Sex, weapons and video games

After four decades of technological development, video games have reached an extraordinary popularity around the world, and surprising levels of realism and graphicness. Video games have gained a pivotal role in the society and such privilege position has raised questions about its impact on players. The study of violent graphicness as a trigger for real world aggression has dominated the academic sphere of video games research, but the need to understand motivations, perceptions, and reasoning of players has gained particular relevance in the study of explicit content in video games. This thesis followed the latest direction and through an experimental design, explored how violent and sexual explicit content can influence the perceptions of players and how moral reasoning and judgment of gamers can influence such perceptions. The findings showed that violent content influenced the perception of explicitness when the participants showed a strong salience on morality based on harm and care principles. On the other hand, sexual content influenced the perception of realism, when the contestants showed a salient moral foundation based on fairness and purity principles. Furthermore, violent content influenced the perception of realism when participants considered violent content too controlled on media. And finally, sexual content influenced the perception of enjoyment when participants previously considered sexual explicit content as objectionable.