But let’s go back to the issue of design: what exactly would a game designed for moral education be like? What genre would it be? What features would it have? Would it have a story? Puzzles? Combat? Multiplayer? The truth is, at this point in time, I don’t have definitive answers to these questions. This article is actually a condensed version of a PhD. dissertation I'm working on, and since I've only just now completed my first year of research, I'm not exactly at a point where I could churn out a hundred page design document. But what I can do is talk about a few design features that – even in this early stage – I’m fairly certain would have to be a part of any game built for the purpose of teaching ethics. Let’s begin with...

Narrative: Narrative has long been established as one of the most common and effective ways to encapsulate and disseminate moral values. Fictional or otherwise, narrative puts morality in human shoes, contextualising it in a way that encourages the development of real moral skills. In his book Moral Imagination, philosopher Mark Johnson makes this point wonderfully, saying:

It is in sustained narratives … that we come closest to observing and participating in the reality of life as it is actually experienced and lived ... We actually enter into the lives of the characters … We explore, we learn, and we are changed by our participation in the fiction that creatively imitates life.

In addition to its moral significance, narrative can also boost a game’s educational and motivational qualities in a number of important ways. A good story allows players to form an emotional attachment to the game and its characters, enhancing their motivation to play. Studies have also shown how narrative games facilitate learning by providing players with what education theorist Michele Dickey calls “a cognitive framework for problem solving” – a kind of loose boundary for what counts as reasonable behaviour in a given gameworld.

I could go on, but by now it should (hopefully) be clear how important narrative is, not only to ethics, but also to educational game design. Now let’s talk setting.

Setting: Because morality is primarily a social phenomenon, any game that attempts to engage our moral faculties needs to pay particular attention to setting. Setting is the where and why of narrative: it defines player expectations, and it frames their understanding of the events that occur during the game. For games concerned with morality, a skilfully realised setting can emphasise the different facets of a particular moral issue, drawing out aspects that are not readily apparent in any other context. For example, in Global Conflicts: Palestine – a Serious Game set in modern-day Jerusalem – the player is placed in the shoes of a freelance journalist and given the opportunity to view the Arab/Israeli conflict from a perspective that is otherwise inaccessible to most people.

It’s important to note that in videogames, setting not only refers to time and place, but also character. When you play a game, you are in a sense inhabiting a different identity. This allows you to, as Gee says, experience the “other” from the inside - an experience that many scholars believe is pivotal to the cultivation of mature moral cognition .

Genre: A game designed for moral education could potentially be a member of almost any genre, although given the importance of narrative and setting, there are obviously a few (sports, puzzle) that are more or less out of the question.

Of the games already designed to have moral impact – such as the ones I mentioned a few pages ago – most are role-playing games, and I think that’s a good choice for a variety of reasons. For starters, the genre’s strong focus on narrative, setting, and role-playing clearly makes it attractive from a moral perspective, while its conventional quest-driven game design provides an elegant template for structuring game-based learning. Additionally, since there’s already a variety of RPGs out there that emulate moral deliberation, the genre is rife with technology that could be used to build a moral game without the need for extensive modification. Some of it you can even use for free, which is always nice.

Page << 1 2 3 4 5 6 >>