Today’s Plan:
- Test PollEverywhere
- Miguel Sicart
Test Poll Everywhere
Okay, let’s see how this goes: can you access PollEv.com/marccsantos762?
Miguel Sicart’s Work on Ethical Gaming
When I teach Sicart in ENG 225, I focus on three dimensions of his work, three areas/components he identifies as central to developing ethical game play:
- Player Complicity
- Wicked Problems
- Reflection
I have mentioned these components several times throughout the course–particularly the notion of complicity–but today I want to present them a bit more formally and think about how we can (to flip a Bogost term) “proceduralize” or “operationalize” them. What are these concepts and how do we turn them into a heuristic? That is, how do we turn them into questions we can ask of developers, ourselves, game narrative, and game mechanics? What should developers do if they want to develop ethical games? What responsibilities fall on players?
For homework, you read Sicart’s 2013 article on “Moral Dilemmas in Computer Games.” The questions in the “quiz” are meant as prompts to propel today’s exercise. Let’s begin there.
- Question #1: What *design* features encourage or discourage ethical gameplay? [Follow-up for class on Wednesday: What can developers do to intensify ethical gameplay?]
- Question #2: What is required from players for gameplay to be ethical?
- Question #3: What are wicked problems? What are their distinguishing characteristics? What makes for a “good” (from Sicart’s perspective, perhaps “intense” would be a better term) wicked problem [Follow up: what is a tame problem]?
- Question #4: What is Sicart’s critique of contemporary game design? What problem does he see with a lot of games that claim to be using Meier’s theory of player agency and decisions? (see 33-34).
- Question #5If designers include more authentic wicked problems in their games, then what complaints can they anticipate receiving from players? (see 36-37).
One passage of importance: bottom of 31.
In his book, Beyond Choices, Sicart offers a useful expansion on wicked problems. Let’s take a look.
