the gamesnetwork email thread
Hi all,
Although I’m more of a humanities scholar, I’m working with a small interdisciplinary team (me, a psychologist, and a philosopher) using social science methods to study how game players understand decisions and actions in games that appear to have moral and ethical dimensions. We are interested in how players framing their gameplay impacts their moral reasoning.
I’m wondering if people have suggestions for published research I could read that specifically looks at how interpretation and the gaming situation impacts shapes players’ experience of moral and ethical gameplay. I’ve seen social scientific research applying theories like Moral Foundations Theory and Moral Disengagement Theory (neither of which I’m an expert in) to gameplay. That’s really interesting, but typically, I don’t see that research talking about the ways in which the mediated experience of playing a game differs from everyday life—and that clearly matters. I’m guessing there is social science research on games that does tackle that difference, and I’m just not finding it. If you have suggestions, I’d love to hear it (off list is fine).
Also, if anyone would be interested in doing a panel or workshop proposal for the DiGRA 2023 conference on something related to this, I’d be interested in talking about that.
Thanks!
Kevin Schut (he/him), PhD
Game Development Program Lead
Professor of Media + Communication
Hi,
I looked at some of this in my earlier research that ended up turning into World of Warcraft expertise… but my earliest foray into WoW was about how different it was from models of social dilemmas. If you’re interested, there’s a paper I wrote in eLearning, Moral Ambiguity in The Witcher (2008, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.2304/elea.2008.5.3.358) and then my first WoW paper discussed how different cooperation was in the game from models of the prisoner’s dilemma (in Knights of the Old Republic), (2009, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1555412008325478).
(As a side note, mine and a bunch of others’ work was recently featured in a Folding Ideas video on professionalism of play, and if anyone is interested in the out-of-print book of mine, Leet Noobs, just email me.)
These aren’t exactly directly related to what you’re interested in, but I hope that helps. There’s A LOT out there about Bioware games, etc., but I haven’t looked in a while…
mark
You see before you Mark Chen, PhD. Above his head appears a label that changes every time you look at it between “Hoodie-Wearing Games Scholar Thug,” “PT Lecturer at UW Bothell,” and “A very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future.” Do you send him a tweet (@mcdanger), check out his website (markdangerchen.net), or respond to this email? His desk and surroundings are on fire as he smiles and says, “everything is fine.”
Hi Kevin,
You could look into the work of Tilo Hartmann, who has published on Moral Disengagement in Video Games. Also Miguel Sicart comes to mind, who has written about moral dilemmas in gaming – not such if this includes user studies though.
Hope this helps, kind regards,
Sander
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • dr. ing. S.C.J. (Sander) Bakkes Assistant Professor in Game Technology
Stephanie Patridge has published several articles in this area.
Also the journal Ethics and Information Technology is a place to visit with respect to these issues.
David Callahan Associate Professor
Department of Languages & Cultures University of Aveiro https://aveiro.academia.edu/DavidCallahan
Hi Kevin,
I actually wrote my PhD on this topic, though mainly in relation to multiplayer games. I have a few published articles that draw from social science methods that you might find interesting:
Ludic Ethics: The Ethical Negotiations of Players in Online Multiplayer Games https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1555412020971534
Apathetic Villagers and the Trolls Who Love Them: Player Amorality in Online Multiplayer Games https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3369457.3369514
From ‘Silly’ to ‘Scumbag’: Reddit Discussion of a Case of Groping in a Virtual Reality Game http://www.digra.org/wp-content/uploads/digital-library/DiGRA_2020_paper_272.pdf
These papers - particularly that first one - will likely also have quite a few references that will be useful to you.
Please feel free to email me about anything if you have more questions - keen to hear your thoughts on a panel/workshop as well!
Best regards,
Lucy
Lucy Amelia Sparrow Research Fellow School of Computing and Information Systems, FEIT Melbourne Connect The University of Melbourne VIC 3053, Australia
Hey Kevin,
In addition to the papers already suggested, you might be interested in this empirical paper from Formosa et al. looking at the impact “morality meters” have on the way players perceive and respond to moral dilemmas in games:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/15554120211017040
You might also find it useful to look at the work done on using games for ethics/civics education, including:
We, The Gamers: https://www.amazon.com/We-Gamers-Games-Ethics-Civics/dp/0190926112 Morality Play: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1555412017729596
I’d also be keen to do a panel. There’s a lot of good work in this area and I’m excited to keep building on it.
Hi Kevin,
I applied Moral Foundations Theory to a study I did for my PhD thesis that you might be interested in - can’t remember if I talked about it in a short publication yet in my thesis I had examples where players reported the differences between their in-game morals and in-life morals. Also somewhere in that thesis I mentioned how game theory economists often misapply game theory experiments to drawing broad conclusions about cultures’ morals - if that’s of any interest please feel free to email me, always happy to have a chat to share what I can and learn about your project and maybe even help with your panel!
Tom
Hi Kevin,
I am one of the researchers on the morality meter paper Dan cites below (thanks Dan!). We’re about to publish a quantitative exploration of this topic, showing how morality meters can affect players’ in-game choices. I’d be happy to send you a preprint.
I keep a blog of my reading in this area at moralityplay.org. I’d be keen to set up an online reading group in this area, if others are interested. I’d also be very happy to revive the Morality Play workshop at DiGRA and/or FDG.
Malcolm
David Simkins also did work in this area (I don’t have it handy, but it should be pretty easy to find).
Hi Kevin,
I am a post doctoral gaming/psychology scholar at the University of Luxembourg and finished my PhD on “Moral decision-making in games” this year. With regard to gaming/context variables, I especially looked at time pressure and both avatar and NPCs design and how these three factors influences in-game decision-making.
If you are interested in further reading into my work here are the references to my PhD papers: 1) A theoretical framework: https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190072216.013.35 2) A qualitative focus group study: https://doi.org/10.1002/hbe2.189 3) A quantitative case study on Detroit: Become Human: https://doi.org/10.1027/1864-1105/a000323 4) And a quantitative laboratory experiment: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.entcom.2022.100485 (If you can’t access a paper, feel free to reach out to me, I am happy to provide you with a copy or with more information on the projects 🙂).
Also, as someone still fascinated with virtual morality, I can just agree with all the others, that I would love to connect/join a panel/workshop/reading group.
Best regards from Luxembourg, Elisabeth
Dr Elisabeth HOLL
Postdoctoral researcher FHSE, Department of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences
UNIVERSITÉ DU LUXEMBOURG
I hesitated to post this, but I suppose we all started somewhere.
My masters thesis dealt with this topic, providing a very basic framework for understanding morality in games and conducting a focus group to investigate how players thought about the topic while playing.
This was my first real solo research project way back in 2009-2010, so it’s hard for me to even read it without cringing. But, hopefully there is something here that can provide guidance for you.
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/4279638.pdf
Sounds like there is a lot of interest in this topic! I will be submitting a proposal to DiGRA to run the Morality Play workshop again this year (after we had to cancel the 2020 workshop due to COVID). I’m excited to hear about all of your research.
Malcolm
