemma. Ethics and Information Technology, 22(2), 133-140. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-019-09522-1
Ostritsch, S. (2017). The amoralist challenge to gaming and the gamer’s moral obligation. Ethics and Information Technology, 19(2), 117-128. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-017-9420-x
Plantinga, C. R. (2009). Moving viewers. University of California Press. https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520943919
Plantinga, C. R., & Smith, G. M. (1999). Passionate views. Johns Hopkins University Press.
Ramirez, E. J. (2020). How to (dis)solve the gamer’s dilemma. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 23(1), 141-161. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-019-10049-z
Rockstar Games. (2018). Red Dead Redemption 2 [PlayStation 4]. Digital game produced by Rob Nelson, published by Rockstar Games.
Russo, P. (2015). Beyond Perverse Allegiance: The Problem of Viewers’ Engagement in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Salò or The 120 Days of Sodom. Senses of Cinema, 77. https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2019/20-years-of-senses/beyond-perverse-allegiance-the-problem-of-viewers-engagement-in-pier-paolo-pasolinis-salo-or-the-120-days-of-sodom-issue-77-december-2015/
Ryan, M., Formosa, P., Howarth, S., & Staines, D. (2020). Measuring morality in videogames research. Ethics & Information Technology, 22(1), 55-68.
Schonig, J. (2022). The shape of motion: Cinema and the aesthetics of movement. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190093884.001.0001
Sicart, M. (2013). Beyond choices: The design of ethical gameplay. MIT Press.
Sinnerbrink, R. (2019). Film and ethics. In C. Rawls, D. Neiva, & S. S. Gouveia (Eds.), Philosophy and film: Bridging divides (pp. 185-205). Routledge.
Smith, M. (2022). Engaging characters: Fiction, emotion, and the cinema (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198871071.001.0001
Sobchack, V. C. (1992). The address of the eye: A phenomenology of film experience. Princeton University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780691213279
Tavinor, G. (2014). Fiction. In B. Perron & M. J. P. Wolf (Eds.), The Routledge companion to video game studies. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203114261
Tavinor, G. (2017). What’s my motivation? Video games and interpretative performance. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 75(1), 23-33. https://doi.org/10.1111/jaac.12334
Wahlberg, M. (2003). Figures of time. Stockholm University.
Wittmann, M. (2016). Felt time: The psychology of how we perceive time (E. Butler, Trans.). MIT Press.
Young, G. (2013). Enacting taboos as a means to an end; but what end? Ethics and Information Technology, 15(1), 13-23. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-012-9306-x
Young, G. (2017). Objections to Ostritsch’s argument in “The amoralist challenge to gaming and the gamer’s moral obligation.” Ethics and Information Technology, 19(3), 209-219. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-017-9437-1
Zagal, J. P., & Mateas, M. (2010). Time in video games. Simulation & Gaming, 41(6), 844-868.