Playful Capitalism, or Play as an Instrument of Capital

This article applies Gray and Suri’s concept of Ghost Work and Ekbia and Nardi’s concept of Heteromation to the analysis of Quick, Draw!, a game-like product developed by Google. The article argues that digital capitalism uses play as an instrument to make exploitative labor practices feel more engaging, while camouflaging their being work

The Ethics of Computer Game Design

Return Power Shift Control: Design Ethics in Computer Games Miguel Sicart Ph.D. Student Department of Digital Aesthetics and Communication IT University of Copenhagen – Denmark [email protected] Abstract This paper addresses the question of the Ethics of computer games’ design. Applying a philosophical methodology, this research intends to analyze the ways computer games enforce ethical discourses via (conscious) design decisions. Ultimately, this paper will ground the rhetoric needed to formalize the morality of computer games. In order to answer the question of the morality of games, three philosophical traditions will be used: Don Ihde’s postphenomenology (Ihde: 1993), Michel Foucault’s analyses of power (Foucault: 1980, 2000), and Luciano Floridi’s Information Ethics (Floridi & Sanders: 1999, 2004a, 2004b). Other theoretical frameworks used will be the legal approach to the nature of Code by Lawrence Lessig (Lessig: 1999) and game design theories (Rollings & Morton: 2003, Zimmerman & Salen: 2003). The basic premise of this paper is that computer games enforce their ethical discourses also through their design. The morality of computer games lies not only in what they tell, but also in how it is told. In order to understand this shift of perspective, games will be defined as agent systems in which ethical values are softwired in the design. This power-agency also affects the experience of the game by the players. Computer games imply an active role of the user/player in their configuration as experience and as cultural object. This active role is determined by a specific design of the system, oriented to create gameplay. In order to play the game, users have to understand and accept that design. Thus, design becomes a power institution in the field of the game, prohibiting and allowing certain activities and not others. Games are designed objects. And design is power. Agents uphold power and Ethical actions. This paper will argue for the definition of games as agents with a rather large autonomy. Thus, computer games become accountable for the moral values their designs promote, as they are agents of those values. Almost all games, including RPGs, operate with a certain notion of winning condition. In single player games, the system puts obstacles to the player who attempt to achieve the winning condition. The game will be designed for those means, and the player has to accept the regulations of the game’s architecture to achieve success. On the other hand, multiplayer games are different. They are not designed as an obstacle to a player, but as set of boundaries the players cannot trespass in their attempt to achieve the winning condition before or better than the other players. In the case of multiplayer games, it is also necessary to take into account that the power structure of the game permeates to the social structures built surrounding the game. That is, players that do not follow or exploit the designed routes to achieve the winning condition are seen as unlawful players. In other words, the ethics of the design are implemented to the ethics of the group of players. Given this framework, this paper will argue for computer games being conveyors of ethical discourses that are implemented via design. A game will be defined as a moral agent, ethically accountable for the values its architecture enforces. Design in computer games implies power and control. By imposing a power structure over the users’ choices and strategies, restraining them of free choice and conditioning them to a certain success condition, design in computer games becomes morally accountable. It becomes a moral object as well as a moral agent. As a summary, this paper will argue for the moral accountability of computer game design as an ethical object and as an ethical agent. The design architecture of the game is an active power structure in which ethical discourses and moral values are embedded. This paper will use three games as examples: in XIII (Dargaud/UbiSoft: 2003), the design architecture does not allow the player to kill certain NPCs, namely policemen. The main character of the game is amnesic, but his moral standards are defined with a design limitation: a dead cop means game over. More complex is the case of Manhunt (RockStar North: 2003). Even though the game has raised discussions due to its content, this paper will focus on the way the game is designed, and how that design is used to enhance a certain experience by the player: namely, that of a hunted man that has to kill to survive in a hostile environment. Finally, Battlefield 1942 (Digital Illusions: 2002) will be the multiplayer example, especially for the freedom its architecture gives to the players, which has contributed to a rich ethical code of conduct in may BF 1942 servers. Other examples taken from games that actually take into account ethical values in their game design, such as Knights of the Old Republic (BioWare: 2003), will be taken into consideration as a symptom of the awareness designers have of their power over players. Games like Fable (BigBlueBox Studios/Lionhead Studios: 2004) and The Sims 2 (Maxis: 2004) suggest that computer games are becoming more and more aware on the ways they can convey ethical values, and how their players experience them. Are computer games moral objects? Can game design enhance ethical discourses? If so, how? These two are the main questions of this paper. The topic of Ethics brings forth many controversial issues concerning computer games. This paper intends to provide a theoretically solid, well-grounded perspective on the question of ethics in computer games. Games are often blamed for evil as if they had some magic, totemic power. Games pervert the youth and turn them into malicious sociopaths, some say. My goal with this research is no other than to prove that there is no such "dark magic" in games, even though they are definitely morally accountable objects. My goal is to allow a scientific approach to the morality of games to contribute to the academic and media understanding of the complexity of the ethical construction in computer game design. References Aarseth, Espen. Cybertext. Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1997. ———. "Genre Trouble: Narrativism and the Art of Simulation." In First Person. New Media as Story, Performace, and Game, edited by Noah and Pat Harrigan Wardrip-Fruin, 45 - 55. London & Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2003. Anderson, Craig A. & Karen E. Dill. "Video Games and Aggressive Thoughts, Feelings and Behavior in the Laboratory and in Life." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 78, no. 4 (2000): 772-90. Audi, Robert (ed.). The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy. Second ed. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 1999. Crawford, Chris. On Game Design. Indianapolis: New Riders, 2003. Floridi, Luciano & J.W. Sanders. "Entropy as Evil in Information Ethics." Etica & Politica I, no. 2 (1999). ———. "Artificial Evil and the Foundation of Computer Ethics." Ethics an Information Technology 3, no. 1 (2001): 55-66. Floridi, Luciano and J.W. Sanders. "Internet Ethics: The Constructionist Values of Homo Poieticus." In The Impact of the Internet in Our Moral Lives, edited by R. Cavalier. New York: SUNY, 2003. Floridi, Luciano. "Informational Realism." Paper presented at the Conferences in Research and Practice in Information Technology 2004. Floridi, Luciano & J.W. Sanders. "On the Morality of Artificial Agents." Minds and Machines (2004). Foucault, Michel. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews & Other Writings 1972-1977. Edited by Colin Gordon. New York: Pantheon Books, 1980. ———. Discipline and Punish. Translated by Alan Sheridan. London: Penguin, 1991. ———. Ethics. Subjectivity and Truth. 4 vols. Vol. 1, Essential Works of Foucault 1954-1984. London: Penguin, 1997. ———. Power. Essential Works of Foucault 1954-1984. Edited by James D. Faubion. London: Penguin, 2000. Ihde, Don. Postphenomenology. Essays in the Postmodern Context, Northwestern Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1993. Iser, Wolfgang. The Act of Reading. A Theory of the Aesthetic Response. London: The John Hopkins University Press, 1978. Juul, Jesper. "Introduction to Game Time." In First Person. New Media as Story, Performace, and Game, edited by Noah and Pat Harrigan Wardrip-Fruin, 131 - 42. London & Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2003. ———. Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds. Copenhagen: IT University of Copenhagen, 2004. Lessig, Lawrence. Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace. New York: Basic Books, 1999. Ondrejka, Cory. Living on the Edge: Digital Worlds Which Embrace the Real World 2004 [cited June 5 2004]. Available from http://ssrn.com/abstract=555661. Reynolds, Ren. Playing a "Good" Game: A Philosophical Approach to Understanding the Morality of Games 2002 [cited 3/2 2004]. Available from http://www.igda.org/articles/rreynoldsethics.php. Winner, L. "Do Artifacts Have Politics?" In The Whale and the Reactor: A Search for Limits in an Age of High Technology, 13-39. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986. Zimmerman, Eric and Katie Salen. Rules of Play - Game Design Fundamentals. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2003. Zimmerman, Eric. "Narrative Interactivity, Play, and Games: Four Naughty Concepts in Need of Discipline." In First Person. New Media as Story, Performance, and Game, edited by Noah and Pat Harrigan Wardrip-Fruin, 154 - 64. London & Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2003

Mundos y sistemas: entendiendo el diseño de la gameplay ética

En este artículo presento un modelo que describe la estructura informativa de cualquier juego. Utilizaré este modelo para describir la naturaleza ontológica de todo juego, así como las posibilidades del diseño de juegos para crear gameplay ética.In this paper I will present an informational model that describes the structure of games, which will be applied to answering the question of the nature and possibilities of the design of ethical gameplay, both for computer games and for non-digital games

Fomento de la participación política y de las virtudes cívicas en secundaria

La creciente desafección política desincentiva a los jóvenes a participar en la vida política pública. Paralelamente, se detecta en la sociedad un desconocimiento de los resortes de poder de la democracia que, a menudo, parecen inescrutables. Estas circunstancias hacen que la desconfianza en el sistema disminuya. Este documento estudia las causas y explora una propuesta didáctica en el ámbito de la enseñanza secundaria con un doble propósito: (1) fomentar la participación política facilitando los conocimientos esenciales y promoviendo la motivación por la materia; y (2), paralelamente, formarlos con las habilidades / virtudes sociales necesarias para la vida y, particularmente, la pública. Se constata que el Programa del Diploma del Bachillerato Internacional es una excelente herramienta para los objetivos marcados (conocimientos y habilidades y virtudes sociales) y, además, tiene la ventaja añadida de que promueve el desarrollo de los procesos cognitivos de orden superior. Finalmente, se proponen un conjunto elegido de herramientas didácticas para el proceso de enseñanza aprendizaje y una planificación de una unidad didáctica de la asignatura Política Global del Bachillerato Internacional.The growing political disaffection discourages young citizens to participate in the political public life. At the same time, a lack of knowledge of the mechanisms of power in a democracy is detected in society, which often seem inscrutable. These circumstances cause a growing distrust in the democratic system. This document studies the causes of such disaffection and explores a didactic proposal in the field of secondary education with a dual purpose: (1) to promote political participation of the future adult citizens by facilitating essential knowledge and promoting motivation for the subject; and (2), in parallel, train young students with the social skills / virtues necessary for life and, especially, public life. It is also found that the International Baccalaureate Diploma Program is an excellent tool for the established objectives (knowledge and skills, and social virtues) and, in addition, it has the additional advantage of promoting the development of higher order of thinking processes. Finally, a set of didactic tools is chosen for the teaching-learning process and a didactic unit of the subject Global Politics of the International Baccalaureate is planned

Playin’ the city : artistic and scientific approaches to playful urban arts

An Theorien und Diskussionen über die Stadt mangelt es nicht, denn Städte dienen uns u.a. als Projektionsfläche zur Auseinandersetzung mit unserer Vergangenheit, der Gegenwart und unserer Zukunft. Diese Ausgabe 1 (2016) der Navigationen untersucht spielerische Formen dieser Auseinandersetzung in und mit der Stadt durch die sogenannten playful urban arts.The city has been discussed and theorized widely, and it continues to serve as a space in which our sense of the present, past, and future is constantly negotiated. This issue 1 (2016) of Navigationen examines new ways of engaging with cities through what are called the playful urban arts. Playful engagements with the urban environment frequently strive to create new ways of imagining and experiencing the city. In and through play, city spaces can become playgrounds that have the potential to transform people’s sense of themselves as human actors in an urban network of spatially bound and socio-economically grounded actions. Emerging from the playin’siegen urban games festival 2015, the essays and panel discussions assembled in this issue provide an interdisciplinary account of the contemporary playful urban arts. Wiht contributions by Miguel Sicart, Andreas Rauscher, Daniel Stein, Judith Ackermann and Martin Reiche, Michael Straeubig and Sebastian Quack, Marianne Halblaub Miranda and Martin Knöll, and Anne Lena Hartman