The wider research project from which this paper’s findings are drawn seeks to address what Moscovici (1998) would term an instance of ‘the scandal of social thought.’ This is a phrase he uses to describe humans tendency for accepting non-logical and non-rational thinking. According to Moscovici, it is this kind of thinking has led to “illusionary correlations which [even] objective facts are incapable of correcting” (p. 210). The enduring and habitual belief under consideration here is, of course, the popular notion that digital games constitute injurious and harmful content involving players in actions that lead to a transmutation from games to the real world. This proposal or belief has given ‘effects research’ purpose, stimulated public concerns, and has triggered the intervention of regulation (as a legal issue in some parts of the globe). The treatment of games as violence is a position that game studies has intentionally, and for good reason (see Schott et al., 2013b), avoided since its inception. Yet, the implications of our disciplines’ seeming disinterest is that it leaves classification systems in a position where they are still required to protect against the possibility of the putative effects of games. This, in turn, further reinforces the beliefs that first necessitated caution. While this represents a ‘well-worn’ debate, and while the notion of games as violent media no longer troubles the creators and players of games with the same vigor that it did over a decade ago, it does nevertheless remain an area of debate that our discipline has much to offer. We propose that there is benefit to be gained from re-
examining the value of some of our more familiar deliberations, for example, as to whether games primarily constitute ludic space and time generators (Aarseth, 2013) that are experienced as, and defined by, their operational systems, or whether they represent complex narrative forms that seek to persuade players that they are indexical (drawn from, related to real life).
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