The Digital Catharsis of Crime: Pleasure, Guilt, and Moral Boundaries in Open-World Video Games

Abstract

This thesis investigates how players of Grand Theft Auto V and Red Dead Redemption 2 morally make sense of in-game crime. The study is motivated by the fact that video games are important cultural spaces where players not only watch crime and violence but also participate in them through play. While previous research on violent video games has often focused on aggression and media effects, this thesis builds on qualitative, criminological, and ethical approaches that understand players as active interpreters of virtual violence, deviance, and moral responsibility. The aim is to examine how players describe, emotionally experience, justify, question, and repair their own in-game crimes, and how the two games’ systems shape these experiences. Theoretically, the thesis draws on cultural criminology, play theory, and moral agency, especially the ideas of crime as carnival, play as a bounded but unstable activity, and moral disengagement as a way of managing responsibility. Methodologically, it uses a qualitative design based on 15 semi-structured interviews and 29 Reddit discussions from four game-related subreddits, analysed through qualitative content analysis. The findings show that in-game crime is not experienced in one simple way. Players can enjoy criminal actions because they create excitement, humour, freedom, challenge, or release, but the same actions can also produce guilt, discomfort, hesitation, or attempts to undo what happened. The comparison shows that design matters. Grand Theft Auto V often makes crime feel fast, exaggerated, and easy to repeat, turning wrongdoing into action, humour, and spectacle. Red Dead Redemption 2 often makes crime feel heavier by connecting wrongdoing to social reactions, moral judgement, and visible consequences. This thesis argues that in-game crime is not morally empty simply because it is fictional. Instead, it becomes meaningful through the interaction between players, game systems, emotions, victims, and wider cultural understandings of crime, violence, and responsibility. The contribution of the thesis is to show how crime centred games make law-breaking playable and create spaces where morality is constantly negotiated.

Popular Abstract

This thesis explores how players make sense of crime in two popular video games, Grand Theft Auto V and Red Dead Redemption 2. Both games allow players to steal, fight, kill, escape the law, rob people, and break rules.These actions are fictional, but they can still feel exciting, funny, uncomfortable, or morally complicated. The main question is how players morally make sense of in-game crime.
The study does not ask whether violent video games cause real-life violence. Instead, it focuses on how players talk about what they do in games. I used 15 interviews with players and 29 Reddit discussions from communities about the two games. I looked at how players described their actions, what emotions they connected to them, and how they explained moments of guilt, pleasure, humour, or discomfort.
The findings show that in-game crime is not experienced in one simple way. Many players enjoy crime in games because it creates speed, chaos, challenge, freedom, and humour. In Grand Theft Auto V, crime often feels fast and exaggerated, turning wrongdoing into spectacle and entertainment. In Red Dead Redemption 2, crime is also enjoyable, but it often feels more serious. The game world reacts more strongly to what the player does, and wrongdoing can leave more visible consequences. Players described crime in this game as more connected to the story, the main character, and the atmosphere of the outlaw world. The thesis also shows that players often draw moral boundaries. Many players were less troubled by harming generic non-playable characters, but felt guilty about harming animals, vulnerable characters, or other real players online. Some players went back to an earlier point in the game after doing something they regretted. Others justified violence as part of the story, as self-defense, as revenge, or simply as “just a game.” This shows that players are not passive. They actively decide what feels acceptable, what feels wrong, and how to continue playing after uncomfortable moments. The main conclusion is that in-game crime is not the same as real crime, but it is still socially and morally meaningful. Video games create spaces where players can experiment with transgression, responsibility, violence, and consequences without real-world harm. Because players participate in these actions rather than only watch them, crime in games becomes something they perform, enjoy, question, and sometimes repair. This makes crime-centred games important to study, not only as entertainment, but as cultural spaces where people negotiate morality through play.

• author: Thanou, Vaia
• supervisor: Tove Westberg
• organization: Sociology; Department of Sociology
• course: CCRM20 20261
• year: 2026
• type: H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
• subject: Social Sciences
• keywords: in-game crime, video games, morality, Grand Theft Auto V, Red Dead Redemption 2, cultural criminology, player experience
• language: English
• id: 9235417
• date added to LUP: 2026-07-03 08:59:02
• date last changed: 2026-07-03 08:59:02