No time for a long reply, but what I want to write has video games at the center. Exterminate the aliens! is fine, in a game. But if you sincerely believe it's not a game, then you're being cruel (or righteous, if you think the aliens are evil), even though it isn't real.

(This also applies to forks. If you sincerely anthropomorphize a fork, you're silly, but you'd better treat that fork with respect, or you're silly and unpleasant.)

What do I mean by "fine", though? I just mean it's beyond my capacity to analyse, so I'm not going to proclaim a judgment on it, because I can't and it's not my business.

If you know it's a game but it seems kind of racist and you like that, well, this is the player's own business. I can say "you should be less racist" but I don't know what processing the player is really doing, and the player is not on trial for playing, and shouldn't be.

So yes, the kids should have space to play at being racist. But this is a difficult thing to express: people shouldn't be bad, but also, people should have freedom, including the freedom to be bad, which they shouldn't do.

I suppose games people play include things they say playfully in public. Then I'm forced to decide whether to say "clanker" or not. I think probably not, for now, but maybe I will if it becomes really commonplace.

> But if you sincerely believe it's not a game, then you're being cruel (or righteous, if you think the aliens are evil), even though it isn't real.

let me stop you right there. you're making a lot of assumptions about the shapes life can take. encountering and fighting a grey goo or tyrannid invasion wouldn't have a moral quality any more than it does when a man fights a hungry bear in the woods

it's just nature, eat or get eaten.

if we encounter space monks then we'll talk about morality