Morality Play: A Model for Developing Games of Moral Expertise

According to cognitive psychologists, moral decision-making is a dual-process phenomenon involving two types of cognitive processes: explicit reasoning and implicit intuition. Moral development involves training and integrating both types of cognitive processes through a mix of instruction, practice, and reflection. Serious games are an ideal platform for this kind of moral training, as they provide safe spaces for exploring difficult moral problems and practicing the skills necessary to resolve them. In this article, we present Morality Play, a model for the design of serious games for ethical expertise development based on the Integrative Ethical Education framework from moral psychology and the Lens of the Toy model for serious game design

Focus, Sensitivity, Judgement, Action: Four Lenses for Designing Morally Engaging Games

Historically the focus of moral decision-making in games has been narrow, mostly confined to challenges of moral judgement (deciding right and wrong). In this paper, we look to moral psychology to get a broader view of the skills involved in ethical behaviour and how these skills can be employed in games. Following the Four Component Model of Rest and colleagues, we identify four “lenses” – perspectives for considering moral gameplay in terms of focus, sensitivity, judgement and action – and describe the design problems raised by each. To conclude, we analyse two recent games, The Walking Dead and Papers, Please, and show how the lenses give us insight into important design differences between these games

Four Lenses for Designing Morally Engaging Games

Historically the focus of moral decision-making in games has been narrow, mostly confined to challenges of moral judgement (deciding right and wrong). In this paper, we look to moral psychology to get a broader view of the skills involved in ethical behaviour and how they may be employed in games. Following the Four Component Model of Rest and colleagues, we identify four “lenses” – perspectives for considering moral gameplay in terms of focus, sensitivity, judgement and action – and describe the design problems raised by each. To conclude, we analyse two recent games, The Walking Dead and Papers, Please, and show how the lenses give us insight into important design differences between them

Papers, Please and the systemic approach to engaging ethical expertise in videogames

Papers, Please, by Lucas Pope (2013), explores the story of a customs inspector in the fictional political regime of Arstotzka. In this paper we explore the stories, systems and moral themes of Papers, Please in order to illustrate the systemic approach to designing videogames for moral engagement. Next, drawing on the Four Component model of ethical expertise from moral psychology, we contrast this systemic approach with the more common scripted approach. We conclude by demonstrating the different strengths and weaknesses that these two approaches have when it comes to designing videogames that engage the different aspects of a player’s moral expertise

Cs the Day: The Trading Card Game

In many ways, Cs the Day: The Card Game is an ode both to academia, which is imperfect but can at times be wonderful, and to my personal passion and research interest, which has helped me to find a place within this profession. It is also, as is discussed in more detail below, an extension of an existing game, and as such embodies many of the same goals and principles of that game. Thus, designing Cs the Day: The Card Game required careful attention to how the mechanics and narrative reflect both the profession and the original game. There are certainly substantial critiques to be made about academia, and in particular the tenure process. Indeed, Way Jeng’s “How I Learned to Love Despair: Using Simulation Video Games for Advocacy and Change,” a tycoon-esque simulation game addressing the use of contingent faculty in English departments, does an excellent job of modeling how games can be used to critique academia. That game places players in the role of an English department chair and asks them to balance faculty loads (both service and teaching related), the department budget, and university goals. By doing so, Jeng creates an open space for academics to play with this system, in a way that encourages further critique and engagement with the ethics of dependance on contingent faculty. Thus, the play of “Despair” is transformative in that it allows us to “see values and practice them and challenge them so they become more than mindless habits” (Sicart 5)

Playing Around With Morality: Introducing the Special Issue on “Morality Play”

This special issue of Games and Culture focuses on the intersection between video games and ethics. This introduction briefly sets out the key research questions in the research field and identifies trends in the articles included in this special issu

Liquidity Protection versus Moral Hazard: The Role of the IMF

This paper develops a simple game between the IMF a county and a set of atomistic private investors. The model is motivated by the case of Argentina. Under reasonable assumptions, the one shot game has no Nash equilibrium in pure strategies. Considering an equilibrium in mixed strategies, conditions are derived on whether the IMF should exist. A “cooperative first best” may be supported in a repeated game by a “minimum punishment strategy” that may be optimal but may break down if the probability of insolvency rises. This implies that countries are likely to deviate in bad times placing the IMF in an “impossible position”. It is suggested that the international financial architecture (IFA) remains incomplete.

Feeling good about myself : real-time hermeneutics and its consequences

Questions concerning the way in which digital games produce meaning and the possibility that their reconfigurability influences the process of interpretation have been debated since the very beginning of contemporary game studies. Based on general agreement between scholars, two areas of inquiry have been distinguished: the story produced by a game, and game mechanics, or rather all the information necessary to operate within them. The so-called "Game vs. Story division" has been analysed from multiple perspectives and theoretical standpoints. Among the scholars adopting the hermeneutical angle, there seems to be a consensus regarding the two distinct interpretative processes that occur while a game is played, although they do not agree about which should be considered the primary one. Scholars arguing for the unique character of digital games tend to focus on the interpretation created while the game is played that relates to aspects of gameplay. They stress the importance of so-called "real-time hermeneutics", as this is unprecedented in other media. In turn, researchers questioning the specificity of games as a medium claim that a proper interpretation should concern itself with the stories produced through playing, rendering such interpretation similar to every other hermeneutical process. Therefore, the process of understanding a game could be explained within the existing hermeneutical framework without any need to introduce media-specific interventions. In this paper, I will investigate the process of understanding video games, following the detailed, step-by-step description of interpretation provided by Paul Ricoeur in his American lectures. In doing so, I will supplement the concept of "real life hermeneutics" by narrowing the gap between interpreting game stories and gameplay situations. While such a perspective will bring me closer to a stance which denies any specificity to video games (at least regarding interpretation), I will also describe the key difference between understanding a video game and a traditional text, and briefly point towards its possible consequences, building upon Charles Taylor’s concept of ethics of authenticity