Games and Ethics: Theoretical and Empirical Approaches To Ethical Questions in Digital Game Cultures

Digitale Kultur und Kommunikation
Maike Groen · Nina Kiel

Angela Tillmann · André Weßel Editors
Games and Ethics

Theoretical and Empirical
Approaches to Ethical Questions
in Digital Game Cultures
Volume 7
Series Editors
Kai-Uwe Hugger, Universität zu Köln, Köln, Germany
Angela Tillmann, Fakultät 1, IMM, FH Köln, Köln, Germany
Theo Hug, Universität Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria
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More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/10740

Maike Groen · Nina Kiel · Angela Tillmann
· André Weßel
Editors
Games and Ethics

Theoretical and Empirical
Approaches to Ethical Questions in
Digital Game Cultures
Editors
Maike Groen Nina Kiel
Köln, Germany Düsseldorf, Germany
Angela Tillmann André Weßel

Köln, Germany Köln, Germany
ISSN 2512-0719 ISSN 2512-0727 (electronic)

ISBN 978-3-658-28174-8 ISBN 978-3-658-28175-5 (eBook)
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Contents
Ethical Questions in Digital Game Cultures—A Multi-Perspective

View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Maike Groen, Nina Kiel, Angela Tillmann, and André Weßel
Introductory Thoughts
Homo Ludens Reloaded: The Ethics of Play in the Information Age . . . 13
Miguel Sicart
Ethical Dimensions of Digital Games . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Julian Lamers and Alexander Filipović
Societal and Political Discourses

Gaming Addiction—Underdefined, Overestimated? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Robin Janzik, Lars-Ole Wehden, Felix Reer, and Thorsten Quandt
Re-Figuring Innovation in Games: A Feminist Interventionist
Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Jennifer Jenson
Gamification of Terror—Power Games as Liminal Spaces . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
Sonia Fizek and Anne Dippel
Challenges in Digital Spaces

Digital Governmentality: Toxicity in Gaming Streams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
Maike Groen
v
vi Contents
Just 1e to Unlock This Guide! How and Why to Study

Free-To-Play Game Cultures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
Ahmed Elmezeny
The “Ultimate Empathy Machine” Revisited . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
Jeffrey Wimmer
Educational Approaches
How Do We Teach Ethics and Empathy Through Games? . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
Karen Schrier
Are You Sure You Want to Do that? Teaching Values with Serious
Games . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
Sonja Gabriel
Digital Game Literacy—Potential, Challenges, and Ethical
Implications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
André Weßel
uMed: Your Choice—Conception of a Digital Game to Enhance
Medical Ethics Training . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
Johannes Katsarov, Nikola Biller-Andorno, Tobias Eichinger,
David Schmocker, and Markus Christen
Design Perspectives
Using Digital Games for Sexual Education: Design Rules, Issues,
and Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
Nina Kiel
Autonomy, Heteronomy, and Representations of Illness in Digital
Games . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
Arno Görgen and Stefan H. Simond
Contributors
Nikola Biller-Andorno Universität Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland

Markus Christen Universität Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland
Anne Dippel Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Jena, Germany
Tobias Eichinger Universität Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland
Ahmed Elmezeny Universität Augsburg, Augsburg, Germany
Alexander Filipović Hochschule für Philosophie München, München, Germany
Sonia Fizek Technische Hochschule Köln, Köln, Germany
Sonja Gabriel Kirchliche Pädagogische Hochschule Wien/Krems, Wien, Austria
Maike Groen Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e. V. (DLR) –
Projektträger, Bonn, Germany
Arno Görgen Hochschule Der Künste Bern, Bern, Switzerland
Robin Janzik Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Münster, Germany
Jennifer Jenson University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
Johannes Katsarov Universität Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland
Nina Kiel Ilustrationen, Game Design, Spielejournalismus, Düsseldorf, Germany
Julian Lamers Hochschule für Philosophie München, München, Germany
Thorsten Quandt Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Münster, Ger-
many
vii
viii Contributors
Felix Reer Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Münster, Germany

David Schmocker Universität Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland
Karen Schrier Marist College, Poughkeepsie, NY, USA
Miguel Sicart IT University of Copenhagen, København, Denmark
Stefan H. Simond Philipps-Universität Marburg, Marburg, Germany
Angela Tillmann Technische Hochschule Köln, Köln, Germany
Lars-Ole Wehden Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Münster, Ger-
many
André Weßel Technische Hochschule Köln, Köln, Germany
Jeffrey Wimmer Universität Augsburg, Augsburg, Germany
Ethical Questions in Digital Game
Cultures—A Multi-Perspective View
Maike Groen, Nina Kiel, Angela Tillmann, and André Weßel
With the present volume “Games and Ethics”, we editors would like to contribute
to the discourse on ethical issues in the context of digital game culture and hope-
fully provide some new impulses. One of the basic premises of this book is that
an increasing amount of time is spent on playing digital games in the everyday
life of a likewise increasing number of people. A look at the example of Germany
reveals that currently 42% of the population play digital games at least occasio-
nally, 35% regularly (game 2019), and 63% of 12- to 19-year-olds play digital
games daily or several times a week (mpfs 2020, p. 12). In other industrialized
countries, an intensification and stabilization of gaming activities can be obser-
ved as well (see, e.g., Newzoo 2018; Pew Research Center 2018; Swedish Media
Council 2016; The Nielsen Company 2018). This development is supported by
an ongoing trend towards mobile gaming and the growing market share of casual
and social games with comparatively simple user interfaces. In the future, inno-
vations are expected in the areas of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality
M. Groen (B)
Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e. V. (DLR) – Projektträger, Bonn, Germany
E-Mail: maike.groen@th-koeln.de
N. Kiel
Ilustrationen, Game Design, Spielejournalismus, Düsseldorf, Germany
E-Mail: nina@ninakiel.de
A. Tillmann · A. Weßel
Technische Hochschule Köln, Köln, Germany
E-Mail: angela.tillmann@th-koeln.de
A. Weßel
E-Mail: andre.wessel@th-koeln.de
© Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2020 1

M. Groen et al. (eds.), Games and Ethics, Digitale Kultur
und Kommunikation 7, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-28175-5_1
2 M. Groen et al.
(AR), where, for instance, the release of the mobile game Pokémon Go (Nian-
tic 2016) managed to attract considerable attention in 2016. The game prompted
players worldwide to gather in public places and offered augmented possibilities
for reality perception.
In public discourse, developments in gaming technology are discussed in a
very controversial manner. The debates tend to focus on questions of gaming
behavior (duration and intensity of play, respectful interaction, etc.), possible
financial risks, potential health hazards and effects on aggressive behavior, new
legislative and regulatory measures, and the protection of personal data and pri-
vacy. Some of the contributions collected in this book are based on a series of
conferences that have been held at the TH Köln, titled “Clash of Realities –
International Conference on the Art, Technology and Theory of Digital Games”,
an international creative-scientific research conference on digital games, which
focuses on questions of esthetic development, theoretical analysis and cultural
mediation of digital games. The conference and the book are addressed to stu-
dents, teachers and researchers in the fields of (media) pedagogy, game studies,
and game design, as well as to agents within the field of game production.
1 ‘Right’ and ‘Wrong’ in the Digital Game Culture
With our focus on ethical questions in digital game worlds, we draw on a philo-
sophical tradition of thought that encourages systematic and discursive reflection
on ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ as well as on moral action, raising the question of general
assessment criteria, methodological procedures or highest principles for the justi-
fication and criticism of rules of action – in other words, for “how people should
act” (Fenner 2008, pp. 4 f.). The goal of the various philosophical approaches
to ethics is to shape social action and social coexistence in such a way that a
‘good’ or ‘successful’ life for everyone is possible. However, even these definiti-
ons themselves are controversial and cannot be understood independently of their
historical and cultural context—much like any ethical concept. Rather, societies
in all historical eras have been and continue to be faced with the challenge of
exchanging views about the principles of action and of justifying their ideas of
‘right’.
With our intention to stimulate the discourse on ethical principles in the digi-
tal game culture, we follow José P. Zagal (2009) in adopting different ethical
perspectives on digital game worlds. On the one hand, we will focus on the
production and distribution process, i.e., the conditions under which games are
developed, produced and marketed. Furthermore, from the point of view of an
Ethical Questions in Digital Game Cultures … 3
ethics of play, the question arises to what extent concepts such as fairness, social
and self-responsibility on the part of the players enter into their gaming behavior.
Another focus will lie on the game content itself and, consequently, on the repre-
sentation of certain concepts and their interrelations, such as terror and power or
illness and autonomy. In addition, the pedagogical application of digital games
is an important subject in our work, as we endeavor to provide perspectives on
the prerequisites, possible settings and potential outcomes of ethical gameplay in
educational contexts. In this respect, it should be taken into account that in some
popular genres, ethical reasoning and decision-making have become a significant
part of the course of the game. In open-world role-playing games like The Wit-
cher 3: The Wild Hunt (CD Projekt RED 2015), for instance, players enjoy a
considerable freedom of action and are frequently asked to make moral decisions.
In the case of episodic adventures such as the Life Is Strange series (Deck Nine
2017/18; Dontnod Entertainment 2015, 2018/19), players are consistently given
choices of various dialogue and action options within the framework of a rather
linear plot and are explicitly required to deal with ethically relevant issues. Here,
players encounter a system of values and norms inherent to the game which they
do not simply adopt or apply in the sense of a linear logic of effect or consider
with the aim of a possible maximization of their success, but which they may
rather deliberate, question and appropriate. Thus, as described by Miguel Sicart,
digital games not only contain moral-decision scenarios, but also represent ethi-
cal systems of varying complexity, which are produced, played, deliberated and
discussed by human ethical agents—the designers, the players and others who are
engaged in the discourse (Sicart 2009).
Moreover, the digital game as a cultural artifact can be examined from an
ethical standpoint. An example of such considerations is Through the Darkest
of Times (Paintbucket 2019), the first uncensored game in Germany in which
swastikas are depicted, which is remarkable considering that symbols of Nazi
ideology had hitherto been forbidden in digital games. This was made possible
through a legislative change in Germany in August 2019.
The present volume attempts to account for several of these perspectives, sup-
plemented by a philosophical approach on the ethics of play in the information
age, a general introduction to ethical aspects of digital games and an outlook to
the ethical challenges of new technologies such as AR and VR. It therefore com-
prises ethical questions concerning the development, production and distribution
as well as the social and pedagogical handling of digital games, and explores the
personal actions and responsibilities of the individual. It thus links questions of
communicative and cultural change with questions of media pedagogy and media
ethics.
4 M. Groen et al.
2 Mediatization—Media Competence—Media Ethics
With this book, we are hoping to enrich the discourse on social and cultural
change, which includes a shift in communicative action in digital game worlds.
One theory frequently drawn on to describe this shift is that of ‘mediatization’
(Krotz 2007; Hepp and Krotz 2014; Lundby 2014). It is assumed that increasingly
complex forms of media communication are developing and that communication
is taking place more frequently, longer, in more and more areas of life and in rela-
tion to an increasing number of topics related to media (Krotz 2001, p. 33). With
regard to the digital game worlds, signs of this change can be found, for example,
in the fact that the lines between game producers and consumers become increa-
singly blurred. With the help of new tools, games can be created more easily, and
many games explicitly offer the players the possibility to create their own content
in order to modify the game and the gaming experience. This also implies that a
one-sided assignment of responsibility for toxic behavior cannot always be sustai-
ned since players have to be increasingly accountable for their own actions in and
around games. This analysis draws on theories who proceed on the assumption
of the ‘prosumer’, meaning that the Internet and the digitally networked infra-
structure enable people to constantly switch between the roles of producer and
recipient (Bruns 2008; Jenkins 2006), so that the boundaries between layperson
and professional (Deuze 2007) are becoming increasingly blurred. Many players
are part of a convergent culture in which they not only pursue their gaming inte-
rests and content, but also in online as well as offline communities, on video
platforms, on live streaming channels, in social news forums, in the context of
fan fiction, at conventions, events, etc. It is noticeable that game companies also
actively seek the exchange with players, e.g., by specifically promoting youth
cultural activities such as fast-drawing videos on video channels, comic strips
and series on digital games or game zines and by asking players to participate
in game tests and to give esthetic input on the ‘skins’, i.e., the appearance of
the game characters. In some cases, they may even choose to publish underlying
codes or create test environments for software in order to encourage players to
modify the game content themselves. These results are then made available to the
community free of charge. One of the most financially successful genres for years,
the Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA), with examples such as League of
Legends (Riot Games 2009), was created in a similar way.
In the context of debates on media ethics, the developments described above
call for ‘media literacy’ in international discourse and ‘media competence’ in the
German-speaking countries. Although the terms follow partly different theoretical
traditions, they have in common that they proceed on the assumption that everyone
has the ability to develop media competence or media literacy, the development
of which is to be encouraged through pedagogical action (Grafe 2011). The term
‘media literacy’ draws more strongly on the concept of pragmatism and, against
the background of the demands of an information and knowledge society, outlines
a modern demand for education (Grafe 2011). In the German-language discourse,
the term ‘media competence’ is primarily linked to concepts of language theory
and social criticism; here the focus is equally on formal and informal learning
processes that involve the use of media. The reasonable and socially responsi-
ble subject who utilizes media in order to expand their own scope of orientation
and action is at the center of the discourse on media competence (Baacke 1996).
Media criticism, or responsible and ethical media action, pervades the concepts of
media literacy and media competence as a normative principle. According to Dou-
glas Kellner, a media-critical position is characterized, for example, by being able
to analyze media codes and conventions, to criticize stereotypes, values and ideo-
logies, and to interpret the manifold meanings and messages generated by media
texts (Kellner 2002). For Dieter Baacke, media-critical action represents one of
the four dimensions of media competence: media criticism, media knowledge,
media use, and media creation. He defines media criticism as critical-analytical
and ethically responsible action (Baacke 1996).
However, the responsibility for media-related actions does not solely lie with
the media users. In addition, their circumstances and the context in which media-
competent and thus critical media action can or cannot unfold need to be taken
into account, as well as the medium (and its creation as well as the content) itself.
3 The ‘Circuit of Culture’ as a Framework for Discussions

on Ethical Values
In order to be able to discuss the question of media ethics comprehensively at

all relevant levels, we believe that the model of the ‘circuit of culture’, which
was developed in the context of cultural studies by a group around Stuart Hall
(Du Gay et al. 1997; Hall 1997), serves as a promising frame of reference. The
starting point of the model is a comprehensive understanding of cultural products
and a rejection of monocausal presumptions of effect and thus ultimately also
of one-sided attributions of responsibility. Accordingly, in relation to the digital
game world, not the individual gaming behavior or the individual game are to
be considered, but the context of the digital game culture as a whole. Respon-
sibility regarding questions of media ethics does therefore not rest one-sidedly
6 M. Groen et al.
with producers or consumers. Instead, the various interactions and political, eco-
nomic and social power relations are taken into account. In its analysis of the
relevant questions and problems, Cultural Studies promote a “radical contextua-
lism” (Grossberg 1999, p. 264) and thus the idea of interpreting cultural texts and
modes of action such as digital gaming exclusively within their respective con-
text. Culture is understood as an ‘arena of contested meanings’, in which some
positions are given more weight than others. These meanings are produced and
circulated, or marginalized or excluded at various points in the circuit of cul-
ture. Therefore, a synopsis of such complex processes as ‘production’, ‘identity’,
‘representation’, ‘consumption’ and ‘regulation’ is needed in order to adequately
classify the phenomena and different power formations in effect at all points of
the circuit of culture (Hall 1997; Du Gay et al. 1997).
Digital gaming presents itself as such a field of contested meanings, in which
questions of ethics or responsibility may be analyzed with regard to the five
aspects mentioned. A look at the example of ‘production’ reveals that if the indus-
try targets a ‘male’ audience with its topics, and if the cornerstones of the content
are primarily on action, excellence,1 and triumph, this often neglects stories or ele-
ments oriented towards relationship and community (cf. Klaus and Röser 1996),
which consequently affects the participation of women in the digital game cul-
ture. According to constructivist theory formation, such producers participate in
a social practice that co-creates and manifests gender imbalances and stereotypes
and promotes exclusions. In the context of ‘production’, it is therefore important
to critically reflect on the financial, technical and personnel possibilities as well
as on ideological dependencies and the media content produced in general.
While ‘production’ looks at possible reasons for the creation of specific content
(e.g., lack of female* involvement), the level of ‘representation’ considers media
as social practice and addresses questions of media representation and visibility.
The assumption is not that what is shown merely reflects the world; rather, it
is assumed within the framework of an equally constructivist understanding of
representation that media presentations do not produce reality but rather ideas
(e.g., of the ‘nature’ of men and women) and thus help to shape socio-cultural
conceptions of femininity and masculinity. This level reflects that representations
occur under certain historical conditions and in specific power constellations.
1 ‘Excellence’refers to the highlighting of one’s own special abilities in relation to others.

Unlike ‘distinction’, ‘excellence’ refers to a separation that requires an other in order to
demonstrate one’s own superiority (Klaus and Röser 1996, p. 50, footnote).
The aspect of ‘identity’ within the circuit of culture refers to the fact that it
is through the examination of representations that people develop an understan-
ding of the world and an idea of themselves. Cultural narratives, like the ones
in digital games, provide a basis for identity by offering people specific (sub-
ject) positions, which they may (also partially) accept or dissociate themselves
from. Digital games, too, provide narrative constructions from which players can
draw and which they can integrate into their own identity construction. Cultural
Studies also accentuates the importance of affective ties to certain positions and
discourses, which make it difficult to adopt new positions.
The fourth element in the circuit of culture is ‘consumption’, laying empha-
sis on the idea that consumption constitutes an active action as well. The group
around Stuart Hall envisions active recipients, who participate in the construction
of meaning and are thus productive in the communicative process itself. The reci-
pient does not simply accept a transmitted message, but decodes it according to
their own contexts, interests and needs. This fundamental assumption of a com-
plex process of appropriation also corresponds to media socialization research in
Germany, an integral part of media pedagogy (cf. Vollbrecht and Wegener 2010).
The final aspect of the circuit of culture is ‘regulation’, examining the ques-
tion how digital games are integrated into everyday practices, and how their use
is regulated by institutions. Relevant questions include, for example, under which
institutional or structural conditions digital games are distributed, and which att-
empts at administrative control they are subject to. It should also be taken into
account here that mediatization is a global process, and that state authority is
losing its legislative importance as national regulations and frameworks are rea-
ching their limits. For instance, age recommendations can be easily circumvented
by downloading digital games from foreign servers. At the same time, this means
that the influence of global businesses is increasing and that market-oriented ideo-
logy is gaining in importance. One example are the so-called ‘free-to-play games’,
which can often only be played free of charge if players accept certain limitations
in comparison to paying players.
If we combine a Cultural Studies approach with a media-ethical perspective,
each element can be focused on and analyzed with regard to its conditions of
action and its significance for the realization of ethically responsible or justifia-
ble ideals. Taking into account the media-literacy concept or media competence
model also raises the question to what extent digital games can contribute to
expanding the individual scope for action and orientation. Within this discussion,
it is necessary to consider all elements of the circuit.
8 M. Groen et al.
4 Structure of This Volume
This book aims to promote the theoretical and practical discussion of ethical
issues in the digital game culture. The contributions with their individual foci
on different aspects of the circuit of culture illuminate the cultural field of digi-
tal games from a quite comprehensive (media-)ethical perspective. As conference
lectures from different years and disciplines, they vary in their approaches. Yet, in
their diverse perspectives, they all make a valuable contribution to the promotion
of ethical discourse in the digital game culture.
The book thus seeks to provide an insight into current ethical debates in the
field of digital gaming culture. We are aware that not all relevant questions can
be addressed; rather, the book provides some central thoughts and impulses from
a theoretical, empirical as well as professional and ethical perspective, which are
worth pursuing in the future.
Somewhat unusual is the relatively long period it took to write the book. This is
partly due to the fact that it contains contributions from two “Clash-of-Realities”
conferences, some of which have been updated and amended for the volume. We
would like to thank the authors for their great commitment and patience during the
editorial process. We would also like to express our gratitude to Chantal Bindrich
and especially Dorthe Johannsen, whose careful attention to the formal guidelines
at the end contributed greatly to the completion of the book.
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Ludography
League of Legends (Riot Games 2009, O: Riot Games)
Life Is Strange (Square Enix 2015, O: Dontnod Entertainment)
Life Is Strange 2 (Square Enix 2018/19, O: Dontnod Entertainment)
Life Is Strange. Before the Storm (Square Enix 2017/18, O: Deck Nine)
Pokémon Go (The Pokémon Company, Nintendo 2016, O: Niantic)
The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt (Bandai Namco Games 2015, O: CD Projekt RED)
Through the Darkest of Times (HANDY Games 2019, O: Paintbucket)
Introductory Thoughts
Homo Ludens Reloaded: The Ethics
of Play in the Information Age
Miguel Sicart
Abstract
This chapter proposes an understanding of the concept of homo ludens from a
Philosophy of Information perspective. This chapter argues that players are
moral agents who create worlds by playing. The creation of these worlds
through play is analogous to what Huizinga described as a ludic drive. There-
fore, this chapter proposes a perspective for studying the ethics of play through
the lens of homo ludens-as-homo poieticus. The goal of this chapter is to sug-
gest a constructivist ethics approach to the different play activities that have a
role in shaping the cultures of the Information Age.
Keywords
Virtue ethics • Constructivist ethics • Philosophy of information •
Videogames • Homo ludens • Homo poieticus
1 Introduction
We live in the Information Age. Around us, our lives are processed, quantified,
facilitated and complicated by myriads of computational processes, shaping new
forms of computational culture. The Philosophy of Information (PI henceforth)
describes how the information revolution has changed the world: “There are some
people around the world who are already living hyperhistorically, in societies
M. Sicart (B)
IT University of Copenhagen, København, Denmark
E-Mail: miguel@itu.dk

14 M. Sicart
and environments where ICTs and their data-processing capabilities are not just
important but essential conditions for the maintenance and any further develop-
ment of societal welfare, personal well-being, and overall flourishing.” (Floridi
2014, Kindle loc. 252–254).
In this article, I inquire into the ethical role of homo ludens (Huizinga 1992
[1938]) in the context of the Information Age. To do so, I will propose to con-
sider the homo ludens as an instantiation of a broader conceptual category of
ethical agency proposed by Floridi (2013, pp. 161–179): the homo poieticus.
Homo poieticus is a creative, moral agent who inhabits the infosphere, an envi-
ronment “constituted by the totality of information entities, including all agents
– processes, their properties and mutual relations” (Floridi 1999). Describing the
Huizingan ludic drive, the role of play in shaping culture, through the lens of
homo ludens-as-homo poieticus can contribute to the formulation of new ethical
challenges that emerge when playing in the Information Age. The goal of this
article is to suggest a constructivist ethics approach to the activity of play.
To achieve this goal, I establish a relation between play and Floridi’s concept
of re-ontologization (Floridi 2013, pp. 6–8). This allows me to connect the con-
cepts of homo ludens and homo poieticus, arguing that playing is creating a world
in a process of re-ontologization that is analogous to the processes that computers
perform in the world. These two arguments provide a foundation for a construc-
tivist ethics of play in the Information Age, and it allows us to think through new
ethical challenges in digital play.
2 Play and Re-Ontologization
If we want to understand the concept of homo ludens, we need to start from

the concept of play. Since play defies formal definition (Sutton-Smith 1997), I
will limit myself to providing an instrumental definition of play that allows me to
engage with the ethics of homo ludens in hyperhistorical societes. This instrumen-
tal definition is phenomenological in nature since my interest lies in the playful
experience of computational technologies.
Accordingly, play can be defined as a way of organizing our experience of the
world:
“Summing up the formal characteristics of play we might call it a free activity
standing quite consciously outside “ordinary” life as being “not serious”, but at
the same time absorbing the player intensely and utterly. It is an activity connec-
ted with no material interest, and no profit can be gained by it. It proceeds within
its own proper boundaries of time and space according to fixed rules and in an
Homo Ludens Reloaded: The Ethics of Play in the Information Age 15
orderly manner. It promotes the formation of social groupings that tend to sur-
round themselves with secrecy and to stress their difference from the common
world by disguise or other means.” (Huizinga 1992, p. 13). In my own theory of
play, I propose that play is a mode of being in the world that structures both rea-
lity and agency: “To play is to be in the world. Playing is a form of understanding
what surrounds us and who we are, and a way of engaging with others. Play is a
mode of being human.” (Sicart 2014, p. 1).
Play’s structuring of reality and agency creates worlds that have their own
purpose and seriousness (Henricks 2016). These are the encapsulated worlds of
dollhouses and The Sims, of the beauty of a ball bouncing off a wall, of the
pleasure of skateboarding downhill, of making Amazon’s voice-controller Artifi-
cial Intelligence assistant Alexa tell a joke. The worlds created by play are not
worlds of productivity, defined by their end goals and results. The worlds of play
have meaning on and of their own. Play is ultimately a free activity we volunta-
rily engage with (Caillois 2001 [1958]; Bogost 2016), an activity that is separate
from the world.
Games offer us good example of how play structures the world: The rules of
a game like basketball tells us what to do, what not to do, and for how long
we should do it. They also tell us what success means, and structure the social
encounter (Goffman 1961) by dividing players into teams with relatively clear
roles. But those are only the written rules of basketball. The pick-up games I
play at my local court have slightly different rules, written and enforced by a
community of players. For example, whoever scores keeps possession, which is
the absolute opposite of the official rules of basketball. Rules are not inflexible
procedures we need to follow but instructions that, when followed and voluntarily
accepted, help define frames within which actions take place and have meaning.
Rules are the negotiable boundaries of the temporary play-worlds.
The following section provides a closer look at this process of world creation
from the perspective of Information Ethics and the Philosophy of Information.
Floridi argues that one of the unique capabilities of information technologies is
their capacity to re-ontologize: “[R]e-ontologizing […] refer[s] to a very radical
form of re-engineering, one that not only designs, constructs, or structures a sys-
tem […] anew, but one that also fundamentally transforms its intrinsic nature,
that is, its ontology or essence” (Floridi 2013, p. 6). For example, for those who
use step trackers like Fitbit, a human step is not just a step; it is whatever can
be calculated by their portable computer as a step. The human step has been
re-ontologized, its nature redefined so it can become computable. That process
of representation is similar to a process of creating a world: “[C]omputational
model-building proceeds through the application of a repertoire of schemata, each
16 M. Sicart
of which joins a metaphor to a bit of mathematics that can be realized on a

computer” (Agre 1997, p. 38).
A similar process takes place when we play: We re-ontologize the world so we
can give it a different meaning than the conventional one. This new play-world is
open for expression, for pleasure, and for interrogation: “[…][P]lay is a rebellion
against the forms and forces of the world. Players confront and challenge ‘claims’
coming from their own bodies, the environment, the social world, and culture. In
those confrontations, they try to manage behavior their way.” (Henricks 2016,
location 1451–1453). Playing is re-ontologizing the world with the purpose of
appropriating it for expressive, personal reasons.
For example, imagine being in a park on a Sunday with some friends. A per-
son may be carrying a ball. The very act of carrying a ball allows them to see the
park in a different way. But they can be bolder. They can gather four backpacks
and place them on the grass, apart from each other, creating makeshift goals.
They can drop the ball to the ground, and start playing soccer. They have just
created a world, with the help of some props and the rules of a game. Let’s com-
pare this with the vast expanses of a digital playground like Minecraft (Mojang
2011). Walking around in that world, collecting resources, building things—in
other words: playing—constitutes the act of inhabiting a world created with the
very logic of play at heart. Minecraft does not make any cultural sense what-
soever unless it is contemplated as a place for playful being and expression, a
world created for us to play in. In that world, like in the park, we can conceive of
different games to play, we can use the environment like a prop to structure our
activity. Rules emerge from the context and our intentions and, critically, what
the software allows us to do and what we can get the software to do, by playfully
exploring its boundaries, like countless Minecraft users have done, looking for
ways to create previously thought impossible contraptions.
The capacity that play has to create worlds can be described as analogous to
the capacity that computers have to re-ontologize the world. For computers to be
able to act in the world, they need to be given a representation of the world in
which they are deployed. And once they start acting in that world, they change it
by their mere presence, they re-ontologize the world. Play creates worlds so we
can experience them through a ludic lens, and those worlds are defined by their
ludic purposes. In short: Both play and computation create worlds.
In computers, humans recognize re-ontologizing capacities and consequently
engage with them through the lens of another re-ontologizing process: play. In
other words, we see computers as playful machines because we can see how
they can create worlds. Play acts as a mode of making use of the re-ontologizing
capacities of this technology. It is the relatedness of these two re-ontologization
processes that makes the Information Age so attuned to the idea of playfulness.
At the core of the Information Age, there is a homo ludens impulse to create
worlds.
3 Ethics and Play Theory
The analysis of the ethics of homo ludens has been largely influenced by Hui-
zinga’s insistence on situating play outside the domain of morality: “Play lies
outside the antithesis of wisdom and folly, and equally outside those of truth and
falsehood, good and evil” (Huizinga 1992, p. 6). For Huizinga, it is important
to keep the integrity of the experience of play as a separated activity, even if
that means creating an uneasy contradiction with the broader argument that play
creates culture.
Moral philosophers and play scholars (Dodig-Crnkovic and Larsson 2005;
Henricks 2009) have addressed Huizinga’s original argument, allowing for the
understanding of play as an activity within the domain of ethics. But the question
is still problematic: If play is outside morality, is homo ludens a moral agent?
And if play is outside ethics, what is the moral value and status of the culture it
produces?
I want to address these questions by situating the origin of the problem in
Huizinga’s argument that play is a disinterested activity that produces nothing
quantifiable and that is separate from real life. Huizinga’s definition of play allows
us to observe how culture, in the form of the order prescribed by play, can emerge
from that separateness.
Sports philosophers have addressed the separateness of play and its autotelic
nature as the central issues for the ethical analysis of play (Feezell 2006): The
activity of play is separated from real life, but at the same time, playing can
be a way of practicing virtues that have an impact on the moral development
of human beings. From a classic virtue-ethics perspective, the values that are
practiced while playing contribute to the development of our moral being, an
argument resonant with Piaget’s constructivist theory (1997). This is what Brian
Sutton-Smith (1997) defined as the rhetoric of play as progress play as a way of
practicing and developing knowledge and skills.
However, this approach has a limited scope. While the arguments work well
when it comes to sports, which since ancient Greece have been considered morally
positive social encounters (D’Angour 2013), they might not be appropriate for
all the other manifestations of play that lack sports’ sociocultural recognition. I
suggest expanding the sports virtue-ethics approach by a reconsideration of play
18 M. Sicart
and its relationship to the moral nature of homo ludens. This necessitates the
reassessment of the very concept of play as separate from other activities.
A plausible interpretation of Huizinga’s motives to remain so adamant about
considering play ontologically separated from real life can be traced to the philo-
sophical origins of his work. Huizinga’s understanding of structured, ordered play
as a source of culture draws on the Enlightenment project, particularly Schiller’s
interpretation of Kant. Schiller’s On the Aesthetic Education of Man (1794 [2012])
provides a classic evaluation of the importance of play: “(…) [I]n every condi-
tion of humanity it is precisely play, and play alone, that makes man complete”
(p. 79). Homo ludens is an exploration of this idea: If play is what makes man
a man, how is it manifested in culture? Or, how can we see culture itself as a
manifestation of that play drive?
Schiller references Kant (Kant 1790 [2001]; see also Laxton 2011), whose dee-
per analysis would exceed the scope of this paper. It should be noted, however,
that play is related to Kantian esthetics by its nature as a non-productive expe-
rience that takes place in the experience of the sublime (Mallaband 2002). This
play is a detached activity outside of the domain of productivity.
For Huizinga, at the heart of modernity, there is a ludic drive based on the
esthetic engagement with the world. Therefore, play ceases to be play when it is
instrumentalized, which he defines as “false play”. To commodify the ludic, to
transform it into a mere economic transaction or an expression of political ideas,
is perverting play and its function in culture. Play creates culture as a function
of its disinterestedness, as a result of its (Kantian) esthetic engagement with the
world.
This argument complicates the moral position of the concept of homo ludens
since any attempt to do so would break the disinterested, separate, esthetic engage-
ment with the world that constitutes the very essence of play. Play is paradoxical,
but it should not be so to the extent that we cannot reflect upon its role in sha-
ping the ethical behavior of those who play, or the moral impact of their actions.
If we embrace play’s separateness as an non-negotiable ontological quality, then
we also accept a paradoxical position: Play creates culture, but if play is outside
morality, then the culture it creates is also outside the scope of moral scrutiny.
For example, the Nazi regime used the Olympic Games to showcase their
ideology and politics. By blurring the lines between play as ritual and the world
outside the ritual, the Nazis wanted to project a powerful message in a way that
might have guaranteed the validation of their arguments. Besides being a stage
for displaying their organization power, the Olympics would be a constitution of
the racial superiority of Aryans—a validation that would be objective and not pol-
luted by politics or morals, as it would take place in the free and separate space
of play. The rise of nationalist totalitarianism is one of the looming presences in

Huizinga’s Homo Ludens, which I interpret as a response to the ludic element in
the manifestations of these political programs. Huizinga attempted to assert the
roots of modernity beyond the perverted nationalist visions that totalitarian regi-
mes were defining. Huizinga saw the rise of fascism and understood that at least
part of its success was connected to the industrialization and commodification of
the ludic drive, from the Berlin Olympics to the marches and parades that defi-
ned public collective action (Adorno and Horkheimer 2010). For Huizinga, his
contemporaries had perverted the ludic drive at the heart of modernity: “More
and more the sad conclusion forces itself upon us that the play-element in culture
has been on the wane ever since the 18th Century, when it was in full flower”
(Huizinga 1992, p. 206; see also pp. 208–211).
Another, more recent example could be seen in the modern production and
consumption of fake news, which became so relevant after the results of the
2016 USA Presidential Election. Fake news are narratives produced and consu-
med under the esthetics and rhetoric of news, but based on rumors, fictions, and
partisan politics rather than on fact and reflection (Berkowitz and Schwartz 2016;
Khaldarova and Pantti 2016). While fake news cannot be explained exclusively
as a play phenomenon, applying a play perspective can shed new light on the
emergence of these phenomena and their distribution in computational culture.
Social media can be interpreted as a play field with clear rules that can be
exploited. Like Bakhtin’s carnival (Bakhtin 1984; Golumbia 2009), this fake news
constructs an alternative world in which institutions are mocked. Unlike Bakhtin’s
carnival, however, this news does not bring a critique of power but the rising of
a conservative, unintellectual majority. This has eventually led some proponents
of conspiracy theories to perceive fake news as an element of a great game,1 a
puzzle that only the selected few, the ‘players’, can solve (Montola et al. 2009).
That world is perceived as a game, partially because it emphasizes its separateness
from the real world. And yet, it ends up configuring and affecting cultural and
political discourses that have serious effects.
Play theory is well-suited to address these phenomena from the perspective
of the ludic: Caillois’ (2001) “excessive play” concept, or Schechner’s (1988)
“dark play” account for the possibility that play can also be harmful, insulting,
and dangerous. Geertz’s (1972) theories provide empirical insight into the dar-
ker sides of play, which have recently been very present in the shaping of the
1 “It
is like a giant game”, as cited in https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/pizzagate-
from-rumor-to-hashtag-to-gunfire-in-dc/2016/12/06/4c7def50-bbd4-11e6-94ac-3d3248401
06c_story.html?utm_term=.b9d3cb02ebba. Retrieved: [23.08.2017].
20 M. Sicart
online communities of players of digital games (Chess and Shaw 2015; Massa-
nari 2017). However, all these works shy away from the admittedly complicated
task of adopting an ethical approach to the problems created by play.
Creating an order in the world by applying a play lens to it is what makes
homo ludens a creator of culture. However, doing so without moral reflection
leads to damaging cultures, like those that foster fake news or the “ambivalent
internet” (Phillips and Milner 2017). This is a process of commodification and
weaponization of play as an instrument for partisan or criminal purposes. Play
can create worlds, and these worlds reflect the values of homo ludens. Therefore,
one needs to inquire about the moral foundation of homo ludens: to understand
the ethical challenges of a playful computational culture, and the ways in which
we can intervene to analyze problems and effect change.
4 Homo Ludens and the Ethics of Re-Ontologization
Even though Huizinga considered play to be beyond the domain of morality, I

argue that ethical theory can address the creative nature of homo ludens while
embracing the paradoxical nature of play. Players exhibit moral behaviors and
practice moral reasoning in very specific, sometimes unconventional ways (Sicart
2009). In this context, we need to start our inquiry from the perspective of play
as a re-ontologizing activity that takes place in an infosphere, an environment
defined by the interfacing of human and computational agencies.
Play is a moral action because it re-ontologizes the world for the purpose of
playing. Play creates encapsulated worlds through the use of rules, social norms,
and mutually agreed goals, in order to achieve a (shared) pleasurable experience
(Goffman 1961; Huizinga 1992; Henricks 2016). This process of appropriation is
not morally neutral: Games and other play technologies have embedded values
that affect the way the world is re-ontologized. At the same time, players have
values they bring to the activity of play (Sicart 2009).
Any ethical discourse about homo ludens needs to reflect the informational
nature of being, the infosphere as the space in which informational agents live
and thrive, and the creative, appropriative capacities of homo ludens. An ethical
understanding of homo ludens needs to be flexible enough to allow for understan-
ding how play reflects and interacts with the social structures in which it takes
place.
Given these requirements, I propose to adopt a constructivist approach to the
ethics of homo ludens (Bynum 2006; Volkman 2010, 2013). Information Ethics
(IE henceforth) provide a method (Floridi 2008) to address the complexities of
ethical constructivism in human-computational networks. From an IE perspec-

tive, agents in the infosphere should proactively contribute to maintaining the
informational balance of the infosphere: “By placing value in the infosphere and
in the informational nature of entities, regarded ontologically as the primary, fun-
damental, and constituent element of our new element and its artificial agents,
it is possible to elaborate a constructionist strategy that supports an ecopoietic
approach” (Floridi 2013, pp. 178–179). The infosphere requires a constructivist
ethics because it needs to be developed by all the informational agents that inha-
bit it: “[…] IE is an ethics addressed not just to ‘users’ of the world, but also to
producers or demiurges, who are ‘divinely’ responsible for its creation and well-
being” (Floridi 2013, p. 168). Human agents in the infosphere should behave as
homo poieticus, stewards of the environment in which they thrive: “Homo poie-
ticus concentrates not merely on the final result, but on the dynamic, on-going
process through which the result is achieved. Homo poieticus is a demiurge, who
takes care of reality, today conceptualized as the infosphere, to protect it and make
it flourish” (Floridi 2013, p. 175).
The examples of these processes range from the constructive engagement in
online conversations, occasionally supported by technological tools (Sherrick and
Hoewe 2018), to the importance of code commenting in open source projects as
a way of distributing responsibility and ensuring the quality and integrity of the
products (Arafat and Riehle 2009).
I argue that this poietic nature is analogous to what homo ludens does when
playing. Play worlds are encapsulated infospheres, model worlds in which rules
and actions give purpose and consistency to the very existence of that world. To
play by the rules, and to change those rules so all players are welcome and able
to enjoy the pleasures of play (DeKoven 2013), is to act poietically in the world
of play.
Playing is poiesis: the creation of infospheres for playable pleasures. From
the play activities guided by toys, such as make-believe and role-playing (Bate-
son 2000) to the coordinated efforts that result in e-Sports (Seo and Jung 2014),
playing is a carefully balanced activity that proposes a world, gives it a con-
sistency through rules and props, and bestows upon agents the responsibility of
keeping that world alive. A radical example of this poiesis was documented in the
groundbreaking work of game scholar Celia Pearce, who followed a community
of players that re-created the communities of play they had forged in a shutdown
videogame in other massively multiplayer games (Pearce 2009). That process of
recreation shows the capacity of homo ludens to act creatively, poietically, as an
integral part of playing: once the original game was shut down, the practices of
22 M. Sicart
play continued. To play is create, nurture, and sustain those practices, aided by
game structures.
Both homo poieticus and homo ludens possess creative agency. They are both
models of constructivist beings, creators and preservers of worlds. Because of
their central role in creating and preserving these worlds, we can see both homo
ludens and homo poieticus as agents who should bear moral responsibility towards
the world they inhabit and the agents they interact with. These values are not
always positive: the worlds that GamerGate created and defended are based on
discriminatory values. But seeing this process of world-creation from a lens of a
constructivist ethics allows for the ethical critique and evaluation of the values on
which these worlds are created. Both homo ludens and homo poieticus create and
inhabit worlds with values, and uphold these values through their actions.
This process is what Floridi defines as creative stewardship (Floridi 2013,
p. 168). The homo poieticus is a steward of the values and informational integrity
of the environment they inhabit. This defines its creative requirements: the capa-
city to protect and contribute to the infosphere. Multiplayer games, both online
and offline, provide good examples of this: Communities of players tend to des-
pise those who cheat, or worse, those “spoilsports” that break the agreed-upon,
negotiated nature of the play experience (Consalvo 2007). Players tend to act
together, finding balance and expression through play, and through that process,
they develop and practice the virtues of that particular play experience.
Similarly, homo ludens is responsible for the values that define the encapsula-
ted world created when playing. As Goffman observed, many of the activities that
we engage in when we play have to do with collectively negotiating the purpose
of our actions while maintaining the integrity of the separated world in which we
play: “Speaking more strictly, we can think of inhibitory rules that tell partici-
pants what they must not attend to and of facilitating rules that tell them what
they may recognize” (Goffman 1961, p. 31). This is equivalent to the informa-
tional integrity of an infosphere. To play is to create and sustain an encapsulated
infosphere. Homo ludens has creative stewardship of the worlds of play.
This constructivist approach allows us to undertake the ethical inquiry into the
way the play-worlds are constructed and the way players behave towards those
play-worlds, all the other players, and the world in which those worlds occur.
Part of the challenge of being a moral homo ludens is to learn to have creative
stewardship over the play-worlds, while at the same time acknowledging that
not everybody plays, thar rules can also rule-out because not everybody outside
of those worlds wants to be a part of them. In this sense, I want to shift the
importance of the separateness of play to the moral domain of the player: It is
through action, through creative stewardship, that players need to make sense of
the separate-but-connected relationship of play-worlds with the worlds in which

they are instantiated. To play is also to be able to navigate, and act upon, the
voluntariness of play, its separateness, and its autotelic nature.
In the domain of computational culture, this approach can be used to provide
an analytical framework to the study of several different kinds of phenomena, for
example, Internet phenomena that with a hate-spreading agenda, from 8-chan to
GamerGate, employ the esthetics and iconography of play to further their agenda.
This is not to say that these are exclusively cultures of play: There are many len-
ses we can use to analyze them. But play is a productive and underused concept
to explain these phenomena. These behaviors are given a plausible deniability of
ethical responsibility by applying a popular appropriation of Huizinga’s notion
of the separateness of play: “It’s just a game”. The argument of separateness for
plausible deniability is not valid, as play is not an activity separate of the world,
but an activity of world creation that demands ethical stewardship. Creating a
world in which asymmetric, harmful relationships between agents are established
(Phillips and Milner 2017) is an example of how homo ludens can use the play
drive to create worlds of hatred that instrumentalize the sociotechnical affordan-
ces of computational machines. The deniability argument that “it’s just a game”
or that “we’re just playing” is a renouncing of the creative- stewardship duties
anybody who creates or acts in a play-world has.
The worlds created by the ludic drive have a certain epistemic invulnerability:
Because they are voluntary, and have their own purpose, they can sometimes seem
to be impervious to critique: Play is “just” play. This is the scenario of childish
vandalism that Floridi observes when critiquing homo ludens (Floridi 2013, p. 80).
But we should not confuse the epistemic invulnerability of rules with the meaning
and purpose of the worlds created through those rules. It is not in the rules, formal
or informal, that we can find the ethics of play. All analysis of the ethics of play
should focus on the poietic act of creating and maintaining an encapsulated world
that is related to the world in which it is instantiated.
An ethical homo ludens is in creative charge of the values that structure the re-
ontologization process that creates the encapsulated play-world. Homo ludens is
also in charge of upholding those values, and contributing to the experience of the
ludic in a creative way. If we are to understand how homo ludens can act ethically
in the Information Age, we need to address its poietic actions, and develop the
kind of constructivist ethics that will allow us to better engage with this play-
worlds and the ways they affect computational culture. We also need to describe,
and understand, what are the values that are at play in the creation of these worlds.
Scholars like DeKoven (2013) have formulated a discourse on play that could be
used to propose a list of values for the worlds created by homo ludens: community,
24 M. Sicart
fun, inclusion, … Similarly, Vallor’s (2016) cybervalues could be used to relate

the play-worlds with the constructivist processes of homo poieticus. However, the
project of specifying the values of play goes beyond the scope of this chapter,
though it should be its natural continuation.
I propose that the ethical analysis of homo ludens focuses on how to create
worlds through play by specifying the values of those worlds, the values of the
actions that can take place in that world, and the way they relate to the world in
which they are instantiated. It is the moral duty of homo ludens to make these
values public, to share them, to reflect upon them, and to ensure that they con-
tribute to the well-being of every agent in the play-world. The re-ontologization
process that creates the play-worlds should be seen also as a moral process, since
it is the origin and foundation of the values upheld by homo ludens, the values
that should lead to play as a mode of well-being in the worlds created by play.
5 Conclusions
This chapter proposes an initial sketch for the understanding of the ethics of homo
ludens in the Information Age. So far, I have only superficially applied some gene-
ral Information Ethics concepts, and I have not specified in detail which ethical
theories can be applied to this project, besides an expansion of Virtue Ethics.
However, I hope to have provided an insight into the ways play can be seen as a
generator of cultural manifestations in the Information Age and established that
the process of creating those manifestations is not exempt from ethical scrutiny.
I have argued that if we look at the information from the perspective of play,
we can understand cultural production as the result of a ludic drive. This is pos-
sible because both play and computers have a re-ontologization capacity: They
change the nature of the world, in the case of play by creating an encapsulated
play-world. The worlds created by play have an effect on the cultural discourses
of the Information Age. Therefore, it is imperative to understand the ethics of
homo ludens so we can address the challenges that this play drive creates in and
for culture. I started this inquiry by arguing that homo ludens is a type of homo
poieticus. This means that we could potentially develop a constructivist ethics of
homo ludens that take into consideration the poietic and re-ontologizing capacity
of the ludic drive.
To play is to create worlds within this world, creating culture and human forms
of expression. In our era of ubiquitous computer machines, addressing how the
moral nature of homo ludens affects play-worlds is a crucial perspective. In that
creative stewardship, the ethical role of homo ludens in the Information Age is
defined.
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Ludography
Minecraft (Mojang 2011, O: Mojang)
Ethical Dimensions of Digital Games
Julian Lamers and Alexander Filipović
Abstract
While spread and influence of digital games has increased significantly in
recent years, they are still a rather new object of applied ethics. This article
aims to address the subject out of the perspective of media ethics. To intro-
duce such an ethics of digital games, the heterogeneity of the subject as well
as the concept of entertainment in general need to be considered. After an
entertainment-ethical approach will be outlined, moral problems as well as
morally positive effects of digital games will be evaluated and summarized to
offer a short and introductory overview of the ethical aspects of digital games.
1 Introduction
The often morally justified criticism of digital games is as old as the medium
itself—since the 1970s, questions and worries about their potential dangers and
behavioural effects gave rise to public as well as academic debates (cf. Karlsen
2015; see also Egli and Meyers 1984; Funk and Buchman 1995; Dill and Dill
1998). A special feature of the debate on digital games (also as a result of several
terrible cases of excessive acts of violence in recent years and the question as to
J. Lamers (B) · A. Filipović

Hochschule für Philosophie München, München, Germany
E-Mail: julian.lamers@hfph.de
A. Filipović
E-Mail: alexander.filipovic@hfph.de

30 J. Lamers and A. Filipović
their causes) is, however, the argument repeatedly raised about the dubious affi-
nity for the depiction of physical violence in digital games, which is believed to
contribute to lowering the inhibition threshold for violence and to social brutali-
zation in the real world. This accusation in turn encounters the vehement criticism
of those who see their hobby as the supposed cause of all evil and criticize the
one-sided confrontation with hostility rather than confrontation with a medium
that has long since been established in society as a cultural asset.
The latter can hardly be denied: in fact, games are an integral part of our
modern culture. Approximately 40% of Germany’s population (34.3 million citi-
zens in 2018) play digital games at least occasionally in their free time, while
the average age of German computer players has risen to 36 (according to game
– Verband der deutschen Games-Branche e. V. 2019). But despite the growing
popularity, a moralized criticism of games remains. In this context, the discussion
of problematic (and particularly violent) content, that is interpreted as morally
questionable, comes into focus. Other forms of digital games such as economic
or everyday simulations, casual games or learning games are largely ignored in
these debates, although from an ethical perspective they can be as relevant as
well. It is precisely in this context, however, that the indifference with which the
medium is confronted is striking.
Based on these brief comments on the moralized and sometimes undifferentia-
ted debate, the question here is what the role of an ethics of digital games is and
how it should proceed. The following considerations are to be understood as part
of media ethics (see Funiok 2007; Filipović 2016). Media ethics as a scholarly
discipline is not satisfied with empirical research and description of moral rules in
the field of media and public communication, but ventures to assess whether facts
and actions are good and right in a moral sense and gives reasons for this. Thus,
ethics does not moralize, but reflects on morals—with a systematic claim. Ethics
is always about the question: What should we do? Thus, ethics always aims at
the moral question of the right action. An “object” is thus interesting for ethics
in terms of the actions it enables, facilitates, suggests, prevents, etc. The aim of
media ethics is to reflect on the implicit moral action questions associated with
the topic.
Digital games are a new topic in media ethics and are only just beginning to be
addressed. Media ethics, as the ethics of public communication, is primarily con-
cerned with issues of journalism and strategic communication. However, various
forms of entertainment also play a role in media ethics, such as films and other
fictional media formats on television. From a systematic point of view, digital
games therefore belong to the entertainment ethics sections of media ethics (cf.
Filipović and Franzetti 2018). Of course, such an ethics of digital games knows
Ethical Dimensions of Digital Games 31
that their subject matter is heterogeneous and that the concept of entertainment
also poses some problems. Nevertheless, from the perspective of media ethics,
an entertainment-ethical approach seems important to us. After this is outlined in
the second section, we evaluate the moral problems of digital games ethically in
the third section. Since ethics always includes the consideration of which morally
positive effects could be supported and strengthened, we will deal with these in
the fourth section. The text ends with a short summary and an outlook.1 Our text
has an introductory character and aims to give an overview of ethical aspects of
digital games. Digital games as an object of applied ethics are still rather unknown
territory.
2 Ethics of Digital Games: An Entertainment-Ethical

Approach
We understand digital gaming as a leisure activity that is voluntary and that is

experienced as an entertaining, i.e. not boring and miserable practice. Digital
games thus have criteria that apply to entertainment (on this concept of enter-
tainment see Früh 2003, p. 29, on digital games as a form of entertainment cf.
Klimmt 2010). Entertaining activities, although pleasurable for those who are
active in this way, are criticised from another side—for very different reasons. In
fact, all forms of entertainment throughout history have been suspected of exer-
ting a bad influence on the character formation and virtuousness of their audience.
In this sense, games are only the latest form of entertainment art that has to deal
with the accusation of moral corruption (Schulzke 2009).
There seems to be a historical consensus that too much (media) entertainment
has no positive effects neither for the individual nor for society. However, today
nobody would come up with the idea of subjecting, for example, novels, undoub-
tedly an established component of entertainment media, to an ethical scrutiny
or even of questioning the medium in general. Meanwhile, in the present con-
text, screen-related and digital entertainment seems to be under special suspicion.
For the question of how ethics can approach entertainment media, two different
directions of criticism are particularly interesting, as presented by Thomas Haus-
manninger (1999, pp. 3–5). The first type of entertainment criticism is generally
based on the suspected moral instability of people and assumes that entertainment
is responsible for a general decline in morals. This archetype of entertainment
1 Thisarticle is based on previous work on the subject in the perspective of media ethics
(especially Filipović (2015, 2019)) and aims to supplement it.
criticism can be traced back to the fourth century BC to Plato, who identified
tragedies and comedies as the cause for the decay of morality and virtues. This
form of critique assumes that entertainment has a negative potential to address
the lower, instinctive layers of human character (Hausmanninger, p. 4).
The second type of entertainment criticism, on the other hand, originates in cri-
ticism of the late capitalist “culture industry” by Horkheimer and Adorno. Within
the framework of this critique, the entertainment media for the masses function
as a central element of totalitarian socialization, as it takes place both in fascism
as well as democracies under the influence of capitalism. Entertainment serves as
an escape from (capitalist) society, whereby this escape is understood less as an
escape from reality than as from the last thought of resistance (Horkheimer and
Adorno 1995, p. 153).
Although these two types of criticism are still popular in the critical approach
to entertainment media today, it seems to be of little help for a constructive con-
sideration to speak of moralizing terms such as “moral decay” and “flight from
reality and social resistance”. Instead, the positive effects of entertainment must
also be included. On the one hand, the individual experience of entertainment is,
of course, an opportunity to free oneself from the burdens and worries of ever-
yday life. However, this relief can by no means be equated per se with a flight
from reality. After all, entertainment offers an individual space that can be used
for reflection and for working on one’s own identity, support educational pro-
cesses, serve as an invitation to empathy with others (Funiok 2007, p. 99), or
offer the opportunity to playfully deal with systems of values. These effects are
morally positive and desirable from an anthropological-ethical point of view, but
at the same time they only represent possibilities that can be aspired to by pro-
ducers and recipients of entertainment. A successful entertainment in this sense
can only be realized by a use of media that is characterized by responsibility on
the part of all involved actors and which, as it were, does justice to the legitimate
(media-related) wishes and needs of the people. The legitimacy of entertainment
(and of the need for it) results from the way in which it functions as an indivi-
dual self-realization by relieving the individual of external, functional purposes
(Hausmanninger 1999, p. 7).
Such an ethic of media entertainment can now be made fruitful in various
ways for an ethic of digital games. In general, the following can be stated at
first: Above all, in the face of broad intellectual scepticism about entertainment
offerings and digital games, it must be emphasised that, morally speaking, posi-
tive human possibilities lie in the pleasurable use of digital games. Negative and
positive effects for individuals and society must be carefully reflected on ethically
as described, because entertainment as entertainment is neither morally good nor
bad. For this purpose, an ethics of media regulation with regulatory issues (such
as the legal protection of minors) plays an equally important role as the reflection
on the responsibility of actors. Actors in the field of digital games can be found
on the production, distribution and reception side.
On this last reception level, one can tie in with the user ethics or reception
ethics, which the media ethicist and educator Rüdiger Funiok has made strong. If
such an ethics of media use is transferred primarily pedagogically-ethically, the
following convictions become important (cf. Rosenstock and Sura 2020; Rosen-
stock 2014; Ring and Funiok 2015; Filipović 2019): Users must be taken seriously
as autonomous subjects. In the case of young people, it will not be possible to
develop their individual freedom through a preservative-educational attitude, but
through encouraging support. The aim is to establish responsible capacity to act.
A responsible use of the media and the regulation of one’s own needs require, for
example, specific self-control skills. Such skills cannot be assumed from the out-
set. In this respect, it makes sense to develop suitable socialisation and educational
processes and to expand competences specifically and systematically, e.g. through
media competence efforts in (pre-)school and lifelong educational institutions and
through the work of media institutions.
Concretely related to digital games, such an ethical approach to use must take
into account the specific character: For digital games differ from other entertain-
ment media “above all in their specific aspects of interactivity, the immersion,
accompanied by its special aesthetics and its mode of access via a virtual proxy”.
Furthermore, the possibility of being able and having to actively act in simula-
ted worlds should be mentioned. Among other things, this is one of the ways in
which digital games unfold a “strong identification potential of the players with
the actions of the game characters”. And beyond that “the characteristics of direct
reward, the so-called flow experience and the design according to a level princi-
ple increased motivation factors” (Rosenstock and Sura 2020, p. 171).—All this
vividly illustrates how computer games as entertainment media intensify usage
and make responsible behaviour morally necessary in this context.
3 Considering Problems and Moral Issues of Digital

Games
3.1 Gaming and Addiction—A Risk of Mental Disorder?
In scientific research it is still up to debate whether and when game addiction can
be spoken of (see Janzik et al. in this vol.). In 2013, the American Psychiatric
Association included “Internet Gaming Disorder” in its Diagnostic and Statistical

Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), classifying excessive gaming as a mental
disorder with reference to need for further research. From the specified criteria,
ranging from preoccupation with gaming to having jeopardized a job or relation-
ship due to it, at least five within one year are required for a diagnosis.2 A study
published in 2017 reviewed these criteria and concluded that of a total of almost
19.000 respondents, of whom more than half said they had recently played online
games, only 2.4% met five or more of the criteria and only 0.3 to 1.0% reported
significant feelings of distress due to gaming (Przybylski et al. 2017). As a result,
such classifications are viewed critically, as it risks to also pathologize normal
behaviour, while the DSM-5 at the same time does not list other activities that
equally entail addictive potential (Markey and Ferguson 2017), and carries the
risk of diagnostic abuse at psychological and social cost (van Rooij et al. 2018,
p. 6). Apparently, gaming disorder in this sense is not very common. Nor can it
be said with certainty whether excessive gaming itself is a form of addiction or
an expression of other diagnostically defined states (Ledder 2016, p. 271; Mößle
et al. 2014, pp. 52–55). Either way, however, it cannot be denied that young peo-
ple in particular spend considerable time playing digital games. Even if they are
not necessarily addicted, excessive gaming can be an individual’s coping strategy
in the face of other problems that may require attention.
3.2 In-Game Shops and User Mining
Digital games have enormous economic potential—in Germany, sales of games

and hardware rose to 4.4 billion euro in 2018 (according to game – Verband
der deutschen Games-Branche e. V. 2019). A remarkable share of this revenue
is generated by in-game or in-app purchases, i.e. the purchase of virtual goods
which extend the gaming experience. Other game publishers rely entirely on a
free-to-play concept (see Elmezeny in this vol.), which basically allows ever-
yone to play the game for free—with the option to buy e.g. game currency or
premium time, which in some cases shorten otherwise frustratingly tedious up-
levelling. The exploitation of the temptation to intensify the gaming experience,
e.g. through the possibility of individualisation and instrumental improvement,
and of the players’ attachment to the game seems particularly problematic, since
especially young players, who may lack sufficient awareness for moderate and
2 See also: https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/internet-gaming.

responsible handling of their own resources, seem to invest real money into vir-
tual goods more often compared to older players (cf. Lim and Seng 2011; Cai
et al. 2019).
Finally, the connection between user/usage mining and digital games must also
be addressed. This aspect is not limited to the criticism of the fact that digital
games are integrated into the surveillance arsenal of the NSA and other interna-
tional intelligence agencies (Whitson and Simon 2014, pp. 310–313). In general,
all problems of user data recording and their exploitation can also be identified
in online games. In light of the ever-increasing number of gamers worldwide
and the increasing online connection of consoles and devices, this poses a major
problem of informational self-determination and state and entrepreneurial control
over people.
3.3 Sexism, Discrimination and Worldviews
Undoubtedly, the huge range of digital games on offer also includes a variety of
disgusting and repulsive content (cf. Verhovnik 2014, p. 311), which does not
require any ethical expertise to be qualified as morally reprehensible. Far more
problematic, however, is the constant as well as subversive recurrence of stereo-
types and discrimination in games. For example, female game characters, who
could function as positive identification figures, still are a rarity within the variety
of digital game characters (cf. Lynch et al. 2016). Instead, an overrepresentation
of white, male, non-disabled, middle-aged main characters (Ledder 2016, p. 273)
can be observed. This seems paradoxical considering that in 2019 the gender dis-
tribution among German gamers is almost equal with 52% male and 48% female
players (according to game – Verband der deutschen Games-Branche e. V. 2019).
Furthermore, it appears that sexism still seems to be a phenomenon within some
gaming communities as well as the games industry (see Theißl 2013; Wu 2014).
Regarding the subversive forces of games, the aspect of conveyed worldviews
is also relevant. The occasional cooperation of some developers with weapon
manufacturers in order to accurately represent certain vehicles or weapons in
games, and the publication of own ego-shooters by various militaries (i.e. Ame-
rica’s Army by the US-Army, or Glorious Mission by the Chinese People‘s
Liberation Army) needs to be regarded critically. Other forms of digital games,
such as economic and everyday simulations, seem unproblematic in this context,
since their mostly non-violent contents might be considered as rather “harm-
less”—although a subversive mediation of worldviews can also be observed here,
as many simulations focus one-sidedly on economic success (cf. Nagenborg 2006,

p. 203).
3.4 In-Game Violence and Aggressive Behaviour
In the public debate, criticism of the trivializing and sometimes even glorifying
depiction of violence in games is combined with the accusation that games are
partly to blame for a generally lowered threshold for the use of violence. The ass-
umption of a causal connection between virtual and real violence has so far been
successfully maintained in public perception and is quickly adopted in the context
of specific incidents of violence. The ensuing discussion about the link between
violence in digital games and real-world-violence, often emotionally conducted
by all sides, runs the risk of overshadowing potentially more crucial aspects con-
cerning mental health and possible reasons for violent behaviour, especially in the
case of young people (cf. Ferguson and Beresin 2017).
Meanwhile, research on that topic has come to more differentiated conclu-
sions so far: some studies have shown short-term effects of ludic violence on
aggressive emotions of the player, while others have not (Ledder 2016, p. 272).
Erica L. Neely suggests, however, that a single immoral action in a game is unli-
kely to have any effect on the moral character of the player, but a continuous
repetition of such action may have (Neely 2019, p. 353). Further, for the differen-
tiation between the virtual and the real world, the closeness to reality of a game
is decisive (Neely 2019, pp. 351–352). The aspect of the subjectively perceptible
demarcation between virtual world and real world might become even more a
challenge in the future due to the progress in virtual reality technology (see Ess
2014, pp. 179–193). In addition, beyond of the focus on violent digital games, it
should also be mentioned that non-violent digital games can also promote aggres-
sive behaviour through the experience of frustration (cf. Verhovnik 2014, p. 309)
and must therefore also be included in the discussion.
4 Considering Positive Effects of Gaming
4.1 Ethical Reflection Through Gaming—the Ludic

Phronesis
Entertainment, at least in some forms, offers its recipients the opportunity to

reflect on their own identity, social relationships and value systems, freed from the
constraints of everyday life. However, as in the case of other entertainment media

as well, it is necessary to clarify which contents can be described as relevant
in this perspective, respectively which digital games can be described as ethi-
cally relevant objects. Miguel Sicart understands ethically relevant digital games
initially as systems of rules in which certain moral values are embedded that
require and reward certain actions (Sicart 2009, pp. 25–37). Accordingly, he defi-
nes a digital game as moral object, if its formal system of rules confront the
player with ethical dilemmas, or raise ethical issues at least, and if it offers the
opportunity to the player to relate to the simulated world in a certain way (Sicart
2009, pp. 48–57). In this sense, rather abstract game types such as puzzle games
as Tetris or Candy Crush do not seem to be relevant in this context, as their
gameplay-systems do not require any moral consideration on behalf of the player.
On the other hand, games which offer complex formal systems and game worlds,
i.e. role-playing games, ego-shooters or massive multiplayer online games, can
be described as virtual places in which the confrontation with value systems is
simulated. Therefore, such digital games are not only objects that can be ethi-
cally reflected upon, but also frameworks in which moral reflection itself is made
possible. Seen in this light, the ethical responsibility for the nature of this fra-
mework and its implicit values lies with the game developers, while the ethical
responsibility for dealing with these values within the limited openness of a game
lies with the gamers themselves (Sicart 2009, p. 59). Sicart describes gaming as a
process of subjectivation, in which the player-subject is created in the context of
the game’s framework. This subject, however, is not limited to the game’s world,
insofar as the player as a person already has a cultural background in the context
of his real environment. In this sense, the player-subject is “only a subset of a
cultural and moral being who voluntarily plays, bringing to the game a presence
of culture and values that also affect the experience” (Sicart 2009, p. 63).
Two of the characteristics of the player-subject deserve special mention: first,
it exists in the respective game situation and regards it as a moral agent in the
context of its own experience both as a player and as a person. Sicart understands
the player-subject as a so-called body-subject which represents a certain embo-
diment of the player and establishes the connection between the subjectivity of
the player within the game and his other subjectivities as a real person, while
simultaneously providing the dividing line between them (Sicart 2009, p. 79).
This connection makes it possible for a real person to appear as a player-subject
and to differentiate between it and its real-world subjectivity.
Secondly, the player-subject is bound to the game’s framework of rules and
values and must take them seriously but does not follow the game events in a
purely purposeful manner as a passive “moral-zombie”. Instead, as a moral agent,
the player also reflects on the game and its rule system and is even able to expand
it through his or her interaction with the game and with other players, e.g. if a
player community consent about a certain behaviour within a game, i.e. camping
in an ego shooter, to be undesirable or inacceptable in order to preserve a balanced
game experience, even though this behaviour is not prohibited by the game’s rule
system itself (Sicart 2009, pp. 33, 90–101). In summary, gaming and the associa-
ted creation of the player-subject implies, in a virtue-ethical sense, a formation
of moral knowledge, considered as ludic phronesis (Sicart 2009, pp. 112–113).
Sicart conceives of this emergence of the player-subject and his ludic phronesis
as a Ludic Hermeneutic Circle, which combines the subjectivities of the playing
individual and finally leads to the individual subject external to the game, which
critically reflects on his or her actions in a game situation and learns to deal with
specific moral challenges (Sicart 2009, pp. 116–123).
This approach can also be viewed critically: Neely remarks that a player—
while theoretically capable of—does not necessarily reflect on his or her actions
and his or her role in the context of a game. Although at least adults possess a
broader moral experience, it cannot be assumed that they are immune to the sub-
versive influences of ludic action (Neely 2019, p. 352). More decisive, however,
is how strongly the player can identify with his character and the game situation.
The more the player sees himself represented in the game character, the more
likely he or she is to act according to his or her moral knowledge and to avoid
certain actions in the game situation that are considered as morally reprehensible
(Neely 2019, p. 349).
However, it remains undisputed that an ethical learning effect is possible
through confrontation with moral dilemmas (cf. Wimmer 2014). Just as ethics
classes work with dilemmas whose morally correct and good solution is not fore-
seeable from the outset, so it is possible to create decision-making game situations
in which a moral dilemma becomes challenging. Though, the ethical value of such
a ludic dilemma depends above all on the quality of the moral framework of a
game. Often, supposed moral dilemmas in games can be solved relatively easily if
the player can see through this framework and understands which decisions lead
to the “ideal” outcome (Bosman 2019, p. 545). With the help of the save-load-
function of digital games, the player is thus able to navigate through the game’s
decision-making-system without using his own moral compass. Frank Bosman
describes such pseudo-moral challenges as so-called tamed moral problems or
semi-wicked problems (Bosman, pp. 550–556), which are transparent enough to
make it obvious which decision can be considered as good or evil in the context
of the game’s morality system and which therefore lead the player to a rather stra-
tegic choice by going through all possible results to select the desired outcome.
Real wicked problems, on the other hand, are decision situations in which the
player initially has no way of knowing in which way his decisions are evaluated
in the overall context of the game and which decision is the right one. Due to
the lack of insight into the moral framework of the game, the player is forced to
deal ethically with the game situation. Super wicked problems, on the other hand,
can be described as real moral dilemmas, insofar as none of their solutions allow
to be described as right or wrong and no ideal solution of the problem can be
determined in moral or narrative terms, i.e. the Tenpenny Tower-Quest in Fallout
3 (Bethesda Game Studios 2008) or also the Kaiden-or-Ashley-decision in Mass
Effect (BioWare 2007) (cf. Bosman 2019, pp. 554–557). Precisely because such
situations do not offer any moral teaching but leave it to the player to reflect
and evaluate his or her actions and their consequences in the game world (see
Schulzke 2009), they enable players to unfold their own convictions and experi-
ences from their own moral personality external to the game and to test them in
a ludic environment.
4.2 Learning by Playing
So far, it has been discussed on how digital games can be used to acquire moral
knowledge and use it in a ludic situation. Apart from this, digital games have
also established themselves in recent years as a suitable medium for learning
as such: under the term gamification, i.e. the use of ludic elements in a context
other than that of a game, in order to increase motivation by means of incentives
such as collecting experience points or using ranking lists and to achieve better
working or learning successes. Christian Dürnberger, for example, describes how
playful elements—in contrast to information brochures and ethical essays—are
far more successful in promoting desired behaviour. For example, it can have a
positive effect on driving style if economical driving on the electronic dashboard
is symbolized as a larger and greener plant, while wasteful driving leads to the
plant withering (Dürnberger 2014, p. 232). In addition, so-called serious games,
i.e. educational games whose purpose is beyond the entertainment aspect to impart
specific knowledge, have established themselves in a wide variety. Other forms
of games, such as political or city simulations, can convey a sense of complex
political, economic and ecological contexts in a ludic way. The developers of the
open-world action-adventure games Assassin’s Creed: Origins (Ubisoft Montreal
2017) and Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey (Ubisoft Quebec 2018) also offered another
innovation when they added a so-called “Discovery Tour Mode” to their games,
which transformed both game maps—freed from any narrative elements—into
virtual open-air museums that allow the player to undertake guided historical tours
through ancient Egypt or ancient Greece and to refresh his or her own historical
knowledge. Undoubtedly, all these examples illustrate the value that digital games
can have in terms of learning.
As Jeffrey Wimmer and Markus Wiemker note, digital games, like other media,
could be integrated more strongly into education and school curricula—i.e. within
the framework of digital science classes or in regard to dealing with the ethi-
cal possibilities of the medium in ethics classes—in order to promote creative
thinking and problem-solving skills (Wimmer and Wiemker 2017, p. 61). When
implemented rationally, such an addition to the curricula could be reasonable
and up-to-date and would make an important contribution to the urgently nee-
ded teaching of media skills to young people, but it also presupposes clarification
about the present significance of the medium—also in the context of learning—to
teachers as well as parents.
5 Conclusion
In our opinion, an ethics of digital gaming must above all take into account
both the problems and the opportunities described. The spread of digital games
and the influence of this entertainment genre, especially on young people, sug-
gests an ethical reflection in itself. An ethics of digital games in the context of
entertainment ethics is therefore a serious matter and requires careful, interdis-
ciplinary reflection. An ethics of computer games would then have the task of
freeing the discourse on digital games from the confrontation between concer-
ned admonishers and enthusiastic fans and to judge it in the context of cultural
change processes. All in all, however, it is our impression that an applied ethics
of computer gaming has not yet been convincingly and systematically formed.
There is still a lot of work to be done in this area, which depends above all on
interdisciplinarity.
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Ludography
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey (Ubisoft 2018, O: Ubisoft Quebec)
Assassin’s Creed Origins (Ubisoft 2017, O: Ubisoft Montreal)
Fallout 3 (Bethesda Softworks 2008, O: Bethesda Game Studios)
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Societal and Political Discourses
Gaming Addiction—Underdefined,
Overestimated?
Robin Janzik, Lars-Ole Wehden, Felix Reer,

and Thorsten Quandt
Abstract
This chapter provides an overview of the state of research on the problematic
use of digital games to shed light on the highly debated question of whe-
ther gaming addiction exists. It traces the development of research from initial
media reports on the negative side effects of gaming, to the early research
done on its prevalence, and ultimately to the classification of the phenomenon
in the manuals of the World Health Organization (ICD-11) and the Ameri-
can Psychiatric Association (DSM-5). Definitions, measurement instruments,
results, and the quality of studies are critically evaluated. A particular focus lies
on discussing issues within early works, how these challenges were overcome,
and which problems still exist today. Finally, this paper outlines suggestions
to improve future research and reliably assess the problematic use of digital
games across nations and cultures.
R. Janzik (B) · L.-O. Wehden · F. Reer · T. Quandt

Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Münster, Germany
E-Mail: robin.janzik@uni-muenster.de
L.-O. Wehden
E-Mail: lars-ole.wehden@uni-muenster.de
F. Reer
E-Mail: felix.reer@uni-muenster.de
T. Quandt
E-Mail: thorsten.quandt@uni-muenster.de

48 R. Janzik et al.
Keywords
Internet gaming disorder • ICD-11 • DSM-5 • Gaming addiction •
Problematic game use
1 Gaming Addiction—A Public Debate
When a 17-year-old Russian gamer, known only under his pseudonym Rustam,
died from thrombosis, he had been playing the multiplayer online battle arena
game Defense of the Ancients for a period of 22 days, taking only minimal breaks
(McCrum 2015). Media reports mention similar incidents in which gamers died
due to cardiac failure or exhaustion, such as cases in Taiwan (Hunt and Ng 2015)
and the USA (USA Today 2017). After the death of Rustam, Pavel Astakhov,
Children’s Rights Commissioner in Russia, made a statement citing his great con-
cern: “It is important to follow what your kids are doing. […] A dependence on
computer games is one of the biggest dangers for the kids nowadays.” (McCrum
2015) The existence of gaming addiction seems to be taken for granted-—despite
being controversially discussed for more than three decades. Though such extreme
cases have been considered the first pieces of evidence for the existence of a new
type of addiction (e.g., Griffiths et al. 2012), no scientific consensus has yet been
reached on whether disordered gaming constitutes a distinct form of addiction.
The concept of gaming addiction deviates from a more traditional view of
addictions, as it does not involve substance abuse (or drug use). This also applies
to other types of behavioral addictions, which do not necessarily rely on a sub-
stance as the cause and object of the disorder. For example, when done in excess,
using the Internet, watching TV, gambling, exercising, or having sex can also be
considered to be behavioral addictions (Griffiths 2005) and have been discussed
prior to problematic gaming. However, the latter has received an increasing level
of attention. Because players are able to play without pausing and adolescents in
particular are drawn to the activity, excessive gaming has been discussed as a pub-
lic health risk (e.g., Griffiths et al. 2012). From that point on, not only have parents
been worrying about their children’s future, but also health insurance companies
and the medical sector have become involved in the discussion of problematic
gaming (e.g., Torres-Rodríguez et al. 2018).
A growing body of research paralleled this public debate to further investigate
the effects digital games might have on people’s lives. Over time, two factions
have emerged. Some scholars expressed criticism of defining problematic gaming
as an addiction due to a weak scientific basis (e.g., van Rooij et al. 2018). Others
Gaming Addiction—Underdefined, Overestimated? 49
appreciated the idea because it would allow potentially affected individuals bet-
ter opportunities to seek help (e.g., Rumpf et al. 2018). When considering the
varied interpretations on the state of research and the resulting debate, one ques-
tion emerges: What are scientifically sound findings concerning the existence of
gaming addiction?
This paper first outlines initial research done on problematic gaming to
demonstrate how these early works approached the topic and which problems
they faced. The paper then discusses the current state of research with a focus on
the World Health Organization’s and the American Psychiatric Association’s deci-
sions to include Gaming Disorder and Internet Gaming Disorder, respectively, in
their manuals and the influence this has had on subsequent studies. To conclude,
the last section elaborates on the existence of gaming addiction, if what was found
suffices this label, and the challenges of future research.
2 A Short History of Gaming Addiction Research
Since the 1980s, there have been works that dealt with the negative effects of
video games. Initially, these works were not concerned with addiction but with
other side effects, such as epilepsy (Rushton 1981), joint problems (McCowan
1981), or the suppression of memories (Klein 1984). The first studies to examine
addictive gaming behavior, however, did not have a clear understanding or defini-
tion of addiction itself. For example, Egli and Meyers (1984) used a set of ad-hoc
items on different problematic aspects of game use (including the question how
hard participants find it to stop a playing session) and came to the conclusion that
about 10% of the examined sample showed some signs of compulsive use. Others
argued that frequency and average time playing are key indicators for problematic
gaming behavior (e.g., Selnow 1984).
As the market for digital games became more differentiated and new platforms
and games became available to a wider population, media interest increased and,
with it, the amount of research on the negative side effects of gaming. While
the 1980s were still dominated by explorative approaches, each of which had
very different understandings of what may constitute gaming addiction, research
in the 1990s contained the first attempts at a more sound, scientific definition
and measurement. In this context, criteria from other behavioral addictions, such
as gambling, were applied to the field of digital games. Despite these efforts to
more validly measure gaming addiction, an assessment of the problem remained
difficult. Griffiths and Hunt (1998) reported that a rather high prevalence rate of
up to 19.9% of their adolescent UK sample was dependent on computer games.
50 R. Janzik et al.
Other studies found still considerable but comparatively lower prevalence rates.
For example, in their sample of secondary school children, Fisher (1994) found a
prevalence rate of approximately 6% pathological “arcade video game players”.
Phillips et al. (1995) looked in particular at children between the ages of 11 and
16 years and reported a similar prevalence of addictive use of 7.5% among players
and 5.7% in the entire sample.
At the beginning of the new millennium, online games were included as rese-
arch objects. They were expected to have a higher addictive potential due to their
prolonged playability (Griffiths et al. 2004). This addictive potential was particu-
larly assumed due to the social gratifications multiplayer games can provide and
the increased popularity of role-playing games, such as World of Warcraft. Social
motives have become more important through online functions, and social game
elements in particular are deemed to have a high potential for increasing addic-
tion: on the one hand, they may compensate for possible social deficits in offline
life, and on the other hand, integration into the game world can create a social
obligation (e.g., Ducheneaut et al. 2006). Accordingly, studies on online games
identified relatively high rates of problematic players. Again, different measure-
ment instruments oriented towards the criteria of other behavioral addictions, such
as gambling or problematic Internet use, were utilized. Wan and Chiou (2006)
classified 46% of a sample of 177 Taiwanese adolescent MMORPG players as
addicts. In a study by Charlton and Danworth (2007) that focused on MMORPG
players of all age groups, 38.7% of the participants were classified as addicts.
Grüsser et al. (2007) employed a larger sample of over 7000 gamers with a mean
age of about 21 years and found that 11.9% of their sample met the criteria of
addiction with respect to their gaming behavior.
The development of valid scales and different criteria that can be applied to
separate disordered gamers from the normal range have posed a problem over
time. Unclear provisions have not allowed studies to be effectively compared. In
some cases, players fell into the category of problematic behavior, but in others,
they did not due to a particular cut-off point. Therefore, in 2009, Lemmens and
colleagues proposed to establish stricter criteria. They suggested to only classify
individuals as addicted if all measurement criteria were fulfilled; if more than half
of the criteria were met, the usage behavior was considered merely problematic.
This approach aimed at overcoming the rigid dichotomy of distinguishing between
disordered and healthy players. Following this approach, Festl et al. (2013) found
that only 0.2% of users in a large, representative sample met all criteria and 3.7%
could be described as problematic users. Van Rooij et al. (2011) confirmed these
low numbers and showed that only 1.5% of Dutch schoolchildren ages 13 to 16
could be classified as addicted to online games.
Taken together, studies conducted in the eighties, nineties, and the first years
of the new millennium were characterized by a large diversity in the measurement
instruments used, which resulted in a high variance in the reported prevalence of
problematic gaming. Across several countries, there was no consensus on how
to reliably assess pathological playing patterns. The state of research on whether
gaming addiction does exist merely provided fragmented results that indicated
that, for problematic gaming to qualify as an addiction, common ground had to
be found.
3 ICD-11 and DSM-5: The Current Situation
Until recently, neither the 10th edition of the International Statistical Classification
of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD) by the World Health Organiza-
tion (WHO 1992) nor the 4th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of
Mental Disorders (DSM) by the American Psychiatric Association (APA 1994)
included problematic gaming or any other media-related behavioral addictions.
Therefore, one could indeed argue that, at least formally, gaming addiction did
not exist.
When the APA prepared a revised 5th version of the DSM to be published
in 2013 (APA 2013), they assembled several workgroups to revise the manual
and recommend improvements. The twelve members of one of these groups,
the Substance Use Disorder Workgroup, were instructed to consider candidates
for potential behavioral addictions, such as gambling, general Internet use, work,
shopping, exercise, and Internet gaming, for inclusion into the DSM-5 (Petry et al.
2014). Through an extensive review of the existing research on each of those phe-
nomena, the workgroup had to decide whether the existence of a gaming disorder
could be proven in a scientifically sound way that warranted formal acknow-
ledgment by its inclusion in the manual. The group ultimately decided to move
gambling addiction to the substance-related and addictive disorder section of the
DSM but denied formal acknowledgment of the other aforementioned problema-
tic behaviors. They also voted to include Internet Gaming Disorder (IGD) in the
DSM section on Conditions for Further Study. This rather cautious step was justi-
fied by the workgroup based on 250 (empirical) publications that existed on the
topic (Petry et al. 2014).
With this decision, the DSM-5 provided the first formal description of disor-
dered gaming and lent its support to the claim that gaming addiction exists. It
defines IGD as the “[p]ersistent and recurrent use of the Internet to engage in
games, often with other players, leading to clinically significant impairment or
52 R. Janzik et al.
distress” (APA 2013, p. 795). Five or more of the following nine criteria must
be met to diagnose IGD: (1) preoccupation with Internet games; (2) withdra-
wal symptoms when Internet gaming is taken away; (3) tolerance, in the form
of the perceived need to spend increasing amounts of time engaged in Internet
games; (4) unsuccessful attempts to control the participation in Internet games;
(5) loss of interest in previous hobbies and entertainment as a result of, and with
the exception of, Internet games; (6) continued excessive use of Internet games
despite knowledge of psychosocial problems; (7) deception of family members,
therapists, or others regarding the amount of Internet gaming; (8) use of Internet
games to escape or relieve a negative mood; and (9) the jeopardization or loss of
a significant relationship, job, or educational or career opportunity due to parti-
cipation in Internet games. The DSM-5 also proposes cut-off points of 8 to 10 h
of play per day, or 30 h per week, and describes long periods without food or
sleep and a negligence of (offline) social relationships as negative outcomes cau-
sed by IGD. In accordance with the earlier findings (e.g., Lemmens et al. 2009),
the DSM-5 distinguishes between mild, moderate, and severe IGD (APA 2013).
The inclusion of IGD in the DSM has caused controversy. In particular, the
nine criteria for diagnosis are criticized for various reasons. It has been argued that
preoccupation is a normal as opposed to pathological behavior, as highly involved
or professional gamers must spend time considering strategies or discussing new
releases to stay competitive. It has also been argued that the need for deception
depends on the social situation of the gamer and that giving up other activities
for a new hobby can be normal (e.g., Griffiths et al. 2015; Kuss et al. 2016).
Furthermore, Quandt (2017) argues that the DSM definition lacks a well-defined
object the subject is meant to be addicted to. He asserts that it is unclear who
decides what kind of behavior is normal and what is problematic. This line of
argumentation is also put forward by Griffiths et al. (2015), who question the
representativeness of the group of Petry et al. (2014), who previously claimed
the DSM-5 approach was internationally consensual. More importantly, Griffiths
et al. (2015) question IGD being an addiction.
Nevertheless, after the formal inclusion of IGD into the DSM-5, new measu-
rement instruments that closely adapt the nine DSM-5 criteria and also provide
clearly defined (yet controversially discussed) cut-off criteria for research purpo-
ses have been developed and validated (e.g., Lemmens et al. 2015; Müller et al.
2014; Petry et al. 2014; Pontes and Griffiths 2015; Pontes et al. 2014; Rehbein
et al. 2015). Studies using these DSM-based screening tools reported prevalence
rates of, for example, 1.16% of German adolescents ages 13 to 18 classified with
IGD (Rehbein et al. 2015); among individuals in the Netherlands ages 13 to 40,
4 to 5% classified as disordered gamers (Lemmens et al. 2015); and 5.3% of
a sample of 1003 gamers from 57 countries also classified as disordered gamers

(Pontes et al. 2014). These rates are much lower when compared to the previously
reported, extremely high rates of up to approximately 40% of players classified
as addicts (e.g., Wan and Chiou 2006; Charlton and Danworth 2007).
Controversy on whether gaming addiction exists and should be formalized
increased when the WHO decided to include Gaming Disorder (GD) as the first
media-related behavioral disorder in their latest 11th revision of the ICD. The
manual reads that the disorder is “characterized by a pattern of persistent or recur-
rent gaming behavior […], which may be online […] or offline, manifested by (1)
impaired control over gaming (e.g., onset, frequency, intensity, duration, termina-
tion, context); (2) increasing priority given to gaming to the extent that gaming
takes precedence over other life interests and daily activities; and (3) continua-
tion or escalation of gaming despite the occurrence of negative consequences.
The behavior pattern is of sufficient severity to result in significant impairment
in personal, family, social, educational, occupational or other important areas of
functioning”. Furthermore, “the pattern of gaming behavior may be continuous
or episodic and recurrent” and is “normally evident over a period of at least
12 months in order for a diagnosis to be assigned, although the required dura-
tion may be shortened if all diagnostic requirements are met and symptoms are
severe.” (WHO 2018)
Critics of the rather short and unspecific description of symptoms, and the
further formalization of problematic gaming in general (e.g., Aarseth et al. 2017;
van Rooij et al. 2018), argue that these standards may lead to the stigmatiza-
tion of healthy gamers by pathologizing normal behavior and that the criteria to
diagnose GD are too closely derived from substance abuse and gambling. They
further argue that the step could lead to an emergence of new behavioral disorders
and point towards a rather weak scientific basis proving functional impairment as
a result of excessive gaming (van Rooij et al. 2018). Those in favor of the inclu-
sion argue that a formalization would facilitate patients’ access to professional
and comparable treatment covered by health insurance plans, allow for increa-
sed and more comparable research on the topic, and increase the development
of more already highly in-demand treatment facilities and professionals (Griffiths
et al. 2017; Rumpf et al. 2018). The scientific discussion on this topic and on
the question of whether or not such an addiction should be formalized is far from
over. However, in both groups, there seems to be a minimal consensus that a small
number of people are facing serious life problems as a result of excessive gaming
(Griffiths et al. 2017).
54 R. Janzik et al.
4 Does Gaming Addiction Exist? Challenges for Future

Research
The body of gaming addiction research has grown substantially and provides
knowledge on the prevalence of problematic gaming. However, the answer as
to whether gaming addiction exists is more complex than implied by early rese-
arch. There is a small number of gamers demonstrating serious problems, but
the dramatic warnings of harm to children caused by gaming and the findings
of high prevalence rates in early research cannot be substantiated in recent stu-
dies. According to the current state of research, there may be various reasons
for this. On one hand, studies should be differentiated by the criteria they app-
lied. While more recent studies distinguish between addicted users and users at
risk of becoming addicted, this categorization did not exist during early rese-
arch. In addition, differences may result from varied measurement instruments.
While relatively high prevalence rates were reported with individually developed
instruments (e.g., Charlton and Danworth 2007), rather low prevalence rates were
found with measurements based on DSM or ICD criteria (e.g., Lemmens et al.
2015). Within this context, early research may have overestimated the prevalence
of problematic use.
The difficulty of answering the question as to whether gaming addiction exists
is not only reflected in the historical development of the state of research. The
lively academic debate on whether problematic use can be seen as an addiction
and whether it requires classification in manuals also demonstrates a disagreement
with regard to the question of this paper. Five problem areas illustrate points
of contention. First, some scholars dispute that gaming addiction is defined as
a behavioral disorder, as with GD in the ICD-11. They raise the question why
gaming should be different from other activities people do in excess, such as
social media use or work, and why gaming is the only activity listed in manuals
(e.g., van Rooij et al. 2018). Second, there is an expanding body of literature on
other types of problematic digital media use, such as social media (e.g., Pontes
2017) and smartphones (e.g., Hussain et al. 2017). Limited research has collected
data on both problematic gaming and other media use to compare their prevalence
rates and find connections. However, comparative studies have found moderate to
strong correlations (e.g., Pontes 2017; Reer et al. 2019), and the prevalence of
other forms of problematic use is fairly equal (e.g., Hussain et al. 2017). This
leads to the question of whether problematic gaming is an independent disorder
or whether it might show an overlap or comorbidity with other disorders. Third,
problematic gaming is often dependent on the particular lifestyle of the subject
and does not testify to high stability over time (e.g., Scharkow et al. 2014). Per-
sonal development plays a central role here, and problematic gaming is discussed
not only as an independent disorder but also as a coping mechanism used to treat
temporary problems, such as loneliness (Domahidi and Quandt 2015). Fourth,
previous classifications of problematic gaming focus exclusively on symptoms
(WHO 2018), according to the criteria on which they are based. This poses a pro-
blem because, though gaming addiction is meant to be an independent disorder, no
specifics of the medium and the context are integrated. This raises the questions
of which characteristics make a game addictive and which environments facili-
tate this process (Elliott et al. 2012). Fifth, the negative consequences of a clear
classification have been ignored. It has been assumed that a fixed definition will
help to develop therapeutic measures and support those affected. In fact, unaf-
fected individuals could be mistakenly classified as addicted, which will provide
additional costs within the healthcare system (Aarseth et al. 2017). In addition,
it could be argued that players have been stigmatized, and the media handling of
the issue has become more acute, because the label addiction can now be used. If
policy is changed on the basis of this undifferentiated view, it would have to be
revised with new findings. As far as research is concerned, Aarseth et al. (2017)
argue that the WHO’s and the APA’s decisions may signify a change of thought.
This would lead to more confirmatory studies and fewer explorative ones, when
the latter would be urgently needed due to the opacity of the subject.
Future studies face a number of challenges to better resolve the contradicti-
ons identified in the existing research. Consistent criteria are needed to measure
problematic gaming. The WHO’s and the APA’s decision to include the disorder
in their manuals may cause a tendency to use their criteria. However, there are
still a number of scales in circulation that make comparative analyses difficult.
Ideally, such criteria should also include references to the role of the game in
identifying problematic behavior. At this point, it is not clear whether Pokémon
is potentially different from Counter-Strike, for example. There is also a need for
more robust studies. Representative and longitudinal studies are rarely conduc-
ted, as cross-sectional studies with self-selected samples dominate the field (e.g.,
Männikkö et al. 2017). However, only the former provide results that validate
the problem. Due to the controversial nature of the topic, open science practices
are equally important to ensure that certain standards are met, and results remain
comparable. Furthermore, there is a need for clinical evaluations of problematic
gaming. Survey studies are central to assessing how prevalent the phenomenon is
in society. Nevertheless, it must be investigated whether the symptoms actually
apply to individuals who are considered addicted and subsequently seek help
56 R. Janzik et al.
in order to further develop criteria. Ultimately, it would also be appropriate to

compare results from different countries to better identify cultural influences.
In conclusion, further research is necessary to better understand problematic
gaming habits. The field of research could be improved by making it clear how
previous results were obtained, how classifications in certain manuals were deci-
ded, and by dedicating future investigations to the goal of providing scientifically
sound and unbiased results. These efforts will hopefully result in a more definite
answer to the question that guided this paper. However, a much-needed solution
to these issues in research should at the same time offer assistance for those in
need and refrain from stigmatizing the much larger group of healthy players.
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Re-Figuring Innovation in Games:
A Feminist Interventionist Project
Jennifer Jenson
Abstract
This paper reports on an ongoing, 5-year, international feminist interven-
tion research project funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research
Council of Canada, “Re-Figuring Innovation in Games”. The project includes
researchers, students, game designers, community members, and video game
companies in Canada, the U.S., and the U.K. Its most fundamental goal has
been to build an explicitly feminist coalition to intervene in the habitually
hostile and misogynist cultures of making and playing digital games. To date,
our collective work has involved examining the structural and cultural issues in
play that continue to successfully marginalize, harass and exclude women and
others from a highly lucrative technology industry. The paper will also focus
on describing some of the interventions that effectively interrupt and reconfi-
gure persistent patterns of inequality, and demonstrate how the international
network is striving to realize local, and extra-local change.
1 Background & Context
A very real challenge of the twenty-first century is the enduring inequity bet-
ween men and women, especially in relation to the design, uptake and use of
digital technologies, including digital games (Hill et al. 2010; Burrows 2013).
Researching this persistent under-participation of women is of social, cultural and
J. Jenson (B)
University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
E-Mail: jennifer.jenson@ubc.ca

62 J. Jenson
economic interest and importance. For example, companies in Canada and the
United States that have more women in positions of power (corporate officers
and/or boards of directors) outperform those who have few to no women (Gillis
2010). In late fall 2018, California, recognizing the deep structural inequities at
all levels of pay, passed legislation that required all companies registered in Cali-
fornia to have women on boards of directors (at least two on boards of 5, and 3
on boards of 6 or more) by 2021 (Stewart 2018).
The digital games industry, like the technology sector in general, is and has
been dominated by men for decades, and recent reports indicate that of those
women who begin careers in technology, 56% eventually leave because of its
inhospitable and often outright discriminatory culture. This is especially true in
the games sector (Burrows 2013; Cain Miller 2014; Huhman 2012; McWhertor
2014; Snyder 2014). In the past few years, Google announced that it would work
to fight “deep-set cultural biases and an insidious frat-house attitude that per-
vades the tech business” (Manjoo 2014), while other large tech companies like
Facebook, Microsoft and Apple have explicitly stated that they will work to incre-
ase diversity in their workforce. All major digital game companies, however, have
been silent on that issue, despite estimates that the number of women working in
the games industry is around 21% (IGDA 2018).
A contributing factor to the games industry’s gender imbalance and the conse-
quent social and economic impact is that women, both those who play and those
who make games, are routinely harassed and threatened both online and offline
(Gray 2012; Griggs 2014; Jenson and de Castell 2013; Lee 2014; Plunkett 2012;
Schreier 2014). Meanwhile, women have come to make up more than 45% of the
total player market, if mobile and casual games are factored in, and surveys over
the past few years have placed women’s mobile gameplay as high as 65% (Google
Play 2017). To date, there are no empirical studies that focus on the deadlocked
gender gap in games culture and its industries.
The aim of this paper, then, is to overview a large, ongoing study of video
game cultures and industries, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities
Research Council of Canada. “Re-Figuring Innovation in Games” (ReFiG). As
an international research project, we have collectively sought to re-configure and
re-imagine how we can study videogame industries and cultures from an explicitly
interventionist, intersectional feminist standpoint that explicitly approaches rese-
arch through an ethics of care. In doing so, we have sought not just to document
the paucity of women working in the games industry, but also to research how
best to support their work, including how to ensure they can access the formal
and informal educational opportunities required to develop the skills necessary for
successful participation. We argue that it is through researching and supporting
Re-Figuring Innovation in Games … 63
a critical mass of women, allies and partnerships that we can most meaningfully
work to change what has become the status quo in game development and play:
Women are harassed both in public and behind the scenes, and are subjected to a
heinous range of threats, even rape and death (Pantozzi 2013; Schreier 2013).
In mid-August 2014, Twitter, Reddit, YouTube, gaming websites and 4chan
exploded with allegations of corruption in games journalism, naming the phe-
nomenon “Gamergate” (see Twitter hashtag #Gamergate). At that time, nearly
every major English news outlet and game-related journalistic website reported
on “Gamergate” (Collins 2014; Dockterman 2014; Farokhmanesh 2014; Schul-
ten 2014; Southey 2014; Stone 2014; Thier 2014; The Stream 2014; Weinberger
2014). Women in all capacities within the games industry, including critics, game
players, game makers and journalists, were at the center of the controversy, and
many received threats that, as games journalist Auerbach put it, were “so egre-
gious” that a prominent female journalist (Jenn Frank) publicly announced that
she would no longer be writing on games (Auerbach 2014a, 2014b). This situation
further escalated into a public threat of a “massacre,” forcing games critic Anita
Sarkeesian (Executive Director, Feminist Frequency) to cancel a public address
at the University of Utah (Robertson 2014; Wingfield 2014).1 As caustic and
hostile as game culture has become for women, exposed so publicly over the past
3 years (Jenson and de Castell 2013), it is now the largest entertainment industry
worldwide (ESA 2018) and therefore represents vital opportunities for economic
growth and cultural participation.
2 Description of the Project
ReFiG has brought together post-secondary institutions, communities, non-profit

organizations, digital games companies, academics, indie game designers, game
journalists, and bloggers to conduct longitudinal research that documents, ana-
lyzes, interrupts and transforms inequitable conditions that reinforce traditional
biases and impede innovation in games industry and culture. Our four specific
research objectives and corresponding research themes are:
1. generating methodologies and tools that document and study gamer culture
and games;
1 Using Montreal Massacre shooter Marc Lepine’s name, as well as his words, the warning
read: “Feminists have ruined my life and I will have my revenge” – chilling reminders of
the obstacles women face to this day.
64 J. Jenson
2. catalyzing empirically driven research on the experiences and roles of women

in the games industry;
3. studying, documenting and assessing informal educational opportunities for
participation in digital game design and development;
4. locating, examining and reporting on policies and practices in formal game
development programs that are successfully building and sustaining more equal
participation by men and women, and documenting the impact of these pro-
grams on innovation, in the cultural as well as technological and economic
spheres.
In collaboration with an international group of researchers, students, commu-

nity members, game designers and many others, we have sought ways to
interrupt and reconfigure the longstanding patterns of female inequality and under-
representation in the games industries and cultures. There is currently no research
or project of this scale that takes up the challenge, through evidence-driven rese-
arch, to intervene, to tackle the hostile and marginalized conditions of women in
games.
Working across these four research areas, and in collaboration with partners
that have local, national and international ties, we have mobilized gender-
sensitive research methodologies to inform innovative and context-appropriate
practices that promote active engagement between researchers, the games indus-
try, community groups, and others in the sector. Key outputs have included the
co-development of: an inclusivity toolkit specific to the games industry; curricula
for game incubators and gender sensitive game programs; journalistic high-impact
blogging; and scholarly presentations and publications.
3 Theoretical Framework & Methodology
This project is grounded in two feminist approaches: intersectional theory and

gender-based interventionist methodology. Feminist theory has a rich history of
critically interrogating structural inequities that obstruct and marginalize women.
Taking an “intersectional” theoretical approach to feminism means that while gen-
der remains its primary lens, analysis must also be attuned to inequities that stem
from ethnicity, class, sexualities, and abilities. Intersectional approaches under-
stand that oppression is interlocking (Samuels and Ross-Sheriff 2008), and that
gender as an analytic category is context-dependent and therefore tied to other
sites of oppression (Hulko 2009). Methodologically, the feminist approach to
research and innovation that we are taking can be best summarized as “interven-
tionist”, aiming not only to document and analyze conditions of oppression and
marginalization, but also to actively work to improve those conditions (Lather and
Smithies 1997).
Our integrative analytical tool for coordinating work across the partnership is
Actor Network Theory (ANT), as developed and articulated in the field of Science
and Technology Studies by Bruno Latour (1987, 1992, 2005), John Law (1994)
and Michel Callon (1987). ANT defines ‘the social’—institutions, practices, and
interactions—as the product of engagement and associations between human and
non-human ‘actors’. As Latour (2005) insists in his introduction to ANT, agency
is distributed across actors that co-constitute a network. Non-humans have been
delegated the task of prescribing, framing, eliciting, and enabling certain forms of
action, and prohibiting or discouraging others. Social scientific research, from
an ANT perspective, is tasked with “re-assembling” the associations between
human and non-human actors in a network so as to better map their interrela-
tionships. As an “object-oriented sociology for object-oriented people” (Latour
2005, p. 74), ANT is particularly productive as a means of studying highly tech-
nologized networks of practice. It has been usefully applied to studies of digital
play (Giddings and Kennedy 2008; Giddings 2007) to chart the co-relations of
human and virtual agencies in games. In this project, we have examined both
sides of the player/game relation: how the games configure the players and how,
in turn, those who are making games configure economic relations of production.
ANT makes it possible to document and trace the ways in which we are both
shaping and are shaped by the technologies we use, and is one of the few theories
that give technology a central ‘speaking role.’ The above approaches frame and
direct the work that has been developed in each of the four thematic research
areas. We describe those next, and in each section report on some of the research
that has been accomplished to date.
4 Thematic Research Areas
Our approach to this project has been through intersecting thematic research areas
that have allowed us to study gender and other structural inequities for women in
games, focusing our research efforts on four key areas of culture, industry, and
both formal and informal education. Working collaboratively, and cutting across
the four thematic research areas, ReFiG participating researchers, students and
community members have identified a set of feminist principles and practices
that guide this project, many of which will be familiar to feminist researchers, but
66 J. Jenson
Fig. 1 Research Areas
are worth elaborating on here. For instance, and without prioritization: (1) an inte-
rest in social change and for many of us, studying conditions (of women/others)
in order to improve them; (2) locating yourself in the research—who you are and
why you are you studying people, places, or objects; (3) co-creation of research
outcomes and intersubjective relationships; (4) seeing participants as people, not
data points; (5) prioritization of research that is interested in the advancement of
folks who identify as women; (6) research that practices reciprocity; (7) transpa-
rency of expectations and outcomes; (8) respecting people’s right of refusal; (9)
approaching research with an ethics of care; and (10) cultivating surprise in your
research. What follows is a summary of the thematic research areas along with a
brief, and certainly not complete overview of research conducted in those areas
to date (see Fig. 1).
4.1 Research Area 1: Exploring the Culture of Games

and Gameplay
In 2012, the darker side of digital games culture began to be exposed across the
U.S., the U.K. and Canada as major news outlets turned public attention to the vio-
lent, vitriolic and misogynistic harassment women game players and critics face
(Consalvo 2012; Jenson and de Castell 2013). In tandem, games themselves came
under closer scrutiny, as critics began to take serious measure of the character
and extent of representational concerns in large-budget, top-selling games—most
prominent among these being the lack of central female characters (Williams
et al. 2009), with the typical presentation of female characters being “damsels in
distress” (Feminist Frequency 2013). In the rare examples of a female protago-
nist, she is likely to be presented as hyper-sexualized, as in the famous TOMB
RAIDER series. The underlying premise of these critiques is that in perpetua-
ting heteronormative stereotypes featuring dominating male central characters and
sexualized and subordinate female ones, the games industry attracts and rewards
its targeted male and heterosexual gamer audience for identifying with regressive
forms of hegemonic masculinity that marginalize female gamers and designers
alike. To date, we have documented the ‘ripple effects’ of gendered stereoty-
pes from the representation of gender in games, the circulation of discriminatory
discourse in online game-related forums, and documented debates and controver-
sies within player communities. We have also conducted embedded research and
collected data from hundreds of game developers at gaming events and hosted
international symposia for industry and academics concerned about sustainability
in games ecosystems. An extensive database documenting the reported conditi-
ons and experiences of women in the industry in Canada and the US is now
being used to discover significant patterns of gender discrimination, and to cross-
correlate data on women’s routes into and career pathways within the industry. We
have also produced a range of studies into the expansive cultures of game play,
including the creation of an online resource chronicling the history of LGBTQ
games (Shaw et al. 2019), the LGBTQ videogame archive (https://lgbtqgamearc
hive.com/), ethnographies of women’s experiences in the emergent live streaming
culture, participatory cultures in competitive gaming, and investigations into how
masculinity manifests in play. Empirical findings in this thematic area have advan-
ced theory about how and under what conditions women and minorities are able
to participate with voice and visibility in games culture. Crucially, these findings
also inform what needs to change to better support women and other minorities,
and what specific methods and approaches might best support those changes.
4.2 Research Area 2: Documenting and Studying the Digital

Games Industry
While there is much in the way of anecdotal evidence illustrating the relationship
between misogyny and the exclusion of women from the gaming industry, no
comprehensive studies either in Canada or internationally have adequately docu-
mented this problem. For example, it is still not clear how and in what ways
the games industry is inhospitable towards women, implicitly or explicitly, even
though the games industry has had a “#metoo” movement of sorts. In late Novem-
ber 2012, a Twitter hashtag, “#1reasonwhy” went viral in answer to the question
of why there are not more women in the games industry. Responses revealed the
scale and scope of sexual harassment, misogyny and discomfort experienced by
women who work or have worked in the industry. However, there is very little
academic research in Europe or North America that documents the gender-based
issues raised in that viral twitter response, nor is there any data that provides a
68 J. Jenson
coherent picture either of what women’s roles are in the industry or of women’s
remuneration in comparison to men’s. The industry-based data collected to date
in North America and Europe is based on self-report from several surveys, one
conducted by a game industry-focused group in the U.K. (UKIE), and the other
by the International Game Developers Association (IGDA). These surveys report
that approximately 18–22% of those working in the games industry identify as
women (IGDA 2018). The 2017 IGDA survey also reported that many of those in
the industry (both men and women) either experienced or witnessed harassment
(IGDA 2018).
This research area has documented and described, from an intersectional stand-
point, the contemporary landscape of the games industry, through both workplace
ethnographies and data collection on employment statistics, working conditions
and differential promotion and pay rates in each of our partner countries (Canada,
U.S., U.K). We continue to gather data on women working in games, and for-
ging collaborations with industry insiders for policy development, particularly in
Ontario, Quebec, and the UK. Collaborating with large-scale game studios has
also been a significant part of this project, and we have had substantial success
working with and placing embedded researchers in smaller studios, collaborative
workspaces, industry festivals and events and within a coalition of indie game
developers (see Whitson et al. 2018), as well as with teams working in emerging
fields related to games in esports (Taylor 2016), transmedia, and VR production
(Atkinson and Kennedy 2018; Harley 2019). Rather than looking exclusively at
women working in game companies (de Castell and Skardzius 2019), we also
mapped the vital role of women in the cultural and economic frameworks that
drive the industry.
4.3 Research Area 3: Informal Learning Environments:

Feminist Interventions
Informal learning environments, especially for adults, are invaluable sites for the
acquisition of new skills and competencies (Engëstrom 2009; Knowles 1984;
Marsick and Watkins 2001). One of the key outcomes of an earlier research
project was the development of an explicitly feminist community-based infra-
structure supporting the technological-skill development of women interested in
entering the games industry, in Toronto, Montreal and the UK. The two non-profit
organizations created during this earlier project (Dames Making Games, Toronto;
Pixelles, Montreal) are still active (Harvey and Fisher 2016). These groups have
helped women design and develop digital games, present newly developed games
to the wider game development community, and support the entry of more women
into industry jobs. The research in this theme has documented who participates
in these kinds of non-formal game ‘incubator’ programs and why they do so,
the curricula used, the means and methods of instruction (Evans 2018). Most
importantly, it documents the outcomes for participants using these organizations
to enter the larger games and new media industries, thereby identifying effective
and sustainable approaches (Kennedy 2018).
The methodological focus of this area is feminist intervention and impact
assessment (Lather 1991; Rommes et al. 2012), which, as mentioned, works not
just to analyze but also to positively change those conditions and to assess the
impact of those changes. Examining grassroots and community efforts in the
UK, US and Canada, including participant-led informal learning environments,
has enabled the identification of potential and actual outcomes (both creative
and economic) made possible by such initiatives, including pathways to employ-
ment, creative output, and community building. To date, we have also developed
and piloted a manual for the creation and implementation of “community-based”
game-focused programs, to be launched in early 2019. Partnerships have been
productive in this area with a number of community organizations’ resear-
chers collaborating in informal learning-program design, delivery, and impact
assessment.
4.4 Research Area 4: Studying Inclusive Formal Learning

and Educational Opportunities
This research area has gathered data from all university and college game pro-
grams in Canada, building a database of programs, diplomas, certificates, and
exemplary courses. We have interviewed a large sample of instructors teaching
in those programs about student demographics, completion rates, and equity poli-
cies, and we have begun a large-scale online survey of students and instructors in
game and game related programs. An overview of post-secondary game programs
in the US and UK are nearly complete. In the UK, we have conducted qualita-
tive case studies of four higher education programs, including interviews with
students and instructors as well as an analysis of policy, curriculum, and mar-
keting materials (Harvey 2019). Provisional analyses identified key challenges to
inclusivity in formal education, including the recruitment of women and other
gender minorities, the lack of critical game literacy in game program curricula,
and the domination of technology and business programs by male students, in
comparison to less gender-stratified art and design programs. Simultaneously, our
70 J. Jenson
research reveals a number of successful initiatives encouraging female recruitment

and retention, including active leadership and ‘ambassador’ roles.
5 So What? A Working Challenge as Conclusion
With an interventionist project of any size the challenge is, and has been, how to
make conditions more habitable for women and other gender minorities. That is,
what conditions will enable feminist work to make the kinds of interventions that
result in positive change? The four thematic research areas we have described,
and the work within them, are working towards that change. As an example, in
the early days of 2019, the first exhibition of LGBTQ video games opened in
Berlin (Thaddeus-Johns 2019). That exhibition is based on the partially funded
ReFIG work by Adrienne Shaw at Temple University, who founded the LGBTQ
videogame archive. The exhibition and the website both serve, we argue, as inter-
ventions into the culture of making and playing games, making a space for queer,
nonbinary and other folks to come together around shared interests and shared
content. More broadly we know from the scope and breadth of the work we have
done, only briefly described here, that these small- and large-scale interventions
can and do have a lasting impact on the lives of participants well beyond the event
they participated in.
Of course, the challenge in all of this work has been how to engage with the
political climate of today, while still advancing the aims of the research. That
has meant that some of what we have had to learn is to not retreat from difficult
discussions, but to learn from our mistakes and indeed make it possible for people
to make mistakes. Like with all good games, we have to build and sustain a place
where people can try and fail, over and over, with some consequences, certainly,
but always with a goal towards progression. We need to make room for failure
and to be forgiven for our collective ignorance, but most importantly to be willing
first and foremost to learn, to develop what Ivan Illich (1973) called “tools for
conviviality.” Tools, he said foster conviviality “to the extent to which they can be
easily used, by anybody, as often or as seldom as desired, for the accomplishment
of a purpose chosen by the user” (Illich 1973, p. 35). That is, convivial tools or
technologies are those that can be shared—are open-source—and are driven by
the needs of the user, not the developer. We have been developing those convivial
tools in this project, tools that might well help us attain, as Illich recovers the
word from Aristotle, a kind of “graceful playfulness.”
A key importance of this research is that it has been able to document the fact
that the harassment of women, minorities and others is an ongoing issue in the
games industry, and no matter how much both players and makers of games “love”
their playing and making, it is not enough to combat the ongoing harassment
(Jenson and de Castell 2018). We have also shown that while education might
be somewhat of a barrier to entering into the games industry, it is certainly not
the only one, and many women take up positions in the industry without having
had any formal computer science training or formal training as game designers.
And finally, we have shown, over time and in five separate locales (Brighton,
Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal and Bristol) how an interventionist approach to
playing and making games, namely one that gives a safer space to women and
girls to make and play on their own, creates opportunities for women to take
up employment in the games industry, and for women and girls to skill up as
players and makers, so they can participate in the largest and most influential
creative industry of the twenty-first century. Finally, and it is worth repeating,
that within all this work, we see time and time again the ways in which patriarchy
operates structurally, placing limits on women and girls that they themselves and
we ourselves do not always recognize.
Acknowledgements This project has taken a herculean effort with much thanks going
to Suzanne de Castell, Helen W. Kennedy, Nicholas Taylor and Emily Flynn-Jones for
their fabulous support and willingness to “go big”. Thanks also to the Social Sciences and
Humanities Research Council of Canada, Partnerships Grant program for funding support.
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Gamification of Terror—Power Games
as Liminal Spaces
Sonia Fizek and Anne Dippel
Abstract
Cases of domestic terrorism have increased in the last few years. Although
executed in often remote locations worldwide, they share a lot of resemblan-
ces, the most striking ones of which have resulted in their recent gamified
character as seen in achievement systems and first-person shooter esthetics.
This chapter is an attempt to understand the so-called “gamification of terror”
by looking for answers not in videogames per se but in their capacity to build
communities, however destructive they might turn. The authors propose to see
gamified acts of terror as dark rituals “played out” in liminal spaces to argue
with the anthropologist Victor Turner.
Keywords
Video games • Gamification • Violence • Rhetoric of power • Liminal space •
Ritual • Alt-right • Terrorism • Game studies • Play studies • Anthropology
“Computer games are a key part of the shared culture from which one can begin
– as laborious as it is playful – the process of creating a reflective and critical
approach to the times.” (Wark 2007).
S. Fizek (B)
E-Mail: sf@colognegamelab.de
A. Dippel
Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Jena, Germany
E-Mail: anne.dippel@uni-jena.de

78 S. Fizek and A. Dippel
“Every type of cultural performance, including ritual, ceremony, carnival,

theatre and poetry, is explanation and explication of life itself.” (Turner 1982,
p. 13)
1 Gamifying Terror
October 9, 2019—An average noon in an Eastern German town of Halle (Saale).

The city’s residents become witness to an attack in front of the synagogue’s closed
door. After several failed attempts to enter the Jewish place of worship, the shooter
leaves, killing a passer-by and a Kebab shop customer, and wounding a couple.
August 3, 2019—A late morning in El Paso, USA. A gunman opens fire in a
local Wal-Mart supermarket, killing eighteen people and wounding several others.
March 15, 2019—Early afternoon in Christchurch, New Zealand. A heavily
armed man enters a mosque and an Islamic center, leaving 51 people killed and
49 injured.
Cases of domestic terrorism like the ones listed above have been repeatedly
taking place in the last few years, reaching a peak in 2019. Although these acts
have been committed in locations far apart from each other, several noticeable
commonalities can be pointed out. They tend to be initiated by far-right and alt-
right white male extremists, often referred to as “lone wolves” as they act outside
of any direct and organized command structures. Many had been radicalized in
an online ecosystem of right wing terror spread on user-moderated boards such
as 4chan, 8chan or Gab.1 In addition to that, two other noteworthy aspects increa-
singly common to such acts become apparent: public head-counting of victims on
anonymous news boards and live streaming of the attacks via head-mounted came-
ras (Mackintosh and Mezzofiore 2019). And it is those two phenomena that have
brought video games back into the spotlight of infamy in a long-lasting discussion
on their relationship to ethics and violence. This time, however, the public dis-
course has shifted from videogames per se to that of gamification, which explains
the use of game dynamics in non-game scenarios (Deterding et al. 2011; Deter-
ding and Walz 2015). Competition, achievement-centered logic and first-person
perspective in displaying video recordings on live streaming platforms are pre-
sented by many publicists (Schiffer 2019; Mackintosh and Mezzofiore 2019, TAZ
2019) as the common key to understanding the recent right-wing terror attacks.
1 4Chan and 8Chan are unregulated anonymous discussion boards. Gab can be described
as an ultra-libertarian social media site. Amongst others, they have been attracting far-right
propagandists (Davey and Ebner 2019).
Gamification of Terror—Power Games as Liminal Spaces 79
As inciting as it may be in theory, gamification provides only a partial answer.

It can explain how the acts of terror are being carried out within the esthetics
of video gaming. It cannot, however, address the core of the problem: Why are
videogames discussed within the context of extremism in the first place, and what
makes them such a “perfect” fit? Or, to ask with Mark Siemons, a columnist of
the FAZ (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung), “Why would an anti-Semitic terrorist
model his attacks on a first-person shooter videogame?” (Siemons 2019).
This chapter is an invitation to explore the above questions and challenge
the main line of argumentation in the ongoing discussions on the “gamification
of terror”.2 Video recording and live streaming of the acts of terror as well as
augmenting killing by turning it into virtual competition between anonymous
radicalized news board users shed a new light on the discussion of the ethical
dimension of play. We consider these esthetic and narrative aspects part of a stra-
tegy of spectacular entertainment framed within a global sociotechnical practice,
partially drawing on the imagery of mainstream video gaming. Trivializing death
and making it the object of a ludic spectacle require a careful analysis, one going
beyond a direct videogame/violence cause-and-effect debate. The gamification of
terror requires us to rethink not only the role of videogames or gamers in political
extremism but, above all, forms of community and the infrastructure of the newly
emerging alternative social platforms, which are providing a necessary space for
the growth of the alt-right community as they serve as a host to many scattered,
angry and, most importantly, scared white male individuals. It is within those
computer-mediated spaces that a new form of community emerges and generates
an alternative concept to the post-modern “public” (Habermas 1962) by explo-
ring alternative forms of expression, in this case destructive to the societal body
defined by modern constitutions and the equality of rights.
Within the context of gamified terror, violence is not only gamified but,
more importantly, ritualized and in effect staged as a mass-entertainment spec-
tacle. Rhetorics of play as well as the anthropology of community and ritual
offer an insightful starting point to understand the emerging place of video-
games within the context of transnational right-wing extremism. We intend to
bring two concepts in particular into the conversation: the rhetorics of power
2 It
is difficult to pinpoint the origin of the term. Gamification of extremism seems to have
been brought to public attention for the first time in March 2019 after the mass shooting
in Christchurch, New Zealand. In August 2019 the “phrases gamification of terror” and
“gamification of terrorism” were widely used in international media in the aftermath of
the El Paso mass shooting. Previously, the term “gamification” was employed within the
context of American drone warfare (Pugliese 2017) and the ISIS game modification of the
videogame Grand Theft Auto V (Rockstar Games 2013).
by Brian Sutton-Smith (1997) and liminality by Victor Turner (1982). At this

point we would also like to emphasize that the complexity of gamified terror
can barely be explained within the modern framework and only partially within
the post-modern one. Above all, in order to understand the dynamics behind
this phenomenon, we need to acknowledge the crucial role digital media play
in the formation of trans-national alt-right communities: not as mere tools but as
co-agents, whose communication infrastructures foster the dynamics of radicali-
zation. In this chapter we seek to illustrate how rhetorics of power and liminality
can be employed to explain the phenomenon of gamified terror within the context
of digital media.
Our main argument is that alternative online social platforms (such as 4chan,
8chan or Gab) in combination with videogames esthetics create ritualized liminal
spaces. Both rituals and games (often overlapping) have the capacity to open up
liminal spaces, allowing individuals to go through a process known in anthro-
pology as “rite de passage” (van Gennep 1960). Within liminal spaces reality
is turned upside down, and the lines between fact and fiction become blurred.
Visions of reality represented by the alt-right community and those who turn
into domestic terrorists are inspired by fictitious conspiracy theories (Davey and
Ebner 2019), often shared online in the form of memes or pseudo-documentary
films produced by the members of that community. The acts of terror are tur-
ned into gamified spectacles, which resemble post 1990s documentary television
(Koch 2019), fusing the immersive character of an audio-visual spectacle with
a first-person shooter narrative structure often amplified by affective background
music and accompanied by live commentary. By live-streaming the acts of terror
on global platforms, the usually isolated individuals manage to exert an impact
on the collective realities of their audience.
The strategy is clear: Personalization and statistical comparability through
pointsification, visualization through head-mounted cameras, dramatization
through weaponization and emotional music, narrativization through letters clai-
ming responsibility and chat comments, and a representation of planned and
committed attacks in present tense, as well as authentication of reality through
actual commitment of murder, traces of blood and in the end the will to kill and
the wish to die a heroic death, even suicide—the last and most existential expres-
sion of free will a human being has. The narrative that holds the perpetrators
together must be readable by anyone since the action is intended to have effect
on a global scale.
2 Play as Power
Human play is ambiguous (Sutton-Smith 1997). Contrary to its most popular con-
notations, it is not always pure, positive, good, or free of ideological bias. It can
be cruel (Sutton-Smith 1997), dark (Mortensen et al. 2015) and violent, espe-
cially when related to competitive or agonistic play. Sutton-Smith argues that
“understanding play primarily as contest reflects the wide-spread male rhetoric
that favors the exaltation of combative power” (1997, p. 80). Combat is also ins-
cribed into the etymology of play—the Anglo-Saxon plega denotes a game or
sport but can also refer to a fight and battle.
Apart from the ostensible motive (misogyny, evolutionism, anti-Semitism and
anti-Islamism), the idea of competition is an additional moving cause for the
recent gamified acts of terror. The assaulters often see themselves in direct com-
petition with their predecessors. For instance, in a white nationalist manifesto
posted online, the Halle attacker expressed his desire to “beat his high score”, the
pronoun “his” referring to the Australian attacker responsible for Christchurch
shootings in New Zealand (Mackintosh and Mezzofiore 2019). Also the far-right
online community scores the performances of the shooters, placing them indi-
rectly in competition with one another, which in turn inspires and encourages
more attackers to join in the “ranks”, forming a community of sworn solitary par-
tisans that appears to attract a cult-like following. Jacob Davey, a senior research
fellow at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), a global counter-extremism
organization, concludes in an interview for the CNN, “… people criticizing the
attacker shows how these attacks have become gamified – their criticism was
that his score wasn’t high enough. That’s the way these people think, that these
attacks are to be consumed, scored and dissected like a video game” (Mackintosh
and Mezzofiore 2019).
The esthetic and narrative structure of the first-person shooter on the other
hand reflect the power image of a heavily armed male figure well-trained and
prepared for the successful completion of a mission. Within this context, to play
is to fight. And to fight is to potentially win, to take over control, even at the
expense of one’s own life. Games can offer the opportunity to come to terms
with death, war or violence (Golstein 1998) and open up space for a variety
of emotions (Bareither 2016). However, in the case of gamification of terror, the
stakes are larger than the game itself, involving the lives of those who stand in the
way of the armed terrorist. In popular discourse first-person shooter games tend to
be conflated with all video games, disregarding the fact that violent competition
does not constitute the only existing mode of digital play. For this reason we
want to differentiate between video games in general and what we refer to as
“power games”, which are characterized by control, combat and violence. It is an

important point to make at the start of the discussion on games and terror in order
not to equate videogames as such with violence, falling into a rhetorical trap set
by the political discourse.
Control, power and competition are traditionally important rhetorical tools for
fascist ideologies in general and the alt-right community in particular, which con-
siders violent action as an effective way to solve social tension (Butler 2020) and
participates in an imagined ongoing evolutionary struggle of a survival of the fit-
test: “I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw Your Optics. I
am Going In”, posted the shooter responsible for the Pittsburgh synagogue attack
on Gab social platform (Sacks 2018). The military first-person shooter esthetic
strengthens the image of an allegedly endangered white supremacist “species”
attempting to defend itself against extinction prophesied by white supremacist
conspiracy theories, which could be subsumed under the banner of “The Great
Replacement” (Davey and Ebner 2019). But the transnational extremist terror
fueled by conspiracy theories would not have spread so quickly, had it not been
for computer-mediated online spaces, which synthesize otherwise fragmented and
scattered trans-national individuals into a community-like pattern.
3 Online Platforms as Active Matter
Most of the alternative social networks, which have become the hotbeds of extre-
mism and radicalism, ironically stage themselves as decentralized spaces standing
in opposition to the status quo of big technology companies, the so-called “Big
Tech” oligopoly represented by, for instance, Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Goo-
gle (Karabell 2020). Gab, a social media website established in 2017, claims to
champion free speech, individual liberty and the free flow of information online:
“At Gab, we believe that the future of online publishing is decentralized and
open. We believe that users of social networks should be able to control their
social media experience on their own terms, rather than the terms set down by
Big Tech. Gab’s codebase is free and open-source, licensed under the GNU Affero
General Public License version 3 (AGPL3).”3
It is at Gab where the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter of 2018 posted anti-
Semitic content and his terrorist manifesto. Since its launch, Gab has been
attracting a considerable alt-right and extremist user base, which in the name
of allegedly free speech propagates hate speech, abusing and misunderstanding
3 Gab Social: https://not-develop.gab.com/about.

the true notion of freedom of expression within democratic societies. As the

authors of the report “The Violent Consequences of Mainstreamed Extremism”
emphasize.
“Far-right propagandists have used the entire new media ecosystem to promote
the idea of a white genocide: they have been particularly active across unregulated
imageboard threads on 8chan and 4chan, censorship-free discussion platforms like
Voat and ultra-libertarian social media sites like Gab and Minds.” (Davey and
Ebner 2019, p. 24)
4chan, an anonymous imageboard launched 16 years ago as a space for anime
fans, has given its users even more freedom often associated with the early days
of the World Wide Web. “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog” goes
the popular meme inspired by a cartoon caption published in 1993 on the pages
of The New Yorker. Although originally conceptualized as a hub for Internet
subculture and home to a plethora of themed boards, 4chan’s boards/new/ (news)
later renamed to/pol/ (politically incorrect) started attracting racist and alt-right
audiences. The website is often referred to as a cesspool of hate, with instances
of hate speech increased by 40% since 2015 (Arthur 2019). The site has further
interesting dynamics apart from user anonymity. It has no memory. 4Chan’s zero
data retention feature means that content is not archived, making it difficult to
trace after it has been posted unless someone saves the data at the moment of its
being posted for later access (e.g., by taking a screenshot). Otherwise, older posts
are simply replaced by newer threads.
Similarly to 4chan, 8chan is animageboard attracting predominantly alt-right
communities. Established in 2013 as an answer to a growing “surveillance” of
content on 4chan, the website was supposed to re-instantiate free speech on the
Internet. It has attracted posts linked to conspiracy theories and white suprema-
cism, neo-Nazism, alt-right, as well as child pornography. In August 2019, 8chan
rebranded itself to 8kun, following three mass shootings (Christchurch, New Zea-
land; Poway, California; El Paso, Texas), whose initiators used the website to
share their manifestos. Also the shooter in Halle (Saale) was an active 8chan
user. And although correlation does not imply causality, the significance of the
above media channels within the context of gamified terror attacks should not be
downplayed. Those platforms provide ample space for far-right extremist ideas to
spread amongst growing follower base (Davey and Ebner 2019). Non-moderated
social media platforms (such as 4chan, 8chan and Gab, among others) bring other-
wise scattered alt-right users together, giving them the possibility to form coherent
communities and realize their unfulfilled desires of belonging and wholeness in
a fragmented globalized world. It is a bitter, if not a broken reality,4 in which

the democratic right of freedom of speech and the right of anonymity designed
for protecting members of a given civil society transform social spaces into echo
chambers of alt-right extremism (subverted by racism, fascism, and misogyny)
capable of rapidly polarizing and radicalizing more users. Individual users trans-
form into members of a transnational counterculture flourishing in digital spaces
such as 8chan. Here, they stage themselves as a revolutionary and liberating force
opposing the global status quo, but above all, the democratic values, which para-
doxically grant the existence of their “imagined community” (Anderson 1983) in
the first place.
The concept of the “imagined community” is crucial here as it places the
medium in the center of the discussion. In his work on imagined communities,
Benedict Anderson emphasizes the role of capitalized print media in the process
of nation formation. It is with the introduction of the printing press and national
print languages that otherwise dispersed local communities started forming their
overarching identity by finding a common voice, he argues. The relationship bet-
ween the sixteenth century print medium, its nineteenth century culmination point
in the formation of nation states, and today’s networked digital media gives rise to
an analogy that goes beyond mere rhetoric and stems from the materiality of the
communication medium. Without the networked computer and the possibility to
join a global conversation, in which every opinion may be potentially of an equal
weight (an average citizen has access to the same communication channels as the
head of state, e.g., Twitter), trans-national alt-right communities would not have
the possibility to form on the same scale. Unlike the printing press, the networ-
ked computer has the capacity to turn each potential user into a messenger, while
also speeding up the communication and re-instantiating the importance of image
and sound as primary message carriers (e.g., Instagram, YouTube, live-streams,
memes, etc.). 4chan and 8chan were originally established as imageboards, so
each new post or discussion was supposed to be initiated with an image. Digital
media, which rely primarily on visual and oral storytelling elements (Ong 1971),
are putting an end to societies of letters initiated by the printing press, and with
it, to a certain degree, to argumentation, the foundation of dialogue in democra-
tic societies based on constitutional values, laws, commonly accepted scientific
truths and secular social rules as opposed to beliefs, opinions, alternative truths
and conspiracy theories.
4A reference to Jane McGonigal’s book titled Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us
Better and How They Can Change the World (2010).
Media should not be frowned upon as mere tools of communication but taken
seriously as co-agents in discursive practices with a performativity of their own.
In other words, online platforms such as 4Chan and 8Chan are neither pure cause
nor pure effect of alt-right communities but should rather be understood as agoras
amplifying the spectacles of gamified terror. Networked media are digital matter
that matters (Barad 2003, p. 26) as much as the printing press in its contribution
to the fall of monarchies and the formation of nation states.
4 Gamified Extremism as a Liminal Space
We draw on the anthropological concept of liminality to sketch the comple-

xity of gamified terrorism initiated and embedded in digital media. Originally
conceptualized within the framework of rituals in non-modern societies by the
ethnographer Arnold van Gennep to understand ceremonies of rites of passage
(van Gennep 1960), it was developed further by the Scottish anthropologist Vic-
tor Turner (1982). According to Turner, liminality demonstrates how community,
or “communitas”, is built. Apart from ritual, play and games constitute an import-
ant part in Turner’s work on the liminal as they have the power to create the sense
of belonging amongst members of a social group. We are arguing here that video
game esthetics in combination with alt-right ideology propagated via online social
platforms generate “liminal spaces”. In this specific framework, video games
serve as community-building and mediatized rites of passage performed through
ritualized modes of action. In the context of recent terror attacks, video games
accompany the transition from a pre-ritual status of an anonymous alt-right user
(“anon”) to an elevated (and usually existentially annihilated) status attained after
a successful terrorist attack by generating the highest score (body count) possible.
In other words, gamified acts of terror may be interpreted as “dark” (Ortner 2016)
rituals performed by the members of the community, who, via the terror-driven
rites of passage, change their status from “anons” to “heroes” recognized by their
own community.
To illustrate the applicability of the concept of liminality to the framework of
this discussion, a look at the etymology of the word “liminal” will prove insight-
ful. The Latin word limen signifies a threshold, something that remains in between
different spaces, dividing and connecting them at the same time. To undergo a rite
of passage means to cross a threshold in a ritual sense, turning symbolic meaning
into physical effect. To undergo a liminal state means to transition from one state
to another, usually involving an elevation of status, for example from childhood
to adulthood. A classical case of a violent rite of passage is for example male cir-
cumcision in Judaism and Islam, turning the circumcised into a full member of the
community (Derrida 1999). The symbolic and physical transition can be accompa-
nied by a passage in space. It may be a literal crossing of a threshold separating
two spaces, like in traditional European weddings when a husband carries his
freshly wed wife over the threshold of their house. These spatial crossings and
symbolical transitions from meaning to matter may also signify a passage from
the virtual to the real space; from an online message board to a synagogue, a
mosque, a street, or a supermarket.
As Turner emphasizes, “the ritual subjects … undergo a ‘leveling’ process, in
which signs of their pre-liminal status are destroyed and signs of their liminal
non-status applied” (1982, p. 59). Those non-status signs may be signified by the
absence of clothing, name or identity. In the virtual space of 8chan, the anony-
mous users refer to themselves as “anons”. It is only after a terrorist attack that
the real name is revealed and becomes public. Liminality usually involves rituals
that can be considered sacred spatiotemporal phenomena of community building.
Games as fictitious and immersive spaces of play, suspended from reality, offer
a ground for “communitas” (Hamayon 2016). The ludic dimension of gamified
terrorism opens a ritualized space within the framework of which terrorists turn
their bodies into political bodies occupying a public space, dominating it and
restoring their control over it. Liminality may also involve subversive and ludic
events, writes Turner (1982, p. 59). Within a liminal space, the existing structures
are reversed or temporarily suspended. This change further strengthens the sense
of “communitas”. The alt-righters employ the first-person shooter esthetics and
other competitive elements of play as means of subverting the existing social sta-
tus quo and introducing the so-called “anti-structure”, which in turn makes their
community even more submerged in conspiracies. Expanding on that logic, we
could say that an “anon” transforms into an anti “anti-hero, and through their act
of “ending the game” they complete the imagery of social war. The terrorist wages
war against every value that seems to have common consent in modern consti-
tutions—equal rights, tolerance, freedom of religious and sexual choices, and no
discrimination against women, People of Color and any other minority that does
not fall into the category of the hegemonic dominant white male population. An
anti “anti-hero” strengthens the realization of the community they pledge their
allegiance to.
Liminality seems to be characteristic of stable, cyclical and repetitive sys-
tems—in short: of non-modern societies (Latour 1993). As Turner emphasizes,
contemporary societies (contemporary with his, i.e., pre-digital times), do not
create “pockets of liminality” but operate within liminoid spaces. They lack the
communal rhythms of non-modern societal structures and can therefore only

create liminoid spaces. The major difference between the two lies in the concept
of social obligation detached from a constitutional public. Whereas liminal situa-
tions in non-modern cultural aspects are obligatory (e.g., one has to go through
communion as a child to become a full member of the Catholic community),
liminoid situations do not require the same level of commitment. Theaters, car-
nival, modern film, or universities—in other words: institutions, traditions and
media of modern and post-modern societies—are liminoid spaces with individual
degrees of commitment. With the growing significance of networked media, we
are witnessing the emergence of an era that is no longer defined solely by limi-
noid situations, but again liminal ones. Thus, the liminoid digital includes aspects
of the liminal; aspects that create individualized visions of belonging as much
as safe spaces of transitioning. Our contemporary digital societies then combine
the liminal elements of non-modern societies with the liminoid ones characteri-
stic of modern societies. Video games, similarly to rituals and myths, are usually
perceived as an epiphenomenon of digital liminoidity. Gamification of terror com-
plicates the modern-versus- non-modern distinction of liminality and liminoidity
as it breaks the fictional and non-obligatory setting by turning from imagina-
tion to reality through the computer as the symbolic machine. In the world of
existential being, the stakes are higher than the game itself. Gamified terrorism
then may be described as a symptom of digital liminality: a liminal phenomenon
within a liminoid framework of digital entertainment, which usually connotes a
non-binding scenario. Within digital communication spaces or “digital matrices”
(Hörl and Parisi 2013), however, the liminoid space thickens through emotionali-
zed speech, especially communal hate speech or “excitable speech” (Butler 1997),
creating frames of violence (Butler 2009) and pushing (psychologically vulnera-
ble) members of society to perform pseudo rites of passage, turning words into
action.
In contemporary secular Western societies that have effectively rid themselves
of traditional obligatory rites de passage, spaces like 4Chan accompanied with
gamified mobilization techniques may be read as signs of how an online world
is changing societies, reminiscent of the outdated concept of tribalism. The alt-
right communities may force us to revive the analytical category of the “tribe”
as a form of community, but in a non-classical and beyond-modern sense. These
digital tribes are creating pockets of “communitas” in a fragmented and globali-
zed world. Platforms such as 4Chan and 8Chan attract “free-floating” members
of a society that did not have the chance to develop a stable sense of “commu-
nitas” within secular constitutional frameworks. It is not video games that make
them change, but the digital liminal space of communication that creates pseudo-
communitas and evokes a sense of belonging to a community of anti-society, with
values, habitus, rituals and concepts much more appealing to those who might
feel lonely amongst the physical presence of their immediate others. The limi-
nal within gamified terror is a longing for and a performance of the non-modern
social order.
Perhaps it is also not coincidental that entertainment (live-streaming and video
game esthetics) is central in staging the acts of terror. Victor Turner emphasizes
the word entertain, derived from Old French entretenir meaning to “hold apart”
that is to create a liminal space in which performances may take place (Turner
1982, p. 41). In other words, gamification of terror is a complex liminal phenome-
non, one that plays with the elements of the familiar (games) only to defamiliarize
them (as acts of ludic terror). It is “entertainment” in the most literal and gruesome
of meanings. And it is a symptom of the networked computer era.
5 Video Games and Violence Revisited
It is not the first time that the alt-right has nested itself within the videogame
culture. In 2014 a misogynist personal bullying incident developed into a fully-
fledged harassment campaign referred to as the Gamergate controversy (Chess and
Shaw 2015). An unspecified and dispersed group of male online users targeted
several women in the video game industry with the aim to defend their own
core gamer identity, which was allegedly endangered by “raging” feminists and
“social justice warriors”. Gamergaters gathered amongst others on such social
networks like 4chan, which a few years later would become a hotspot of alt-
right ideology and “head-count competitions”. This might have contributed to the
popular image of video games as sources of social violence and gamers as white
male supremacists.
Due to their interactive character and ever more refined realistic visual style,
games (especially the first-person shooter genre) have been readily abused as
examples of deviant media, directly responsible for crime. After increasingly more
frequent mass shootings in the United States and a growing social plea to either
restrict or ban access to guns, the old argument concerning violence allegedly
caused by video games has vehemently reentered the public discourse. Politicians
such as Donald Trump have dubbed videogames violent media and proclaimed
their negative social impact (Draper 2019; Voytko 2019).
Such statements may seem hypocritical at best, taking into consideration the
fact that the US Army has been officially employing the medium of videoga-
mes to create a positive image of the soldier’s career and recruit new war talent.
Games such as America’s Army (United States Army 2002) or one of the first
military-themed games Tank (Kee Games 1974) frame their mechanics through
wartime violence (Symonds 2012) and yet do not seem to cause as much public
concern as they should. Also the German Bundeswehr uses videogame esthetics
as a recruitment tool. The armed forces of Germany attend the Gamescom, the
world’s largest video games trade fair, regularly as a host. Their posters adopt
videogame esthetics and rhetoric by implementing such slogans as “Multiplayer
at its best” or “Mehr Open World geht nicht” (trans. As open world as it gets), pla-
ced against a background of highly stylized military shots resembling blockbuster
video game or film covers (Horizont 2018).
Digitalized societies are exposed to what Robertson Allen calls cultural mili-
tarization (2017), a process “shaped by the economy of war, immersed in the
interactive spectacles of conflict, and distracted by a pervasive overload of infor-
mation” (2017, p. 11). The logic of gamified violence lies at the heart of military
structures (ranking, badges, status), which often use digital technology as a distant
tool trivializing and gamifying death. American drone warfare has been linked to
videogames, for instance within the context of the so-called civil militarization,
which “articulates the colonizing of civilian sites, practices and technologies by
the military” (Pugliese 2016, p. 2017).
Games and warfare co-exist in a mutual embrace, where the technology and
esthetics of war and entertainment are constantly overlapping. Many games and
toys of the past were also “deliberately designed for conflict oriented and vio-
lent play styles and themes. War toys are among the oldest examples of these”
(Mäyrä 2015). Toy soldiers and miniature weapons were known already in anti-
quity (Golstein 1998). Strategic war games also have a long history preceding
digital computers by centuries (von Hilgers 2012).
Despite a historical connection between war and games, no study has been able
to point to direct behavioral change caused by playing videogames. To extend the
argument even further, “…after fifty years and more than five thousand studies,
no one has established a clear connection between media violence and violence
in the general population” (Karlsen 2014). That is not to say that the abundance
of violence esthetics in media, including videogames, is not a major problem in
contemporary societies. To look for a simplified cause-and-effect chain between
the two, however, is to miss the point.
6 Destruction by Connection
Games bring people together. Their communal aspect is encoded in the etymology
of the word “game”. The Proto-Germanic prefix ga- means “together” and the
stem -mann signifies “men” (stem -mann). The act of gamified terror distorts the
social dimension of gaming for the purpose of disturbing a collective social order
that is based on equal rights and tolerance, at the same time deriving its appeal
from a strong sense of a transnational alt-right communal bond, standing in the
long tradition of fascism, racism, misogyny, anti-Islamism, anti-Semitism, and
evolutionism. The paradox here is that while an existing social order is diffracted,
a trans-national extremist community is built.
Videogames play an infamous role in this complex scenario. Their immersive
narrative structure, ritualistic repetitive mechanics, and their community-building
potential contribute to the formation of a digital ecosystem, in which extremism
is given a chance to flourish. As we tried to argue in this text, “imaginary com-
munities” formed over the networked social platforms regain a sense of control, a
feeling of belonging, even an imagined vision of completed missions, all enhanced
by the idea of competition and the first-person shooter esthetics. All those aspects
grant alt-right ideologies a fitting narrative to confirm and share their Darwinist
survival of the fittest narrative.
Through competition (previously mentioned head-counting and bringing the
terrorists into indirect competition with one another), dispersed alt-right users
establish proximity. Comparison and competition add up to the sense of belon-
ging and community in half-public spheres of the digital social platforms. Framing
the acts of terror within videogames esthetics further dismantles acceptable social
rules, which usually separate the world of make-believe from reality. In times of
post-truth and fake news, however, fiction and facts are constantly superimposed,
weaving a web of conspiracy theories rarely withstanding logical reasoning. Sha-
red via unregulated and anonymous social media platforms, they quickly gain
“truth” status, emerging from the misinterpretation of the idea of freedom of
thought and speech. Videogames esthetics provide for a live-streamed entertain-
ment distorting the presented reality within the framework usually reserved for
fictitious scenarios.
It is not videogames or game logics per se then that lead to violence. It is their
capacity to create bonding via ritual, repetition and competition that is abused and
distorted by human actors. Neither videogames nor the operational infrastructure
of digital media may be summoned before the court. It is the human actors that
are to be held accountable. Gamification of terror shows how play and gaming
culture can be instrumentalized within the least expected contexts.
Anonymous alt-right online users undergo mediatized rites of passage, some

of which culminate in a liminal ritual enhanced by videogame esthetics. These
bring the feeling of control over reality back and frame the acts of terror within a
fictitious yet globally recognizable format. The terrorist acts alone but at the same
time in the name of a collective, offering cultural sense and collective meaning to
hypothetical claims of conspiratorial riotous assemblies formed, amongst other,
on social platforms and in chat groups.
Each social platform user can be understood in a not so far-fetched analogy
with the concept of agent-based computer simulations of elementary particles
(DeRaedt et al. 2014; Dippel and Warnke forthcoming). The users have their per-
sonal spin, a historical momentum, their individual emotional charge, as well as
social, cultural, economical and national “mass” or “capital”, as Pierre Bourdieu
sees it. It is the platform as such that polarizes and radicalizes those freewheeling
individuals. The operational logic of social media turns a diffracted set of indi-
viduals into a coherent group, providing those who in their daily lives feel left
behind with a new sense of belonging online.
Perhaps gamified terror then embodies play at its most intoxicating, the oppo-
site of fair, ethical and moral play; the kind of play which makes more sense in
the context of war games and power games rather than videogames. The kind of
play that paradoxically and ironically brings destruction by connection.
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America’s Army (United States Army 2002, O: United States Army)
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Challenges in Digital Spaces
Digital Governmentality: Toxicity
in Gaming Streams
Maike Groen
Abstract
Twitch remains the biggest streaming website for the gaming community. As of
2020, the phenomenon of streaming has been shaping the internet for several
years. But viewing numbers continue to grow, making especially the mone-
tarization system an ethical issue not to be neglected as more gamers might
consider a career in streaming. This article analyzes Twitch’s website design
and the potential influence of its monetary system on social interaction, with
a focus on whether it rather averts or ignores toxicity. The analysis draws on
Michel Foucault’s concept of governmentality and its implication of power to
influence behavior.
Keywords
Hate speech • Digital games • Streaming • Governmentality • Algorithm •
Foucault • Cyber society • Gender • Toxic behavior
1 Introduction
N. D. Bowman (2013) stated that “from the first public arcade machines to the
massive online worlds and professional gaming contests of today, a central part
of the history of video games has been that of performance: a demonstration –
often public – of mastery over a digital challenge”—and today’s online streaming
M. Groen (B)
Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e. V. (DLR) – Projektträger, Bonn, Germany
E-Mail: maike.groen@th-koeln.de

98 M. Groen
can be seen as a logical next step in that evolving practice. Digital gaming has
long been a social activity for example at arcades or on the couch at home with
friends and family, but the ongoing growth of live-streaming games—the online
broadcasting of real-time play to a remote audience—is taking the social experi-
ence to another level. Professionals and amateurs alike broadcast to communities
of fellow avid players, who watch for learning or entertainment purposes. Some
streamers even dream of a professional career in streaming, but being financially
successful demands a lot of work. This article examines streamers’ endeavor to
become popular, its connection to the algorithmic frame that Twitch (https://www.
twitch.tv/) as a website offers, and the ethical implications that arise.
Just like gaming socially, online spectatorship of others is not a new con-
cept; it has been around since the internet and webcams became more available
as the case of the “JennyCAM” (Jimroglou 1999) in the late 1990ies illustra-
tes. The phenomenon of “Let’s Play”-Videos on YouTube is one of the newer
and more prominent examples of the interlinkage between playing and watching
someone play (Glas 2015; Burgess and Green 2009; Postigo 2016). It is now
evident that there is a global audience of millions for events like eSport champi-
onships as well as streams which did not emerge from a professional environment
but simply transform private play into a spectacle for others. And because stre-
aming one’s own gaming experience is usually done live and without editing
process, the lines between professional and private are commonly blurred. Beco-
ming a streamer with even modest financial success requires creative energy and
the ability to carefully maneuver around intervening organizations, regulations,
and practices—the “regulatory assemblage of the space” (Taylor 2014, p. 2). This
includes aspects such as the interface of the platform that is used for streaming
(like Twitch, YouTube Gaming or FacebookLive) and which shapes interactions,
presentations and possibilities as well as financial structures (advertising, monthly
subscriptions); but also aspects like intellectual property regimes (e.g., copyright
issues with regard to the game, or music embedded) constitute live streaming as
a cultural and economic space.
This article examines how the aforementioned processes and constituents
might possibly facilitate the emergence of toxic elements in streaming environ-
ments.
2 The Basics of Streaming on Twitch
Live streaming in its current form enables its users to publicly broadcast live
audio and video streams alongside a chat (see Fig. 1). The players who broadcast
Digital Governmentality: Toxicity in Gaming Streams 99
Fig. 1 Screenshot of a live stream on Twitch
(“streamers”) share content of their gameplay, often in addition to a video feed

of themselves, simultaneously engaging in game play and communicating with
the spectators. In order to distinguish themselves from others, many streamers
change the interface of their streamed content to stand out, e.g., by editing pictures
into their interface or by playing music. In the example of Fig. 1, the streamer
AdmiralBulldog has embedded a score board of their wins and losses (in red and
green on the left side), which also gives the viewers the chance to bet on the
outcome of the next game for fun.
In general, viewers can communicate with each other and the streamer through
open chat. Viewing is not restricted; anyone can tune in, and all that is required to
partake in chat is a free anonymous account (in this case with Twitch). Streamers
can moderate their chat (e.g., timeout toxic participants for a certain time) and
grant these administrative rights also to volunteering members of their community
(so-called moderators).
Albeit streaming became popular in the wake of digital games, streamed con-
tent is not limited to gameplay. Even gaming streamers spend significant time
interacting with their spectators outside of the game, broadcasting meal breaks
or telling stories about themselves, sharing their points of view on political or
private topics. These intermissions are key to the possible monetarization because
the length of the stream affects the profits: More screen time means more adver-
tisements and potentially more viewers, and, as a consequence, more revenue.
Because concentrated gaming over hours, live and unedited, would constitute a
100 M. Groen
near-impossible feat, food breaks, designated question times or other lighthearted

ways of entertainment are commonly chosen. Sometimes streamers offer (mostly
highly committed) viewers the opportunity to play with them, but in general, the
streaming phenomenon of the digital gaming community remains something in
which a game is watched by more in the instance then played.
Twitch continues to be the leading video streaming platform, dominating the
market by viewer numbers and by streaming opportunity (different kinds of con-
tent) (Perez 2019). The platform has existed for almost 10 years at the time of
writing, starting as a spin-off from justin.tv in 2011. It was bought by Amazon
in 2014 for roughly one billion US Dollars (MacMillan and Bensinger 2014) and
is facing fierce competition from other companies, as corporations like Facebook
or YouTube Gaming have signed exclusive deals with popular streamers (Thomas
2020) or even secured the rights to entire eSport championships (Impey 2019)
in order to weaken Twitch’s dominance over the streaming market. However, for
this article the focus will remain on Twitch as the dominating streaming service
especially for digital games.
3 Foucault’s Concept of Governmentality in a Digital

Environment
As mentioned above, streaming is shaped by various influences. In order to des-

cribe the implicit and explicit ethical impacts that the technological aspects of the
website have especially in terms of toxicity in streaming, this article draws on the
writings of Michel Foucault et al. (1991) on governmentality.
Governmentality, according to Foucault’s definition, describes organized prac-
tices and calculated means of participants (in this case of online streaming)
behavior. The concept of governmentality explores how their relationships are
linked by mentalities, rationalities, and techniques—it describes power dynamics
between them and mechanisms by which they are (indirectly) determined (Lemke
2014). Power is in this understanding an (implicit) instrument for influencing peo-
ple’s behavior often enacted via mediation and the use of technical resources. In
sum, governmentality denotes types of actions and practices aimed at influencing
(“governing”) people’s behavior. One media-related example of this might be sel-
ling a product by marketing it or creating fear via through the portrayal of crime
on TV (Moore 2014).
Badouard et al. (2016) implemented Foucault’s concept of governmentality
in their exploration of ways in which behavior of online users are “directed,
constrained and framed by resources such as algorithms, content-management
systems (CMS) and operating systems (OS)” (Badouard et al. 2016, p. 2). They
framed their findings as “digital governmentality”, identifying three mechanisms
of control: governmentality by design (Sect. 3.1), governmentality by incentives
(Sect. 3.2) and governmentality by framing (Sect. 3.3). This offers an analy-
tical method to describe how private companies implicitly exert power over
users through directing, constraining and framing their digital encounters and
interactions. This article illustrates how this possibly facilitates the emerge of
toxic cultures and their persistence in the online gaming streaming community.
The next sub-chapters will take a closer look at the different mechanisms of
governmentality on Twitch.
3.1 Governmentality by Design: How to Become Popular
Governmentality by design refers to “power relationships exerted by designers and

developers over users by focusing on the direction of users’ behaviors through
technical constraints” (Badouard et al. 2016, p. 4).1 Possible actions on a web-
site constrain, limit or enable and empower users in a very specific way and are
usually beneficial for the platform. Twitch would have an economic interest in
modeling viewer and streamer behavior in a way that generates more profit for
the website. The chosen platform for streaming on the one hand enables inter-
action by providing opportunities but, on the other hand, narrows down possible
actions for users like feasible interactions or expressions in chat (e.g., the use of
emojis). In streaming, interactions interlink directly with monetarizing options.
Twitch, for example, offers users a wider range of chat expressions (more emojis
or even playable sounds) for a monthly fee.
These technical limitations do not negate power dynamics within the strea-
ming community; participants manufacture their own forms of control—while
remaining within the given algorithmic framework of the streaming platform. To
illustrate: The streamer can establish ethical standards such as rules of behavior
in the chat and enforce those rules with the help of moderators, who suppress
actions like harassment or hate speech. However, the actions available to enforce
their rules are all limited or enabled by the functions of the platform.
The influence of a website’s algorithm on toxic behavior in the gaming com-
munity has been researched in the context of the misogyny surrounding the
1 Itis worth noting that other not outright technical aspects like intellectual property claims
also have an influence on how streaming as a communal/social space is forming since they
influence the possible legal content of a gaming stream. This article focuses on the design
of Twitch and will therefore disregard that aspect.
102 M. Groen
#gamergate controversy (Chess and Shaw 2016), in the course of which women*
were explicitly harassed on game-related websites. Massanari (2015) analyzed
the influence of the website Reddit’s (https://www.reddit.com/) algorithm on the
toxicity of the debate and argued that its assemblage of design, policies, and
norms encouraged “certain kinds of cultures and behaviors to coalesce on plat-
forms while implicitly discouraging others” (Massanari 2015, p. 336). She argues
that it is impossible to disentangle the community’s norms from the ways those
norms are shaped by the platform and administrative policies because they are
co-constitutive of one another. For example, on Reddit, postings are up- or dow-
nvoted, and the score directly influences the visibility on the platform, changing
the position where they are shown on the front page. Massanari argues that this
kind of system is perfidious in the sense that it seems to valorize individual contri-
butions and thereby suggests that the site is democratic in terms of what becomes
popular—while negating possible herding effects that would suggest otherwise
(Massanari 2015, p. 337). Herding describes the phenomenon that individuals
tend to mirror the behavior of others (e.g., incorporating choices made by other
customers into one’s decision making during online shopping), and it has proven
to be quite influential in online realms (Duan et al. 2005; Muchnik et al. 2013).
In the case of Reddit, this means that people potentially see popular threads on
the start page based on the individual algorithm and are more likely to click on
them instead of scrolling further down for alternative content. Similar effects on
behavior due to search displays have been researched and revealed, for example,
within Google’s search algorithm (for racial bias see Noble 2018). Thus, the way
a website displays its content especially on the first page can implicitly suppress
some content and highlight other. Twitch has a pattern similar to that of Red-
dit, where the start page shows the most-viewed streams and games, decreasing
in number, making it easier for already successful streams to be viewed. With
this pattern, one way to become popular is to adapt behavior that is rewarded by
the system, e.g., streaming games with a high viewing ranking, which implicitly
makes it less attractive to stream content from independent game companies.
The governmentality by design here potentially has an influence on what or
who becomes and stays popular.
3.2 Governmentality by Incentives: What Kind of Behavior

is Rewarded
Another regime of governmentality is the one ruled by incentives (Badouard et al.

2016). Incentives, following Foucault’s understanding of power, are based on the
premise that freedom of choice can be a tool of power in itself when used to
coerce or guide individuals into a specific direction. Badouard et al. (2016) define
incentives as comprising two elements: information and interpretation: “Incentives
are both the result and the originator of the incited individual’s perceptions. The
incitor [sic] takes the wishes of the incited into consideration and translates the
order he wants to give them by shifting and transforming this order as many times
as necessary until the incited act according to the incitor’s [sic] wish.” (Badouard
et al. 2016, p. 3). To clarify, the incentives can of course vary depending on
the goal of the streamer and the platform, but this article focuses on streamers
aiming at financial success and attempting to make a career out of streaming. They
constitute the clientele that Twitch profits from the most, because monetarization
relies on high numbers of viewers generating profits for the website through their
clicks. That shows one aspect of how Twitch and the streamers strive for the
same goal—which is independent of how the streamer feels about possible toxic
implications. It is of no significance for this analysis whether the streamer enjoys
being watched or merely does it for financial reasons, nor is the question why the
viewers tune it at all. These concerns are derivative; the unifying incentive—to
gain money through streaming—is the only focus of this article.
The road to success generally starts with unpaid preparatory work: Game-study
scholars have pointed out the extensive labor involved in creating a streaming
setup (installing specialized software and more) as well as the work involved
in maintaining a “persona” (comparable to a social role or a character played)
while streaming to remain entertaining and interacting with viewers (Johnson and
Woodcock 2017; Taylor 2018). One of the more obvious effects this has is that
Twitch ultimately (just like YouTube or other Social Media websites) relies on
unpaid labor. This can be problematic because it can have significant implications
for the perpetuation of toxic cultures on the website (compare to Massanari 2015).
If the goal is to be successful, gain a larger viewership and earn money from
streaming, there might be an inherent reluctance to suspend or ban part of the
audience because of toxic behavior since this immediately leads to fewer viewers,
ultimately decreasing the visibility on the start page (as explained under Sect. 3.1)
and potentially amplifying negative effects on monetarization. Consistently, the
fact that having many viewers is financially rewarded can have an implicit effect
on (not) managing toxicity—as examined more closely in Sect. 3.3.
Twitch fosters the desire for more viewers through another mechanism: View-
ers can take out a monthly subscription for specific streamers, which constitutes
one of the few ways to directly pay a streamer for their work. The fee amounts
to roughly 5 USD a month. The benefit for the subscribers are that they are not
104 M. Groen
shown any commercials on the stream, and it offers streamers a somewhat relia-
ble monthly income, independent of ad revenue, although in most cases they only
receive half of the money. But not every streamer can be subscribed to: Only
streamers that are affiliated or partnered with Twitch are eligible (Twitch 2020a).
Partnerships with Twitch are restricted—in terms of both beginning and duration.
In order to be eligible for a partnership, streamers need a minimum number of
followers as well as active viewers and a minimum volume of streamed content
during a set time period (Twitch 2020a). In line with the concept of govern-
mentality of incentives, it is necessary to follow Twitch’s rules and its algorithm
logics while still fearing to be punished (‘un-partnered’) or banned in cases of
misconduct (Bennett 2020). Rewarding popular streamers then financially serves
as a classic incentive for aspiring streamers: Twitch (as the inciter) draws on the
wishes (making money, becoming popular etc.) of the streamer (the incited), and
both of them succeed when the traffic on the website increases.
The next chapter provides an outlook on the implications of these mechanisms
for the degree of toxicity in gaming culture.
3.3 Governmentality by Framing: Possibilities to Deal

with Toxic Behavior
The regime of governmentality by framing refers to “the fixing of technical archi-

tectures for actions in a digital environment” (Badouard et al. 2016, p. 5). It might
be most obvious in the design of the interface itself, which enforces working con-
ditions and operating standards for all participants in online streaming. But as the
type of governmentality where ethical issues are the most visible, it also has a
strong impact with regard to the toxicity on the online platform itself.
3.3.1 Managing Toxicity in Chat

As explained above, making money through streaming requires large audiences,
which necessarily involves some kind of mitigating or managing toxic behavior.
People of color, women or anyone of the LGBTQI*-community are much more
likely to be affected than white* heterosexual cis-men (Salter and Blodgett 2017),
but all streamers have to—implicitly—decide whether or not to take a stand when
it comes to hate speech and harassment. Most streamers rely on so-called mode-
rators to manage their chat, usually volunteers with the right to stop viewers from
participating (Wohn 2019). Chat rules are solely established by the streamer and
might include ethical values like prohibiting racist or sexist speech, but also sim-
ple regulatory measures concerning the promotion of other content, spamming
or sharing links. In some sense moderators are given technical possibilities to

govern the community, allowing them to constrain online behavior in a specific
way, made possible by the technical architecture of Twitch. One example of this
would be a “time out”, where the person who disregarded chat-rules is expelled
from the chat for a specific amount of time (usually around 5 min), and their
messages are deleted for everyone. Those suspended can still view the stream
and are free to rejoin after the set period of time. This penalty can be imposed
by a chat moderator or the streamers themselves, and there are also Twitch bots,
which automatically detect unwanted spam or links and in return timeout the user
in question. Thus, the “technical architectures for actions” on Twitch, i.e., the
governmentality of framing, provide possibilities to deal with toxic behavior in
chat, but only in a very specific way.
3.3.2 Toxic Behavior Towards the Streamer

Another issue is protecting streamers from unwanted or even toxic attention.
Helpful websites give tips on how to protect one’s private identity while stre-
aming from home (Creatoko 2019). This might not be enough, considering
that the gaming community has been struggling with toxic behaviors—inclu-
ding doxing2 —especially towards marginalized groups (Fox and Tang 2016). The
necessity to protect those who do n ot easily fit in has the gaming community
been especially prevalent since the #gamergate controversy in 2014, which revea-
led a deeply rooted and widespread misogynism within the gaming community
(Braithwaite 2016; Gray et al. 2017). The question how hate speech, harassment
and toxic behavior can be dealt with is even more important when it comes to
live streaming, because as explained in chapter 2, streamers are not only known
for their gaming skills but need to interact with their viewers, pass waiting time
and maybe even sell a specific persona to be appealing and worth watching for
several hours (Kaytoue et al. 2012; Phelps and Consalvo 2020; Witkowski 2011).
In several cases the therefore necessarily embedded private aspects of streaming
facilitated the subsequent harassment of streamers (Alexander 2018; Rosenblatt
2019; Stephen 2019b; Uszkoreit 2018). Twitch centers its security efforts around
the protection of the user account (Twitch 2020c) and redirects questions concer-
ning harassment towards their community guidelines against hate speech. There
they offer victims four suggestions as to how to deal with “Hate and Harassment”
on Twitch:
2 Doxing describes a practice where private or personal information is purposefully leaked

on the internet. It has been used among other practices to threaten women* in the games
industry (see e.g. Hoyt 2015).
106 M. Groen
• “Clearly communicate that sort of attention is unwanted.

• Manage their ability to interact with you with functionality like blocks, bans,
and timeouts.
• Moderate their chat by tuning AutoMod, adding keywords to your Blocked
words list, recruiting trusted Moderators, and using other recommendations
from our guide on How to Manage Harassment in Chat.
• Always report a violation of Twitch’s Terms of Service (ToS) or Community
Guidelines (CG) when you see it occur.” (Twitch 2020d).
Besides the point that the first tips focus on the victim’s behavior instead of
the offender’s, none of them have any considerable impact on the latter, as they
can always continue to watch the stream or start harassing another streamer. The
“Community Guidelines” referenced at the end only vaguely outline potential
consequences: “Twitch reserves the right to suspend any account at any time
for any conduct that we determine to be inappropriate or harmful. Such actions
may include: removal of content, a strike on the account, and/or suspension of
account(s)” (Twitch 2020b).3 It remains unclear what kind of behavior is punished
in what way. With regard to the governmentality of framing and the question how
the technical architectures of the website might encourage or discourage toxic
actions, the protection of streamers from harassment does not appear to be a
priority.
3.3.3 Toxic Behavior by the Streamer

Last but not least, streamers themselves can act toxically, for example towards
their fellow gamers in a multiplayer setting or by using racial or sexist slurs.
An ethical issue becomes obvious in the constellation between the latter and
the monetarization system employed by Twitch because scandals surrounding
demeaning insults may even result in an increased viewership of the offensive
streamer. In some cases, the use of racial slurs can function as a popularity
boost as repeated controversies illustrate (see e.g. Henry 2019). This goes hand in
hand with the somewhat feeble community guidelines of Twitch (see Sect. 3.3.2),
where penalties are not communicated clearly, and where decisions are made
on a case-by-case basis: Behavior violating community guidelines may result in
a suspension of the streamer in question or incur no consequences at all, and
sometimes only repeated infractions may evoke a reaction (Stephen 2019a). The
at times inconsistent reaction from Twitch to toxic behavior by its streamers is
3 Againit might be noteworthy that banning of accounts is not even mentioned and possible
consequences remain vage.
believed to depend on the amount of revenue the streamer in question generates:

The bigger the fanbase of the streamer and their viewership on Twitch, the more
toxicity seems to remain unpunished (Stephen 2019c). This phenomenon may
well increase in severity due to the growing competition with other streaming
websites as prominent streamers might switch platforms if they are penalized for
inappropriate behavior.
Toxic behavior from streamers is an important issue because—as mentioned
above—streamers spend a considerable amount of time talking to their viewers,
not only playing a game. It can be argued that in some cases they function as
role models for their viewers, blurring boundaries of what constitutes acceptable
behavior and which values are to be upheld (Morgenroth et al. 2015).
All three cases describe ways in which the governmentality of framing impacts
the way toxicity is dealt with on Twitch, a platform governed by lax rules and
restrictions that rewards behaviors aimed at retaining as many viewers as possible
and potentially discourages dealing with hate speech.
4 Conclusion
Streaming platforms offer (new) ways to connect with fellow gamers beyond the
confines of one’s home, creating more freedom and sociability, yet they also sub-
stantially shape these social interactions. Streaming websites hold the potential
for progressive change, for increasing the visibility of marginalized groups and
cultivating a more inclusive gaming community. In the case of Twitch, this article
illustrates how the digital governmentalities in place—regardless of the question
whether these mechanisms are intended or not—tend to foster toxic behavior.
The way that streamers and Twitch profit from viewership and the mechanisms
of monetarization are unlikely to produce an inclusive community.
Even though there are clear ethical issues, there is no plain good or evil here.
Communities change and offer rooms to raise awareness or find safer spaces,
to organize as marginalized people. However, some Twitch channels have been
known to take a stand or communicate particular views in political discussions.4
Humans are not bound by the rules of an algorithm but instead are able to adapt,
create and shape norms and values themselves. An important first step for that is
often transparency.
4 One example of this would be the Feminist Frequency stream (https://www.twitch.tv/fem
freq). Others make the case of avoiding political topics (e.g. Hernandez 2019).
108 M. Groen
Consequently, this article closes with an appeal by Katherine Cross: It is time

to establish a more progressive Cyber Society (Cross 2014). There she argues that
changing rules by implementing different algorithms might seem like a small step,
but it has proven to be beneficial. Individual gamers already use their streams to
intervene in gaming community debates and help shape its norms—not only to
help others but also to create safer and better work conditions for themselves.
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Just 1e to Unlock This Guide! How
and Why to Study Free-To-Play Game
Cultures
Ahmed Elmezeny
Abstract
Free-to-play games provide a novel experience compared to their pay-to-play
or subscription counterparts, allowing players to make real-world currency
transactions in the game world. The following chapter provides an overview of
studies focusing on the research of free-to-play games, their players, commu-
nities, types of play, and ethical implications. It discusses a multidisciplinary
approach that utilizes cultural studies and media and communication science in
the investigation and study of free-to-play game cultures to better understand
their intricate characteristics, habits and routines.
1 Introduction
More than ever before, digital games have become a strong social and cultural
force, thanks to the various modes of connectivity, group play and spectatorship.
The permeation of online gaming has led to numerous online and offline social
formations (Ducheneaut et al. 2006) and has given rise to platforms that allow for
game spectatorship, such as Twitch (Kaytoue et al. 2012). Today it has become
quite apparent that the influences of gaming expand beyond the game, the player
or the supposed interaction between ‘man and machine’. Games, an immersive
media format, have spread their roots to various other contexts and life spaces,
influencing the way people negotiate personal identity (van Looy et al. 2010),
A. Elmezeny (B)
Universität Augsburg, Augsburg, Germany
E-Mail: ahmed.elmezeny@phil.uni-augsburg.de

114 A. Elmezeny
form social groups (Ducheneaut et al. 2007) and even their civic behavior (Moly-
neux et al. 2015). Given the importance play and games have for those who use
them, some academics propose a cultural approach to their research and analysis.
One common approach to the study of games utilizes the concept of game cultu-
res. Mäyrä defines game cultures as “sense-making structures” which “surface not
only in games themselves, but in the language, practices and sensibilities adop-
ted and developed by groups and individuals” (2008, p. 103). Mäyrä accounts for
more than one single game culture and compares them to subcultures, or groups of
people sharing the same values, interests and practices, that, through their inter-
actions, form a separate crowd within a larger culture. These cultures exist for
several games, methods of play, as well as the players themselves. Defining a
specific game culture to study is a heterogeneous process that is left up to the
researcher, and is based on their research design (Elmezeny and Wimmer 2018).
Academics have used the concept of game cultures and cultural frameworks
to discuss countless phenomena relating to specific games and their communi-
ties. Example works include Taylor’s (2006) ethnography of EVERQUEST (Sony
Online Entertainment 1999), Copier’s (2005) look at fantasy role players and
the magic circle, or Chen’s (2008) study of communication and camaraderie in
WORLD OF WARCRAFT (Blizzard Entertainment 2004). Other academics have
attempted to study game culture more generally; looking at multiple games, those
who play them, and the industry itself. Examples include Juul (2010), who obser-
ves the casualization of gameplay and games in his book A Casual Revolution:
Reinventing Videogames and Their Players, or Wimmer’s (2012) study on the
World Cyber Games, and the way they serve as a prototypical example of certain
metaprocesses in society.
One noticeable change in the current digital game environment is the abun-
dance of games utilizing the free-to-play (F2P) business model. F2P denotes a
payment model that uses “two products or services, or a combination of pro-
ducts and services. In such combination, one item is provided at no charge while
a complementary item is sold at a positive price” (Pujol 2010, n.p). In games
this usually occurs when access to the game world is free but products can be
bought with real money transactions, which are most commonly referred to as
microtransactions. Items can be functional, assisting the player in various game-
play purposes; or decorative, having no practical benefit except for displaying
a certain status. Several games are utilizing this payment model today; this is
not limited to mobile games, but also includes triple-A titles and MMORPGs,
such as GUILD WARS 2 (Arenanet 2012) or PATH OF EXILE (Grinding Gear
Games 2013). In fact, F2P is so common that since 2012 it has been recorded
that almost half of all adults in the United States are F2P mobile gamers (Popcap
Just 1e to Unlock This Guide! … 115
Games 2012). In 2013 it was estimated that 360 million Euro were spent on the
mobile gaming market in Germany (Bogdanov 2013), and in 2016 the mobile
gaming platform was noted as being the second most significant among 34 mil-
lion players in the country (Wilken 2016). Mobile games constitute the share of
games that most frequently employ the F2P model. It can be assumed that more
and more individuals worldwide are now becoming exposed to these games and
their cultures. F2P culture could be inherently different and provide ethical and
moral quandaries not existing in games with regular payment models due to their
ability of allowing real-world currency purchases, which assist in the transfer of
real-world socioeconomic status, such as wealth or class, and other game-related
phenomena such as “pay-to-win” (P2W).
2 Why Study Free-To-Play? Financial Success and Moral

Quandaries
Due to the prevalence of F2P in the games industry, an investigation of the cul-
tures of free-to-play games seems appropriate. The popularity of F2P and mobile
games can be primarily attributed to the overwhelming rates of smartphone pene-
tration in recent years, which are as high as 82% for Western nations like the
UK, and even 64% for developing nations like Kazakhstan (Newzoo 2018). With
almost everyone using smartphones today (and most individuals owning at least
some form of game on them), and with the majority of people probably not being
invested enough to spend money on mobile gaming apps, these games tend to be
free-to-play. As a matter of fact, casual and more dedicated ga gf mers combi-
ned have made mobile gaming an immensely popular platform and a multi-billion
euro industry, with record earnings of an estimated e47.5 million in 2019 and are
expected to show an additional growth of 3.2% by the end of the year (Statista
2019). The penetration of mobile gaming itself was noted to be 24% in 2019
and expected to grow to as much as 28% by 2023 (Statista 2019). Furthermore,
even though most individuals download F2P games on their phones because they
are free and provide easier access to casual and shorter bursts of gameplay, they
still generate considerable revenue from individual users. In 2019 it was reported
that the average amount an individual spends on mobile games is around e26.59
(Statista 2019); which is hardly a small amount to devote to a game that does not
require one to spend any money. With all of this recent popularity, smartphones
have even replaced PCs as the most popular game consoles in countries like Ger-
many (Puppe 2018), making F2P games one of the most common type of gaming
genres. This constitutes a substantial surge from their second-place position only
116 A. Elmezeny
two years prior (Wilken 2016), stressing a need for the scientific investigation of
F2P (and mobile) games.
Aside from its financial success, the F2P payment model gives way to various
social phenomena and practices previously not present in pay-to-play games, such
as different user classes (paying and non-paying users), as well as the use of
real-world money to purchase in-game currency and items. These new practices
introduce a number of ethical and moral dilemmas also not present in pay-to-
play games, which should be thoroughly observed and scientifically analyzed.
For instance, issues such as aggressive monetization in these games and preying
on players’ weak impulse-control can be problematic, especially when dealing
with children at an impressionable age. Another ethical dilemma can be in game
design itself, when game creators rely too heavily on ‘dark patterns’, or patterns
which are “used intentionally by a game creator to cause negative experiences
for players that are against their best interests and happen without their consent,”
(Zagal et al. 2013) to incentivize spending money in the game.
These features and ethical problems are present in most F2P games regard-
less of platform (console, browser or mobile-based) and genre (real-time strategy,
MOBA, clicker), making a study of F2P games and their ethical repercussions
essential. Due to most F2P games sharing these problems and characteristics, this
also invokes the notion that games sharing the same payment model could also
share a common culture, and be categorized as such on the meso level (Elme-
zeny and Wimmer 2018). These unique occurrences in F2P games (user divide,
real-money spending) could trigger new cultural and social manifestations distinct
from traditional games, e.g., hierarchies based on real-life socioeconomic status,
or weaker ties and sense of community. The following chapter summarizes some
research conducted on F2P games and suggests theoretical and methodological
approaches for the investigation of free-to-play game culture(s).
3 A Look at Free-To-Play Phenomena
F2P games have been previously researched, with only few attempts to study
the culture of the games overall and a focus on specific aspects instead, however.
While not dealing strictly with F2P games, research on the real money purchasing
of virtual assets dates back to the early 2000s. Looking at virtual economies,
Castronova (2003) found that players see real money trade of virtual assets as
undesirable. Lehdonvirta (2005) also examined user perspectives on real money
trade of virtual assets (RMT). Surveying the perspectives of ten individuals, he
found that, in contrast to Castronova’s study, “even achievement-and immersion-

oriented players may see RMT favorably in some circumstances,” (Lehdonvirta
2005, p. 6). Achievement-oriented players found RMT positive because of how
easy it is to obtain different assets to customize, while they disliked it because it
is similar to cheating when used to obtain a competitive advantage. Immersion-
oriented players, on the other hand, find it positive because it allows role-players
to obtain props for their desired fantasy, even though the act still breaches the
magic circle (Lehdonvirta 2005, p. 6) – a common term in game studies that
denotes the space a game creates through its rules which is separate and isolated
from the ‘real world’ (Mäyra 2008, p. 136).
Looking at how free-to-play games particularly breach the magic circle, Lin
and Sun (2007) review several user perspectives through a content analysis of
forum posts on F2P message boards. They find that users have arguments both for
and against the use of real money in F2P games, and they mostly revolve around
the themes of free market, fairness, quality, fun and balancing. Even with suppor-
ters and proponents, they note that the F2P model is “changing player’s sense of
game ownership,” (Lin and Sun 2007, p. 342) and that compared to subscription-
based games like WORLD OF WARCRAFT, free-to-play gamers have a weaker
sense of ownership (Lin and Sun 2007, p. 342). While physical ownership of
digital games has been proven important for gamers and their identity (Toivonen
2011), it seems that it is not just the virtual aspect that influences the sense of
ownership in F2P games.
More importantly, Lin and Sun also note that the sense of community among
F2P gamers is weaker “since their participation is closer to that of consumers,”
(2007, p. 342). Lehdonvirta et al. (2009) elaborate more on virtual consumerism
in their case study of the F2P game HABBO HOTEL (Karajalainen and Kyrölä
2000). They look at consumer behavior and RMT in this massively-multiplayer
online game (MMO) and note that “virtual commodities can act in essentially the
same social roles as material goods,” (Karajalainen and Kyrölä 2000, p. 1059)
which they consider potentially vital for those who are not able to afford real
life luxuries: “[a] lack of trendy sneakers at school could be compensated with
virtual dragons,” (Karajalainen and Kyrölä 2000, p. 1075). In that sense, virtual
consumption in games acts as a status marker, differentiating memberships within
certain groups.
Observing issues from the development and publishing side of the game indus-
try, Alha et al. (2014) spoke to a number of game professionals about their opinion
of the F2P business model. Through 14 interviews they discussed topics such as
the ethics of F2P game design and its future. Overall, Alha et al. came to the
conclusion that developers see some issues as morally questionable within F2P,
118 A. Elmezeny
such as “milking paying players as much as possible,” or how the interaction of

“children and F2P is ethically problematic,” (Alha et al. 2014, p. 7). Still, they
revealed that game professionals seem to have a more positive outlook on the
business model than players (Alha et al. 2014, p. 5). Through a virtual ethnogra-
phy of the F2P game KINGSROAD (Rumble Entertainment 2013), Jordan et al.
(2016) discovered various ethical issues in the development of F2P games and
the outlook of both players and developers. They find that developers constantly
change game rules, “which causes anger, frustration and feelings of unfairness
among a dedicated core community of players,” (Jordan et al. 2016, p. 2). Their
specific case study of KINGSROAD also mentions a shift by developers towards
more of a P2W player experience, something frowned upon by players, and which
they state depicts “the struggle between market and culture” (Jordan et al. 2016,
p. 13).
Analyzing the actual development and monetization strategies of F2P games,
not those who make them, Evans (2015) focuses on three games: SNOOPY’S
STREET FAIR (Beeline Interactive, Inc. 2011), THE SIMPSONS: TAPPED
OUT (EA Mobile 2012) and DRAGONVALE (Backflip Studios 2011) to observe
methods of branding and gameplay. Evans notes that “there has been a link bet-
ween economic strategies, upfront costs and gameplay, and this link continues to
play out in contemporary games culture” (2015, p. 578). Most importantly, she
finds that in F2P games there is a trend to monetize impatience and the attention
span of players. Additionally, she states that F2P games monetize players’ need
for continuous gameplay by programming intentional waiting times which can
be bypassed through payment, otherwise known as temporal dark patterns (Zagal
et al. 2013). Overall, Evans states that there is a “convergence between gaming,
the appearance of an open-source philosophy and brand- or time-based moneti-
zation strategies,” which “is becoming a foundational ethos of the casual gaming
market,” (2015, p. 578).
Nieborg (2015) presents similar arguments on F2P games, but focuses on the
commodification of individuals in addition to products through the use of social
network sites and platforms. Examining the game CANDY CRUSH SAGA (King
2012), Nieborg (2015) adopts a political- economy approach to analyze game plat-
forms like the Apple App Store. He finds that “the business model associated with
free-to-play games is decidedly less monolithic and, as of yet, anything but sta-
ble,” (2015, p. 6). The development of these games is built on commodifying three
parts through different monetization strategies: a product commodity through in-
app purchases, a “prosumer” commodity through virality, and a player commodity
through advertising. There are several methods for this commodification, but they
are most apparent when games prompts users to share their progress, high sco-
res and ask for help through social networks like Facebook, “thereby generating
attention and thus value” (Nieborg 2015, p. 8).
Significant research has also been conducted on the players of F2P games by
the Free2Play Research Project at the University of Tampere. Through their rese-
arch, Paavilainen et al. (2016) have answered questions like: Why do people buy
virtual goods? Why do they pay for in-game content in free-to-play games? And
what kind of people pay for this content? They find that people tend to buy virtual
goods to express themselves esthetically, or when they have had good experience
with purchases previously (Paavilainen et al. 2016, p. 11). As for spending in F2P
games, players are more likely to do so when it is related to removing obstructions
from gameplay (such as time restrictions), for social reasons (such as gifting other
players), or for personal reasons like supporting the game and developer (Paavilai-
nen et al. 2016, p. 13). They also note that different types of players purchase
diverse virtual goods in F2P games, with achievement-orientated players purcha-
sing items to help them become the best; immersion-orientated players purchasing
items that assist in unobstructed gameplay; and social-orientated players buying
items that relate to social interaction or other economic reasoning, but not with
the aim of unobstructed play (Paavilainen et al. 2016, p. 14).
One interesting approach of the Free2Play Research Project is their associa-
tion of F2P gaming to gambling, hinting that there might be distinct qualities to
F2P game cultures different from traditional ones. Most notably, they find that
“the line between gambling games and other games has become blurred in online
environments,” (Paavilainen et al. 2016, p. 44) with the social interaction connec-
ted to both activities becoming increasingly important. This is apparent in that
the players of F2P Facebook games and online gamblers have “similar gaming
careers” (Paavilainen et al. 2016, p. 45). Both types will continue playing and
appropriate their game practices in their daily lives, especially if these habits are
important for their identities.
Even with plenty of research having been conducted on the multiple facets of
F2P games, scholars rarely attempt to look at the entire culture of the games and
prefer focusing on a single aspect, e.g., the players, the developers or the game
itself. A game culture approach, however, attempts to combine all these aspects
and other contexts as well, hoping to detail the ways in which these aspects
influence each other, and how the culture manifests itself and differs from other
previously distinguished game cultures. For example, research observing player
habits should also look at how these routines influence other parts of the game
culture, such as actions of the developers, content developed, or even expressions
of the community itself. If in-game purchasing and spending influence players
120 A. Elmezeny
to behave in a certain way, then surely there should also be an influence on the
community as a whole, on the identity of the individual, and on the regulation
and production of the game itself.
4 A Theoretical Approach to Studying F2P Culture
Several possible theoretical frameworks for the observation and study of game
cultures already exist; however, the following suggested approach is unique in its
inclusion of multiple contexts of culture that reflect Game cultures’ genesis and
entirety. This theoretical approach was first introduced by du Gay et al. (1997) in
their study of the Sony Walkman. They propose a circuit of culture, or five pro-
cesses that are constantly influencing each other, and which should be utilized in
order to study any cultural artifact properly. The cultural processes of production,
regulation, identification, representation and consumption include various cultural
practices that can be observed and analyzed when dealing with media content and
technologies (Gay et al. 1997, p. 3).
Building on this circuit of culture and Hepp’s (2011) work on media cultures,
Mitgutsch et al. adapt the five processes into domains that can be utilized for digi-
tal games instead, replacing the process of consumption with appropriation. These
contexts can be considered expressions of various processes in game culture and
are constantly “historically, temporally and spatially rooted and contextualized”
(2013, p. 10):
• The context of (re)production deals not only with the development and publis-
hing of digital games, but also with the creation of user-generated content.
Example F2P studies dealing with this context look at specifics in game design
(e.g. Evans 2015).
• The context of regulation observes how non-producing parties, like political
and governmental organizations, influence game culture. One previously men-
tioned study dealing with this context is Nieborg’s (2015) commodification
case study of CANDY CRUSH SAGA through app markets and social network
sites.
• Representation, as a context, deals not only with the depiction of games in
media and public discourse, but also of specific themes (violence, gender roles)
in the games themselves. Lin and Sun’s (2007) content analysis of user per-
spectives on game forums is one example study observing this context for F2P
games.
• Identification observes the constant process of building one’s identity based on

the patterns and discourses communicated in games. This is observable when
individuals use certain jargon or items to signify their membership in a specific
community. Example studies observing this context in F2P games include Gru-
ning’s (2013) research on the value of digital objects in FARMVILLE (Zynga
2009).
Finally, the context of appropriation involves how games are played, used and
imbedded into daily life. The focus here is to discern habits, rituals and the like.
Example F2P studies dealing with this context include several ones conducted by
the University of Tampere’s Free2Play Research Project, which looks at how and
why people play F2P games (Paavilainen et al. 2016).
While there have been several F2P studies dealing with one context, little
research has been conducted which attempts to look at multiple contexts and the
way they influence each other. However, some studies do exist, such as Jordan
et al.’s (2016) ethnography, which looks at both the appropriation and production
context through analyzing how changes in development influence player beha-
vior. This multi-contextual approach is especially important for the recognition of
several practices and their influence on each other and allows for a more holistic
depiction of the culture. In order to do so, ethnography (or virtual ethnography,
to be more precise) as utilized by Jordan et al. (2016) or Taylor (2006) is the
most common method that allows the researcher to observe and analyze multiple
cultural contexts.
Once researchers have decided which game(s) they would like to utilize for
their observation and analysis of free-to-play, they can compare it/them to tradi-
tional, pay-to-play ones to pinpoint unique intricacies of the culture, or changes
from traditional game culture(s). To do so, it is suggested to utilize the framework
for comparative analysis of digital game cultures (Elmezeny and Wimmer 2018).
In this process, the researcher goes through four stages: defining a digital game
culture to study (e.g., one F2P game culture and another traditional one), pin-
pointing the contexts to be investigated and compared (selected from the circuit
of culture), comparing the selected contexts through noting cultural patterns and
phenomena (e.g., how players communicate or identify with their virtual assets),
and finally placing the compared cultures on a spectrum that relates their charac-
teristics (e.g., one end as unique and the other as common, or one as local and
the other as international). By going through this process, researchers seeking to
study F2P game cultures are able to not only characterize their culture of interest,
but also place the culture in a larger social and professional context (Elmezeny
and Wimmer 2018).
122 A. Elmezeny
Utilizing this framework also enables researchers to compare multiple F2P

cultures, and to pinpoint if characteristics observed in a single game culture
are applicable to other games through the implementation of the F2P payment
model, or if they are unique manifestations of a specific game. For example,
are user practices and monetization strategies similar in CANDY CRUSH SAGA
and FORTNITE (Epic Games 2017)? Using this framework can help answer this
question through selecting specific contexts and practices to observe.
5 Methodological Approaches to Studying F2P Culture
There are several possible online ethnographic methods that can be appropriately
utilized to observe and analyze F2P games (Beneito-Montagut 2011; Hallett and
Barber 2014; Caliandro 2017). However, since most F2P games present us with a
virtual world to be perceived and immersed in, the most appropriate online ethno-
graphic method is the approach suggested by Boellstorff et al. (2012), otherwise
known as ethnography of virtual worlds. This method is most suitable because
of its important considerations to virtual worlds and their offline contexts. This
means that ethnography of virtual worlds is a multi-sited method, allowing the
researcher to not only observe individuals and actions in the game world, but
also in other communicational spaces, both online and offline. Thus, researchers
interested in studying F2P cultures holistically and from various perspectives
and contexts are well-advised to select this method. The most central part of
this ethnographic method (as with other types) is participant observation since
“[b]ecoming directly involved in the activities of daily life provides an intimate
view of their substance and meaning” (Boellstorff et al. 2012, p. 65).
While participant observation is central to other types of ethnography, if the
researcher is interested in studying F2P culture through observing communica-
tional spaces outside of the game world, there are more suitable methods. For
example, Beneito-Montagut’s (2011, p. 716) approach named “expanded ethno-
graphy” is suitable for looking at gaming contexts outside of the game world
since it has three distinct and useful characteristics: It is multi-situated (i.e., loo-
king at several field sites), it considers online and offline environments, and it
uses flexible multimedia data collection methods. This approach allows the rese-
archer to observe various online communicational sites and utilize a wide array
of data collection tools, from screenshots to audio and video recordings. On the
other hand, Caliandro’s (2017) approach is suitable for researchers intending to
conduct their research on social networks. He provides important considerations
in his ethnographic method suitable for this pursuit, such as following the “medi-
um”, “thing” or “native” through various social media channels (Caliandro 2017,
pp. 3 ff.). He also provides five analytical concepts to assist the researcher in their
ethnographies: “community, public, crowd, self-presentation as a tool and user as
a device,” (Caliandro 2017, p. 1).
Regardless of the selected ethnographic approach, participant observation is
always key in the study of F2P culture(s). By doing so, researchers are better able
to understand social and cultural practices; “[t]hrough participant observation, eth-
nographers step into the social frame in which activity takes place” (Boellstorff
et al. 2012, p. 65). For researchers of F2P and other online cultures, participant
observation even allows for fuller participation and access than offline ethnogra-
phy (Boellstorff et al. 2012, p. 69). While most might feel that playing a game
and participating in it is not hard work, one must remember that “Good par-
ticipant observation means play and research in parallel, as the same engaged
activity” (Boellstorff et al. 2012, p. 69). This is usually accomplished through
juggling multiple tasks in parallel; whether it is recording field notes during loa-
ding screens or recording gameplay and coming back to it at a later point for
in-depth analysis.
In addition to participant observation, ethnographers and researchers have a
number of other data collection tools at their disposal. Researchers using virtual
ethnography can supplement their participant observation with individual or group
interviews; capturing chatlogs, screenshots, video or audio data; data collection
in other online contexts, such as forums and social network sites; or even using
historical and archival research (Boellstorff et al. 2012, pp. 92 ff.). With various
options available to virtual ethnographers, it is important to consider the data
collection method most appropriate for their research question. Using F2P as an
example, if the interest is in sensitive topics regarding payment, individual inter-
views would be more appropriate than collecting chatlogs or group discussions.
If the researcher is interested in community spending habits, norms and opinions,
group discussions and surveying chatlogs or other online communities would be
more apt.
Still, ethnography is not the only suitable approach for studying F2P and other
game cultures. If the focus of research lies only on one or two of the afore-
mentioned contexts, more tailored methods are also applicable, such as using
content analysis to look at social media communication of a certain game culture
(Elmezeny and Wimmer 2016), or “play interviews”, where the researcher inter-
views the participant while they are playing a game of their choice (Shaw 2013).
However, should the focus of research be on looking at the entire game culture
124 A. Elmezeny
holistically, ethnography is almost always the preferred methodological approach

as it facilitates the study of the multiple contexts of the game culture in question.
6 Just 0.99e More to Unlock a Final Word!
This chapter presented a succinct review of current F2P research and provi-
ded a possible theoretical and methodological approach to studying F2P culture.
Currently, plenty of research exists on F2P games, highlighting various aspects;
from perspectives of developers to those of users and their spending or gaming
habits. Still, what no current F2P research has tried to accomplish is to characte-
rize a F2P game culture or depict it holistically, addressing its multiple contexts
and complexities. The theoretical framework provided in this chapter is a step-
ping stone for an attempt to do so. Obviously, it does not constitute the only way
to study and observe F2P cultures; however, it provides a direct and categorized
way of noting specific phenomena (within their respective contexts) and how they
influence each other. For instance, this framework helps researchers to not only
look at reasons for players to spend money in specific F2P games (appropriation
context), but also at ways in which this spending influences the development of
the game (production context), as well as its image in public discourse (repre-
sentation context) and even the degree to which players identify with the game’s
virtual assets (identification context). Through looking at the relationship between
these contexts, researchers interested in F2P games are able to observe not only
specific practices, but also characteristics and inner workings of the culture itself.
Additionally, by utilizing the framework for comparative analysis of cultures
mentioned earlier (Elmezeny and Wimmer 2018), researchers are able to com-
pare their findings of F2P cultures to other traditional, pay-to-play or subscription
game cultures. Following this pursuit, enables researchers to highlight differences
between F2P cultures implementing this popular business model and traditional
games. Alternatively, researchers can also utilize this framework to compare mul-
tiple F2P game cultures, in hopes of pinpointing common features that span across
multiple games, which can be deemed characteristic of the F2P payment model
itself, and not of a specific game or community.
To study and observe F2P cultures, this chapter suggests utilizing ethnogra-
phy, or ethnography of virtual worlds, to be specific, as it is a flexible, responsive
methodology that is “sensitive to emergent phenomena and emergent research
questions,” (Boellstorff et al. 2012, p. 6). As with all types of ethnography,
participant observation is the cornerstone of this approach, allowing the resear-
cher to engage in the community, noticing cultural happenings, first-hand and in
detail. However, multiple other data collection methods are also available in this
approach, ranging from interviews to archival research and quantitative surveys,
with the researcher being able to tailor data collection methods to their respective
research interest.
Overall, while the study of game cultures is not a novel pursuit, the study
of F2P game culture(s) is. More media and games researchers should ideally
focus on detailing and analyzing F2P game culture holistically, as it provides
phenomena and practices relatively new to the gaming world. Data-driven game
development, purchasing of virtual assets, and a divide in players based on their
spending status are just a few observable occurrences which did not use to be
observable in traditional games, but which are becoming more common today.
These phenomena are encroaching on regular game culture, with some pay-to-
play games having microtransactions after their initial purchase price. Hence,
these changes can only be indicative of the influence the free-to-play model is
having on the games industry as a whole.
There is certainly more to observe and note in the cultures of games imple-
menting this payment model, and studies looking at player or developer opinions
come to the conclusion that this model is gradually being established (Paavilainen
et al. 2016). So it is in all of our best interest as both researchers and avid gamers
to keep observing the F2P model’s development and influence on game cultures
as well as on the overall games industry.
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The“Ultimate Empathy Machine”
Revisited
Challenges of Augmented and Virtual Realities From
an Ethical Perspective
Jeffrey Wimmer
Abstract
Virtual realities can be understood as computer-mediated simulations that
create the feeling that users are present in a real-physical environment. Enthu-
siasts postulate that virtual experiences of reality have a more intense effect
on the users than traditional media. Social and ethical implications of this
technology arise not only from its potential for the extension of individual
experiences of different realities, but also from its increasing pervasion of each
area of everyday life. On the basis of a literature review, the article shows to
what extent virtual realities can be understood as a drastic push in the media-
tization of society. Building on this theoretical framework, different personal
as well as social implications of VR and AR applications are specified and
discussed from the perspective of media ethics.
Keywords
Augmented reality • Everyday lifeworld • Media change • Media reality •
Mediatization • Social contexts • Virtual reality
J. Wimmer (B)
Universität Augsburg, Augsburg, Germany
E-Mail: jeffrey.wimmer@phil.uni-augsburg.de

130 J. Wimmer
Craig Schwartz: [as Maxine Puppet] Tell me, Craig, why do you love puppetering?
Craig Schwartz: [as Craig Puppet] Well Maxine, I’m not sure exactly. Perhaps
the idea of becoming someone else for a little while. Being inside another skin
– thinking differently, moving differently, feeling differently.
(Being John Malkovich, USA, 1999).
1 Introduction: Visions, Risks and Research Gaps
The development of virtual reality technologies, whose origins date back to the
1960s, is currently making advances due to continuous increases in performance
and the onset of cost reduction. These technologies are gradually finding their
way into various professional and private areas of application. Successful app-
lication attempts have been made, for example, in the treatment of phobias, in
which patients are virtually confronted with a fear-triggering situation using Vir-
tual Reality (VR) (e.g., experiencing great heights). Still, virtual realities are by
no means a mass phenomenon, but the number of companies employing these
technologies, their status in public discourse, and the technological and social pos-
sibilities for their use are rapidly increasing. Areas of application include, among
others, marketing, entertainment communication (especially computer games and
pornography), social networking, education and profession, medical therapy and
journalism (cf. Slater and Sanchez-Vivez 2016).
Virtual realities can be understood as computer-mediated simulations that
create the feeling that users are present in a real-physical environment. In addi-
tion to the perceptive, cognitive and motor abilities of the users, the technical
characteristics of the representation are fundamental to this immersive process of
coupling user and technology and/or media use and media offering. On the one
hand, these characteristics affect the diversity of the graphical representation of
the environment, such as its scope (e.g., visibility, audibility, touch, smell) and
quality (e.g., detail accuracy), but also its speed (e.g., update rates, time delay)
and mapping (details such as language, gestures, gaze, complex behavior pat-
terns). On the other hand, the interactivity of the representation—e.g., the extent
to which a user can change form and content of the mediated environment—is a
decisive factor in an immersive experience.
It is important to distinguish Augmented Reality (AR) from VR. AR extends
a video stream in real time by means of artificial virtual objects. The practi-
cally simplest and currently most common form of AR is achieved by using a
smartphone or tablet. A user views certain content (often so-called markers on a
The “Ultimate Empathy Machine” Revisited 131
two-dimensional surface such as a sheet of paper) via the device’s display, and
the device integrates 3D objects into the viewed image in a precise position, with
which the user can usually even interact. In order to prevent emersion by view-
ing reality via display, and to expand practicability, mobile data glasses are being
developed at an increasing rate, allowing users to perceive the digital environ-
ment as completely natural with the virtual objects being projected directly into
their field of vision. In comparison to AR, VR does not usually integrate real
environment into display, but rather the user is completely immersed in an artifi-
cial virtual environment, such as a computer game, by wearing a head-mounted
display (cf. Jung et al. 2020).
According to Milgram and Koshino (1994), AR and VR can be located on a
continuum between reality and virtuality, since both connect real-life and digital
characteristics to different degrees. In contrast to the computer-generated reality
of VR, AR applications extend individual real-world experience through a hig-
her degree of immediacy of presence and perception with digital information. By
placing virtual objects in real-time and space, they enable virtual experiences not
only in laboratory conditions and in confined spaces, but in real conditions and
many everyday situations, transforming the ordinary living environment into a
digital interface. A prototypical example is Amikasa (INDG 2014), an app desi-
gned to help consumers find the right home furnishings. The smartphone camera
is used to create 3D models of the rooms, in which furniture and decor can then
be placed at the user’s convenience.
The intensity of the entanglement of physical and virtual realities is referred
to as the degree of immersion: While total immersion describes a feeling of com-
plete absorption in a virtual, artificial environment, with low levels of immersion
the real environment is still highly perceptible and thus a constant part of the
user’s awareness (this is the case with AR solutions). For a perfect VR emulation
of reality, all components of the real world, e.g., living beings, objects, natural
phenomena as well as their noises, smells and haptic properties, would have to be
simulated—the technical solutions currently available are still a long way from
that. While immersion in the context of VR thus refers to the structure of virtual
environments transmitted by technology, presence is the subjective experience of
assessing the virtual environment to be real. This, however, does not indicate that
users are not aware of the mediated nature of their experience. As research by
Spagnolli and Gamberini (2002, p. 429) has shown, players are still aware of
their physical surroundings in reality while experiencing in-game presence using
VR technology.
By far the most popular example of extended realities is the AR application
and location-based game Pokémon Go (Niantic 2016), which was released 2016.
132 J. Wimmer
Basically, the aim of the game is to catch and collect different monster-like crea-
tures. The major difference from previous Pokémon games is that this hunt is
not carried out exclusively in a virtual world, but is inextricably linked to the
real-world setting. The basic interface of the game is a map of the real environ-
ment of the players, where important places of the real world such as museums
or railway stations are integrated as landmarks and serve as starting points for
digital gaming. Players who visit these locations can collect useful items or chal-
lenge other players to virtual battles. AR game apps are, of course, not a new
phenomenon. However, Pokémon Go became quickly popular around the world,
prompting large audiences to try out AR-based game apps and sparking a public
debate about the opportunities and risks of virtual realities in everyday life (cf.
Hjorth and Richardson 2017).
On the one hand, the new digital possibilities fascinate many people as they
bring society closer to the realization of science fiction technologies featured
in books and Hollywood movies like eXistenZ (Cronenberg 1999) or Minority
Report (Spielberg 2002) (see in depth Veerapen 2013). Many enthusiasts postu-
late that virtual experiences of reality have a more intense effect on the users than
book novels, movies etc. because they would be perceived as more impressive and
immediate by the audience/users. The director and VR pioneer Chris Milk prai-
sed the innovative media technology in a 2015 TED talk: “It is indeed a machine,
but through this machine we become more sympathetic, we become more empa-
thetic, we feel closer to each other, and thus ultimately also more human”
(Milk 2015). Immersive 360-degree videos virtually transport their viewers to
new environments and enable them to look around independently. “Realistic”,
computer-generated VR productions also offer the possibility for interacting with
the people they display. In both cases, according to Milk, virtual co-presence
may not only increase empathy, but also lead to greater understanding and kind-
ness towards people. It is remarkable, though, that VR productions are indeed
used for humanitarian or charitable purpose. An early example is Milk’s own
360-degree video Clouds Over Sidra (Arora and Pousman 2015). Using data
glasses, the interactive documentary transports viewers to the Za’atari refugee
camp in Jordan, where a girl named Sidra introduces them to the living con-
ditions of Syrian refugees. Milk’s phrase “ultimate empathy machine” inspired
a whole industry—especially journalists—and became a marketing catchphrase.
However, an explanation of how these two contradictory terms—empathy and
machine—relate to each other was not provided by Milk.
The fact that virtual realities can trigger a feeling of presence in another
location is the most intensively discussed potential of the new technology. It dif-
ferentiates virtual realities from traditional media. It is common to almost all
virtual realities from VR to AR that they try to optimally stimulate this feeling
of presence, to make the user an interactive eyewitness. The assumption that their
interactive content could lead to more empathy is the conclusion of this potential.
The underlying hypothesis can be formulated as follows: If a user experiences
something themself, they could then empathize better with the situation of those
affected. Be it the refugee, the victim of an earthquake or a woman who is attacked
by fundamental Christians in front of an abortion clinic.
Empathy, the ability to share and understand someone else’s emotions, is a
critical part of meaningful social interactions. It has been shown to increase peo-
ple’s understanding of one another and to motivate positive social behaviors, such
as donating, volunteering or cooperating with others. Psychological experiments
within the framework of the EU project VERE (2014)1 have shown that people
gain more understanding for others if, e.g., through simulation, they assume their
perspective (e.g., men in women, white people in people of color, adults in child-
ren, younger ones in an older self) (cf. Banakou et al. 2013, 2016; Maister et al.
2013, 2015; Peck et al. 2013). Such a change of perspective can promote positive
changes in people, reduce thinking in stereotypes and improve communication.
Moreover, experiments have shown that the illusion created influenced peoples’
behavior outside the virtual world and that the effects persisted even after the
experiments (e.g., Hershfield et al. 2011; Peck et al. 2013; Rosenberg et al. 2013;
Yoon and Vargas 2014). However, there is little research examining how exactly
this emerging technology can alter people’s attitudes. Past research on VR and
empathy has yielded mixed results and used small sample sizes composed mostly
of college students. In addition, previous studies have not examined the long-term
effect of virtual realities on empathy beyond several weeks. Substantial effects
on an unconscious level, e.g., the body model, are measured empirically clearly
and comprehensibly. Previous research on VR primarily focused on psychological
concepts (cf. Hartmann 2020). The main focus lies on the factors that contribute
to the user’s feeling of presence; partly determined by the degree of immersion
and the emotions experienced. Many of these studies try to falsify various factors
derived from technology-centered theories (e.g., technology acceptance model,
diffusion theory) (e.g., Jung and tom Dieck 2018; Jung et al. 2020). Questions
of social contexts and of everyday life and the resulting consequences have been
neglected by previous research. The embedding of virtual reality in the everyday
life of users has not yet been investigated, although it could provide information
about motivations for use and the negotiation of the meaning of technology. An
1 https://www.vereproject.eu
134 J. Wimmer
approach which locates virtual realities in the ongoing digital transformation of

society will be illustrated in the next chapter.
2 Virtual Realities as a Drastic Push in the Mediatization

of Society
From the broader perspective of communication studies, the questions arise as to

what role virtual realities play in our current media culture and what their specific
qualities are that make them new forms of cultural expression. To answer these
questions, it helps to consider two analytical dimensions:
Firstly, the level of everyday life where media as a whole and the plethora
of media practices can now be regarded as constitutive for personal development
and social reality (cf. fundamentally Hepp 2013). The use of digital communi-
cation media transforms people’s social interaction and everyday experiences, so
that everyday life and everyday media life can no longer be analytically separa-
ted (cf. Krotz 2017). Current research on mediatization shows that the increasing
establishment of technical communication media as a whole and the associated
change in the “production” of our reality are expediting the changes drastically
(Couldry and Hepp 2016). Accordingly, users experience in the countless worlds
of virtual realities not only entertaining or educational content, but also opportu-
nities for socialization and identity-forming. These virtual forms of media reality
can shape their ad-hoc communicative actions, but also, in the long term, their
personal development and social community.
Secondly, media experience can, in principle, not only be understood as a con-
scious anticipation and/or processing of existential social experience, following
the news for real-world events, but also as a type of experience in its own right
through which real-world or fictitious realities distant from one’s own point of
view can be acquired. Virtual realities drastically and dramatically change both the
dynamics of mediated experience and the intersubjective comprehension of this
experience. Through technological innovations, mediated experiences can now be
carried out in vivo. Moreover, and quasi playfully and not always consciously
reflected by media users, various areas of reality and experience remote from the
user (e.g., geographically distant earthquake regions) become accessible through
these interactive media. The result is that social reality(ies) and media reality(ies)
need to be studied alongside each other. Krotz (2012, p. 33) consequently postu-
lates a radical mediatization push through the extension of real-world experience
through virtual realities, which he calls augmented reality: “Both historical steps
– the discovery of the central perspective as well as the change of our vision
through augmented reality – can obviously be understood as belonging together

steps of a mediatization process: The central perspective structures our vision and
makes us a part of what is happening, and augmented reality then fills our views
with new and additional content. Media shape our perceptions to the extent that
they offer through their contexts what we recognize and how we contextualize
what we perceive. The invention of the central perspective is not only the founda-
tion of science, but also of a gigantic industry and many technologies – museums,
the art trade, the telescope, the camera, etc. – and this is what augmented reality
today refers to, presumably without further thought about what it does.”
It can be assumed that virtual realities will continue to drive and shape the
mediatization of everyday life by further promoting the paths of digitization from
social interaction, media use, work, consumption and entertainment. They con-
tribute significantly to the ever-increasing shift of activities in everyday life and
work towards the digital sphere. Pioneers of this process are practical applicati-
ons in the field of medicine, in form of simulations, but also in communicative,
artistic, and therapeutic settings. Through virtual presence, extreme situations can
be better understood and mastered, and perhaps even social contexts can be re-
created, for example by “transporting” the user to a poverty or war situation.
Virtual realities are already used to train pilots today. They also have their place
in sports training and pedagogy and serve as a tool for empirical research about
media ethics (cf. Sütfeld et al. 2017).
However, the central question that arises from a deliberation on social aspects
is: How does virtuality deal with the interpersonal, with the fact that underneath
it all, humans are physical beings with a great need for physical presence? On
the one hand, we are, effectively, “virtualizers” because we can imagine many
things and we construct our reality(ies) through a plethora of media. On the other
hand, we have a deep longing for a reality that we can rely on, that provides us
with a sense of home and security. This inner dividedness is further intensified
by virtual realities. Virtual realities are a dramatic technology: they dramatize our
human duality between imagination and reality (which, of course, is merely a con-
struct). In virtual realities, the spatial distances of the real world could completely
dissolve. For users, location-independent access and means of communication are
created in order to increase the chances of participating in intensive social inter-
action processes. In a professional and private environment, this increases the
opportunities for making new contacts and maintaining existing relationships.
136 J. Wimmer
3 Challenges from the Perspective of Media Ethics
The strong sense of presence within the framework of immersion in virtual reali-
ties also presents considerable challenges from an ethical perspective. The potential
long-term cognitive and emotional effect of virtual realities on users has yet to be
investigated in detail, and the line between reality and virtual realities is becoming
increasingly blurred. Referring to an ethically controversial case of Facebook foun-
der Zuckerberg’s virtual ‘visit’ to a region destroyed by an earthquake via VR-App,
German journalist Michael Moorstedt (2017, own translation) discusses the nega-
tive potential of virtual realities: “It is the declared goal of Virtual Reality to make
the real world and its simulation as indistinguishable as possible. It seems as if the
pendulum swings in both directions. Psychological studies have shown that people
behave differently in virtual environments than in the real world, more emotionally
cold, more pragmatically. Not for nothing do computer scientists and social scientists
alike demand a moral code for artificial reality. What may one show and what not?
And why does it bother people more when Zuckerberg is embedded in a virtual reality
video than it probably would have had he been in a normal movie? The new medium
is still searching for the right tone.”
The empirical answer to the question of whether the feeling of being ‘present’
in an earthquake region, for example via VR, provides real insight or is merely
a mediatized form of voyeurism remains unanswered. But if one considers this
potential a little further, it seems plausible to assume that the worlds of experi-
ence of AR and VR influence our already highly mediatized and digitized reality
even more and could thus change our social and societal coexistence even more
strongly than previous digital media technologies (cf. Couldry and Hepp 2016).
Not only is there potential for expanding individual perceptions of reality through
virtual representations, but also the fact that in the future a user will be able to
interact with virtual realities in a variety of ways and integrate them into any area
of everyday life makes them technological assets that promise many freedoms but
which also have considerable social implications while raising questions of media
ethics that are worth considering.
Of course, virtuality has always existed in human life, and human reality can
very well be considered virtual to some extent as media and communication have
always constructed our reality. But the degree to which we give virtual realities
space in our lives correlates with their potential ethical harmfulness. The virtual
realities of the “empathy machine” challenge well-established forms of perception
and interaction in that they change our understanding of time, sense of space,
and self-image and induce us to withdraw from face-to-face communication in
favor of virtual forms of communication, especially in the case of interpersonal
conflicts, potentially intensifying rather than mitigating them due to the loss of
sensory impression (cf. Slater et al. 2020).
With regard to the social risks, there is an ambivalence in the effects that immer-
sion into virtual worlds can have for users of virtual realities (as for all users of digital
media): On the one hand, virtual realities can contribute to overcoming social iso-
lation and stimulate social interaction—for example, by improving the way people
contact friends, families or acquaintances. On the other hand, they can also create a
parallel world and consequently lead to social isolation and alienation. But especially
in the case of VR, there is a risk that virtual immersion and interaction become parti-
ally ‘hyperrealistic’ (Baudrillard 1978) or ‘superrealistic’ (Slater et al. 2020). Virtual
realities become so attractive to some users that they prefer virtually mediated expe-
riences to the real world. Thus, while technology will help overcome social isolation
through new forms of communication, virtual reality can also lead to a life in a dream
world and result in isolation and alienation or even media addiction. But one needs to
acknowledge that these fears are expressed (and relativized in retrospect) every time
new media are introduced. Even if the social risks described are not causally attri-
butable to the use of VR (though more than of AR, presumably) and depend heavily
on different factors like the dispositions of the individual users, their media literacy
etc., it can be assumed that the high intensity of experiencing virtual realities tends
to increase the risks described.
From an ethical perspective, Kellmeyer et al. (2019) identify three key risks
of using VR in therapy settings: (1) The persuasive power of VR can be used for
therapeutic purposes that are ultimately based on an illusion. This instrumentaliza-
tion of the senses restricts a patient’s autonomy and is sometimes problematic with
regard to human dignity. (2) VR aims at a change in behavior that users cannot
avoid. This jeopardizes autonomous decision making if the virtual experience is
so compelling that users cease to seek alternative experiences (images, arguments
etc.). (3) Users establish emotional ties to virtual figures, avatars, and accept them
as supposedly real people. This could result in a reinforcement of social withdra-
wal from the real world. Madary and Metzinger (2016, p. 5) point to the threat
of an instrumentalization of the laboratory setting and confined spaces of virtual
realities through interest groups if the contexts and implications of virtual realities
are not clearly communicated to the users:
“The comprehensive character of VR plus the potential for the global control of
experiential content introduces opportunities for new and especially powerful forms
of both mental and behavioral manipulation, especially when commercial, political,
religious, or governmental interests are behind the creation and maintenance of the
virtual worlds.”
138 J. Wimmer
The fact that VR can create such strong illusions is seen as a major cause for
concern. Madary and Metzinger (2016) therefore provide concrete recommenda-
tions particularly with regard to the use of VR. In the case of research work, for
example, participants should be informed about the risks, and medical researchers
should refrain from raising false hopes. An ethical code, however important it may
be, does not replace ethical reflection and action itself. With regard to consumers,
the authors are demanding long-term studies on how immersion in virtual worlds
affects the psyche. They see a particular danger from certain content, such as sce-
nes of violence or pornography, in which technological risk increases the risk of
psychological trauma. Finally, they draw attention to the need for regulation of
avatar ownership, as well as of surveillance and data protection.
Ethical implications of AR are slightly different. AR-based assistance systems
will become even more subtle and invisible through interfaces that are percei-
ved as natural, such as glasses or contact lenses, and are bound to merge with
everyday life more than previous communication technologies. Current smart-
phones are large, their use is visible and understandable for others; by contrast, in
AR applications, for example, a conversation partner does not know whether the
bearer of such a system is retrieving additional information (about them) at any
given moment; they are covertly used. Human cognitive abilities are potentially
expanded by making information relevant to the situation available. AR-based
assistance systems will continue to spread if proven to be useful and will become
indispensable within many social groups. But due to the expected device and
usage costs, these options will initially be reserved for a digital elite, which can
gain an informational and educational edge through access to exclusive content.
It is to be feared that societal knowledge gaps may also arise or be reinforced
through the proliferation of virtual realities. In addition, augmented reality con-
tent may become a tool for manipulative political, economic etc. intentions in
the future and could have particularly strong influence on the opinion formation
of its users. An example is real-time manipulation of video footage through AR
technology (Herling 2014).
4 Conclusion and Outlook
Research on virtual realities faces the dual challenge of focusing not only on
a ‘moving target’, but rather on a ‘changing target’. Thus, virtual realities are
an object of investigation that transforms itself due to specific technical and
social context. Following this premise, one can only grasp the social challen-
ges of VR and AR if one also examines their interdependencies across media
and social domains in depth and does not focus solely on the short-term acts
of reception. The task of future research work is therefore to describe the influ-
encing factors that determine media constructions of reality more concretely and
comprehensively, not only taking into account mass media discourse, but also
‘transmedial’ connections. For it can be assumed that virtual realities can unfold
a considerable potential for public debate by enabling new directions and, in parti-
cular, new forms of participation, among other things, through digital 360-degree
perspectives (cf. in-depth de la Peña 2015).
The change in users’ perception of space and time should be also given a broader
analytical consideration (Liao and Humphreys 2014). A study by Klopfer and Squire
(2008) that evaluates an AR app in a school context prototypically shows the underly-
ing transformation. Their results provide information on what needs to be considered
when programming and using AR in an educational context. Thus, users identified
other design features as significant than developers and teachers. They had no pro-
blem linking virtual and real space from a cognitive point of view. However, the use
of the app in groups led to an increased social hierarchization (e.g., decision making
based on gender stereotypes) in using the app. Javornik et al. (2016) tested an AR
application for applying make-up in a store. Although their study focuses only on the
app’s acceptance by customers, it methodically shows a possible integration of AR
technologies into everyday life. Pavlik and Bridges (2013, p. 52) extrapolating on the
basis of Rogers’ diffusion model of how AR could influence journalism, come to the
euphoric conclusion that AR-enhanced news content leads to a more committed, but
an also more informed readership.
At the same time, however, we should not lose sight of the possible long-term risks
of VR. Studies indicate risks that VR can pose for media professionals, content pro-
viders, marketers and users (cf. Slater et al. 2020). Future studies ought to investigate
the implication of long-term immersion, beyond short-time “motion sickness”, the
well-known nausea that arises as the first negative effect after long use of VR. As
soon as VR games can actually be played for a longer period of time, excessive usage
should also be problematized, and with it a possible loss of orientation, disturbed
perception of the actual reality and identification problems with one’s own identity.
The development of phobias or cardiovascular diseases as a result of psychological
stress due to VR consumption is also conceivable. In the future, we may also see a
“reality lag”: the extent to which we lose our perception of reality after a long VR
consumption and the time required to reorient oneself in the real world.
Kellmeyer et al. (2019) propose that technological solutions should only be
used where problems cannot be solved politically or socially. In order to make
new applications in their research area of health care more user-centered, they
suggest involving patients early-on in the development. Finally, it would also be
140 J. Wimmer
advisable to consider the following actions: (1) Research on the effects on human
consciousness needs to be conducted and appropriately funded. (2) The digital
economy could propose and recommend research as part of a self-regulatory way
to establish an ethical framework. (3) A label similar to the German FSK or the
American PEGI would help inform consumers about the depth of immersion.
Compared to social media, virtual realities are still a niche today, but their
social impact is growing rapidly. As a new medium, VR and AR will also
profoundly change our understanding of common life, work and relationships—
possibly even similar to the smartphone over the past decade or the introduction
of the first television sets into the living room in 1960s. There is still a lot of rese-
arch and experimentation to be done in this field—if ethically sound decisions are
to be made.
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Ludography
Pokémon Go (The Pokémon Company, Nintendo 2016, O: Niantic)
Educational Approaches
How Do We Teach Ethics and Empathy
Through Games?
Karen Schrier
Abstract
Can games support the practice of ethics and empathy? Under which conditi-
ons can games better encourage these types of skills and thought processes?
This chapter seeks to contextualize these questions and provide an overview
of the latest research related to these issues.
Keywords
Compassion • Empathy • Ethics • Learning • Values
1 Introduction
Often, when the intersection of games with ethics is discussed in the public
sphere, people bring up a number of problematic issues with games, such as
violence, addiction, sexism and racism, too much screen time, or toxicity and
harassment online. For instance, the World Health Organization (WHO) inclu-
ded game addiction in their list of international diseases (WHO 2018). Likewise,
games and game playing has been blamed for mass shootings, obesity, and
ADHD; game players have dealt with toxic in-game interactions and harassment,
and game developers have been questioned for problematic, if not immoral design
and business practices, from sexual harassment and transphobia in the workplace,
K. Schrier (B)
Marist College, Poughkeepsie, NY, USA
E-Mail: karen.schrier@marist.edu

146 K. Schrier
to advertising and marketing issues, to crunch time and labor exploitation, to free-
to-play payment practices and loot boxes. Many of these concerns may even be
valid. For example, the ADL (Anti-Defamation League) released survey results
indicating that two-thirds of the participants in the study had experienced some
type of severe harassment while playing online games (including stalking and
physical threats), and 53% of online multiplayer gamers felt that they were haras-
sed because of some aspect of their identity, e.g., gender, sexual identity, race
(ADL 2019).
On the other hand, even though it is not discussed publicly as regularly, or
receives the same level of media attention, games can also be communities that
support prosocial behavior, care, compassion, and even learning. In that same
ADL study, 88% of the participants expressed having had positive social experi-
ences while playing multiplayer games online (ADL 2019). Players in this study
explained that they made friends, helped others, and felt like they belonged. Thus,
games, just like other (online) communities, can be sites of inclusion and care,
and toxicity and harassment, as well as all different types of behaviors in between.
In this chapter, I am focusing on the prosocial potential of games: How can
we use games to support the learning and practice of ethics and empathy? While
any problems with games may be valuable to study, attend to, and solve, this is
not the focus of this chapter. Rather, this chapter looks at the different ways that
games can be constructive and effective for ethics and empathy education, as well
as their limitations.
In this chapter, I will cover/answer the following questions:
• What are ethics and values, empathy and compassion, and why should we
teach them?
• How might games be useful ways to learn, including examples of using games
to teach ethics?
• What are some limitations of using games for teaching ethics and empathy?
• What are some recent research findings on and frameworks for using games
and game design to teach ethics and empathy?
In other words, can games be both the problem and the solution to that problem?
For instance, how can we use games, pedagogically, practically, and logistically,
to support ethics learning, and character, compassion, and care education? What
types of learning experiences do games offer that other types of experiences may
not provide? How can educators use games in classrooms, libraries, museums,
after school centers, and other settings?
How Do We Teach Ethics and Empathy Through Games? 147
2 Definitions of Key Terms
Ethics and empathy are concepts that people often believe to “understand” impli-
citly, but that are also highly complex and difficult to define. While morals are
typically seen as a series of guiding principles or agreed-upon rules or universal
truths,” (Tierney 1994, p. ix), ethics constitutes the act of handling these morals,
or the choices someone makes in response to a society’s or community’s morals
or standards (Tierney 1994). Ethics relates to making choices and judgments to
achieve a good life (Sicart 2005), a prosocial outcome, or a societal benefit. There
are a number of ways to approach ethics or to make choices and behave ethically.
For instance, in the virtue ethics approach, a person becomes a virtuous decision-
maker through education and experience. One’s character and their values help
that person to properly assess, interpret and act in a situation (e.g., Aristotle,
Plato). In the utilitarian approach, people prioritize decisions that maximize uti-
lity, or the most happiness and least suffering on the whole, or for the greatest
number of people (e.g., Mill, Bentham). A feminist ethics perspective aims to
incorporate previously marginalized perspectives, such as how care, emotion and
connection may also matter, rather than just so-called rationality and autonomy
in decision making (e.g., Gilligan, Wollstonecraft, Stanton). Likewise, the ethics
of care approach aims to consider how empathy and compassion, and a relati-
onship of care, matter as well when it comes to making ethical decisions (e.g.,
Noddings).
Thus, empathy and compassion, perspective taking, care and connection, may
also be integral components of ethics and ethical education. They are not necessa-
rily separate entities, but may go hand-in-hand with how we treat others and
behave as a society or individually. Empathy, as it is typically defined, relates to
other people’s feelings and experiences and is often ascribed both cognitive and
affective components (Schrier and Farber n.d.). However, just as there are nume-
rous definitions of ethics, empathy is also varied in its definition and application.
For instance, Schrier and Farber (n.d.) studied literature on ethics and games and
identified 13 different definitions of empathy being used. Likewise, empathy is
often mistaken for sympathy, which is the ability to recognize what another is
feeling or thinking, without actually feeling or mirroring it (Schrier 2019a). Some
researchers argue that empathy may not be what we are aiming for, as a society,
as it can overwhelm people to an extent that they cannot act or interact appro-
priaty, helpfully, or ethically and that compassion is what we should foster instead
(Bloom 2016, 2017). Compassion is the ability to understand what someone else
is going through, including their feelings, pain, or needs, and then acting on it by
reducing their suffering, or enhancing their happiness (Farber and Schrier 2017).
148 K. Schrier
Rather than just teaching students a set of rules about what is right or wrong,
or a set of instructions on how to show compassion or practice ethical behavior,
what may be more useful is to teach a series of skills and thought processes
that relate to understanding and analyzing situations and interactions, as well as
thinking through how to act and behave as a result of those interpretations. Thus,
even if empathy and compassion are different, the related and necessary skills and
thought processes to elicit them are similar, and are what people need to practice.
These skills are important to learn so that a person can adapt to different situa-
tions, as well as different contexts (whether online or offline). I have generated
a list of skills that are useful for interpreting and understanding how to act in
an ethics-related situation. The skills include: perspective taking, communication,
decision making, systems thinking, literacy, reflection, exploration, problem sol-
ving, critical thinking, argumentation, cultural awareness, emotional awareness,
and identity and personal expression (Please see more information about this and
the skill-selection process in Schrier n.d. and Schrier 2015).
3 How and Why Should We Teach Ethics and Empathy

Using Games?
Teaching ethics and compassion is not only useful, it is necessary for a func-
tioning civil society, where we depend on each other for everything from daily
interactions to political decisions, to providing appropriate healthcare, education,
and business transactions. As the world becomes more interconnected and inter-
dependent, we all need to be able to fluidly transition among different cultures,
epistemic lenses, and types of communities. However, public schools in the United
States (and many other countries) do not mandate ethics education. For instance,
there is no formal framework for teaching ethics, and no course that is universally
taught in K-12 public school in the U.S.
But why use games to support the practice of ethics and empathy? Are there
any drawbacks and limitations to using games? In this section, I will briefly
outline a few reasons why games may be particularly useful (as well as any
limitations).
3.1 Games May Support Complex Learning
Games have been used to support different types of learning, whether related to
feelings, attitudes, and behaviors, or specific topic or content areas (Ke 2016;
Schrier 2018). For instance, some explicitly educational games have been desi-
gned to teach computational thinking (Warner et al. 2014), music and art (Hein
2014), or literature and reading (Ferdig and Pytash 2014). Commercial off-the-
shelf games, which may not have been intentionally designed for education, have
also been adapted, modified, or translated for educational uses (Schrier 2014,
2016, 2019c).
Educators have also started to use games for social and emotional learning
(SEL), which relates to identifying one’s own and other people’s emotions, mana-
ging one’s emotions, and communicating with others, among other skills (Lim-Fei
et al 2016). For instance, Paul Darvasi (along with iThrive and Matthew Farber)
designed a curriculum around the game What Remains of Edith Finch (Giant Spar-
row 2017) to be used in his literature class, which he used to support exercises
around identity exploration and reflection.
Designers are also creating games to teach SEL skills such as identifying emo-
tions or communicating with others. For instance, the game When Rivers Were
Trails (Indian Land Tenure Foundation & Michigan State University’s Games for
Entertainment and Learning Lab 2019) enables greater compassion for indigenous
communities in the United States by showing the impact of U.S. policies on their
communities. The game also shares stories of the Anishinaabe people and provi-
des cultural references and touch points, enabling greater cultural awareness and
understanding (LaPensée 2018).
Games are also being used to enable the practice of ethical thinking and deci-
sion making, even if they are not explicitly “educational games.” For example,
“the analog role-playing game, Rosenstrasse […] lets players make ethical decisi-
ons and relive a moment in history (which involved non-Jewish women protesting
the imprisonment of their Jewish partners in Berlin under the Reich).” (Schrier
2019a). Likewise, in This War of Mine (11 Bit Studios 2014), players need to help
a group of wartime civilian survivors continue to live under difficult circumstan-
ces, where they have to make choices such as whether to steal from an elderly
couple or how to divide up the loot and food that they find.
Research results have been mixed about whether games are more effective than
other methodologies and educational interventions. For instance, in one meta-
analysis study of the effectiveness of games, researchers found that games can
better support cognitive learning outcomes than non-game conditions (Clark et al.
2014, 2016). In another study, games helped to enhance enjoyment and learning
of math, science, and English (Crocco et al. 2016). However, another study sug-
gested some less optimistic findings, which showed that games were not more
motivating, though they supported cognitive outcomes (Wouters et al. 2013).
150 K. Schrier
Research also suggests that learning games are not universally effective or
ineffective, but that well-designed games can be effective when used appropriately
with the right type of audience under the right types of conditions (Clark et al.
2016). Games may be able to support complex skills and behaviors, such as social
and emotional skills, but they themselves are also complex environments, and
their effectiveness varies dynamically depending on a number of factors. In this
chapter, I will explicate some of the considerations that relate to their use and
design, but ultimately testing, retesting, and continually reassessing a game is
the best way to understand and evaluate whether it fulfills the goals and learning
needs in a particular environment.
3.2 Perspective Taking and Role Taking
One of the reasons why games may specifically be effective in enabling the prac-
tice of ethics and empathy lies in the fact that they can encourage participants to
take on the role of another (fictional) person, and see the world, act, and behave
as if they inhabited them. For instance, the Mission US series (Thirteen (WNET
New York Public Media) 2018–2020) brings players into the roles of different
characters from history and enables them to assume their perspectives and empa-
thize with their challenges. In one of the modules, players take on role of a Jewish
teenage girl from the early 1900s who has just immigrated to the United States
(New York City) and is trying to navigate tenement living, working in a factory,
and supporting her extended family. This type of historical empathy helps players
to understand the historical challenges, obstacles, and contexts through which this
character lived, and provides them with a greater appreciation for the circumstan-
ces of life of that community during that time period. Research on perspective
taking suggests that it can be useful for enabling people to connect with people
who are different from them, because it reduces the perceived differences bet-
ween in-groups and out-groups. If people perceive others as too different from
themselves, they are less likely to want to connect with them or care about their
fate. Finding ways to help people to experience what being someone else is like
helps them to better understand them and to see them as humanized allies, rather
than “othered” enemies (Darvasi 2016; Castillo et al. 2011; Pettigrew and Tropp
2005, 2006; Galinsky and Moskowitz 2000; Galinsky et al. 2005, 2008). Games
can potentially support this type of interconnection and interaction by either pro-
viding ways to enable players to embody someone else—and hear their stories
and challenges—or to interact with others who may initially appear be different
from themselves, but who may seem more relatable through shared experiences
such as playing a game (Schrier 2019b; Wang et al. 2014; Galinsky et al 2008;
Vescio et al. 2003; Castillo et al. 2011). This does not mean that a game needs to
encourage perspective taking to be effective in ethics and empathy education, but
that research has suggested that this type of design and practice may be helpful.
On the other hand, there are limitations to perspective taking and its potential
to foster empathy. To begin with, people may be more likely to dismiss someone’s
challenges because they are only “walking in their shoes” for a limited time, and
not fully embracing their lived experience. Second, no game can fully or aptly
share or simulate someone else’s experience or story (Nario-Redmond et al. 2017).
In fact, using a game may backfire or even be troubling or problematic when
assuming the perspective of a marginalized group of people (Sassenrath et al.
2016). For instance, when people played a game where they took on the role of a
disabled person, they felt so overwhelmed in this role that they were even more
afraid to have interactions with actual people who are disabled (Nario-Redmond
et al. 2017). Third, adopting such a perspective may even be a form of violence,
in that a person’s own unique perspective is “taken over” by someone else and
reinscribed with another’s beliefs and attitudes—even if it is unintentional, it is
a violent type of erasure of someone’s authentic point of view (Nakamura 2002;
Roxworthy 2014; Hartman 1997).
3.3 Choices and Consequences
Another key reason that games may be particularly useful for learning and practi-
cing ethics and empathy is the use of active choice making and the experiencing
of the outcomes and consequences of those choices. For instance, in the Walking
Dead series (Telltale Games 2012, 2013/14, 2015, 2016/17; Skybound Games &
Telltale Games 2018/19), players need to make choices about how to survive and
thrive after a zombie apocalypse. For instance, in the first game, you play as Lee
Everett and need to make decisions such as whom to save in your group, or how
to treat others you meet along the way. Sometimes decisions you make in the first
few episodes, or even full games, may have an effect on outcomes in subsequent
games (such as sequels). For instance, how Clementine, a young girl in the game,
treats another character, Kenny, affects how he interacts with her and supports
her much later in the game and its sequel(s). Likewise, in series such as Mass
Effect (BioWare 2007, 2010, 2012, 2017), Fallout Fallout (Black Isle Studios
1997, 1998; Bethesda Game Studios 2008, 2015; Obsidian Entertainment 2010),
Fable (Lionhead Studios 2004, 2008, 2010), and Dragon Age (BioWare 2009,
2011, 2014), a key component of the gameplay is making dialogue choices, as
152 K. Schrier
well as choices around which relationships or loyalties to cultivate, which species

to save, and/or how to spend money and make policies to support the game world
that you are inhabiting. Educational games such as Quandary (Learning Games
Network 2019) use choice making as part of the process for thinking through
problems. In Quandary, players need to not only make choices, but they need to
justify their choices with evidence, and interpret the evidence appropriately. In the
game, players need to decide how to solve problems in a new society called Braa-
xos. The game scaffolds the problem-solving process by having players interview
people, sort and interpret evidence, evaluate it for efficacy, and then make decisi-
ons based on what they have found. While some choices may be more optimal for
society, the purpose of the game is not just to make choices, but to walk through
the decision-making process, so that a person who builds a well-evidenced argu-
ment that supports a less optimal choice may earn more points than someone who
chooses something more optimal, but does not support it as effectively (Schrier
n.d.; Osterweil 20191 ).
While making ethical choices and gaining feedback on those choices may be
helpful for learning, there are limitations to what games can do. For one, games
cannot fully simulate all the intricacies of choices and their consequences. Often,
choices are “black and white” rather than subtle, and players may choose what
helps them attain their goals in the game, rather than actually thinking through
the ethical implications. Ian Bogost calls this a type of “moral accounting,” where
players may try to gain the most of one side or the other to advance their goals,
rather than truly grappling with the complex consequences of their actions (Bogost
2006). Part of the reason for such dichotomous choices is that it is too computa-
tionally and narratively challenging to create all the possible choices and paths in
a scenario and present every conceivable nuanced, dynamic outcome. Some game
designers are beginning to find ways to encourage players to grapple with com-
plex choices and their possible outcomes in games, but as a result, the paths may
feel too obfuscated. For instance, in the Life Is Strange series (Dontnod Entertain-
ment 2015, 2018/19; Deck Nine 2017/18), players take on the role of a teenager
who has to make choices about how to treat others. In the first series, players
play as Max, who can select from different choices, see the outcome, and then
rewind time to redo the choice with a potentially different outcome. This helps
the player to reflect on choices and think about how they might do it differently
(However, many consequences in Life Is Strange cannot be rewound, such as the
possible suicide of one of the characters, so the designer constrains this signifi-
cantly). In the second series (Life Is Strange 2), players play as Sean Diaz, and
1 S. Osterweil (personal interview, 2019).

are unable to redo choices (unless they go to a previous checkpoint and erase all
the progress they made before that). In this game, it is sometimes hard to see how
one’s individual choices impact other players because the results are more subtle
and may not be revealed unless the player starts the game over again and tries out
the different possibilities. Not having this opportunity for feedback, reflection and
retrial makes it more difficult for a player to learn about how they may reshape
their ethics practices.
Choice making and perspective taking are two elements that may support ethics
learning, and there are other reasons why games may also be useful. For instance,
other factors that may make games effective include the ability to be participants
in a storyworld and immersed in a new environment, to be active influences and
decision makers, to communicate with others and build relationships, and the
ability to adjust and modify a system to understand how it changes dynamically
over time and relative to different choices, activities, or behaviors (Schrier n.d.).
4 Drawbacks
While well-designed games may be effective under certain circumstances and

with particular audiences, there are limitations as well. I will briefly explain some
in the following.
(1) Inappropriate content: Educators looking for games for learning need to
ensure that the content in the games be appropriate for the audience, particu-
larly in the case of commercial games. For instance, the aforementioned Life
Is Strange 2 includes content, language and interactions (e.g., drugs, sexual
situations, verbal insults, racist language, death) that may not be appropriate
for all audiences. Other games, such as Quandary, may be suitable for some
middle school and high school students, but less so for audiences composed
of less fluent or visually impaired readers. The game needs to be matched
to the audience, their needs, their prior knowledge and experience, and their
interests.
(2) Length of the game: Some commercial games that have ethical choices as part
of the gameplay are extremely long and require extensive gameplay before
the results of choices become apparent. For instance, Fable III comprises
approximately 10–15 h of gameplay, Life Is Strange has five episodes of
90 min to 2 h each, and each Fallout game could take upwards of 100 h
depending on one’s gameplay style. Even games such as Papers, Please (3909
LLC 2013) or This War of Mine may take a few hours to play, as players
154 K. Schrier
may need to play them multiple times to fully understand their paths and
outcomes (or even just to meet their challenges). This makes fitting a game
into a typical 45-min to 1-h period difficult. It also limits how much a player
may cultivate relationships with other players or even other characters (non-
player characters or NPCs), which can be important factors in whether a
player may empathize with others, and make decisions with consideration of
their care for and connection to others in the game (Schrier 2017).
(3) Relevancy: Many games take place in fantastical worlds and environments,
and it may be difficult for an educator or an administrator to understand how
the game and its content are relevant to the learning goals and curricular
needs of a classroom or other learning environment. While we can argue that
practicing ethics with fantastical scenarios can still provide benefits and spark
ethical thinking (Schrier 2017), having scenarios and gameplay that more
directly relate to real-world problems and outcomes is also beneficial. For
instance, finding ways for students to play that directly affect local issues and
make real-world change makes the learning personally relevant and impactful
(Schrier n.d.). For example, students can engage in citizen science games that
help solve real-world scientific problems (Schrier 2017), or can play board
games that help them to understand actual problems in their community, such
as in the case of Alfred Twu’s California Water Crisis (2014), which helps
players understand the water problem by role-playing from the perspective of
different constituencies (Schrier n.d.).
(4) Standardization and Assessment: One of the benefits of games is that they are
highly complex, dynamic, and can support higher-level thinking like ethics
and empathy. As a result, they are not necessarily “standard,” out of the box,
one-size-fits-all solutions that an educator can just apply in the same fashion
in different schools or classrooms and expect the same outcomes. This makes
it difficult to figure out how to fit them into what is often a set, standardized
curriculum, with little flexibility with regard to novel and innovative approa-
ches. Also, games may not yield the prognosticated results the first, second,
or third time, and may instead work in effective, yet unexpected ways. The
efficacy of a game also relies on a teacher or educator being able to adjust
their lessons spontaneously, to work with sudden technical and/or pedagogical
issues, and to know how to employ the game in a way that is effective for the
students in a class or other educational setting. This also makes games more
challenging to assess and evaluate because what works for some audiences
may not work for all. Thus, teachers may need to assess and revise how to
use the game while doing so, and it may take a few tries to ensure the game
is effective for a particular curricular need.
5 Recent Research on Using Games to Teach Ethics

and Empathy
In this section, I will briefly discuss a few recent studies related to using games for
ethics and empathy learning which are relevant to understanding their strengths
and limitations.
5.1 Study on Game Jams, Identity, and Empathy
In my own research on games and empathy, I wanted to investigate whether the

process of game design, rather than just a game itself, may also affect the practice
of empathy and identity exploration. I created and researched these questions at
nine game jams (short-term game creation events) and surveyed 84 participants
ages 18 or over before and after the event. I used three different experimental con-
ditions: (1) a control condition (which involved the participants just being part of
the game jam), (2) the game jam, plus we provided a guide that explained using
empathy principles, such as choice making or perspective taking, and (3) the game
jam, plus we provided the guide and a person trained as an anti-bias educator to
join the game jam team. I found that overall, participants felt greater self-efficacy
in their role game developers; they explored their own and others’ identities
throughout the design process. Participants were also less likely to believe that
games increase bias, and more likely to think that games can enhance empathy
(after, versus before the game jam event). One indicator in an empathy measure,
“feeling safer from threats and uncertainties,” increased after the event (based on
self-report). However, other indicators, such as perspective taking and empathic
concern, did not change, suggesting that the game jam and design process did not
affect these indicators, that there was not enough time to change these indicators,
or that the sample size (84) was not large enough to reveal the changes (Schrier
2019a).
5.2 Research on Quandary
Quandary is a game that aims to teach perspective taking, empathy, and ethical
decision making to middle school and high school students. Hilliard et al. (2016)
investigated whether the game could promote these skills by assessing the game
with 131 middle school students and using a measure of moral thinking, as well as
qualitative interviews. They used a mixed method randomized control trial, with
156 K. Schrier
participants playing Quandary, playing Quandary with some facilitation of dis-

cussion by the researchers, or playing another game (control). Participants were
interviewed and surveyed and asked to rate themselves on “levels of positive
youth development (PYD), active and engaged citizenship, empathic concern, per-
spective taking, interpersonal generosity, commitment to moral action, and moral
reasoning” (quantitative measures) (Hilliard et al. 2016, p. 5). While the quanti-
tative measures did not indicate any significant change, the qualitative analyses
(interview and short answer survey) suggested that those students who played
Quandary were more able to practice the skills related to empathy and ethics
(Hilliard et al. 2016). The lack of significant changes in the quantitative findings
of the moral thinking measure may indicate that this type of measurement may
not fully capture how games can support this type of learning, or that the game
does not alone spur these types of changes but instead needs to be part of a
longer-term or multi-layered intervention. In another study, middle school stu-
dents played Quandary and participated in one of three curricular options. A total
of 624 5th- to 9th-grade students completed a pre-Quandary survey, and 252 of
those completed a post-Quandary study. 49 students took the surveys without also
doing the Quandary curriculum. The researchers found that perspective taking
was enhanced for those that participated in the Quandary curriculum (Hilliard
2018).
5.3 Research on Spent
The game Spent invites players to make a series of choices about how to spend
their money throughout a fictional month in the life of a person who is struggling
to make ends meet. For instance, players may need to choose between buying a
present for their child, repairing their car or paying a bill. Throughout the month,
the game explains how much money the player has left—if they run out before the
month is over, the game ends. The purpose of the game is ostensibly to teach peo-
ple to have more empathy for those who are financially insecure. However, some
researchers looked at this game and found that the game often backfired in that it
did not succeed in raising empathy, and even lowered empathy in some situations.
They found that when participants believed in the idea of a “meritocracy,” or that
“if they simply try really hard and make all the right choices, they will do well,”
those participants ended up having less empathetic attitudes toward those who are
poor (Roussos and Dovidio 2016). They concluded that this was due to the game
affirming the notion of allegedly “right choices” resulting in financial security.
However, realistically, poverty is systemic and not under an individual’s control.
It is very difficult, if not impossible, to become financially secure just by making

the “right” choices. When the game removed agency for the player by showing
them a video of others making the decisions rather than them being in control,
this effect subsided, and the participants’ empathy did not decrease (Roussos and
Dovidio 2016). However, another study suggested the opposite: that playing Spent
helped to increase the practice of empathy for players (Richey Smith et al. 2016).
Yet another study suggested that Spent players might donate more money or show
more support for policies for the poor after playing the game, although they were
less likely to take action such as signing a petition supporting a greater wage.
Those players who perceived the game as more real also had higher empathy
levels, which furthered their support for policies to support the poor (Hernández-
Ramos et al 2019). These studies suggest that the game as well as the context
around it (how it is used and who is playing it) matter just as much as the game’s
content. They also indicate that how a study is designed and how a game is used
in it may lead to different and even contradictory results with regard to empathy.
This underscores again how hard it is to fully assess a game for supporting the
practice of ethics and empathy.
6 Conclusion and Next Steps
In this chapter, I have summarized recent questions and research related to the
use of games to teach ethics and empathy-related skills. This is a burgeoning
field with growing interest. Although there is currently limited research available,
peer-reviewed scholarship and practices are increasing. In the future, I hope more
formal quantitative and qualitative research will be conducted to understand the
conditions under which games can support the practice of empathy and ethics,
to better describe the design principles, contexts, and approaches that should be
used, as well as to identify the audiences that will benefit most from these types
of experiences. I also hope informal discourse on the use of games for teaching
ethics and empathy will flourish, both in the classroom and in other educational
communities and spaces. The informal and formal exchange of information is
necessary to ensure that games are designed and used optimally—both practically
and pedagogically.
158 K. Schrier
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Ludography
California Water Crisis (Twu, A. 2014, O: Twu, A.)
Dragon Age: Origins (Electronic Arts 2009, O: BioWare)
Dragon Age 2 (Electronic Arts 2011, O: BioWare)
Dragon Age: Inquisition (Electronic Arts 2014, O: BioWare)
Fable (Xbox Game Studios 2004, O: Lionhead Studios)
Fable II (Xbox Game Studios 2008, O: Lionhead Studios)
Fable III (Xbox Game Studios 2010, O: Lionhead Studios)
Fallout (Interplay Entertainment 1997, O: Black Isle Studios)
Fallout 2 (Interplay Entertainment 1998, O: Black Isle Studios)
Fallout: New Vegas (Bethesda Softworks 2010, O: Obsidian Entertainment)
Life Is Strange (Square Enix 2015, O: Dontnod Entertainment)
Life Is Strange 2 (Square Enix 2018/19, O: Dontnod Entertainment)
Life Is Strange: Before the Storm (Square Enix 2017/18, O: Deck Nine)
Mass Effect (Microsoft Game Studios 2007, O: BioWare)
Mass Effect 2 (Electronic Arts 2010, O: BioWare)
Mass Effect 3 (Electronic Arts 2012, O: BioWare)
Mass Effect: Andromeda (Electronic Arts 2017, O: BioWare)
Mission US (Thirteen (WNET New York Public Media) 2018–2020, O: Thirteen (WNET
New York Public Media))
Papers, Please (3909 LLC 2013, O: 3909 LLC)
Quandary (Learning Games Network 2019, O: Learning Games Network)
Spent (McKinney & Urban Ministries of Durham 2011, O: McKinney & Urban Ministries
of Durham)
The Walking Dead (Telltale Games 2012, O: Telltale Games)
The Walking Dead: A New Frontier (Telltale Games 2016/17, O: Telltale Games)
The Walking Dead: Michonne (Telltale Games 2015, O: Telltale Games)
The Walking Dead: Season Two (Telltale Games 2013/14, O: Telltale Games)
The Walking Dead: The Final Season (Skybound Games & Telltale Games 2018/19, O:
Skybound Games & Telltale Games)
This War of Mine (Deep Silver & 11 Bit Studios 2014, O: 11 Bit Studios)
What Remains of Edith Finch (Annapurna Interactive 2017, O: Giant Sparrow)
When Rivers Were Trails (Indian Land Tenure Foundation 2019, O: Indian Land Tenure
Foundation & Michigan State University’s Games for Entertainment and Learning Lab)
Are You Sure You Want to Do that?
Teaching Values with Serious Games
Sonja Gabriel
Abstract
Serious games have become a popular way of teaching players certain values.
The methods they use, however, vary in game elements that are used and their
degree of meaningful decision-making. Starting from basic definitions, the
contribution examines the effectiveness of digital games in conveying values
of different kinds. The role of game design, various approaches towards the
inclusion of social values, and research on the potential of digital games for
teaching about values are presented. Finally, an example is discussed to illus-
trate a rather novel approach of employing youtube-like commentary within a
game to make gamers feel more empathetic towards refugees.
1 Introduction
“Your neighbor is moving and has offered to pay you $50 to help. But he reser-
ved the truck during the time your kid will be starring in a school play.” Easy
decision? Take the money and disappoint your child? Or deny yourself the money
although you need every cent to pay for all the costs of life? This example is taken
from the serious game Spent (McKinney 2011), a text-based browser game that
challenges the gamer to survive on US$1000 a month. All the questions relate to
financial issues, but many also include a social aspect (i.e., what to do with your
daughter who was invited to a birthday party and has to bring a present) or bring
up moral issues (i.e., will you pay for an expensive treatment for your family pet,
S. Gabriel (B)
Kirchliche Pädagogische Hochschule Wien/Krems, Wien, Austria
E-Mail: sonja.gabriel@kphvie.ac.at

164 S. Gabriel
have it put to sleep, or let it suffer?). Between most decisions, the game provides
players with real data showing how many US citizens have to face these decisi-
ons in everyday life. Games that employ ethical decision-making for educational
purposes have been on the rise for the past decades. But can they really achieve
their design goals?
All games teach—that is what experts on videogames will agree upon. Howe-
ver, the far more difficult question is, how can the game designer influence the key
take-away of a game? That has especially become relevant ever since games were
first used as learning tools. Becker’s (2017) model of “the magic bullet” illustrates
that learning can take place in- and outside of a game and differentiates between
skills that must be learned in order to play the game, things that can and things
that might be learned as well as things learned outside the game. In order to make
a game playable, game designers need to teach players how to control the game.
However, often there are also other intentions to be found in game design like
evoking empathy, making aware of a situation or also integrating certain values
for the player to discover and to apply them beyond gameplay.
2 Values and Serious Games
When talking about values in serious games, it is necessary to have a closer look at
two definitions. First, what are values and second what are serious games? Values
can be regarded as essential to ethics and can be defined as fundamental beliefs
that motivate and guide our attitudes and actions. They are crucial to finding out
what is important to an individual or a community, which kind of person we want
to be, and how we would like to treat others and be treated by them in turn.
Values often depend on the culture and surroundings in which a person grows up
and can be divided into those with intrinsic worth and those that serve as means
to an end (McCombs School of Business 2018, online). As Hechter (1993) points
out, values are hard to define, and they differ according to their scope of control,
their scope of application (meaning that it depends on the individual which value
is regarded higher-ranking than others), and the extent to which they are shared
socially. Sometimes conflicts between values may arise especially when the desire
to achieve a goal conflicts with personal or cultural values.
Thus, the question arises if videogames can integrate and even teach certain
pre-defined values as intended by the game-designers. This contribution focuses
exclusively on serious games although games focusing on entertainment often
include values and ethics as well. Thus, it is necessary to define the term serious
game. According to Abt (1987), “[t]he oxymoron of Serious Games unites the
Are You Sure You Want to Do that? … 165
seriousness of thought and problems that require it with the experimental and
emotional freedom of active play”. This is even further restricted by Michael and
Chen (2006, p. 17) as they define serious games as “game[s] in which education
(in its various forms) is the primary goal rather than entertainment”. According
to Johan Huizinga’s concept (Huizinga 2016) of the magic circle, actions taken
and things learned in a game do not have consequences in real life—they are
only true as long as we are within the magic circle meaning as long as we play a
videogame. In keeping with this notion, there would not be any possibility for a
serious game to impart anything that is relevant beyond game play. Wagner (2007)
also states that behavior learned in games is not automatically adopted and applied
outside the game space. To illustrate that, he refers to Gee (2007), who describes
three identities a player creates while playing a videogame—the real, virtual and
projected identity. Although there is a close connection between the real identity
and the virtual projection to enable immersion, there is no automatic transfer from
the virtual self to the real self. In order to learn from games, it is either necessary
for the experience made in the game to somehow relate to real experiences or
problems of the player or for external factors (like a teacher or trainer) to start
a process of reflection. However, even if players do not automatically learn from
playing videogames, the latter can nevertheless influence players’ perception or
make them think about certain situations. The potential of digital games can be
seen in the fact that they “increase capabilities for civic engagement and outreach”
(Stokes et al. 2014, p. 4). Bogost (2007) considers serious games as an expressive
and persuasive medium as they are able to represent real and imaginative systems
and invite gamers to interact with and evaluate them. Although there are numerous
games available whose aim it is to evoke empathy or convey values, not all of
them can be regarded as successful.
3 The Role of Game Design
The potential for a game’s success in being educational can be found in the under-
lying game design. Successful immersive games appeal to the player’s emotions
as this makes a playing experience enjoyable and “because emotions play an
important role in decision making” (Lazzaro 2009, p. 6). Isbister (2017, p. 7)
argues “that these techniques [i.e. e. making players attached to characters] evoke
emotion because they mirror the way our brains make sense of the world around
us in everyday life”. As Sicart (2010, p. 6) notices, “[e]thical gameplay can be
defined as the moral experience created by games in which there is a conflict
between the requirements of the procedural level and the information provided to
166 S. Gabriel
the reflective agent”. Therefore, a different approach to game design is necessary.

Whereas good game design was long considered to make meaningful decisions
explicit to the player, “[e]thical gameplay needs to be built from the assumption
that players interpret their being in the game, the strategies and choices taken to
overcome challenges, in a moral way” (Sicart 2010, p. 9).
As Flanagan (2013) suggests, games dealing with critical or serious topics need
to follow a different game design model. Thus, she introduced the Critical Play
Game Design Model where “[h]uman concerns, identifiable as principles, values,
or concepts, become a fundamental part of the process” (Flanagan 2013, p. 257).
She mentions that value goals need to be set as a first step when designing a game
Sicart (2009) sees.
ethics and ethical decisions rooted in the game design but, as he states, game
design is not enough, as the actual gameplay as well as the player’s experience
while playing take on an important role: “We can analyze the rules of a game
as ethical objects because they constitute the potentiality of a game. Nevert-
heless, we cannot say that it is the game’s rule set or its design that sets its
ethical values” (Sicart 2009, p. 54). Mitgutsch and Alvarado (2012) take another
approach towards game design. When analyzing a serious game using the Serious
Game Design Assessment (SGDA) Framework, the authors state that if all parts
of a game are consistent, they can—as a whole—convey what the game designer
originally intended. The items of the SGDA Framework are chosen specifically
“to offer a basis to study how the design elements are configured formally and
conceptually in relation to the game’s aim and purpose” (Mitgutsch and Alvarado
2012, p. 123). The SGDA Framework consists of six core elements. The starting
point of the framework is the purpose as each serious game wants to achieve cer-
tain goals which do not only lie within the game but should also reach a certain
purpose beyond game-playing. In order to be successful, the purpose needs to be
reflected in all the other five elements as well. That means aesthetics/graphics,
fiction/narrative, mechanics (rules, rewards), framing (audience of the game and
their gaming literacy) and content/information—all these factors need to support
the purpose of the game (Mitgutsch and Alvarado 2012). The difference of the
SGDA Framework compared to other frameworks to analyze serious games can be
seen in the fact that the audience is taken into account by having a look at their
gaming literacy and their gaming experience. Gabriel (2016) had a closer look
at serious games dealing with human right issues and their way of integrating
values in game design. The methods range from including values in the narration,
in the way non-playable and playable characters are presented, and actions that
the player can carry out within the game, to point of view, strategies, rewards,
aesthetics and player choice. The results show that there are numerous approa-
ches game designers adopt to teaching values in serious games, some of them
more promising than others.
Rusch (2017, p. 115) recommends designers to ask themselves nine questions
in order to design a game for a certain purpose:
• What is the game about?

• What is the game’s purpose/communicative goal?
• Does the game favor a literal or a metaphorical approach?
• Does the metaphor fit the game’s experiential gestalt?
• Should the game model “how it works” or “what it feels like”?
• How encompassing should the system that shall be modeled in the game be?
• From which perspective should the player interact with the system?
• Do the core mechanics reinforce the game’s meaning?
• Are the player and the avatar well-aligned?
These questions are quite similar to Mitgutsch and Alvarado’s (2012) approach—
the core mechanics which need to reinforce the game’s meaning but also deal with
metaphors, perspective and avatar depending on the question if the game should
model human experience, include experiential metaphors or be an allegorical
game.
As these different approaches towards game design and including ethical deci-
sions or values show, games evoking emotions usually need to be careful about
their underlying mechanics and design. Serious games as well as games focusing
on entertainment might teach different kind of values, but they all need to be
accounted for by the game designer (if the games are intended to teach values).
4 Research on Values in Serious Games
Within the last two decades, more and more games have been developed which try
to teach values to the player using different approaches. As Belman and Flanagan
(2010) discuss, “there is considerable and growing interest in harnessing their [i.e.
e. videogames] potential for prosocial causes”. The two authors, who specialize in
designing serious games that affirm values like tolerance, equity and justice, found
out that games which foster empathy are especially interesting for designers to
create. According to the authors game-designers need to have be more knowledge
on finding and testing principles of game-design to create efficiently working
games teaching these values. Assuming the role of another person can be a factor
168 S. Gabriel
that produces empathy as stated by Davis (1996). Peng et al. (2010) used Darfur
is Dying (Take Action Games 2006) and a text about the Darfurian conflict as
stimuli for their experiment. Results showed that participants who had played the
game were more willing to help Darfurian people compared to those who had
only read the text.
In a study with 538 children and adolescents between 9 and 15 years, Harring-
ton and O’Connell (2016) found a positive and significant relationship in their
study between prosocial video game use and dependent variables like coope-
ration and sharing, the tendency to maintain positive affective relationships as
well as empathy. Having studied the effectiveness of news games—a category
of videogames that are produced as cross genre between videogames and jour-
nalism (Bogost et al. 2010) and also used to simulate real-world situations and
systems—Plewe and Fürsich (2018) discussed three such games about migration.
The study revealed that the games—although they are quite quickly produced
(often within a few days) and thus do not fully exploit the potential of videoga-
mes—can be seen as help for audiences to understand political events (Plewe and
Fürsich 2018). A study by Neuenhaus and Aly (2017) also shows that combining
a geo-location based mobile game about Syrian refugees can help in forming an
emotional connection and thus reducing/mitigating prejudices by local inhabitants.
5 Dealing with Serious Topics
As the previous references illustrate, the attitudes of game designers have some-
what changed when it comes to including values in serious games. As possibilities
of meaningful decision-making have been increased by technical progress, it
has become easier to design complex games. Moreover, digital games have also
become a means of educating (Gros 2003; Zhonggen 2019). Values need to be
integrated deeply in the game mechanics, not just as a background story of a cha-
racter or narration, which seems to be easily exchangeable. Also, the number of
serious games dealing with topics like immigration (cf. Gabriel 2015), environ-
mental issues, transgender and homosexuality, or mental health issues has been
on the rise for many years (Burde 2014). One example of a serious game attemp-
ting to teach about depression, self-doubt and anxiety is Sea of Solitude (Jo-Mei
Games 2019). The protagonist, a young girl named Kay, needs to fight her inner
monsters by confronting events from her past. The rising and falling water level
in the game serves as a metaphor for life’s ups and downs. The scenery changes
from light and friendly to dark and scary and reminds players of the moods of a
person suffering from depression.
Serious games that deal with alternative points of view during wartime have
also become popular within the last years. Liyla and the Shadows of War (Rasheed
Abueidah 2016) is a serious game developed for mobile devices that is based on
the war in Gaza in summer 2014 and presents the player with a fictional story
about a family trying to escape the violence. Players control the father of Liyla,
a Palestinian girl, at the time war breaks out in Gaza. As the objective of the
game is to escape the warzone together with wife and daughter who have to be
found at first, it is quite contrastive to many shooter games which also use war as
the setting for their plots. Instead of playing an active hero, the only action the
player can do is to avoid gun fire, missile-bearing drones and white phosphorus.
Additionally, decisions have to be made that show the cruelty of war with its
no-win situation (Lark 2016) making the player ask themselves if actions that are
known from other games might be of any relevance here. The game’s aesthetics
foster the feeling of loneliness and despair, which it attempts to convey: The
game is mostly black and white; the characters are only silhouettes and the music
matches the horrors of war. “Liyla both resembles and diverges from the typical
manner in which roleplay occurs, and this allows for an ‘estrangement effect’ in
the Brechtian sense: you are not given catharsis or resolution, or even the pride of
gaining mastery over a virtual environment. Instead, you are boomeranged back
into the real world of political conflict and devastating war” (Lark 2016, online).
The game does not provide a happy ending, leaving the player in a state of failure,
as there is no real winner in war. Games like Liyla and the Shadows of War want
to convey different values—not those of glory and victory but of sadness, loss
and desperation. The political message of the game was the reason why Apple
initially rejected it for being released in its AppStore (Klepek 2016).
A topic that has also been dealt with more and more frequently in serious
games for the past years is LGBTQ issues. There are a number of games that
aim at making players aware of the obstacles and prejudices people face when
they grow up outside the heteronormative spectrum. A Closed World (Singapore-
MIT GAMBIT Game Lab 2011) is designed in the style of Japanese Role-Playing
Games. While the player takes on the role of a seemingly customizable character
(players are asked if they would like to play as a girl or a boy, which, howe-
ver, does not make any difference in gameplay and appearance of the character)
and faces the challenges of having a different sexual identity than the community
around them, the game tells the story of the protagonist at day in comic style
cut-scenes showing how disappointed family and friends are, whereas the player
has to be active at night, wandering around a forest and encountering demons
which represent the prejudices, fears and challenges the playable character expe-
rienced during the day: “[…] the game is premised on rooting its fictive world
170 S. Gabriel
and procedural gameplay mechanics on queer lived experiences. In this case, of

homophobia and the struggles to maintain happy, meaningful relationships” (Lau-
teria 2011, online). The underlying system is quite simple, as it is similar to a
rock-paper-scissors game where players use logic, passion and ethics to battle
the demon’s attacks. The forest and the demons can be seen as metaphors for
all the hardships homosexual people have to endure—and only by fighting them,
rather than accepting arbitrary rules, changes can take place. Although the game
mechanics were criticized as too simple and too easy to figure out (Bitmob 2011),
this game is one of the few examples to show the constant struggle homosexual
people have to endure and provides an immersive narrative showing the many
stereotypes and prejudices people who are not considered “normal” in terms of
their sexuality have to face in society.
6 In Depth Game Analysis of Path Out
Games dealing with migration and asylum seekers have become more prevalent
among serious games within the past years. Apart from NGOs which want to
develop more widespread empathy for refugees (like for example in Against All
Odds (UNHCR 2006) or Finding Home (UNHCR Malaysia 2017), people having
undertaken the long and dangerous journey from their war-torn home countries
to European safety want to share their experiences and thus might (as well) turn
them into games (or at least take part in the game-design process). One example
for such a game is Path Out (Causa Creations 2017) which is an autobiogra-
phical adventure game sending the player on the journey of Abdullah Karam,
a young Syrian artist who escaped from war in 2014. The game, which received
several rewards and prizes, is based on the journey Abdullah had to go on in order
to reach a safe place in Europe. The game is divided in episodes starting from
Abdullah’s memories about life before war broke out, showing himself as a young
man interested more in playing computer games than in politics, re-enacting his
escape and dangerous journey from Syria through Turkey, Greece and the Balkan
and finally arriving at his destination in Central Europe. The game analysis will
concentrate on the first episode of the game, in which the player meets Abdullah
in his home in Syria and learns about the situation in the country and the family
circumstances, and which ends with the first part of Abdullah’s journey as he
arrives in Turkey.
The serious game “is a tale full of surprises, challenges and paradoxical humor,
giving insight in this real-life adventure, on which Abdullah comments through
youtube-style videos in the game” (Causa Creations 2017, online). The game-
designers intended the game to be “part of the fight against the anti-refugee
narrative that pervades much of the western world” (Cox 2017, online). Thus,
the game wants to create understanding and empathy for people leaving Syria by
showing the reasons which made them go on such a dangerous journey. This is
also achieved by using humor instead of pointing fingers, as humor can also have
effects on social, emotional and cognitive behavior (Dormann and Biddle 2009).
Players are encouraged to rethink attitudes towards refugees and, at best, to get
to walk some miles in their shoes.
The content and information presented within the game is twofold. On the one
hand, there is dialogue between the playable and non-playable characters, which
conveys the background story and information on the characters’ relationships,
and which pushes the story forward, which is a typical approach for adventure
games. On the other hand, there is an additional layer of information: At some
parts of the game, the player receives a video message by the real Abdullah com-
menting on the situation, relating the events within the game to his own experience
or making fun of the game: For example, when the game-avatar Abdullah leaves
the house and sees a camel on the street, the real Abdullah comments on how
ridiculous that would be to meet a camel on the street in his old home-town and
therefore confronts the player with common stereotypes about his home country.
After the video sequence, the camel is replaced by a traffic cone. This way, infor-
mation given within the game and through the videos with Abdullah are related
to each other, either increasing the emotions conveyed, fighting stereotypes with
a wink or telling players what they cannot see in the game. The information
given is valid and based on facts or real experience, and is easily accessible for
players. Although it is possible not to read the dialogues between the characters
by just clicking them away, this information is needed to advance in the game.
By contrast, it is not possible to skip the video-sequences with the real Abdullah,
therefore the players are forced to listen to a real account of somebody having
undergone everything that might only be an amusing game. These video messages
provide a possibility for creating empathy with people like Abdullah because—
compared to the game-avatar—he is real and not a cartoon figure. When watching
the videos, the audience can feel the fear and agony Abdullah has had to endure.
Game mechanics, which include rules and actions the player can perform,
are at the core of every digital game. As Sicart (2008, online) puts it, “game
mechanics are methods invoked by agents, designed for interaction with the game
state”. In the game Path Out, players are rather restricted in their actions—by
using the arrow keys and the space bar, they can walk around on the game-
map and sometimes look at items by pressing a button, which results in a short
172 S. Gabriel
explanation or comment by the player’s avatar. Some objects will be put into the
inventory or taken out if needed—as this is an automated process, no decisions
are required by the player. There is a win-state of arriving in Turkey safely and a
lose-state if the player avatar is killed by soldiers.
Dialogues are started as soon as a non-playable character is approached. In
some cases, the player can choose from two answers, which will lead to a slightly
different story outcome (or might even end the story early if a wrong answer is
chosen). For example, the player can decide to steal some papers from a neighbor
in order to exchange them against important documents that might enable easier
crossing of the border. However, the stolen paper might be used to get the neigh-
bor arrested. So, the decision remains for the player: Shall I help my avatar, or
shall I play in a morally correct way? Apart from asking these questions implicitly,
the game’s strength certainly lies in Abdullah commenting the avatar’s journey—
making the player clear that this is much more than just a game—it is the story of
somebody’s life. By realizing that fact, the game “becomes a mirror to the players
who experience the hardship that a fellow gamer had to endure” (Industry Contri-
butions 2018, online). It is the contradiction between the cartoonish aesthetics of
the game combined with the comments by a real person having lived through all
these events that makes players feel empathetic with the character (Chan 2017).
7 Conclusion
As this example shows, serious games try to teach players about different values.
Most of the time they approach the topic by putting the player into the shoes of
somebody belonging to a marginalized group who has to face discrimination and
exclusion. As Flanagan and Nissenbaum (2014, p. 15) state, “Every game expres-
ses a set of values, but it’s often difficult to understand the many ways in which
those values come to be embodied in the game”. The authors identify fifteen
elements of games which can embody values, for example narration, characters,
actions, rewards and player choice.
However, serious games only provide the potential of teaching values—that
is one factor one must never forget. As Giessen points out in his comparison
of different meta-studies, there are not many findings “in regard of the teaching
and learning effects of Serious Games” (Giessen 2015, p. 2241). When learning
effects are observed, they usually/always appear in a learning scenario, which
means that there needs to be a trainer/teacher who sparks discussions, asks the
right questions or provides additional material: “Also, a game must not stand alone
but should be included in a context with other learning assets” (Giessen 2015,
p. 2241). Learning without accompanying material or teaching only takes place

when the player is emotionally affected by the game, when they can identify with
the situation depicted (Wagner 2007). Boyle et al. (2016) also compared different
meta-studies and show that social outcomes like promoting empathy and interest
in other cultures might work well with serious games. As serious games advance
in game-design and technology, and game-designers are more and more eager to
tackle serious topics and use games to convey messages and teach players certain
values, teaching values through videogames may one day be nothing unusual
anymore, in a similar way to novels or films being employed in pedagogical
contexts to teach about social values.
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Ludography
A Closed World (Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab 2011, O: Singapore-MIT GAMBIT
Game Lab)
Against All Odds (UNHCR 2006, O: UNHCR)
Darfur is Dying (Take Action Games 2006, O: Take Action Games)
Finding Home (UNHCR Malaysia 2017, O: UNHCR Malaysia)
Liyla and the Shadows of War (Rasheed Abueidah 2016, O: Rasheed Abueidah)
Path Out (Causa Creations 2017, O: Causa Creations)
Sea of Solitude (Electronic Arts 2019, O: Jo-Mei Games)
Spent (McKinney & Urban Ministries of Durham 2011, O: McKinney & Urban Ministries
of Durham)
Digital Game Literacy—Potential,
Challenges, and Ethical Implications
André Weßel
Abstract
‘Being literate’ in the context of digital game culture is not yet considered to
be a valuable skill for young people by many parents and educators in Ger-
many. Besides discussing which aspects should be subsumed under the concept
of digital game literacy, it is the aim of this article to reason theoretically why
the promotion of the pertinent skills is necessary in a mediatized society. The-
refore, multiple literacy approaches will be considered, and an example will
be provided for the implementation of digital game literacy in an educational
setting.
Keywords
Digital game literacy • Digital games • Digital game culture • Literacy •
Literacy skills • Media competence • Media literacy
1 Introduction
Nowadays, more than ever before, everyday life is pervaded by various forms
of media communication and media activity of all kind. Communication culture
is changing in a long-term technological and sociocultural process that is cha-
racterized by a perpetual mediatization (Hepp et al. 2015; Hjarvard 2013; Krotz
2009; Lundby 2014), meaning that new media have been permeating cultures and
A. Weßel (B)
E-Mail: andre.wessel@th-koeln.de

178 A. Weßel
societies over time. In the last decades, digitization as the most recent step of
mediatization so far has led to another significant “increase of media communi-
cation on a temporal, spatial and social level” (Hepp and Krotz 2007, p. 4), not
least due to the ubiquity of “’always on/always-on-us’ communication devices”
(Turkle 2008, p. 122).
From the perspective of communication science, mediatization has caused
media to assume new roles and perform new actions for people and has brought
forth new purposes, contexts and complexes of meanings for people to use media
(Krotz 2007, p. 32). According to Friedrich Krotz, communicative action in
current complex mediatized environments can be categorized into three types:
mediatized interpersonal communication, interactive communication referring to
communication between people and ‘intelligent’ hardware and software sys-
tems, and the production and reception of standardized content addressed to the
general public, previously known as mass communication (Krotz 2007, p. 13).
In order to be capable of dealing confidently with these partially new forms
of communication and communication settings, pertinent abilities need to be
acquired.
However, the consideration of the related literacy skills suggests that in this
regard, the German education system is struggling with adapting its learning goals
to the mediatized society. The idea of ‘being literate’ still mostly refers to traditio-
nal reading and writing skills which are generally considered to play a key role in
obtaining educational access and success. People who only learn to read and write
simple sentences and are therefore labeled ‘low-literate’ also experience grave
difficulties with their social participation (Grotlüschen and Buddeberg 2020). For
this reason, acquiring “alphabetical literacy” (Cope and Kalantzis 2009, p. 166)
skills is a basic part of education systems all over the world for children from an
early age on.
Hence, knowing that traditional literacy is necessary to handle media such
as books and other forms of written text, the (media) pedagogical discussion of
ways to identify, describe and foster the skills needed for dealing with other media
has been taking place for several decades at the time of writing. In the Anglo-
Saxon discourse, various broader literacy concepts like media literacy (Hobbs
2016) or digital literacy (Bawden 2001) has been gaining recognition, while the
media competence approach (Baacke 1996) has prevailed within the field of media
pedagogy in German-speaking countries.
Studies reveal that young people in Germany are highly active media users
and pursue all the forms of communication identified by Krotz (Frees et al. 2019),
while favouring digital games in particular (Quandt et al. 2013). Almost two thirds
Digital Game Literacy—Potential, Challenges … 179
of the 12- to 19-year-olds play digitally at least several times a week, among boys1
even four out of five (mpfs 2020). A comparison with the activity of reading books
reveals a significant divide: Only one third of the same age bracket reads daily
or several times a week, among boys only slightly more than one out of four.2
And even among girls—who are increasingly, but still often less inclined towards
digital games—digital gaming is more popular than reading books by now.
These findings suggest that it would be reasonable to provide more educational
offers aiming at a deeper understanding and a proficient use of digital games—
and therefore to develop a more specific literacy concept focusing on the medium.
Even though the idea is not new (see, e.g., Beavis 2004; Buckingham and Burn
2007), the high significance of digital games in young people’s everyday media
activity, the growing recognition of their learning potential and their increased
use in educational contexts during the last two decades (see, e.g., Boyle et al.
2016; Connolly et al. 2012; ESA 2020; Fromme et al. 2015) have yet to produce
considerable changes: Digital games are oftentimes still treated as “trivial, rat-
her than influential artifacts and practices” (Squire 2008, p. 662), particularly by
many parents and educators. Therefore, it is the aim of this article to reveal why,
from a pedagogical perspective, digital game literacy is a useful and necessary
complementary competence for children and adolescents, allowing them to take
advantage of multiple benefits with regard to their personal development and to
participate in an important area of contemporary children and youth culture.
Following the introduction, various literacy concepts and their interrelations
will be discussed, drawing on traditional literacy, media literacy and digital game
literacy. Subsequently, the relevance of digital game culture for the life of young
people in terms of socialization and learning potential will be highlighted, inclu-
ding some thoughts on why it is of ethical relevance to foster the skills needed for
a competent use of the medium. Finally, an example will be given for an educa-
tional workshop with young people in order to show how the practical application
of the digital game literacy concept can be executed.
1 The study that is referenced here only distinguishes between two genders.
2 Only printed books were considered here. In addition, e-books are used by 7% on a daily
basis or several times a week, but it remains unclear if these are the same persons as the
ones who read printed books.
180 A. Weßel
2 Extended Perspectives on Multiple Literacy Concepts
The original demand for an expansion of the traditional literacy concept emerged
with the progressing mediatization of communication culture and the acknowled-
gement of the idea that communication in the context of different media requires
specific forms of cultural and communicative competences (Buckingham 1993).
As a result, various literacies have evolved over time, some of them addressing
a single medium like television or computer literacy, others dealing with broa-
der concepts like visual literacy, information literacy or digital literacy (see, in
summary, Buckingham and Burn 2007, p. 324). One of the most extensive and
influential approaches conceptualized as an expansion of traditional literacy is
media literacy (Hobbs 2016, p. 12). A widely used definition sees it as “the
knowledge, competencies and life skills needed to participate in contemporary
society through accessing, analyzing, evaluating and creating media messages in
a wide variety of forms” (Hobbs 2016, p. 3). Depending on the positioning of
the audience as primarily vulnerable or as primarily active—which is discussed
extensively by experts in the communication and education sciences –, the con-
cept reflects “a dynamic and generally productive tension between those who see
media literacy education as a means to address the complexities and challenges
of growing up in a media- and technology-saturated cultural environment and
those who see media literacy as a tool for personal, social, cultural and political
empowerment” (Hobbs 2016, p. 10).
In the German-speaking discourse in media pedagogy, Dieter Baacke’s (1996)
concept of media competence can be regarded as an equivalent to the rather
Anglo-Saxon media literacy approach. Ultimately pursuing the objective to sup-
port people in expanding their scope of orientation and action with and via the
media, media competence comprises the four dimensions of analytical, refle-
xive and ethical media criticism, informative and instrumental media knowledge,
receptive and interactive media use as well as innovative and constructive media
creation (Tillmann and Weßel 2020). Even though both concepts follow different
theoretical traditions, their meanings overlap significantly, emphasizing that the
abilities to access, critically analyze, evaluate and create media messages form
the prerequisites for and the objectives of learning about media simultaneously
(Grafe 2011, pp. 75 f.). Media competence and media literacy both represent
comprehensive approaches to media activity of all kind, but they are also appli-
cable to individual media and can serve as a base for literacy concepts focusing
on them.
In order to approach such a more specific literacy concept related to a certain

medium like digital games, assuming a Cultural Studies perspective might be hel-
pful, from which all media can be considered as texts in a broader sense (Carr
et al. 2006, p. 12), and the question arises which abilities are needed to decode
and encode them accordingly. In terms of written texts, the related skills of rea-
ding and writing can be subsumed under the term “print literacy” (Purcell-Gates
et al. 2006, p. 26). ‘Being literate’ in this regard refers to the ability to use “prin-
ted and written information to function in society, to achieve one’s goals, and to
develop one’s knowledge and potential” (Kirsch 2001, p. 6). Extended definiti-
ons for the traditional literacy notion differ between the literacy skillset and the
literacy practice, with the latter relating a text’s social, cultural and political con-
texts to the individual abilities (Purcell-Gates et al. 2006, p. 26). In this respect,
James Gee identifies different ways of reading and writing, depending on the par-
ticular type of text, e.g. newspaper, rap song or legal tract (2003, p. 18). Each of
them is linked to certain sorts of social practices, so in decoding or encoding the
texts, the focus needs to lie not only on the codes or representations but also on
the domains in which they create a specific meaning. Gee calls them “semiotic
domains”, “area[s] or set[s] of activities where people think, act and value in
certain ways” (Gee 2003, pp. 18 f.; emphasis in original). This leads Gee to the
conclusion that the literacy concept integrates distinct dimensions, i.e.,
1. the ability to decode,

2. the ability to understand meanings with respect to a semiotic domain, and
3. the ability to produce meanings with respect to a semiotic domain.
Approaching digital games from his perspective on traditional literacy, Gee states
that one learns a new type of literacy when playing them due to their specific
multimodality of images, text, sounds, music, movement, and bodily sensations,
among others (Gee 2003, pp. 18 ff.). To him, digital games represent a new type
of semiotic domain and a family of interrelated semiotic domains, respectively,
considering the various types and genres.
Based on these thoughts, José Zagal introduces his approach to literacy in
digital games (2008, 2010). He openly references Gee’s concept and likewise
involves three interwoven dimensions, defining digital game literacy as the skillset
that enables one to
1. to play games,
2. to understand meanings with respect to games, and
3. to make games (Zagal 2008, p. 34).
182 A. Weßel
Comparing Gee’s and Zagal’s approaches, the equivalence of the abilities to

‘decode’ and to ‘play’ digital games may be called into question. ‘Decoding’
primarily addresses a functional dimension based on cognitive skills and invol-
ves the translation and interpretation of coded information (Hall 1973). Playing a
digital game is likewise connected to such decoding processes related to the dis-
tinct components and their interrelation, e.g., images, sounds, narratives, and rules
(Koubek 2018, p. 185). However, the question of access also seems to play a key
role here, not only referring to the content, but also to the medium itself, e.g., in
terms of obtaining (the financial resources for) the technical equipment necessary
for playing or the knowledge about how to operate it. Besides, there appears to
be an even more substantial difference between ‘making games’ and ‘producing
meanings with respect to digital games’. While the former clearly refers to coding
or using software in order to create a playable digital game, the latter comprises
a broader variety of additional actions, e.g., discussing digital games in an online
community, writing fan fiction or designing a costume for cosplay.
Zagal’s concept of digital game literacy needs to be regarded within its edu-
cational context of teaching games-related university classes. He realized that his
students had difficulties reasoning critically and analytically about digital games,
especially—and at first sight paradoxically—when they had a lot of experience of
playing them (Zagal 2010, p. xi). The objectives of his concept lie in promoting
a deeper comprehension of the medium itself, enabling the learners to “analyse
games in a meaningful way”, to know “why they create certain experiences and
evoke certain emotions and feelings”, to realize “how games are and can be used
as an expressive medium”, and to “have an informed discussion on the merits
(or lack thereof) of a particular work” (Zagal 2010, p. 2). In order to promote
these skills, Zagal applied two educational tools. With the first one, the students
could reflect on their playing experiences by writing multiple parallel blogs, each
devoted to a single digital game, in an online blogging environment (Zagal 2010,
pp. 63 ff.). The second one aimed at filling a wiki-enabled website with observa-
tions and analysis of various games, from which a framework for the description,
analysis and study of the medium was to be derived in the end (Zagal 2010,
pp. 90 ff.).
With the emphasis on the dimension of understanding digital games (Zagal
2010, p. 23), Zagal’s approach forms a valuable basis for fostering students’ digi-
tal game literacy. However, from a media pedagogical perspective, some aspects
could be added in order to enable an extended educational application involving
the objectives of media literacy and media competence to a higher extent. The-
refore, the focus should lie less on the medium itself, but on its use and its
potentially empowering functions, on an individual level as well as in a broader
societal context. It would be reasonable to find methods for fostering digital game
literacy skills with a lower threshold, addressing a greater variety of young people,
regardless of their educational level or socio-economic background. The learning
settings should be extended from formal contexts like schools and universities to
non-formal environments like youth centers and voluntary contexts like game fes-
tivals or other gaming-related events. In this way, the multiple possibly positive
effects of digital gaming on a personal and social level can be addressed with
the aim of fostering a self-determined, critical-reflexive and socially responsible
participation in all facets of the digital game culture (Weßel 2019, pp. 147 f.).
3 Potential and Challenges of Digital Game Worlds

for Young People
Thanks to the great diffusion of multi-functional mobile devices with internet

access in Germany, children and adolescents have the opportunity to engage in
digital games quite independently from a relatively early age on (Hugger and
Tillmann 2015). Already two out of five own a tablet computer by the age of nine,
three out of four receive their first smartphone by the age of ten or eleven, more
than 40% of the 6- to 13-year-olds own a game console—and media ownership
even rises with increasing age (Berg 2019; mpfs 2019).
Even though public as well as private debates about digital games often still
focus on potentially harmful aspects, there are a lot of possibly positive effects of
young people participating actively in digital game culture. With regard to sociali-
zation, for instance, it can be important for their personality and identity formation
(Deutscher Bundestag 2017, p. 283). Many young people are fascinated by and
immerse themselves in digital game worlds, broadening their sphere of action to
the virtual rooms, where they can experience themselves as powerful and self-
effective. They practice self-positioning, seek connection and exchange, compete
against each other and participate increasingly in an international context. They
interact socially as well as collaboratively and establish a mediatized cultivation
of their gaming-related network of friends, in online games as well as in the
corresponding communities (Hajok 2019, p. 41; Schorb et al. 2013, pp. 60 ff.).
Nevertheless, children and adolescents might also be overextended with handling
all the possibilities and challenges that participating in the digital game culture
entails, particularly when they are burdened with a lack of family support back-
ground where they lack support (Paus-Hasebrink 2019, p. 123). Examples of these
challenges include, among others accessing games with problematic content or
184 A. Weßel
harmful gaming-related behavior like excessive use and in-game bullying. There-
fore, it is certainly advisable to support young people with acquiring the abilities
needed to benefit from the potential and to help them cope with the challenges
related to the digital game culture.
Besides the aforementioned aspects of socialization, the specific potential of
certain digital games and game genres for learning contexts is a topic that has long
been discussed (Sherry 2016; Vollbrecht 2008). Even though the efficacy of digi-
tal games as learning tools still needs to be researched to a higher extent and the
methods need to be refined (Breuer 2017; Fritz et al. 2011), it was already shown
in the early days of digital gaming that they can provide intrinsically motivating
qualities for young people (Malone 1980), drawn from their fascination. Further
studies reveal that especially for students who are considered socio-economically
disadvantaged and therefore often being underachieving and struggle with lear-
ning (OECD 2019a), the use of digital games in educational settings can be
greatly stimulating (Jacobson et al. 2010, p. 114; Squire 2005, p. 138). Especially
the German education system in its current state and with the learning settings it
presently provides is known for having issues with compensating for differences
in the students’ respective backgrounds, and to actually consolidate social segre-
gation social inequalities (OECD 2019b). In this regard, the application of digital
games in learning environments may provide a promising option to create more
equal opportunities in education.
However, in formal education in Germany, the application of digital games
in learning contexts as well as developing literacy with regard to digital gaming
still only play a minor role (KMK 2017). Traditional media like textbooks and
worksheets are still prevalent in the education system (Petko 2019, p. 1), resul-
ting in a learning environment often at odds with the students’ lifeworld. The
questions remain how the implementation of digital games into learning environ-
ments can be carried out and which prerequisites have to be fulfilled in order
for them to qualify as an object of learning and a useful supplement to other
learning tools. In this context, it must be taken into account that the responsibi-
lity for teaching literacy skills related to digital games should not solely lie with
schools as an allegedly monolithic source of education. Non-formal learning envi-
ronments are equally important for education, especially for young people who
are considered socio-economically disadvantaged. These (public) spaces can be
crucial for gaining access to digital gaming devices and practices as well as for
speaking with social workers and educators about one’s individual experiences
with digital game culture. Furthermore, these settings are well-suited for offe-
ring educational opportunities to foster young people’s abilities to proficiently
use the medium. However, this does not advocate teaching young people gaming
skills in order for them to perform well within the objectives of digital games.
Instead, ‘becoming digital game literate’ aims at overcoming what Zagal calls
a “naïve understanding” (2010, p. 3) of the medium. Such a simplified stance
can be recognized when young people confuse being well-versed in digital game
culture with being good or successful at playing (Zagal 2010, p. 57). Some of
them are too focused on specific games or game genres and have a relatively
narrow view of the medium. Others assume they cannot learn anything new from
a game they have already played, or they believe that everyone playing it gains
the same experiences as they do. Instead of taking a perspective that leads to a
deeper analysis, they lose themselves in perfunctory descriptions of obvious fea-
tures like graphics and sounds, or they come to superficial judgements about a
game’s quality. Such a naïve view of the medium is mostly attended by the igno-
rance towards other potentials than mere entertainment and can be an obstacle to
a deeper understanding of digital games.
Hence, from a pedagogical and also an ethical point of view, and with respect
to socialization, it would be advisable to promote young people’s digital game
literacy. How this can be achieved will be shown in the following chapter.
4 An Example for Digital Game Literacy Training
In order to provide an example of an educational approach to digital game literacy

with young people, I will refer to my work as a media educator for Spielraum,
a media pedagogical project at the TH Köln—University of Applied Sciences in
Germany. In 2017, I conducted a workshop with a group of twelve students at the
Next Level Festival for Games in Düsseldorf, Germany. The group was composed
of eight boys and four girls, all of them between 13 and 14 years old, all of them
8th graders in a German middle school, around three quarters having a migration
background. The aim of the workshop was to use the digital game Phone Story
(Molleindustria 2011) for promoting digital game literacy skills by applying a
modified version of a concept originally developed by Spielraum (Weßel 2018).
Phone Story is a free, short-form persuasive game intending to evoke political,
social and cultural change as is typical of the genre (Bogost 2007). of the game
has four levels, each of them addressing a specific issue related to the—in most
cases—capitalist logic of the smartphone industry: the exploitation of raw material
supplies in developing countries (level 1), poor working conditions in factories for
186 A. Weßel
electronic parts and devices (level 2), planned and perceived obsolescence3 (level
3), and environmental and health damage due to the processing of electronic waste
(level 4) (Pineschi 2011).
In the beginning, the students were divided into three groups, each with dif-
ferent tasks to fulfill. A volunteer, subsequently referred to as ‘the player’, was
picked to play in front of the others with image and sound being clearly percepti-
ble to everyone by means of a projector and loudspeakers. The audience formed
two groups: Group A (‘the watchers’) focused primarily on what was visible in
the course of the game, group B (‘the listeners’) primarily paid attention to the
audible elements. After all the levels had been completed, the students were given
a few minutes to talk to each other within their groups. In the following, a discus-
sion among all participants was initiated regarding some of the objectives of the
media competence and media literacy concepts and alongside the dimensions and
subcategories of Zagal’s approach to digital game literacy (see chapter “Homo
Ludens Reloaded: The Ethics of Play in the Information Age”). The focus lay on
the first and second dimension of the latter (‘having the ability to play games’
and ‘having the ability to understand meanings with respect to digital games’),
with the second one being further defined as “the ability to explain, discuss, des-
cribe, frame, situate, interpret, and/or position” (Zagal 2008, p. 34) digital games
in four distinct contexts (Zagal 2010, pp. 25 ff.). First, it is important to consider
their value as cultural artifacts in the broader context of human culture, be it in
relationship to other media, media genres and artistic movements or certain cul-
tures and subcultures. Second, their role in comparison to other (also non-digital)
games or game genres is taken into account, including certain game mechanics
and conventions. Third, their relationship to the underlying technology and the
platform on which they are executed is examined with respect to the implications
for the design and play processes, e.g., possible functionalities and experiences.
Fourth, it can be crucial to examine and analyze their components, how they inter-
act, and how they enable certain experiences. Here, it might be useful to identify
the basic patterns and core elements of gameplay, or the decisions and actions
available while playing. In the following, I will present some of the results of the
workshop.
3 Plannedand perceived obsolescence refer to business strategies providing for a product

to become obsolete, i.e., no longer usable or fashionable, after a certain period of time is
and manufacturing it accordingly (Pineschi 2011).
4.1 Having the Ability to Play Phone Story
Due to Phone Story’s free availability on the internet, its compatibility with mul-
tiple platforms and the low system requirements, it is relatively easy to access.
Given the limited workshop time, all the technical prerequisites were provided
for the students, and the player was able to start immediately after the workshop
introduction. A problem that occurred to him very soon is that the game is only
available in English. He stated that in the main menu, he was able to cope with
it because the only selectable options were ‘Story Mode’ and ‘Credits’, so he
knew that the former would start the game and the latter would present a list of
names of people that had helped creating it. However, before the game starts, an
English audio commentary provides some explanations. The player admitted that
his language skills were not sufficient enough to fully understand what was being
said, so he became confused and concerned that he might have missed some cru-
cial information. He was also worried because the commentary went on over the
course of the game, and even though he understood some words and sentences,
he did not know exactly what was being narrated and was not able to connect and
the narration with the gameplay. However, due to Phone Story’s relatively short
play time of less than fifteen minutes, the player managed to not get distracted
and stayed concentrated throughout the whole game.
The control mechanisms are demonstrated at the beginning of each level and
thus easily comprehensible at first sight, but in the end quite difficult to execute
as the player remarked later, especially in the second and third level. Since the
game is designed for touch screens but had to be played with a mouse on a
computer in order to be projected, the explanations did not match very well and
led to confusion. The player also mentioned that he felt quite helpless referring
to the objectives that had to be reached in each level as the instructions given had
not been very helpful to him, so he needed several attempts to complete the four
levels. However, he said that he was motivated from the beginning and remained
so until he had finished the game, expressing in the end that he had enjoyed
playing.
4.2 Having the Ability to Understand Meanings

with Respect to Phone Story
(a) Phone Story in the Context of Technology, and (b) Phone Story in the Context
of Other Games
188 A. Weßel
Referring to these categories, the students compared Phone Story to other digi-
tal games they knew and quickly ended up talking about its visual style. They said
that it looked rather old-fashioned and reminded them of mobile games they had
played on their smartphones years before. The listeners also referred to the audio
commentary and discussed whether it sounded like a robot because of the low
technical resources or because it was intended that way by the designers. One of
the watchers explained that her father had an old computer at home and that she
sometimes played old games on it that had a similar graphic style to Phone Story.
Furthermore, the participants stated that in terms of playing time, Phone Story
was a rather short game and that therefore, they would not pay money to buy it
even though they considered it fun to play.
(c) Phone Story’s Structure and Components
Here, the students talked about the gameplay and audio elements. They expres-
sed that they had understood that for winning a level, its specific objective had to
be identified and a certain quantifiable outcome to be reached, e.g. by impelling a
sufficient number of child miners to work (level 1) or by supplying enough greedy
customers with new phones (level 3). Referring to the title, they recognized the
‘story’ being formed by the chronology of the levels, representing different parts
of the manufacturing cycle of a smartphone in a certain order. They reflected
on the thought whether the player’s performance in a level had influenced his
initial position in the next one, but they could only speculate since there had not
been enough time to replay the game several times. Some members of the group
announced that they would download it themselves to find out on their own.
Several participants criticized that Phone Story only provides basic features
and lacks complexity, not offering a lot of variety, but only a single predefined
type of action per level. Others liked exactly this characteristic since it makes the
game playable inbetween, allowing to finish it in a few minutes without having
to cognitively engage too much.
Describing the game audio, the listeners had to face the same issues as the
player since the commentary is exclusively available in English. They said that
all of them had been learning English for some years at school but being second-
or even third language speakers caused severe difficulties in understanding. The
students realized that the commentary was not directly related to the in-game
actions because the player had to replay the levels, and the commentary always
stayed the same. They were able to understand that the story being told covered
different aspects of smartphones, and since they could simultaneously watch the
gameplay on the projection, they were able to establish a number of connections
between what they had seen and heard. They mentioned, for instance, people
trying to commit suicide by jumping of a roof out of desperation, or the toxic

waste making those who have to work in this environment sick.
(d) Phone Story as a Cultural Artifact in the Context of Human Culture
Since this subcategory of Zagal’s concept deals with the cultural context of
digital games, the discussion was framed pedagogically to a higher extent than
before in order to initiate a critical reflection process about the game and the
ethical aspects it addresses. Therefore, the students were asked to relate Phone
Story’s content to their personal lives, the lives of people on earth in general, and
to societal and political issues outside the game world. In addition, they were
invited to think about what the creators of Phone Story might have had in mind
when making the game, and in which way the game might promote social or
political change.
At first, the students remarked that smartphones play an important role in their
lives and that they spend a lot of time with them, guessing that this would be the
case for most people in the world. However, one of them raised the point that
the game is less about smartphone use than it is about the stages in a smartphone
manufacturing and disposal cycle. Afterwards, the students thought about the four
levels and tried to find out their overarching themes. They were able to identify
subjects like child labor and environmental pollution. With regard to the second
level, they grasped the concept of the suicide attempts, but could not determine
the reasons related thereto. The content of the third level remained unclear to
them. Subsequently, the player was encouraged to visit the Phone Story website
so that the group could have a look at it, discuss its content and expand their
knowledge about the game and its background. The participants stated that a lot
of the additional information about issues related to smartphones on the website
would not normally enter the mind of people in their age group. They learned
that the audio commentary offers explanations of the different levels and that
the transcription can be read on the website. Their attempt translate the English
texts revealed to them that the suicides in the second level allude to the so-called
Foxconn scandal (Guo et al. 2012) and they gathered information about the incre-
asing demand for raw materials leading to a wave of violence in the Democratic
Republic of Congo. They also found out that Apple as one the most successful
companies producing smartphones considered Phone Story harmful for their busi-
ness and banned it from the App Store (Dredge 2011). Summing up, the students
realized that Phone Story deals with the negative aspects of smartphones and that
the underlying storyline is a sad one. They concluded that the main subject of
the game was the possible harm to people and the earth caused by the production
and disposal of these electronic devices. Being asked if they had already given
190 A. Weßel
thought to the topic prior to the workshop, two participants mentioned that they
had once seen a TV documentary about the problematic aspects of smartphones
and reported on its content. Finally, the students asked their accompanying tea-
cher if they could continue to discuss the topic in class since they were interested
to learn more about it.
Finally, the students were not aware of the irony that a game critical of smart-
phones is designed to be played on smartphones without indications—possibly,
due to the fact that in the workshop, the technological platform used to play the
game was a computer and not on a mobile device.
5 Conclusion and Outlook
In this article, different aspects of the relationship between the concept of literacy
and digital game culture have been discussed. The aim was to show why it appears
reasonable and ethically relevant to take digital game literacy into consideration
as a valuable skill set for young people living in a mediatized society like the
German one. The theoretical reflections so far and the example given justify the
promotion of digital game literacy in both school and extracurricular contexts.
An analysis of the existing concepts, both by Zagal and others, e.g., the
“gaming literacy” approach by Eric Zimmerman (2008), reveals that it appears
prudent to conduct further research in several areas. First, one might look for
further options to promote digital game literacy skills in various formal and
non-formal learning environments with different target groups. A more game
design-oriented approach is, for instance, the Lego Level Up project (Schmidt
2019), which was carried out by the Cologne Game Lab and the City Library of
Cologne. Through workshops with children from the age of eight to twelve, the
project combined various types of play settings with the aim of integrating educa-
tion in both analogue and digital game literacy. After playing a board game several
times with the task to modify the rules and analyze the consequences, the partici-
pants were given the task to build labyrinth-like levels using (Lego) bricks. With
the help of cameras and specific software, these levels came to life on laptops,
where they could be played from an avatar’s first-person perspective. Given the
opportunity to rearrange the dungeons with an Augmented Reality application,
the children were confronted with the possibilities, but also with the challen-
ges and limitations of analogue and digital game and level design. Educational
settings like this one or the one presented in chapter “Gaming Addiction—Under-
defined, Overestimated?”4 attempt to build on young people’s affinity towards
digital games and to convey a better understanding of the medium in intrinsically

motivating learning environments.
Second, some limitations of existing digital game literacy concepts have
already been mentioned, particularly in relationship to other ideas of learning
with and about media as discussed in the media literacy and media competence
approaches. In this regard, a comprehensive concept of digital game literacy is
still to be developed, not only aiming at educating young people in terms of the
abilities to access, understand and create digital games, but instead integrating
further objectives. These could lie in empowering youth to maximize the bene-
fits with regard to identity formation, learning potentials and entertainment, but
also to develop coping strategies with respect to protecting oneself from the pos-
sibly harmful effects of the digital game culture. By applying such an extended
approach, young people could be given the opportunity to obtain a better compre-
hension of a medium they already use, and thus to become even more competent
and literate digital gamers.
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Ludography
Phone Story (Molleindustria 2011, O: Molleindustria)
uMed: Your Choice—Conception
of a Digital Game to Enhance Medical
Ethics Training
Johannes Katsarov, Nikola Biller-Andorno, Tobias Eichinger,

David Schmocker, and Markus Christen
Abstract
In this contribution, we present the conception of the serious moral game

uMed: Your Choice for the training of medical students’ moral sensitivity and
resoluteness. First, we offer an overview of the moral competences that we aim
to train through the game: an empathic concern for relevant groups; an awa-
reness of one’s susceptibility to biases and stress, moral schemas and scripts
for automatized sensitivity under time pressure; a sensitivity to attitudes of
moral disengagement; and skills for speaking up about ethical issues. Second,
we present the educational game mechanisms and contents that we have selec-
ted and combined to achieve the desired learning outcomes: playing an intern
at a clinic, learners deal with several cases, in which they have to interact
with patients, patients’ relatives, and co-workers. Their decisions, including
the way they communicate, have immediate as well as delayed consequences,
J. Katsarov (B) · N. Biller-Andorno · T. Eichinger · D. Schmocker · M. Christen

Universität Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland
E-Mail: johannes_katsarov@hotmail.de
N. Biller-Andorno
E-Mail: biller-andorno@ibme.uzh.ch
T. Eichinger
E-Mail: eichinger@ibme.uzh.ch
D. Schmocker
E-Mail: david.schmocker@bf.uzh.ch
M. Christen
E-Mail: markus.christen@dsi.uzh.ch

198 J. Katsarov et al.
and players receive constant feedback in terms of three value categories (empa-
thy, integrity, efficiency). Third, we discuss how we employ the game within
our study program. We close with a discussion of a possible critique of our
design and with an outlook on the further design process.
Keywords
Game-based learning • Serious game • Ethics • Moral • Education • Training •
Bioethics • Medicine • Simulation • Game mechanics
1 On the Potential of Serious Moral Games in Medical

Training
Ethics training is generally regarded as a key component in the education of

health professionals (World Medical Association 1999). Yet, ethical scandals and
reports of unethical behaviors in the health sector (e.g., under-/overtreatment of
patients, therapy without consent, etc.), continue to be relatively frequent. Situa-
tional factors like a lack of resources or institutionalized conflicts of interest could
certainly play an important role here, e.g., when physicians are not remunerated
for the treatment options that would be most beneficial for patients. Still, further
improving the competences of health professionals to recognize ethical issues and
resolve them appropriately in practice is essential, including their ability to even
recognize the deteriorating impact of institutionalized conflicts of interest and
missing resources.
Currently, a wide array of methods is employed in (medical) ethics training,
often with positive effects, as recent meta-analyses show (e.g., Watts et al. 2017).
We suggest to further enhance the quality of medical ethics training through digi-
tal games. Well-designed digital games are known to enhance learners’ motivation
and study performance (Wouters et al. 2013). We propose that serious moral
games, i.e., digital games for the promotion of moral development, can yield
diverse benefits (see Fig. 1; Christen et al. 2013). Among others, they can be
designed to simulate complex situations, e.g., ones in which players are required
to make decisions under uncertainty. They can allow players to try out different
behaviors and can provide immediate as well as delayed feedback, thereby sensi-
tizing players to relevant issues. Moreover, they provide a secure environment for
learners to experiment, fail, retry and optimize their behaviors.
uMed: Your Choice—Conception of a Digital Game … 199
Fig. 1 Value Proposition of Serious Moral Games (adopted and translated from Christen,
M. & Katsarov, J. (2018). Serious Moral Games—Videospiele als Werkzeuge der Ethik-
bildung. In T. Junge & C. Schumacher (Eds.), Digitale Spiele im Diskurs, www.medien-
im-diskurs.de, CC-BY)
2 Desired Learning Outcomes of Training with uMed:

Your Choice
In the following, we will introduce the game uMed: Your Choice (uMed), deve-
loped by the authors in cooperation with the Swiss game studio Koboldgames
and funded through the Swiss National Science Foundation and the University of
Zurich. The aim of uMed is to complement existing approaches and resources of
medical ethics training—not to replace good practices. The first step of our project
was to identify the desired learning outcomes of uMed in consultation with experi-
enced medical ethics trainers and clinical ethicists (two of whom are co-authors)
in order to guide design, assess learning achievement and evaluate pedagogical
approaches (cf. Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation 2011).
We designed uMed for the purpose of reaching five learning outcomes, which are,
in our experience, difficult to achieve within the tight curriculum typical of medi-
cal training. This chapter provides a short introduction of each learning outcome
and its respective relevance.
The first four of these learning outcomes correspond with the competence of
moral sensitivity as defined in diverse process models of moral agency (e.g., Rest
1982; Narvaez 2006; Tanner and Christen 2014). Based on findings from moral
psychology, Katsarov and Christen (2018) have identified these four components
of moral sensitivity. The fifth learning outcome, moral resoluteness, corresponds
with the final step of agency in diverse models, i.e., following through with what
is seen to be right/good, and coping with different forms of resistance (Tanner
and Christen 2014). We suggest that both sensitivity and resoluteness are ideally
trained through an approach of action-based learning, where learners envision the
possible outcomes of different actions, make decisions, experience consequences
and receive feedback (coping-modeling/problem solving, see below).
2.1 Empathic Concern for Relevant Groups
A key reason why medical professionals (and people in general) may act unethi-
cally is because they are ignorant of the specific needs of (some) people. What
matters here is that medical professionals care for all relevant people with their
interests and needs, so that they will relate to them, ask respectful and concerned
questions, and anticipate what they may need and how they may be affected by
one’s actions. This caring attitude is commonly called empathic concern. Through
exercises of adopting an affective perspective, i.e., imagining what a person might
experience and feel in certain situations, empathic concern can even be developed
for members of stigmatized groups (e.g., homeless people; (Batson et al. 1997).
When people do not identify with people from certain groups, they do not adopt
an affective perspective when thinking about members of these groups (Mitchell
et al. 2006). People who have developed an empathic concern for people from
certain groups tend to think about them more positively and will empathize with
them more eagerly (ibid.). Drawing on Martin Hoffman’s work, we expect that
medical professionals with an empathic concern for all types of patients (inclu-
ding elderly people, migrants, people with drug addictions etc.) will be more
likely to consider their needs (Hoffman 2000; Gibbs 2014).
2.2 Awareness of Human Susceptibility to Biases and Stress
A second reason why people tend to engage in unethical behavior is because they
do not recognize how their assessment of situations can be biased in different
ways. Studies show that a conflict of interest can affect our assessment of risks
(making us overly optimistic or pessimistic), even when we are motivated to be
objective (Bazerman and Tenbrunsel 2011). Similarly, humans in general tend to
ignore long-term effects (discounting-the-future bias), judge situations differently,
depending on how they are framed (e.g., “1% risk” vs. “99% chance”) etc. In the
practice of medicine, time pressure is high, potentially leading to rash judgments,
which are particularly prone to bias (Tversky and Kahnemann 1974). Therefore,
making medical professionals aware of their susceptibility to motivational biases
is important. Effectively, they need to develop a level of professional skepticism
regarding their own assessments and motivations (and those of colleagues), which
allows them to remain critical and question the adequacy of their judgments and
intentions regularly.
Whereas the previous learning outcome (empathic concern) leans more in the
direction of an implicit, intuitive, fast cognitive process, this learning outcome
(awareness) is more about a self-competence to critically evaluate and reflect upon
one’s judgments and perceptions (reflectivity).
2.3 Moral Schemas and Scripts for Automatized Sensitivity

Under Time Pressure
Awareness of how conflicts of interest and other motivational factors may distort
perception is not sufficient to overcome relevant problems: A large part of human
thinking is sub-conscious, intuitive and automatic, and people often lack the time
and energy to double-check whether their assessments may be biased in some way
or another. Hence, to overcome biased perceptions, people ideally develop scrip-
ted responses, which they will automatically activate any time they come across a
relevant problem (category), and which incorporate moral dimensions (Bazerman
and Tenbrunsel 2011). For example, a medical professional who offers acupunc-
ture for an extra fee could be biased to preferentially diagnose problems that can
be treated through acupuncture.1 A scripted response to deal with such a con-
flict of interest could be for the physician to generally test all of his diagnoses
by checking whether alternative explanations for the symptoms are also possible,
and by asking follow-up questions to rule out a false diagnosis.2 Scripted respon-
ses are therefore evaluative schemas, which systematically direct the attention and
behavior in certain situations (e.g., medical practice), and ensure that one is not
overlooking anything relevant.
Professionals generally work with scripts and schemas, through which they
automatize much of their behavior: What matters here, is that their schemas and
scripts include moral dimensions, so that they take them into account routinely,
instead of ignoring them (Gioia 1992; Seiler et al. 2011).
1 Oneof the authors experienced this case as a patient.

2 This
example is meant to illustrate how a script is basically a routine procedure of doing
something.
2.4 Sensitivity to Attitudes of Moral Disengagement
Even when medical professionals generally care for other people, are aware of
their human vulnerability to biases and stress, and have adopted diverse scripts
and schemas that help them to notice moral issues routinely, they may still behave
unethically in some situations if they hold morally disengaged attitudes. Attitu-
des of moral disengagement are generally rationalizations of unethical behavior,
which allow people to ignore moral considerations in the first place (Bandura
1999). Morally disengaged attitudes can take many forms, including double stan-
dards, whereby the interests, needs, contributions and opinions of people from
certain groups (e.g., women, elderly) are generally viewed as inferior. These atti-
tudes do not necessarily need to be explicit. Often, they are, in fact, implicit
attitudes, which their bearers are not aware of, and which they do not want to
hold, e.g., implicit racism or sexism (cf. Banaji and Greenwald 2013). Very often,
morally disengaged attitudes concern routine activities, where professionals like
to “cut corners”, e.g., they do not take time to talk with patients about import-
ant matters because “they will forget anyway” etc. Bandura (1999) has identified
six widespread types of moral disengagement (e.g., blaming the victim) through
which people allow themselves to ignore moral aspects. One of our goals is to sen-
sitize learners to such attitudes so that they will identify relevant rationalizations
as problematic.
2.5 Skills for Speaking up About Ethical Issues
Even when medical professionals are aware of ethical problems, e.g., the racial
discrimination of a patient by a superior, they may fail to act in accordance with
their values and professional ethical codes due to fear of repercussions (e.g.,
workplace harassment), in lack of appropriate responses and strategies, insecurity
about an ethical issue and possible consequences of actions or perceived inferio-
rity of experience (Raemer et al. 2016). Moral ownership, courage and efficacy
are therefore important goals for ethics training: People who possess these three
sub-components of moral potency are more likely to (1) feel the necessity to inter-
vene in a relevant situation, (2) overcome relevant fears, and (3) feel confident in
the ability to address relevant challenges, e.g., in persuading others (Hannah and
Avolio 2010). Following Mary Gentile, the development of relevant schemas and
scripts will also be helpful here, e.g., finding it normal to speak about moral
issues, or having good arguments ready to respond to common rationalizations of
questionable behaviors (Gentile 2010).
3 Selected Game Mechanisms and Their Combination
To promote the achievement of the desired learning outcomes, we have selected

and combined several game mechanisms, i.e., aspects of the game that enable or
frame the players’ interaction with the game: “(1) possible actions and choices
of players, (2) how these are framed (role, perspective, and goals), and (3) which
consequences the players’ actions and choices may have (feedback, rewards, etc.)”
(Katsarov et al. 2019, p. 347). Suitable game mechanisms were identified based
on a previously published review of literature and digital games (ibid.). In the
following, we describe how we have combined them and how they shall support
relevant learning.
3.1 Personalization and Realism
A central challenge for (game-based) learning lies in the transfer of what has been
learned (knowledge, skills etc.) to the relevant practice. To facilitate transfer, we
have decided to place the narrative of our game in a relatively realistic setting.
This makes the game experience meaningful for our main target group, students
of medicine, and will therefore help to foster the learners’ motivation to engage in
the game and reflect on their experience of it. Players slip into the role of a recent
graduate of medicine starting their residency (a first job as an assistant doctor) at
a regional hospital.
At the beginning of the game, players can choose their name and gender
so that they can identify with the role they are playing, or expressly choose to
play someone other than themselves. In accord with qualitative findings, both
forms of experience will be meaningful and can foster moral development (Con-
salvo et al. 2019). Moreover, in a recent meta-analysis Mayer (2014) has found
that the personalization of game-based learning strongly increases instructional
effectiveness.
3.2 Awarding of Points
The game’s introduction aims at acquainting players with the narrative (role and
mission) and at introducing a central game mechanism.
After a short prologue, players encounter their future supervisor, a leading
physician at the clinic where they are performing their residency. She invites
players to do their best, offering them a permanent position if they prevail. Also,
Tab. 1 Points awarded for three conflicting value dimensions
she introduces them to the three types of points that are awarded to players (see
below). The back-story is that all staff members of the clinic are currently recei-
ving 360° feedback through a new system on three aspects: empathy, integrity and
efficiency (cf. Tab. 1). She makes it clear that the player’s scores will be decisive
in the player’s final evaluation.
What players do not know is that the purpose of these three value dimensions
is to highlight how different values and expectations may collide and conflict in
practice. The efficiency dimension is meant to work as a distractor: It creates
conflicts of interest, making it costly to engage in compassionate and courageous
actions for players, i.e., without losing efficiency points. For instance, players
might find themselves in the situation that they want to look up alternative expla-
nations for the problems a patient is facing—yet losing efficiency points while
using the office computer to do so. Similarly, players may not be able to perform
their tasks very efficiently without losing empathy and integrity points (at least
in the short term). We also create trade-offs between empathy and integrity to
demonstrate to players that morally good goals can also collide in practice. Yet,
the main goal is to sensitize learners for the fact that conflicting values are part of
medical practice and that a certain balance is necessary. Overall, this game mecha-
nism shall promote the development of moral schemas in learners and sensitize
them to the power of motivational biases.
3.3 Activities, Decisions and Consequences
Following the introduction, players choose one of several cases to play, three
of which have already been written by Johannes Katsarov, Sandra Rossi, and
Maika Schelb. Each case represents a scenario with one patient, his/her relati-
ves (if available) and other staff of the clinic. The players interact with these
non-playable characters (NPCs) by selecting from diverse dialogue options.
Depending on the players’ choices, the scenario unfolds in different ways (bran-
ched storyline). Many decisions only have an impact in terms of the points that
players win or lose. However, the game is programmed in a way that even seemin-
gly “minor” choices have an impact on the outcome of the narrative (inspired by
the “systemic approach” to engaging ethical expertise in digital games discussed
by Formosa et al. 2016).
At the micro level, players exercise their communicative skills in working with
the NPCs, e.g., an elderly woman who has suffered a stroke and who is rejec-
ting her treatment.3 Each scenario confronts players with a prevalent conundrum
of biomedical ethics (e.g., allocation problems, advance care planning, or sha-
red decision-making). For instance, players can test their own abilities to assess
the elderly woman’s judgment. The goal is to sensitize players for the practi-
cal relevance of the skills that are developed as part of medical ethics training
and to offer them cases to experiment with. By portraying some of the fictio-
nal patients negatively, e.g., as naïve, we make it more difficult for players to
exercise ethical skills and tempt them to arrive at false conclusions or to “cut
corners” (e.g., having a naïve patient sign a letter of consent without understan-
ding the risks of an operation). The educative strategy, which we employ, is a
variation of the coping-modeling/problem-solving approach (cf. Simola 2010).
We do not present ethically relevant decisions to players overtly. Instead, more
or less ethical behaviors present themselves subtly, at the level of nuances (e.g.,
whether players choose to ask a patient what is important to her or assume that
3 Thegame does not demand medical knowledge from players. Relevant information on
diagnoses, treatments etc. will be readily available so that the game can also be played by
medical laypeople.
they already know what is best). In presenting dialogue options, we contrast prai-
seworthy and problematic alternatives, challengings learners to identify relevant
differences autonomously. Since players expect immediate feedback and delayed
consequences of their choices, they are also motivated to analyze the options,
thereby searching for noteworthy differences. In doing so, they ought to exer-
cise and improve their moral schemas because they are building associations
between empathy (caring, patient orientation), integrity (concern for justice, pati-
ent autonomy, etc.) and efficiency with different behavioral options (including the
use of language and other forms of communication, e.g., raising one’s voice or
comforting an elderly patient by holding her hand).
At the meso level, players face diverse critical incidents (critical decisions)
over the course of the game. In some of these incidents, players experience con-
flicts of interest, which are either subtle or obvious, and which are either personal
(beneficial to the player) and/or institutional (beneficial to the clinic or medical
team). For instance, one of the scenarios features a seemingly rich foreigner, the
overtreatment of whom promises an extra income for the hospital and a personal
gratification for the player. In these cases, players need to sacrifice some benefit—
at least in the short term—to act ethically. In featuring these problems, we also
offer players seemingly good justifications to act unethically, e.g., rumors that the
rich foreigner is a warlord and that he has made his apparent fortune by selling
weapons. Each critical scenario forces the players to make more or less explicit
decisions with consequences for the further story. Through this setup, we aim to
sensitize players to attitudes of moral disengagement and motivational biases, but
also challenge them to exercise moral courage and recognize strategies for doing
so effectively.
At the macro level, the different scenarios unfold over several days, adding gra-
vity to the critical decisions of players. One scenario may go on, for instance, over
a total of three days. Based on the final decision of the first day, players engage
with one of three different narrative branches on the following day, with several
different outcomes for the scenario on the final day. In the long run, unethical
actions have negative repercussions for the players, mostly in terms of conse-
quences for the patients (outcomes of therapy). In some cases, the players will
be reprimanded for these consequences, e.g., if they lead to financial losses for
the clinic. In other cases, the players are not (only) criticized by NPCs, but (also)
witness the negative outcomes of their decisions. Ethical decisions, on the other
hand, generally have positive outcomes at the narrative level of the game, although
these players may have collected fewer performance points than others and may
be criticized in the short term.
The macro level pursues two main goals. On the one hand, it shall sensitize
players to the dangers of short-term (efficiency) thinking, thereby fostering posi-
tive attitudes towards taking enough time to work with patients and their relatives.
On the other hand, the scenarios are designed to ensure that players must build
positive relationships with the patients (and their relatives) in order to be success-
ful. To build these relationships, they need to make efforts to understand these
characters and relate to them as humans. The purpose is to engage players in
affective perspective taking and an expansion of the group of people with whom
they can identify affectively. Players who take enough time will learn a lot about
the lovable features of their patients, e.g., an elderly woman’s dedication to her
(grand) children and her love of birds.
The micro, meso and macro levels are connected in the game. A biased or
otherwise problematic communication with an NPC at the micro level could lead
to a poorly informed decision at the meso level with negative consequences at the
macro level.
3.4 Final Feedback
At the end of each case, players find out how the scenario has unfolded through
a presentation of outcomes and during a personal development session with their
supervisor, the leading physician. She first comments on the points scored by the
players (360° feedback), offering positive and negative feedback. Then, based on
how the case was handled, she will highlight praiseworthy and problematic beha-
viors. To promote moral ownership and efficacy, it is important to show learners
how their choices and decisions matter, and how they can influence the course of
events (Hannah and Avolio 2010). For this reason, the leading physician’s feed-
back focuses on the impact of specific decisions and behaviors of players, who
can then react in different ways.
4 Use of the Digital Game in Study Programs
At the University of Zurich, all approx. 400 sixth-semester medical students par-
ticipate in a course in clinical ethics. We are currently redesigning this course to
work with uMed. The course is held in small groups of 10–13 students and is
structured in four units of 90 min. So far, standard procedure for these sessions
has been for a lecturer to shortly introduce the topic of the unit, followed by
the main part of the course: a mentored discussion of clinical cases with ethical
problems or dilemmas.
Two years earlier, in their first semester, all medical students have already been
introduced to medical ethics, also in small groups. In the introductory course, a
new e-learning tool is now being administered: This e-tool imparts theoretical
foundations of medical ethics as well as an introduction to clinical ethics in the
form of a structured case-discussion model (basic knowledge + practical exer-
cises). It can be used individually, e.g., at home and in the classroom together
with the group. The e-tool is meant to support medical students throughout their
studies.
uMed is now being integrated into the design of this third-year course. Before
each of the four units, students are required to play one case of the game (on
their own or in teams). After completing the case, they have to write a short
report on their playing experience based on three reflective questions (homework
assignment). On the basis of these reports, the teachers will address remarkable
thoughts concerning the critical topics (power of judgment, allocation problems,
informed consent, and shared decision-making) in the following sessions. The
teachers will show how the gamified scenarios correspond with ethical theory
and skills and discuss the different behavioral options the game offers with the
students. At this point, different components of the e-tool will also be re-utilized
alongside newly created teaching materials with explicit game references (in form
of screenshots of key scenes), with the aim of applying theory to practice and
supporting the students in internalizing the relevant methods.
5 Discussion
A frequently raised point of criticism of our approach is that the game evaluates
players’ behaviors. We are then asked to justify why certain actions are evaluated
one way or another, and why some actions have positive consequences, while
others do not. In part, this point of criticism may be based on the notion that ethics
teachers (and teachers engaged in political education) should take an impartial
stance and facilitate discussion among the students as equals, without abusing
their authority to impart their own values to the students (Lee 2006). We generally
concur that ethics trainers need to be wary of this; not because “value neutrality”
is desirable (it is neither desirable nor possible), but because mutual respect, value
plurality, tolerance of diversity, and autonomous/critical thinking are important
values to be upheld in constitutional democracies and professional practices: An
implicit requirement of ethics training is for trainers to endorse values like these
and role-model appropriate behaviors in doing so (cf. Hand 2018).
Therefore, we take this concern seriously. There are two reasons why we have
still decided to evaluate players’ decisions and actions in the game. First, it is a
fact of life that our actions and behaviors are evaluated by ourselves and others.
The main difference between our system and real life is that players receive imme-
diate feedback on almost all of their decisions (through the awarding of points,
and partially through reactions), which is not always the case in real life. Yet,
for the educational purposes of our game, the immediate awarding (or loss) of
points appears to be prudent. It sensitizes players for the value dimensions in
practice. Additionally, we do not regard it as problematic if players or lecturers
disagree with some of the evaluations of the game: The evaluations are portrayed
as subjective 360° feedback from patients, their relatives, and co-workers, not as
objective statements made by a moral expert. In fact, disagreement about evalua-
tions can foster valuable discussions about what constitutes ethical practice, and
thereby contribute to students’ moral development.
Second, our game might be considered more just than real life, because it
generally rewards ethical actions (at least in the long run) and punishes unet-
hical conduct (at least in the long run, e.g., by making players experience the
consequences of their decisions). In reality, unethical actions like unnecessary
treatments do not necessarily end in disaster. They do sometimes, however. Effec-
tively, this means that we have removed moral luck from our stories to some
degree and introduced some kind of “cosmic justice”. Since a central aim of our
game is to sensitize people for ethical risks, including an awareness of egoistic
biases that may lead us to overly optimistic/pessimistic risk perceptions, we sug-
gest that the “moralist” consequences in our game are justified and beneficial to
relevant learning.
6 Outlook
uMed is currently undergoing a process of rigorous testing and continuous impro-

vement. Six teachers have already experimented with the first two cases of the
game in teaching approximately 85 third-year students during the spring semester
2019. Additionally, we have conducted quantitative laboratory experiments with
two cases of the game and experimented with different game instructions in a
qualitative study (with the third case). Following good practices of user experi-
ence research (Hodent 2018), our investigations concern the game’s usability and
engageability, the emotions, judgments and reflections inspired in players, and the
game’s effectiveness in achieving the desired learning outcomes.4 First findings

are expected to be published in 2020.
In terms of continuous improvement, we are revising several features of the
game. For example, in a previous version the game included a mentor, who
challenged players to identify positive and negative aspects of their working envi-
ronment. We gave up this game mechanism, since it did not appear to add value.
We have also just implemented an online system for the game, which was pre-
viously played offline on players’ own computers. This online system allows us
to collect anonymized statistical information about the in-game decisions of the
learners. This information will support the game’s further improvement but may
also be useful in helping teachers address specific topics in their groups.5 Ano-
ther innovation that we will test soon is the inclusion of “achievements”, which
players can collect for certain actions and outcomes and which might inspire them
to play the game several times to explore more of the different options. Finally,
we are currently investigating different teaching strategies of working with the
game, e.g., whether players learn more when they play it alone or in groups.
Once the game has been validated and reached a sufficient degree of sophisti-
cation, we want to make it widely accessible for medical ethics training, including
interprofessional ethics training and further education.
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Design Perspectives
Using Digital Games for Sexual
Education: Design Rules, Issues,
and Applications
Nina Kiel
Abstract
The following article explores the potential of digital games to close gaps in
sex education and to complement traditional approaches in this field. Seven
key characteristics of the medium that enable and support learning processes
are identified, as are the challenges connected to sexual health interventions
in general and game-based interventions in particular. Additionally, the results
of a comprehensive analysis of 34 sex education games conducted in 2018
are presented in detail to outline the status quo of digital games as tools to
promote sexual health.
Keywords
Sexuality education • Sexual health • Safer sex • Sexual health games •
Game-based learning • Edutainment • Serious games • Sex games • Digital
media
In 2009, the UNESCO declared that “the transition to adulthood requires beco-
ming informed and equipped with the appropriate knowledge and skills to make
responsible choices in [young peoples’] social and sexual lives” (UNESCO 2009).
Still, many adolescents today lack access to comprehensive and scientifically
accurate information on sexuality1 and interpersonal relationships. In light of this,
1 Sexuality, as defined by the World Health Organisation, is “a central aspect of being
human throughout life and encompasses sex, gender identities and roles, sexual orientation,
N. Kiel (B)
Ilustrationen, Game Design, Spielejournalismus, Düsseldorf, Germany
E-Mail: nina@ninakiel.de

216 N. Kiel
a growing number of sex education experts and health care professionals make the
case for employing digital media and online services to impart sex-related infor-
mation to both children and adolescents (Collins et al. 2011, p. 55). The reasons
for this increasingly common stance are manifold: Firstly and most importantly,
digital media that is freely available online can close educational gaps prevalent
in different countries and regions around the world due to, for instance, lack of
appropriate infrastructure, provision of mere abstinence-only programs, untrai-
ned teachers, and religious or political opposition (Strasburger and Brown 2014,
pp. 1 f.). Where school- or community-based sex education is already available,
educational media content may serve as an addition to consolidate pre-existing
knowledge, provide more detailed information and a relatively safe space for
young people to explore this intimate topic. Web-enabled devices such as personal
computers, tablets and smartphones are now featured in a majority of households
in the industrialized world—and increasingly common in developing countries
and emerging economies (Poushter 2016)—and allow for quick and easy access to
different kinds of information, including sex-related facts (Bersamin et al. 2008,
p. 13). While digital games have only played a minor role in sex education so
far—which “should assist young people in developing a positive view of sexua-
lity, provide them with information they need to take care of their sexual health,
and help them acquire skills to make [informed] decisions now and in the future”
(SIECUS 2018, p. 19)—sexual health experts and game developers have recently
started to explore the medium more extensively again.
In the following, this article will examine the challenges, benefits and draw-
backs of designing and using digital games as tools for sexual education, identify
the medium’s seven key characteristics that enable and support learning proces-
ses, and summarize a comprehensive analysis of 34 digital sex education games
conducted in 2018 (Kiel 2018).
eroticism, pleasure, intimacy and reproduction. Sexuality is experienced and expressed

in thoughts, fantasies, desires, beliefs, attitudes, values, behaviours, practices, roles and
relationships. [...] Sexuality is influenced by the interaction of biological, psychological,
social, economic, political, cultural, ethical, legal, historical, religious and spiritual factors“
(WHO 2006, p. 5).
Using Digital Games for Sexual Education … 217
1 Games for (Sexual) Health—Challenges, Advantages

and Disadvantages
Digital games are popular among people across many demographic boundaries
(Griffiths 2002, p. 47): According to study findings, three in four young people
aged 14 to 17 in the US play digital games daily (Pew Research Center 2008). As
several studies have suggested so far, African American and Hispanic adolescents
seem to spend slightly more time playing digital games than White youth in the
US, and low- and middle-income communities spend more time playing than
those from high-income areas (The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation 2002).
In 2017, an estimated 32.4 million people of all ages played digital games in the
UK—nearly half of the population—with an almost even split between men (52%)
and women (48%) (Ukie 2018).2 Similar findings can be reported from Germany,
where the total of 34.1 million players was composed of 53% males and 47%
females in 2016 (game n.d.). While the average age of gamers continues to rise,
children and adolescents in total still represent the largest demographic among the
gaming population in Germany (game n.d.). It should be noted that the market
for games is expected to continue growing around the globe, potentially leading
to an increasingly large player base in both developed and developing countries
(Newzoo n.d.).
Despite the popularity of digital games among children, adolescents, and
adults, educational or “serious” games—which can best be described as digital
games for a primary purpose beyond pure entertainment (Fiellin et al. 2017, p. 2)
—have yet to play a noteworthy part in sex education, and research on this topic
is scarce (Collins et al. 2011, p. 54). Considering the demographic data available
and the successful implementation of digital games in various other health care
contexts (Fiellin et al. 2017, p. 2), this is surprising, especially since games have
been suggested as a tool to promote sexual health for at least two decades now.
As Sheana Bull, professor at the Colorado School for Public Health, states, “The
medium simply makes sense for youth and young adults who have spent their
lives engaged in online and app-based gaming. Delivery of sexual health educa-
tion in a game format is a logical way to create content that resonates for [sic] this
group at highest risk for negative sexual health outcomes such as sexually trans-
mitted infections” (Shegog et al. 2015, p. 1). Perhaps more importantly, games
can be a “useful educational tool that adolescents are willing to engage with
and learn from” (Morrison 2017), due to several characteristics that may support
2 Itshould be noted that a majority of the numbers in this chapter come from market
research, as these are generally the most up-to-date numbers available.
218 N. Kiel
knowledge retention as well as, to some extent, behavior change. In the following,
seven characteristics considered in current research to be particularly important
for game-supported learning processes are identified and described in detail.
1) Simulation
Digital games have the capacity to simulate complex systems and interactions,
allowing the players to test different inputs and experience the outcomes in a
virtual environment. Therefore, digital games can provide a relatively safe space
for experimentation, which is particularly important in the context of sex edu-
cation. Players are enabled to make mistakes without having to fear real-world
consequences (Bonus 2012, p. 8), e.g. having unprotected sex with someone (a
non-player character) and becoming pregnant or contracting an STI, thus under-
going a learning process regarding risky and healthy sexual behavior (Vogel 2014,
p. 11). Likewise, one may experiment with their gender or sexual identity inside
the virtual space, enjoying the privacy a single-player game provides and not
having to fear social stigmas (provided that the experience is not observed or inter-
rupted by peers). By allowing young people to experience situations rather than
just observing them or hearing about them, the distance between the players and
the subject matter decreases, which may lead to more engagement and prolonged
attention.
2) Role-Playing
Closely tied to the ability of simulating interactions, digital games also provide the
opportunity to assume different roles and explore settings from various perspec-
tives. As mentioned above, players may, for example, experiment with different
genders and sexual identities, leading to a better understanding of other peoples’
experiences and motivations, and improved results in the learning process. Com-
pared to analogue games, digital games offer a larger number of opportunities to
“embody” other people and to see the world from their perspective, with an added
feeling of interactivity and privacy. If young people experience difficulties integra-
ting newly acquired sexual health knowledge into their lives—as is often the case
in traditional interventions (Barak and Fisher 2001, p. 325)—assuming different
roles, encountering situations which require certain knowledge, and experimen-
ting with different solutions can have a beneficial effect on the learning process
(Vogel 2014, p. 11). Some studies suggest that the ability to customize a player
character (“avatar”) leads to a greater emotional connection with the character and
in-game experiences (Bonus 2012, p. 11). Thus, digital games promoting sexual
health that include role-playing should ideally offer a range of options for the
respective target audience, including body shapes, hair styles, and clothes.
3) Exploration and Interactivity

Digital games facilitate the exploration of virtual worlds, which may or may not
be similar to that of the players. Players can interact with computer- or other
player-controlled characters, the virtual environment, and objects, which in turn
may be used to influence the in-game world in a meaningful way, evoking a
feeling of agency (Murray 1997, p. 126). By honing skills through gameplay,
knowledge is applied rather than memorized, which may result in improved lear-
ning outcomes, especially in games offering a variety of strategies to solve a
problem (Griffiths 2002, pp. 4 f.), thus exercising different types of cognitive
skills (Hense and Mandl 2012, p. 21). Providing a high level of interactivity and
strengthening the players’ feeling of agency and self-efficacy can increase engage-
ment and thus the likelihood of them paying attention for longer periods of time,
as well as of players reading and subsequently remembering content (Shegog et al.
2015, p. 2).
4) Automated Feedback and Repetition
While feedback and repetition generally play an important role in education, the
automatization in digital games can support certain learning processes in several
ways (Hense and Mandl 2012, p. 21). First and most importantly, digital games
provide opportunities to repeat previously learned content anywhere and anytime:
in class, at home, or on the road. Repeating content and overcoming challenges
leads to practice, which, in turn, plays a major role in sustainable learning effects
(Shegog et al. 2015, pp. 1 f.). Constant feedback may also increase motivation to
find the right solutions for the problems at hand (Bonus 2012, p. 8).
5) Fun and Engagement
While often used interchangeably, fun and engagement are in fact two different,
but intertwined concepts. Fun can be defined as a pleasurable and active men-
tal state that may lead to engagement, but due to the wide variety of variables
influencing this possible outcome it is very difficult to predict. As C. Scott Rigby
explains, “fun by its nature is not simply the inevitable output of applying certain
techniques” (Rigby 2014, p. 116). Due to these difficulties and the thin empirical
evidence regarding the source and nature of fun, it may be advisable to use the
term “engagement” instead when discussing digital games. Engagement refers to
the state of being fully focused and invested in a stimulus—actively or passively—
and can be understood as the directional or behavioral expression of motivation.
Games are commonly associated with motivation and engagement, since they can
220 N. Kiel
fulfill at least two basic psychological needs, highlighted in the context of Self-
Determination Theory and Cognitive Evaluation Theory (Ryan and Deci 2000,
p. 58) as powerful and universal sources of motivational energy: a feeling of
competence and mastery, if a game provides challenges the players can overcome
without being bored or frustrated, and a feeling of autonomy. Some games also
cover the psychological need for relatedness—feeling supported by others—for
example through online multiplayer modes or online communities (Rigby 2014,
p. 120).
6) Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation
As both researchers and teachers know, motivation strongly impacts learning
processes and outcomes. Entertainment games are commonly perceived as intrin-
sically motivating, which means that playing digital games constitutes an activity
that people engage in “for its inherent satisfactions rather than for some separa-
ble consequence” (Ryan and Deci 2000, p. 56). More specifically, “digital games
are able to generate an enormous amount of motivation which leads to intensive,
sustained and emotional engagement with the game contents and mechanisms”
(Hense and Mandl 2012, p. 20). A well-designed educational game may be per-
ceived as an inherently pleasurable experience, leading to stronger engagement
with its contents and thus the knowledge it is designed to impart.
7) Immersion and Flow
In the context of digital games, immersion refers to the feeling of being deeply
engaged in a virtual environment, which Janet H. Murray defines as “the sensation
of being surrounded by a completely other reality […] that takes over all of our
attention, our whole perceptual apparatus” (Murray 1997, pp. 98 f.). Immersion
thusly means completely inserting oneself into another reality and focusing on
the experience. Flow is a concept strongly connected to immersion and can be
described as the “blurring of subjective distinction between player and activity”
(Rigby 2014, p. 116), which may lead to a lost sense of time. Experiencing flow
means perceiving the challenges at hand and one’s own skills as balanced, being
highly concentrated and achieving clearly defined goals. As the experience of flow
is usually inherently rewarding and pleasurable, the activity enabling it will likely
be engaged in voluntarily and repeatedly. Accordingly, flow can be considered
as a type of intrinsic motivation and as highly relevant for supporting learning
processes (Csikszentmihalyi 2002).
To conclude, digital games may be particularly useful educational tools due
to the seven aforementioned characteristics, which research in the field of games
and education has identified as relevant. However, it should be noted that some of
these characteristics and their presumed effects on learning processes and espe-
cially behavior change require further study. Future research needs to focus, and
expand on, the evaluation of game-based interventions, in order to both learn
more about gaming experiences and to employ them for educational purposes.
Furthermore, while in theory these characteristics can be found in games regard-
less of genre, content and target group, complex design processes and evaluations
are required to create engaging interactive experiences which fully exploit the
medium’s potential. In other words: Simply developing a game is not enough.
Each project should be carefully planned taking the specific requirements of
the subject, target group, and educational context into consideration in order to
achieve a coherent result.
2 The Status Quo of Sex Education Games
In theory, digital games can provide engaging and entertaining learning experi-
ences as well as private explorative spaces (Nah et al. 2012, p. 4) for people of all
ages, thus helping them to overcome feelings of shame and embarrassment usually
connected to sex education (Simon and Daneback 2013, p. 306). So far, however,
very few sex education games have fully explored the unique characteristics of
the medium nor the opportunities it offers. In 2018, a comprehensive research and
literature review identified 34 sex education games that had been released over
the course of 35 years (Kiel 2018). A systematic online search was conducted to
access relevant literature such as studies, papers, and online articles, using key-
words including (but not limited to) “digital games”, “serious games”, “sexual
health games”, “Aufklärungsspiele”, “sexuelle Aufklärung”, “sex education”, and
“safer sex”. The literature was carefully studied in order to find examples of digi-
tal games focusing on or related to the topic of sexual health. This literature review
process was then extended to encompass books and magazines on game develop-
ment and/or sexual health, whose titles had also been obtained by means of a
keyword-based search. Additionally, gaming websites, online presences of gover-
nmental as well as non-governmental organizations, health care providers, health
centers, and websites targeted at young people were browsed for relevant content
entering the aforementioned keywords into the search function of each website.
Any literature—both online and in print—written in languages other than Eng-
lish, German, or French could not be studied in detail due to language barriers.
However, if such a text was highlighted in the search results on the basis of mat-
ching keywords, it was browsed for names of thematically relevant game projects.
Finally, the author contacted researchers, game developers and game journalists
222 N. Kiel
through her online network, requesting information regarding potentially relevant

digital game projects. The 34 games discovered through this review process (see
Tab. 1) were then played and analyzed with regard to accessibility (distribution
channels, platform, retail price, available languages), the quality of visuals, nar-
rative and gameplay, the range and accuracy of the sexual health facts provided,
and the seven key characteristics described above. If a game could not be played
(due to, in most cases, the game not being available anymore or compatibility
issues with modern technology), a summary of all available information from the
previously reviewed literature was provided instead.
Out of these 34 digital games (see table 1 for a complete list), very few offer
room for experimentation and exploration. Consequences of players’ actions are
mostly limited to simple text- or audio-based feedback (e.g. Adventures in Sex
City 2010), while the actual impact on the game world is not revealed, which may
lead to players perceiving their own actions as less meaningful. Role-playing is
also rarely supported or very limited: None of the 34 games provide customiz-
able player characters, and only one (Swazi Yolo 2016) offers a small selection
of character portraits with little variation. Correspondingly, few sex education
games include well-written stories. Instead, most of the products heavily focus on
gameplay and only provide context through fragmented narrative, if at all. Most
importantly, however, gameplay is too often disconnected from the intended lear-
ning outcome. For instance, games which focus specifically on condoms—e.g.
the Catch the Sperm series (2001–2003), Kondomis Mission (1998) and Eggplant
Invaders 2 (2017)—in many cases require fast reflexes and thus may improve
hand-eye-coordination, while practical information on condom use is not provi-
ded. Additionally, troubling messages about sexuality are at the core of many of
these games, as they tend to focus heavily or solely on the risks of sex and occa-
sionally include false or misleading3 information as well as messages which may
reinforce social stigmas.4
3 In„Kondomis Mission“ (1998), a browser game which tasks the players with protecting
an egg cell from sperm with a condom, emergency contraception pills are presented as
special collectable items which can be used whenever the player fails to catch a sperm
in time in order to avoid losing the game. This may lead to the false impression that
these pills can just as reliably prevent unintended pregnancies in reality. In fact, however,
emergency contraception can only prevent or delay ovulation, will not work if the body
has already started ovulating, and may cause side effects.
4 The trivia game „Adventures in Sex City“ casts a man who has contracted an STI as
the villain, presenting him as a monstrous creature with two giant penises instead of arms
whose only goal is to infect as many people with STIs by shooting them with his “evil
sperm“. This framing increases the stigma surrounding STIs and may lead to feelings
Tab. 1 The 34 games identified through a literature review conducted in 2018
Title Year Type/Genre Platform Age Developer / Language(s)
rating/recommended publisher
age
Night Life 1982 Simulation PC-8001, FM-7 Not specified Koei Japanese
Dr. Ruth’s 1986 Trivia game Apple II, Adult players The Avalon Hill English
Computer Game of Commodore 64, Game Company,
Good Sex DOS Victory
Games Inc
The Brothers 1993 Dialogue-based Unknown Adult players BAVC/Brothers English
Dating Game game Network
Bitte nicht stören! 1995 (Point-and-click) PC (Windows) 6 years and up Ravensburger German
Adventure Interactive
Using Digital Games for Sexual Education …
Tim und Nina 1995 (Point-and-click) PC (Windows) 10 years and up Bidule 4 AG, German
Adventure Promotion
Software, Aids Info
Docu Schweiz,
BMG Interactive
Life Challenge 1997 Adventure Unknown Not specified New York State English
Department of
Health
Let ‘s talk about 1997 Dialogue-based Unknown 14 years and up Bundeszentrale für German
… Liebe, Lust und game gesundheitliche
Aids Aufklärung
(BZgA)
(continued)
223
Tab. 1 (continued)
224

age
SexKomplex 1998 (Point-and-click) PC 14 years and up Bidule 4 AG, Aids German
Adventure (Windows/Mac) Info Docu
Schweiz, BMG
Ariola Schweiz
Amora-Liebesspiel 1998 Platformer/Jump Online (Flash) Not specified Visart, German
‘n’ Run Bundeszentrale für
gesundheitliche
Aufklärung
(BZgA)
Kondomis Mission 1998 Action Online (Flash) Not specified Visart, German
Bundeszentrale für
gesundheitliche
Aufklärung
(BZgA)
Safety First! with ca. 2000 Unknown Online Unknown Planned English
Officer Janet Parenthood
Benchpress Federation of
America
That Would Suck ca. 2000 Unknown Online Unknown Planned English
Parenthood
Federation of
America
(continued)
N. Kiel
Tab. 1 (continued)
age
Our Super Duper ca. 2000 Unknown Online Unknown Planned English
Planet: Nature is Parenthood
Groovy Federation of
America
Jim Dandy and His ca. 2000 Unknown Online Unknown Planned English
Very Gay Day Parenthood
Federation of
America
How Many of You ca. 2000 Unknown Online Unknown Planned English
Out There Are Parenthood
Abstinent Federation of
America
Hooray for Birth ca. 2000 Unknown Online Unknown Planned English
Control! Parenthood
Federation of
America
The Sexually ca. 2000 Unknown Online Unknown Planned English
Transmitted Parenthood
Infection Petting Federation of
Zoo America
(continued)
225
Tab. 1 (continued)
226

age
Catch the Sperm 2001–2003 Action/Shooter Online/PC 0 years and up Phenomedia, Swiss English,
(series) (Windows) Federal Ministry of German,
Health, Black Japanese
Pencil
Entertainment AG,
Koch Media
Super Shag Land 2001 Platformer/Jump Online (Flash) Not specified K-Generation English
‘n’ Run Foundation
Journey to Planet 2002 Platformer/Jump Online (Flash) Not specified Prostate Cancer English
Prostate ‘n’ Run Charity
Talk Sex Fetish 2003 Card game Online (Flash) Not specified Robert J. Calvano, English
Flip N’ Match AgencyNet,
Oxygen
Cool Condoms ca. 2004 n/s Online (Flash) Not specified Unknown English
Game
Condom Game ca. 2010 Card game Online (Flash) Not specified Sex, etc., Answer English
Adventures In Sex 2010 Trivia game Online (Flash) Mature youth Middlesex-London English
City audience Health Unit, Mind
Your
Mind
(continued)
N. Kiel
Tab. 1 (continued)
age
Privates 2010 Action/Shooter PC (Windows) 14 years and up Zombie Cow English
Studios /
Channel 4
Cock Out 2010 Fighting game Online (Flash) Teenagers/adults Vergiss AIDS nicht English
e.V
PR:EPARe 2012 Trivia game PC (Windows, Secondary school Serious Games English
Mac) pupils (ages 13–14) Institute/Applied
Research
Centre for Health
and Lifestyle
Interventions,
Coventry
University
PlayForward: Elm 2012 Adventure Mobile (iOS) Young teens (middle Schell Games, English
City Stories school, play2-PREVENT
grades 5–8) Lab
(Yale Center for
Health & Learning
Games)
Happy Play Time 2013 n/s Online Not specified Tina Gong English
(continued)
227
Tab. 1 (continued)
228

age
Safer Sex Shuffle ca. 2014 Puzzle game Web, Mobile Not specified Kaho Abe, Ramsey English
(iOS, Android) Nasser, Sarah
Schoemann
I’m Positive 2014 Interactive fiction PC (Windows) Not specified Stephen Borden, English
Ilya Polyakov, Ali
Yildirim,
Stephanie Chergi
Swazi Yolo 2016 Visual Mobile All ages (Google Formula D English
Novel/Interactive (Android) Play), 18 years and Interactive
fiction up (according to the
game’s terms and
conditions)
Eggplant Invaders 2017 Action/Shooter Mobile (iOS) Not specified After School English
2
Consentulip 2017 n/s Online (HTML Not specified Flower Power English
5)
N. Kiel
Finally, almost all of these games fail to address LGBTQI youth as their target
audience, or even in passing. This is particularly troubling since school-based sex
education rarely takes the unique needs and challenges of this demographic into
consideration (Pound et al. 2016, p. 4), thus making them more susceptible to
sexually transmitted infections as well as dating violence (GLSEN 2015). Out of
34 games, only one game specifically focuses on homosexual as well as trans-
gender players (The Brothers Dating Game 1993), and this game is not publicly
available anymore (Kiel 2018, p. 132). This particular example illustrates how
the content of sex education games—and, likewise, the thematic focus of tradi-
tional interventions—is linked to normative ideas of sexuality, which still, despite
substantial changes of sexual ethics in the past decades, presuppose heterosexua-
lity and monogamy as the standard. While the analysis of the game selected may
reveal a clear change in sexual morals over time, deviations from the norm are—if
addressed at all—still at times identified as such.5 Pornography, for instance—a
long-established central aspect of young people’s sex lives—is not a subject of
discussion in any of the games studied. Discussing this issue, Lamb and Plocha
(2011) speak of a “hidden curriculum” which is built on specific social norms
and in turn continues to reinforce them, thus leading to adolescents feeling left
out and not receiving the education they need in order to make responsible choi-
ces to maintain or improve their sexual health. They emphasize that “[t]here are
several reasons why it is important to acknowledge adolescents in their particu-
larity for health-oriented, ethics-oriented, or relationship-oriented sex education.
In particular, if sex education is to be ethics-based, then specific attention needs
to be paid to those adolescents who are most vulnerable to being hurt by sex or
whose rights are most likely to be violated” (2011, p. 1).
3 Discussion
To summarize, many of the sex education games released so far are deeply fla-
wed and demonstrate a lack of understanding of the subject matter, game design
principles, or both. Unrefined gameplay, outdated graphics or incoherent visual
of shame and strong discomfort among players who have ever been (or are currently)
infected.
5 While “Dr. Ruth’s Game of Good Sex“ (VictoryGames Inc. 1986) exclusively portrays
sex between married, heterosexual couples as normal and desirable, the adventure game
“Tim and Nina“ (BMG Interactive 1995), released merely 9 years later, openly discusses
topics such as (casual) sex between teenagers and homosexuality.
230 N. Kiel
design, fragmented or missing narrative and game-breaking bugs suggest that col-
laborations with experienced game developers and writers have been the exception
rather than the rule up to this point. Additionally, members of both ethnic and
sexual minorities, despite being particularly susceptible to sexual health problems
and dating violence, are rarely addressed as a target audience.
However, new projects currently in development or undergoing evaluation may
avoid some of the mistakes made by previously released games. In recent years,
more sex education games than before have been created in cooperation with
both sexual health and game development experts. This kind of collaboration has
resulted (see e.g. PlayForward: Elm City Stories 2012) and will likely continue
to result in more refined products, the impact of which is now more frequently
evaluated, which in turn enables the creators to improve their games and others
to access valuable information, allowing for the creation of better games in the
future. Improving and expanding the use of digital games for promoting healthy
sexual behavior is only reasonable, given their manifold advantages. As men-
tioned earlier, games provide a relatively safe and private space to explore this
intimate and highly embarrassing topic outside of the classroom and without inter-
ference by peers who might use this opportunity to shame and stigmatize others
(Pound et al. 2016, p. 6). Students can learn at their own pace (Office of Educa-
tional Technology 2017), repeating lessons if necessary, and set their own goals,
accessing the game content wherever and whenever they see fit (Griffiths 2002,
pp. 50 f.). The availability of educational content is particularly important for
long-term impacts: While traditional, school-based sex education is only provided
for a limited time—usually a couple of weeks or months in high school—online-
and game-based interventions can be accessed throughout a person’s adolescence
and even much later, providing constant support for those who wish to improve
their sexual health (Strasburger and Brown 2014, p. 1). On top of that, game-based
educational content may be useful for adults who never received comprehen-
sive sex education during their adolescence, enabling them to belatedly access
important information (Barak and Fisher 2002, p. 269). Digital games can also
enable young people to discuss the topic with their parents. Considering that many
parents closely pay attention to the games their children play (ESA 2017) while
potentially feeling inhibited to talk about sexual health, a game-based intervention
may be a promising starting point and even allow parents and their children to
play together, depending on the content. Finally, digital games may provide rese-
archers with useful tools to study the impact of their interventions: Collecting data
through (online) games and devices like smartphones or PCs is a relatively easy
and cost-efficient way of gaining insights into the efficacy of a product while
it is still in development, as specific variables can be measured and compared,
providing valuable information for future research (Griffiths 2002, pp. 50 f.). Of
course, appropriately ensuring consent and including the parents when targeting
minors are imperative when it comes to user data.
Professionals creating game-based interventions also have to take into account
several risks and challenges. Above all else, teachers may be tempted to use digital
games as substitutes for traditional interventions, allowing them to avoid poten-
tially embarrassing situations in the classroom. Sexual health games, however,
should not replace, but complement other educational approaches, if possi-
ble. While games or online services like “ICYC” (“ICYC: In Case You’re
Curious,” n.d.) can provide answers to pressing questions regarding sexual health,
they cannot replace direct communication with professionals, unless absolutely
necessary.
Despite the immense popularity of digital games among young people, they
do not appeal to and cannot be used by everyone (Shegog et al. 2015, p. 2).
Games should thus ideally be made with non-players in mind, providing opti-
ons for enhanced accessibility (e.g. different difficulty settings where applicable)
and avoiding implementation of unnecessarily complicated game mechanics. This
is particularly important if games are to be distributed in schools, and students
are required to play instead of approaching the product voluntarily. As research
suggests, “dislike of the game itself is one of the most important factors that
may diminish the effectiveness of the educational game due to less commitment,
less positive affect and less focused attention” (Vogel 2014, p. 7). However, att-
empting the near-impossible task of creating a game with universal appeal is not
recommended, since this approach will likely lead to a visually and mechani-
cally undefined, unremarkable product which may eventually engage even fewer
players. Instead, while taking players with different skill levels into considera-
tion, educational games should be tailored to members of a clearly defined target
demographic (e.g. high-risk youth from a specific minority group). Factors like
general interests, level of education, gender, ethnicity and religion, among others,
all have to be taken into account when developing game-based interventions. Just
as any other type of sexual health intervention, digital game projects may face
opposition by parents, teachers (who could be reluctant to rely on technology
and especially games in class, despite the possible advantages), politicians, reli-
gious leaders and other groups, especially when allowing their players to directly
engage in sexual activity in a highly immersive virtual world. Publishers should
try to limit exposure only to the targeted demographic, keeping younger people
from accessing content which is not age-appropriate.
Generally, it seems prudent to target mobile platforms and smartphones in par-
ticular due to their prevalence in both low- and higher-income households around
232 N. Kiel
the world. However, they also present another set of challenges. Smaller dis-
play size is commonly associated with lower levels of immersion and persuasion
(Shegog et al. 2015, p. 2), and players’ attention may be divided as smartphones in
particular are also tools for communication and allow access to other, potentially
distracting media content. Even when playing on computers, users might pay less
attention to the educational material if no teacher or group facilitator is present
(Collins et al. 2011, p. 39). Obtaining access to public spaces like schools for user
testing might prove difficult, making it more advisable to work with non-profit
organizations and/or information centers to connect with potential players (Vogel
2014, p. 30). Additionally, many public sector entities—including schools—have
strict policies regarding sexual content, making it more difficult to access online
sexual health information and games during class (Barak and Fisher 2001, p. 331).
Taking into account these regulatory obstacles, it may be advisable to explore
other channels of distribution, particularly online. However, while online distribu-
tion offers the considerable advantage of allowing quick and easy access to a large
group of people, regulating it can be very difficult. At the same time, reaching a
large audience is complicated by the fact that popular web-based distribution plat-
forms like the Apple App Store or Google Play Store specifically prohibit sexual
content to varying degrees. Additionally, restricted access to online platforms in
certain countries or communities may complicate the issue of distribution further.
It is thus recommended to collaborate with well-known institutions (e.g. non-profit
organizations like Planned Parenthood or national institutions like the German
Federal Centre for Health Education) to ensure public awareness as well as easy
access to the game-based intervention and gain the trust of both adolescents and
parents. Ideally, such collaborations could also provide financial support, which
is particularly important as developing a digital game for sexual health education
can be a costly endeavor, requiring expertise from different fields—most notably
sexology, pedagogy, and game development—as well as many target group tests,
leading to several iterations and long development cycles with constant evalua-
tions. As mentioned above, sexual health games should be tailored to specific
audiences, thus potentially requiring extensive research on cultural and religious
contexts, manners of expression, pop culture references, common interests, and
more. Finally, sexual behavior includes a wide range of activities and actions,
making the subject matter difficult to be translated into educational material and
game mechanics in particular. The act of using condoms alone is made up of five
separate behaviors—accessing them, carrying them, negotiating their use, actually
using them, and disposal—which should ideally offer some degree of interacti-
vity in a game. Experts have to decide which content to include and which to
best leave out without risking the impact of the intervention—especially when
it comes to sexually explicit imagery (Shegog et al. 2015, pp. 3 f.). It should
be noted, however, that many of these issues are not exclusive to games, as sex
education in general is a delicate matter bearing unique challenges not apparent
in other areas of education. Still, it is important to keep the potential risks and
challenges in mind when developing game-based interventions to promote safe
sexual behavior.
4 Conclusion
Digital games have only played a minor role in sex education so far, and most
products available on the market do not seem to have been evaluated in regard
to their efficacy. Only recently, a trend towards more frequent development and
evaluation of such game-based interventions has become apparent, as well as
a noticeable increase in production value, which is likely linked to the availa-
bility of more affordable and user-friendly tools. So far, the results of studies
evaluating the impact of sex education games on adolescents have been promi-
sing, as overall significant positive effects on preparedness, self-efficacy, sexual
health attitudes and knowledge were observed (Fiellin et al. 2017, p. 7), but more
research is needed to gather data on the short- and long-term impact of these
interventions. Additionally, developers and researchers have yet to explore the
medium’s full potential for providing engaging educational experiences, as most
of the games published so far failed to do so. Considering the potential advan-
tages of game-based interventions, however, continuing to explore them as tools
for sex education is certainly a worthwhile endeavor.
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Ludography
Adventures in Sex City (Middlesex-London Health Unit, Mind Your Mind 2010, O:
Middlesex-London Health Unit)
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Happy Play Time (Gong, T. 2013, O: Gong, T.)
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Parenthood Federation of America)
How Many of You Out There Are Abstinent? (Planned Parenthood Federation of America
n.d., O: Planned Parenthood Federation of America)
I’m Positive (Borden, S., Polyakov, I., Yildirim, A., & Chergi, S. 2017, O: Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention, United States Department of Health and Human
Services)
Jim Dandy and His Very Gay Day (Planned Parenthood Federation of America n.d., O:
Planned Parenthood Federation of America)
Journey to Planet Prostate (Prostate Cancer Charity 2002, O: Prostate Cancer Charity)
Kondomis Mission (Visart 1998, O: Bundeszentrale für gesundheitliche Aufklärung)
Let‘s talk about... Liebe, Lust und Aids (Bundeszentrale für gesundheitliche Aufklärung
1997, O: Bundeszentrale für gesundheitliche Aufklärung)
Life Challenge (New York State Department of Health 1997, O: New York State
Department of Health)
Night Life (Koei 2016, O: Koei)
Our Super Duper Planet: Nature is Groovy (Planned Parenthood Federation of America
PlayForward: Elm City Stories (Schell Games 2012, O: play2PREVENT Lab, Yale Center
for Health & Learning Games)
PR:EPARe (Serious Games Institute, Applied Research Centre for Health and Lifestyle
Interventions, Coventry University 2012, O: Coventry University)
Privates (Size Five Games 2010, O: Channel 4)
Safer Sex Shuffle (Abe, K., Nasser, R., & Schoemann, S. 2014, O: Abe, K., Nasser, R.,
& Schoemann, S.)
Safety First! with Officer Janet Benchpress (Planned Parenthood Federation of America
SexKomplex (Bidule 4 AG 1998, O: Aids Info Docu Schweiz, BMG Ariola Schweiz AG)
Super Shag Land (K-Generation Foundation 2001, O: K-Generation Foundation)
Swazi Yolo (Formula D Interactive 2016, O: Formula D Interactive)
Talk Sex Fetish Flip N’ Match (Calvano, R. J., Agency Net 2003, O: Oxygen)
That Would Suck (Planned Parenthood Federation of America n.d., O: Planned Parenthood
Federation of America)
The Brothers Dating Game (BAVC, Brothers Network 1993, O: BAVC, Brothers Network)
The Sexually Transmitted Infection Petting Zoo (Planned Parenthood Federation of
America n.d., O: Planned Parenthood Federation of America)
Tim und Nina (Bidule 4 AG, Promotion Software 1995, O: BMG Interactive)
Autonomy, Heteronomy,
and Representations of Illness in Digital
Games
Arno Görgen and Stefan H. Simond
Abstract
Starting from essential concepts of medical ethics, this article focuses on how
constructions of somatic and mental illnesses in digital games tie in with ideas
of autonomy and heteronomy. Distinguishing between disease, illness, and
sickness, we argue that digital games negotiate autonomy/heteronomy on the
level of narrative, esthetics, and gameplay structure. Three games then serve
as analytical examples: Outlast (Red Barrels 2013), Depression Quest (The
Quinnspiracy 2013) and Red Dead Redemption 2 (Rockstar Games 2018).
Keywords
Bioethics • Computer game ethics • Game studies • Autonomy •
Heteronomy • Theory of disease • Pathography
1 Introduction
As the enlightened thinking called upon reason as a guiding principle, the modern
autonomous subject inevitably became the definition of normalcy. The assumption
of autonomy shapes to this day not only the individual’s existence, but also the
A. Görgen (B)
Hochschule Der Künste Bern, Bern, Switzerland
E-Mail: arno.goergen@hkb.bfh.ch
S. H. Simond
Philipps-Universität Marburg, Marburg, Germany
E-Mail: stefan.simond@staff.uni-marburg.de

240 A. Görgen and S. H. Simond
institutional structure of modern society. This precisely means that we regularly

act upon the assumption that we are free to make our own choices and pursue
our own goals. It further means that, institutionally speaking, we rely on people’s
autonomy in order to punish or reward them. Yet, when it comes to illnesses,
the limitations of autonomy permeate our experience. Whether one suffers from a
chronic somatic illness and thus feels a progressive deterioration of one’s body, or
whether one feels in a state of depression that the most reasonable choice simply
is out of reach—illnesses can, by highlighting the impact of heteronomy, make
us aware of the vulnerability of human beings.
Starting from essential concepts of autonomy rooted in medical ethics, this
article focuses on how constructions of somatic and mental illnesses in digital
games tie in with ideas of individual and systemic autonomy, or heteronomy. By
differentiating between the three dimensions disease, illness, and sickness, we
argue that digital games negotiate autonomy/heteronomy on the level of narra-
tive, esthetics and gameplay structure. In reference to the examples Outlast (Red
Barrels 2013), Depression Quest (The Quinnspiracy 2013) and Red Dead Red-
emption 2 (Rockstar Games 2018), we must emphasize that the method applied
does not aim for representative results, but rather for an approach of qualitative
interpretation to consider that beyond being enablers of power fantasies, digital
games employ their media-specific attributes just as well when conveying a sense
of heteronomy (the inability to act freely).
2 Autonomy in Bioethical Principlism and Game

Analysis
In their seminal work “Principles of Biomedical Ethics”, Beauchamp and

Childress (2009) applied the principle of autonomy, together with the princip-
les of nonmaleficence, beneficence and justice, for a better ethical practice in the
medical field. Their aim was to propose a low-threshold alternative to traditio-
nal ethical approaches of normative reasoning like deontology, consequentialism
(and utilitarianism) and virtue ethics—to only name the most influential theories
(Beauchamp 2005, p. 49).
According to Beauchamp and Childress, personal autonomy encompasses “at
a minimum, self-rule that is free from both controlling interference by others
and from certain limitations such as an inadequate understanding that prevents
meaningful choice (Beauchamp and Childress 2009, p. 99). Basically, autonomous
action for them implies action that is intentional, executed with understanding
Autonomy, Heteronomy, and Representations of Illness … 241
and without controlling or restraining influences (Beauchamp and Childress 2009,

pp. 99–101).
Autonomy is built upon two preconditions: first, the respect for autonomy,
and second, the capacity or competence of a person to make autonomous choi-
ces. Respect for autonomy is an intersubjective condition that supports people
in their capacity to act autonomously. It therefore is directed towards a person
and helps them to achieve autonomy (Beauchamp and Childress 2009, p. 103).
Competence, here, is defined as the ability to perform a task. The level of com-
petence can vary over time or may be intermittent (Beauchamp and Childress
2009, p. 112). By defining its antonym, incompetence, Beauchamp and Childress
simultaneously give a definition of heteronomy. For them, incompetence (and
heteronomy) implies the inability to communicate a choice, to understand one’s
situation, the information relevant to this situation, and its consequences, to
give a rational, risk/benefit related reason and to reach a reasonable decision
(Beauchamp and Childress 2009, p. 115).
It should be clear at this point that heteronomy (and autonomy) are only the
extremes in a spectrum of personal agency: it is impossible to be fully autono-
mous, as there will always be a range of biopsychosocial influences to restrain
the subjective competence to act. (On the other hand, full heteronomy is possible
in some situations, e.g., when a person is fully cut off from interaction with the
environment.)
In game studies, the idea of autonomy is often positioned synonymously to
player agency. For example, in his analysis of BioShock (2K Boston 2007) and
Grand Theft Auto IV (Rockstar North 2008), Miguel Sicart focuses on the inter-
action between system and player, therefore on the autonomy of the player in
the context of the game (2012, pp. 117 ff.). A self-reflective player is obliga-
tory to hermeneutically develop a subjective moral culture, or, more precisely,
ludic phronesis by active involvement in a game (Sicart 2009, pp. 112 f.). An
actual choice within the game structure is but one possible form of ethical game
design. By drawing a distinction between open and closed ethical design it beco-
mes apparent that the ethical affordances of a game can entail player choices—in
the case of open ethical game design—or confront moral values of the player by
presenting them with uncomfortable and heteronomous linear experiences in the
case of closed ethical design (Sicart 2009, pp. 212 ff.). While the player sub-
ject might be considered restrained within the confining boundaries of the game’s
rule system, said rule system—by virtue of its operational procedure—enables
meaningful action, i.e., communication within the game.
This structural autonomy of the game system (the ability to set its own rules
against external stimuli) and the heteronomy of the individual within such a sys-
tem force the player subject not only to go by the rules of the game, but also to
adopt the agency the game system allows the player subject to exert. At the same
time, as part of the system, the player paradoxically finds themself in a position
of consensual heteronomy—the restricted capacities to act or interact with the
environment are then an act of autonomy. After all, the concept of play entails
that actions gain their meaning by taking place within certain constraints (Bogost
2010, p. 120).
Comparing the approaches of autonomy in biomedical practice and in digital
games, we can identify the following main differences: Autonomy (of the pati-
ent) in medical practice is a normative ideal and goal, which every participant
of this system is obliged to respect and to work for. In digital games, autonomy
constitutes a descriptive state whose realization is not obligatory. On the con-
trary: Experiences of heteronomy can add a special value for the player. While
heteronomy in the interaction with a game system is an accepted or even valued
possibility, in medicine it is an indesirable state.
Mass media, according to Niklas Luhmann, form the memory of society (2000,
p. 12). They convey what Luhmann calls scripts and schemes, which, in a very
general meaning, describe the communication of procedures and complex related
chains of actions and events (scripts) as well as complexity-reducing interpretive
patterns of reality (schemes) (Luhmann 2000, pp. 108 ff.). With games being
procedural and interactive media, the player as the focus and point of action,
and with (personal) autonomy being a central pillar in our self-perception (in any
systemic context), it comes as no surprise that especially scripts and schemes
of physical and mental health have found their way into digital games. In both
cases, autonomy and the competence and capacity to act on our own will can
depend strongly on the physical and the mental competence and functionality of
the individual themself as the point of action between subject and world (Neitzel
2013). The concepts of disease, illness, and sickness apply here as well.
3 Disease/Illness/Sickness
Since the 1960s/70 s, considerations of autonomy have entered the medical dis-
course, and the concept of illness has shifted accordingly. While a consensually
agreed upon definition is lacking and by no means required for the analysis pre-
sented here, it is of interest to reflect upon three different dimensions of the term
that reveal themselves not only upon theoretical contemplation, but also in daily
utterances: (1) disease, (2) illness, and (3) sickness.1
(1) Disease commonly refers to ontologically defined malfunctions of the body
and/or mind. It is beyond the scope of this article to consider how such functi-
ons may be determined, but the idea is essentially that a malfunction can be
empirically observed employing means of diagnosis. An example for a somatic
malfunction might be a reduced cellular response to insulin (diabetes mellitus
type 2) or, in the case of mental illnesses, anhedonia2 (depression). Diseases
are then categorized according to causes and symptoms, i.e., in a nosologi-
cal classification.3 At the level of disease, a purely biomedical rationality is at
work, basically observing the human body as a complex machine4 whose mainte-
nance lies, according to contemporary ideas of neoliberalism, in the responsibility
of the autonomous subject. There can thus be a discrepancy between having
a disease and feeling ill (Franke 2012, p. 25; Warkus 2018). (2) Illness then
refers to the subjective experience of people, specifically how they experience
an affliction. The manifold questions arising from this distinction—leading from
Cartesian dualism to pragmatic problems of detaining mentally ill people, i.e., the
loss of autonomy—cannot be addressed in detail in this paper. Notwithstanding,
regardless of whether consciousness is an epiphenomenon of neural operations
in the brain, it exists all the same and cannot be ignored in medical conside-
rations (Couser 2015, p. 103). The dimension of (3) sickness ties in social and
institutional implications, for example in case of the sick note, which excuses
1 For a brief overview of the presented distinction as well as potential consequences of

defining mental illness, accordingly, see Heinz (2015).
2 Anhedonia refers to the incapability to experience joy. Particularly the spectrum of endo-
gen psychoses poses a problem to the distinction between disease and illness as the
intricate neurobiological patterns of experiencing joy complicate psychiatric inquiry. Com-
monly, psychiatric professionals would instead rely on patients’ accounts, which blurs the
lines between disease and illness. This is, however, not necessarily a weakness of the
distinction, as in actual application, all three dimensions are inextricably linked anyway.
3 Specific nosological classifications are named below. It is noteworthy that such classifi-
cations are subject to historical and cultural change, and that they are under the suspicion
of representing economic interests of the health care industry, thus being part of medica-
lization (Franke 2012, p. 84). For one of the most extensive inquiries into classifications
of mental illnesses, see Foucault (1961/2015, pp. 188 ff.) and, more recently, Sartorius
(2011).
4 Christopher Boorse (1975) ponders such an understanding whilst simultaneously offe-
ring an understanding of disease and illness that distinguishes between biomedical facts
(disease) and normative judgements (illness). Boorse’s distinction serves as a foundation
for the presented concept.
patients from otherwise binding obligations without facing direct sanctions. The
sick note is thus an institutional acknowledgement of the person’s heteronomy
regarding their fulfillment of a particular role. Looking at sickness further enables
an understanding of stigmata and extended consequences of disease and/or illness
(Franke 2012, p. 62). Tying in all three of the aforementioned dimensions, and
eventually dissolving them, leads to a systemic perspective as manifested in the
biopsychosocial model of illness (Egger 2015).
It can be argued that the concept of disease as an empirically observable
entity is predominant in western societies. It is an external gaze on disease in
which, as a result of processes of medicalization (Görgen 2020), medical experts
communicate definitions of diseases.5 Disease requires two possible modes of
legitimization: One is the public approval of a disease as being existent, i.e., via
its inclusion in official classifications like the International Statistical Classifica-
tion of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD) or, for psychiatric disorders,
the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). Another mode
of legitimization is making a disease observable (in best case: visible) through
research, i.e., by providing neurological or genetic causes and pathological effects
of a disease and by integrating these findings into a visual language (Martin and
Fangerau 2019). Both modes could be interpreted as a frame building process in
which a disease is given meaning through the creation of semiotic and semantic
frames from a legitimate source, i.e., the medical field. The official recognition of
a disease predetermines to an extent subjective and sociocultural behaviors and
actions connected to the disease: Our knowledge of a disease influences how we
deal with it.
This simple, but also powerful rule—a disease having to be observable to
be recognized—also applies to digital games. A deficit in empirical observabi-
lity is then compensated by various modes of representation and implementation
in game mechanics, gameplay, and the game world. These modes of ludonarra-
tive concretization, the quantification of disease, the actional, spatial, and somatic
externalization of disease,6 are connected to ideas of player agency as signifiers
of subjective and sociocultural reflections on medicalization and on the status of
5 It
is important to mention that, while this medical hegemony in general enforces a certain
amount of heteronomy in sick people, Beauchamp and Childress’ account on autonomy
empowered subjective (illness) and sociocultural (sickness) perspectives. They are deeply
conjunct with the medicalized perspective of the respective disease.
6 We describe these types of constructing mental illnesses in digital games in Görgen and
Simond (2020).
those affected in society. In the following, we will investigate the connection bet-
ween the types of constructing disease, illness, and sickness on the one hand and
the concepts of autonomy and heteronomy on the other.
4 Analysis: Outlast
Outlast, as a survival horror game, draws heavily on tropes of the horror asy-
lum that developed in the horror genre in the 1940s but gained popularity in
the last twenty years (Murphy 2016). Initially, Outlast introduces the protagonist
Miles Upshur, who follows the call of an unknown whistleblower claiming that
inhumane experiments are being performed at Mount Massive Asylum. Equip-
ped solely with a camera, Miles ventures through seemingly endless corridors as
he finds himself confronted with rogue inmates who, after violently disposing of
guards and staff members, chase the defenseless journalist. Gradually, the mys-
tery of Mount Massive Asylum is unraveled: The mad Nazi scientist7 Dr. Gustav
Wernicke indeed conducts inhumane experiments on inmates under the codename
Project Walrider. As Miles eventually attempts to stop an ongoing procedure, he
himself falls victim to the experiments’ creation. The ending cuts away at the
decisive moment leaving Miles’ fate up to the player’s imagination.8
In the interest of inspecting Outlast with regard to the distinction between
autonomy and heteronomy, the protagonist may very well serve as the starting
point of analysis. Following the convention of survival horror games, Miles is a
vulnerable protagonist. In opposition to most video game power fantasies, Miles
lacks physical strength. Neither is he able to brute-force his way through Mount
Massive Asylum, nor does he make use of any weapons. Direct contact with an
opponent for the most part leads to an instant fail state. His physical manifestation
is further denied by the first person perspective from which the game is played.
Except for his extremities and seldom glances upon his body, the player’s point of
view resides within the avatar. The limitation of physical strength is then explicitly
emphasized once Miles encounters rogue inmates of the asylum.
One of the most iconic characters of Outlast is Chris Walker, who shall serve
as an example here. At first glance (see Fig. 1), it becomes clear that his body
is severely deformed; his teeth are revealed, scars cover his face, and his torn
7 Foran analysis of the mad scientist in digital games, see Pfister (2017).
8 The downloadable content Whistleblower expands upon the narrative but does not bring
substantive changes to the construction of mental illness in Outlast and is thus excluded
from this analysis.
Fig. 1 Chris Walker in Outlast. Upon their first encounter, Chris Walker serves as a jump
scare, suddenly lifting Miles up. [Screenshot by authors]
clothes display a bulky physique. Before his tragic back-story is revealed, he is

also being referred to as “Big Fucking Guy”, thus depriving him of a personal
name and instead identifying him by his physical attributes. He further lacks any
capability of reason and instead displays severely aggressive behavior. In the way
Chris Walker roams the asylum, seeks out his prey and then chases it relentlessly,
his heteronomy becomes evident. Chris Walker is indeed, once inspected through
the lens of Helmuth Plessner’s philosophical anthropology, centrally positioned.9
As he lacks the capability of distancing himself from his actions, he lacks human
reasoning. In accordance with his behavior, Chris Walker appears as an animal
9 Helmuth Plessner (1970, pp. 34 ff.) develops his idea of eccentric positionality based
on the assumption that animals are centrally positioned as they are bound within their
self . It is then a specific aspect of the human condition to be eccentrally positioned, as
humans are generally able to distance themselves from their selves. Whilst enabling basic
functions of reason, this eccentric position also requires humans to persistently restore a
balance which can never be maintained.
trapped in a disfigured human body, thus earning him the attribute of being a
monster.10
Video games, as described above, tend to somatically externalize the otherwise
elusive attribute of madness. By virtue of this somatic externalization, a link is
drawn between the heteronomy of the (former) person and their monstrous appea-
rance. The conflict might become evident already: Miles Upshur as a defenseless
protagonist is threatened by a physically overwhelming inmate of the psychiatric
institution. The means by which the player is to solve this conflict are twofold:
First, Miles has a decisive advantage over the rogue inmates—his autonomy.
Not only is he able to outrun his pursuers by leaping over obstacles and slamming
doors shut, but his most effective strategy is hiding. Peeking out under hospital
beds or from within closets while a grunting inmate is searching the room makes
for a focal point of tension in Outlast. Thus, the autonomous player subject is
confronted with objectified heteronomous inmates.
Secondly, the player must make use of Miles’ camcorder. While the camcor-
der’s night vision function allows Miles to see in the dark and quite literally shed
light upon the secrets of the institution, the player must manage the ever-depleting
battery level of the device cautiously. The necessity to make use of technology
emphasizes Miles’/the player’s capability to apply reason. The camcorder is as
much an iconic esthetic feature of Outlast, esthetically resembling the hyperme-
diation11 of found footage films, as it emphasizes a crucial difference between the
autonomous player subject and the heteronomous inmates.
There is much more to consider regarding the way Outlast constructs mental
illness. Most notably, the horror asylum clearly references media constructions
of psychiatric institutions prior to the social-psychiatric reform in the 1960s, and
the inmates themselves are depicted as victims of the biomedical rationality of a
mad Nazi scientist. The resulting conflict draws heavily on criticism posed by the
anti-psychiatric movement. Outlast’s narrative objectifies the mentally ill whilst
simultaneously pointing towards a history of institutional abuse and mistreatment.
As a preliminary conclusion, one can say that Outlast constructs a confronta-
tion between madness and reason in a way that the heteronomy of mental illness
poses an existential threat to the autonomous protagonist/player. If there is any
chance to overcome this threat and solve the conflict in favor of the autonomous
10 The Monster “becomes a scandal in the order of the living beings” (Brittnacher 1994,
p. 184, translation by the authors), a symptom of an epistemic crisis of reality (Biebert
and Schetsche 2016, p. 99).
11 In contrast to immediacy‚ hypermediacy refers to an esthetic form by virtue of which
the medium, which would otherwise aim for transparency, becomes itself a part of the
text. For an elaborate exploration, see Bolter and Grusin (2003).
protagonist, it is not by virtue of physical strength, but by well-tempered rea-

son. Considering the ultimate villain Dr. Wernicke, madness is not within itself
a threat, but a tool. The true conflict Outlast is geared towards is one between
reason as autonomy and its delimitation in the pursuit of knowledge and power
by all means.
5 Analysis: Depression Quest
As an autopathographic12 text adventure created in the widespread Twine

engine,13 Depression Quest tells the story of a university graduate in their mid-
twenties who finds themself14 in an increasingly unavoidable confrontation with
their own mental instability. Stuck within a dreary daytime job, a more or less
waning relationship, a detached family and social circle, the narrative leaves
some room for player choice. These choices come with a twist, however: As
the protagonist suffers from depression, some appealing options are displayed but
unavailable. Depression Quest does not offer a conclusive ending but a message
by the developers pointing out that depression is an ongoing struggle.
Evidently, Depression Quest employs a perspective of subjectification. The
thoughts and feelings of the protagonist are mostly communicated via detailed
descriptions. While the interface is typically minimalistic for a text adventure,
three blocks of text on the lower part of the screen serve as indicators of the
protagonist’s situation. They address (1) the symptoms the protagonist displays,
(2) the state of ongoing psychotherapy, and (3) the effects of medical therapy (see
Fig. 2).
12 Pathography refers to a narrative focusing on one’s illness. While pathographies are most
commonly a key feature of medical records maintained by medical experts, romanticism

and the modern focus on the individual have brought forth manifold pathographies that
focus less on the biomedical dimension of disease and more on the contextually embedded
narratives of individuals, namely illness and sickness. Autopathography then refers to a
pathography narrated from the perspective of the affected person (see also Tembeck (2017)
and Couser (2016)).
13 The Twine engine is a free-to-use framework specifically designed with the goal of
rendering the development of text-based games accessible.

14 Depression Quest abstains from clearly indicating some of the protagonist’s features,
such as their gender or their occupation. By employing such gaps, Depression Quest
furthers the process of subjectification, reducing the barrier to empathize with the situation
the protagonist finds themself in.
Fig. 2 As the protagonist in Depression Quest suffers from depression the two appealing
options of enjoying the evening with their partner are not available yet visible. [Screenshot
by authors]
Esthetically accompanied by melancholic piano music and symbolic images at

the top of the screen, the conflict between autonomy and heteronomy is simul-
taneously addressed in the narrative as well as in ludic interactions. Essentially,
Depression Quest is a choice-based game, putting the player into the position
of choosing what to say or how to act in certain situations. These might entail
questions such as whether to adopt a cat, whether to attend a social gathering,
whether to open up about one’s condition, or whether to attend therapy sessi-
ons. Depression Quest builds upon the established promise of player autonomy
in decision-based games and proceeds to subvert it persistently.
It does so ostensively by displaying options a healthy individual might choose,
but marking them red and crossing them out. Depression Quest thus constructs
mental illness by focusing on actional externalization, meaning that mental illness
is expressed in the way the player engages with the rule system. For example,
the protagonist might be invited to a birthday party by their significant other.
As simply brushing off the oppressive negativity appears impossible, the option
of satisfying the partner’s wishes becomes strenuous, whilst disappointing said
partner might lead further into a downward spiral of self-hatred and a sense of ina-
dequacy. The fact that the unavailable options are still clearly displayed deserves
particular attention. By displaying said answers, Depression Quest emphasizes the
contrast between the range of options available to healthy individuals and those of
people suffering from depression. On a ludic level, heteronomy thus becomes the
defining feature of virtual depression as, relative to a healthy person, the options
for interactions are limited.
By employing means of subjectification and actional externalization, Depres-
sion Quest primarily focuses on illness and sickness. The subjective perception of
the protagonist’s symptoms is elaborated upon in extensive descriptions. In par-
ticular, sickness comes into play as the social and institutional consequences of
depression are highlighted, for example by explicitly referring to fears of stigma-
tization, social exclusion, and inadequacy—also in the context of a professional
capacity. While medical therapy is certainly addressed, Depression Quest does
not so much focus on how it works precisely, but rather on how the protagonist
is reluctant to seek professional help and remains skeptical towards medication.
Common concerns of people suffering from mental illnesses are articulated and
processed within the limitations of the game’s narrative and rule system. As
such, Depression Quest locates the conflict between autonomy and heteronomy
not within a biomedical epistemology, but within the self of the protagonist.
Nevertheless, a persistent heteronomy is the driving force of the plot.
6 Analysis: Red Dead Redemption 2
Red Dead Redemption 2 (RDR2) is an open-world action adventure situated in a

Western setting in the year 1899. Played from a third-person perspective, outlaw
and player character Arthur Morgan carries out various crimes and adventures,
during which he unknowingly becomes infected with pulmonary tuberculosis.
This infection becomes the central narrative vehicle of the game and is integrated
into both the narrative and the game mechanics.
Tuberculosis, known under this name since 1839 and identified as a bacterial
infection by Robert Koch in 1882, is a disease that was the third most frequent
cause of death especially in rural areas and within poorer US populations in
1900—until the development of vaccines in 1921 (Murray 2004). Characteristic
symptoms are fever, fatigue, night sweats, weight loss; later cough with bloody
sputum, and shortness of breath. Due to the physical decay, the disease has long
been referred to as “consumption”.
Through the infection with tuberculosis, RDR2 infiltrates classic game con-
cepts of successive self-improvement: While Arthur is at the peak of his physical
capacity at the beginning of the game, the disease slowly robs him of his phy-
sical integrity and autonomy. Arthur’s health condition deteriorates visually. The
hypermasculine stereotype that Arthur first embodies becomes marked by palen-
ess, bloodshot eyes, a sweaty forehead, cracked lips, and increasingly intense
cough attacks. In addition, inserted cut-scenes show Arthur collapsing with dis-
torted and limited cognition and in moments of total loss of autonomy over his
body.
RDR2 follows a tradition of perceiving consumption as a “romantic illness”,
according to which the patient has been given increased sensitivity and, through
the slow decay of the body, a good death in the sense that tuberculosis allows
enough time for self-reflection and arrangements for one’s own death (Bourdelais
2006; Lawlor 2006). Arthur seeks to atone for the self-inflicted injustices of his
past by helping people in need through deeds and donations. It could be argued
that Arthur’s physical heteronomy is opposed to an increasing moral autonomy
and moral self-empowerment—the arrest of his body is countered by a liberation
from the (sub-)cultural and microsocial constraints of his gang and simultaneously
oriented towards a “modern” canon of values.
The invasiveness of the disease and the medical knowledge of it are also
implemented in the game mechanics. Two important variables in quantifying the
physical state of the player character are health and stamina, which appear in the
user interface as rechargeable cores. On the one hand, these characteristics are
successively improved over the course of the game. In addition to effects caused
by hunger or violence, the tuberculosis has a negative effect as well: The time
the cores need to self-charge successively increases after the diagnosis (Nanjappa
2018), and Arthur is weaker and more easily exhausted.
Tuberculosis is staged here as an inward delimitation of physiological func-
tionality of the body, which gradually sabotages the player’s ability to act and
thus influences the development of the game narrative and gameplay. It thus pro-
motes a game progression that is antithetical to conventional models of ludic
self-optimization. In this sense, one can speak here of a “sickness as functional
disorder” (Görgen 2017): The integration of sickness in the form of a target-
oriented artificial/programmed disorder serves on the one hand the development
of a compelling story, on the other hand the aggravation of the game flow. The
mechanical restriction of personal autonomy allows Arthur and the player to
reflect on the abuse of this former autonomy. At the same time, one can say
that the more heteronomous Arthur acts, the more autonomous the game system
becomes, as the player’s influence is increasingly subject to game variables.
7 Discussion
What do Miles Upshur, Arthur Morgan and the unnamed Protagonist in Depres-
sion Quest have in common? In all cases, their personal autonomy is being defined
by an autonomous game system that is semantically connected in varying degrees
to issues of disease, illness and sickness.
In Outlast, sickness in the narrative installs a system in which rationality is
abandoned and the ordered heteronomy of psychiatry as a site of healing is rever-
sed into a seemingly chaotic heteronomy (with the mad antagonists at its center).
The player as a rational and autonomous subject has to protect their physical and
psychological integrity and autonomy through survival and the mere escape from
the hostile environment. Also the game mechanics convey this: Finding a way
through the maze of the asylum, using one’s personal autonomy and rationality
within a restricted space of a systemic operationalization of mad inhabitants to
solve the puzzles produces an idea of, if not empowerment, at least a temporary
subjective superiority in relation to the environment.
It is important to note here, that although the narrative representation shows
this asylum with regard to the referential reality of psychiatric institutions as a
dysfunctional place, in terms of the game system it develops a highly functional
propriological15 topography of threat to the player-subject. It is an autonomous
system, which could basically function without input, with the inmates fulfilling
their recursive and repetitive tasks. This system is masked with a semantic façade
of the deviant, yet heteronomous other and builds up a tension between the auto-
nomous player and their environment. The ending indicates, however, that it is not
possible to escape an overwhelming environmental power structure, as Miles Ups-
hur becomes the Walrider—a Frankensteinian nanorobot—and is thus integrated
into the system.
Outlast externalizes madness and insanity from their carriers into the spatial
environment and onto their outer appearance. This objectifying depiction refers to
sociocultural tropes of madness as deviant behavior, as a threat to the autonomy
of society and their individuals, and can consequently be qualified as sickness.
Marking an institution of healing and of people who need treatment as deviant,
and coupling sickness with threat proves to be problematic, because it perpetua-
tes stigmata and the marginalization of vulnerable groups, even to the point of
questioning the legitimization of the psychiatric institution per se.
Depression Quest on the other hand is an autopathographic game that attempts
to give an impression of what depression feels like. By doing so, it draws heavily
15 in the sense of an inner, restricted logic.

from depression as a personal and social experience, and is hence primarily con-
cerned with illness and sickness. This subjective experience is deeply interwoven
into the game mechanics. For instance, it repeatedly presents a broad range of
choices for different situations. This promise of autonomy is broken, however.
The system (which in itself represents and reiterates the mechanics of depression
and is in itself autonomous) limits the options for the player. Through this actional
externalization of illness via a restriction of agency, the game allows an empathic
reflection space for the player in which the feeling of heteronomy and the help-
lessness in this situation, and not a successful traversing, become the central point
of ludic investigation for the player: Illness and heteronomy, again, are linked, but
they aim not at an empowerment of the player subject, but more on its reflective
capacity. Ideally this experience is not only restricted to the realm of the game
system, but can also be adopted for a real-life understanding of depression.
In RDR2, the differences between heteronomy and autonomy are not binary
(as in the other games), but situated in a continuum. This continuum represents
Arthur’s infection as a quantified disease but also provides a subjective internal
perspective on how illness affects Arthur’s agency in terms of action as well as
introspection. Although his tuberculosis also implies an increasing heteronomy,
the process is designed in a way that the development of the story is never in
danger. The story stops at the climax of Arthur’s heteronomy/tuberculosis in a
state of imminent death where he can only watch how the events develop around
him. Like in Depression Quest, the system is designed to limit the player in their
agency through game mechanics, and like in Outlast, the player’s task is to sur-
vive as long as possible in an increasingly hostile environment with increasingly
limited agency. At the same time, the narrative builds up a counterweight, as
Arthur succeeds to gain a moral autonomy, which, depending on his previous
moral lifestyle, allows him to die in peace.
In all three case studies, heteronomy as a central experience of
disease/illness/sickness can be conveyed only because the respective agency of
the player subject is determined through an environmental system that represents
the disease/illness/sickness. This system in each case is autonomous and instal-
led as a counterweight that enables player autonomy as much as it restricts it in
order to construct an idea of the respective afflictions. It is precisely this angle
of analysis that promises to provide valuable insight into how somatic as well as
mental illnesses are constructed within digital games—first and foremost because
the literal play of autonomy and heteronomy enables a meaningful consideration
of ludic procedurality. As this is merely a preliminary attempt at understanding
constructions of illnesses in digital games from the perspective of biomedical
ethics, much work remains to be done. An approach of mid-level principle ethics
might, according to the analytical conclusions drawn, be equally promising for

studying games and for the field of game development. On the technical side of
the ethical analysis of digital games, as a mid-level principle, autonomy proves
to be a fruitful analytical category. At the same time, this presupposes our accep-
tance of autonomy not as a normative goal, but a descriptive state, which in itself
might offer space for the ethical reflection of autonomy without any obligation
to do so. Nevertheless, the principle of autonomy provides an important view
on the ethics of digital games. Due to the media logic that is inherent to digital
games, bioethical principles like beneficence and maleficence might not be appli-
cable in the context of games. At the same time, it would be extremely valuable
to develop a system of ethical principles for digital games. Such an ethics could
include, for example, autonomy, the proportionality of content and form, justice,
fairness or others in order to give a better orientation on the state of ethical game
design not only for professionals from the field of game studies, but also for game
developers.
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Digitale Kultur und Kommunikation

Maike Groen · Nina Kiel

Games and Ethics

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/10740

Games and Ethics

Angela Tillmann André Weßel

ISSN 2512-0719 ISSN 2512-0727 (electronic)

© Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2020

Responsible Editor: Stefanie Laux

Ethical Questions in Digital Game Cultures—A Multi-Perspective

Societal and Political Discourses

Challenges in Digital Spaces

Just 1e to Unlock This Guide! How and Why to Study

Nikola Biller-Andorno Universität Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland

Felix Reer Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Münster, Germany

Maike Groen, Nina Kiel, Angela Tillmann, and André Weßel

© Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2020 1

1 ‘Right’ and ‘Wrong’ in the Digital Game Culture

2 Mediatization—Media Competence—Media Ethics

3 The ‘Circuit of Culture’ as a Framework for Discussions

In order to be able to discuss the question of media ethics comprehensively at

1 ‘Excellence’refers to the highlighting of one’s own special abilities in relation to others.

4 Structure of This Volume

Baacke, D. (1996). Medienkompetenz – Begrifflichkeit und sozialer Wandel. In A. von

der der Medienbildung (20, pp. 59–80). doi: https://doi.org/10.21240/mpaed/20/2011.

Videogames • Homo ludens • Homo poieticus

© Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2020 13

2 Play and Re-Ontologization

If we want to understand the concept of homo ludens, we need to start from

of which joins a metaphor to a bit of mathematics that can be realized on a

3 Ethics and Play Theory

of play. The rise of nationalist totalitarianism is one of the looming presences in

4 Homo Ludens and the Ethics of Re-Ontologization

Even though Huizinga considered play to be beyond the domain of morality, I

ethical constructivism in human-computational networks. From an IE perspec-

the separate-but-connected relationship of play-worlds with the worlds in which

fun, inclusion, … Similarly, Vallor’s (2016) cybervalues could be used to relate

Adorno, T. W., & Horkheimer, M. (2010). The Dialectic of Enlightenment. London/New

Julian Lamers and Alexander Filipović

J. Lamers (B) · A. Filipović

© Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2020 29

2 Ethics of Digital Games: An Entertainment-Ethical

We understand digital gaming as a leisure activity that is voluntary and that is

3 Considering Problems and Moral Issues of Digital

3.1 Gaming and Addiction—A Risk of Mental Disorder?

Association included “Internet Gaming Disorder” in its Diagnostic and Statistical

3.2 In-Game Shops and User Mining

Digital games have enormous economic potential—in Germany, sales of games

2 See also: https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/internet-gaming.

3.3 Sexism, Discrimination and Worldviews

as many simulations focus one-sidedly on economic success (cf. Nagenborg 2006,

3.4 In-Game Violence and Aggressive Behaviour

4 Considering Positive Effects of Gaming

4.1 Ethical Reflection Through Gaming—the Ludic

Entertainment, at least in some forms, offers its recipients the opportunity to

constraints of everyday life. However, as in the case of other entertainment media

4.2 Learning by Playing

Bosman, F. G. (2019). There Is No Solution! “Wicked Problems” in Digital Games. Games

CHI PLAY ‘19: The Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play,

Horkheimer, M., & Adorno, T. W. (1995). Dialektik der Aufklärung: Philosophische

Robin Janzik, Lars-Ole Wehden, Felix Reer,

R. Janzik (B) · L.-O. Wehden · F. Reer · T. Quandt

© Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2020 47