Duke Nukem 3D

'Detective — What Were You Hoping to Accomplish?': Benign Violation as Means of Moral Detection in Disco Elysium

Jon Stone's paper argues that Benign Violation Theory, originally developed to explain humour, offers a productive framework for understanding how video games allow players to experimentally transgress social norms and taboos as a route to moral investigation and reflection.

• Benign Violation Theory, originally developed to explain humour, is applied by Jon Stone as a framework for how video games let players experimentally transgress social norms as a route to moral investigation.
• Whether a transgressive act reads as funny, disturbing, or morally weighty depends on how the game frames it, especially whether a convincing fictive justification supports the violation or the game breaks an implicit contract with the player.
• Disco Elysium deliberately withholds certainty about which moral paths are correct, refusing to reward one stance over another so that moral navigation itself becomes the substance of both its humour and its suffering.