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 miguel@itu.dk 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.