From Street Games to Virtual Games: Assessing the Developmental Processes of Digital Games in Terms of Moral Developments of Child Users

Abstract

Games based on the emergence of human beings and even before have started to shift from the street to the virtual world with the technological developments and the widespread use of the internet. The first digital game trials that started in the middle of the 20th century for academic purposes began to be produced for commercial purposes in the early 1970s, thus the foundation of the digital game industry, which has reached hundreds of billions of dollars was laid. From this date to present, the game companies, which have entered the race to obtain the largest share of the cake by reaching the highest number of customers, have started to offer games with advanced features day by day. This race, which causes users to play digital games more often and for a long time, also brought the problematique of “the effects of digital games on children’s moral development”. Because, digital games, besides being means of entertainment and pleasure, are very suitable tools to send certain messages to the subconscious of the users. It is seen that especially in new generation digital games, the subliminal messages that are containing the scenes and discourses that evoke sexuality are frequently and that male characters with generally white skin are muscular, strong and inclined to violence and thus achieve success, and female characters with sexy clothes are the most used ones by developers. However, digital games can also contribute to the moral development of children according to their content and production purposes. Therefore, digital game contents should be well analyzed and those with appropriate content should be allowed to be played.