Ethics and Video Games Podcast

We explore controversial ethical issues about video games (e.g. what should be censored), in video games (e.g. what counts as cheating), and in video game design (e.g. what works to make a game morally interesting). Your hosts are Shlomo Sher, Ph.D. (Philosophy Professor and Video Game Ethicist) and Andy Ashcraft (Veteran Video Game Designer and Professor).

Episode 76 – Older Players in Video Games(with Bob De Schutter) 09/05/2023

Episode 75 – Fighting Extremism in Games (with Rachel Kowert) 08/22/2023

Episode 75 – Fighting Extremism in Games (with Rachel Kowert) Games are particularly fertile grounds for extremist recruitment. Why is that? What’s special about games and gaming culture that might make them attractive spaces for recruitment? How does extremist recruitment work in games? What is being done about it right now? And what can be done to help prevent the spread of extremism through games? --------------------------------------------------------------- is a research psychologist and the Research Director of Take This. She is a world-renowned researcher on the uses and effects of digital games, including their impact on physical, social, and psychological well-being. An award-winning author, she’s published a variety of books and scientific articles relating to the psychology of games and, more recently, the relationship between games and mental health specifically. Her YouTube channel serves to bridge the gap between moral panic and scientific knowledge on a variety of psychology and game-related topics. In 2021, Dr. Kowert was chosen as a member of The Game Awards Future Class, representing the best and brightest of the future of video games. Dr. Kowert has been featured in various media outlets, including NPR, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, Wired, and video game publications such as Kotaku and Polygon. ------------------------------------------------------------ JOIN THE ETHICS AND VIDEO GAMES COMMUNITY: - Follow/like/share us on , , and - Explore our website and check out our Video Games Ethics Resources Center: - If you're game to lend us your financial support, we'd love to have it and can definitely use it! You can do that here: - Give us a review whereever you listen to podcasts - If you've got an idea or an ethical issue involving video games that you think would make for a good podcast, please let us know! Contact us at ethicsandvideogames.com or email us at . We’d love to hear from you! /episode/index/show/ethicsandvideogames/id/27824868

Episode 74 – When Games simulate Real World Cultures For Profit (With Andrei Zanescu) 08/01/2023

Episode 73 – How Gaming treats the Global South (with Aditya Deshbandhu) 07/18/2023

Episode 72 – Battle Passes (with Daniel Joseph) 07/04/2023

Episode 71 – Women in Esports (with Theresa Lee, Joseph Sarnoski, and Kelly Williams) 06/20/2023

Episode 70 – Ethical Advertising in Games (with Celia Pontin) 06/06/2023

Episode 69 – When Video Games Get Kinky (with Kate Gray) 05/23/2023

Episode 68 – Ethical Issues With Adult Games (With Fae Daunt) 05/09/2023

Episode 67 - Player sexuality and consent (With Fae Daunt + Zhia Zariko) 04/25/2023

Episode 67 - Player sexuality and consent (With Fae Daunt + Zhia Zariko) What should we think about when we bring sex and intimacy into video games? In this episode, we explore issues of player sexuality, in-game intimacy, representations of consent, and how video games can take chances and explore sexuality responsibly. --------------------------- Our guest for this episode are: Zhia Zariko is a media and communication expat into games design and development. Originally studying written communication, she did an elective in games, aesthetics and culture and never looked back. She now holds a Masters on Let's Play videos from RMIT, Australia, and has been teaching games design and theory for 5 years. She is currently in pre-production for a narrative-driven game on romance, intimacy, and vulnerability in a dark fantasy universe." Fae Daunt is an Australian-born, English-temporarily-raised, Australian-returned academic, researcher, and developer. Turning their experience in web into an endless curiosity for development and design, they have married their cultural experiences and academic knowledge into a sort of cosmic horror of curiosity. Fae wishes to further discussions of inclusivity, safe exploration, and understanding in games. They’re currently developing an experimental mobile game that progresses in real-world time" --------------------------- JOIN THE ETHICS AND VIDEO GAMES COMMUNITY: - Follow/like/share us on , , and - Explore our website and check out our Video Games Ethics Resources Center: - If you're game to lend us your financial support, we'd love to have it and can definitely use it! You can do that here: - Give us a review whereever you listen to podcasts - If you've got an idea or an ethical issue involving video games that you think would make for a good podcast, please let us know! Contact us at ethicsandvideogames.com or email us at . We’d love to hear from you! Hosted by Shlomo Sher, Ph.D. and Andy Ashcraft Production by Carmen Elena Mitchell Music and graphics by Daniel Sher /episode/index/show/ethicsandvideogames/id/26643501

Episode 66 – Video Game Design Lessons from Moral Psychology (with Paul Formosa and Malcolm Ryan) 04/11/2023

Episode 66 – Video Game Design Lessons from Moral Psychology (with Paul Formosa and Malcolm Ryan) How do players morally engage with games? What can user experience research and moral psychology tell us about how players experience and think about ethical decisions in games? We chat with philosopher Paul Formosa and Game Designer Malcolm Ryan about their collaborative ongoing research exploring these questions. --------------------------- Our guest for this episode are: Paul Formosa is a Professor of Philosophy, Head of the Department of Philosophy, and Co-Director of the Centre for Agency, Values and Ethics at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. Paul has published widely on topics in moral and political philosophy, with a recent focus on the ethical issues raised by new technologies such as video games and AI. He also collaborates regularly with colleagues from a range of different disciplines outside of philosophy, one of whom is our other guest today, Malcolm Ryan! Malcolm Ryan is Course Director of the Game Design and Development program in the School of Computing at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. Malcolm has published in game design, virtual reality and artificial intelligence. His current research focuses on how players make ethical decisions in video games, in collaboration with colleagues from philosophy, psychology and creative writing. He blogs about video game ethics research at MoralityPlay.org. Their research together (which is what we’ll be talking about today) is founded in moral psychology and user experience (UX) research. They’re interested in how players engage morally with games, how they exercise their ethical thinking to make decisions in games and how they experience these kinds of decisions. The hope is that this research will lead to richer, more engaging ethical content in games both for entertainment and education. --------------------------- JOIN THE ETHICS AND VIDEO GAMES COMMUNITY: - Follow/like/share us on , , and - Explore our website and check out our Video Games Ethics Resources Center: - If you're game to lend us your financial support, we'd love to have it and can definitely use it! You can do that here: - Give us a review whereever you listen to podcasts - If you've got an idea or an ethical issue involving video games that you think would make for a good podcast, please let us know! Contact us at ethicsandvideogames.com or email us at . We’d love to hear from you! Hosted by Shlomo Sher, Ph.D. and Andy Ashcraft Production by Carmen Elena Mitchell Music and graphics by Daniel Sher /episode/index/show/ethicsandvideogames/id/26341287

Episode 65 - Problems with Games and History (with Bram De Ridder) 03/27/2023

Episode 64 – Monster Ethics (with Dom Ford) 03/14/2023

Episode 63 - The challenges of making a game about domestic violence against children (with Mathew Staunton) 02/28/2023

Episode 62 - The challenges of using an AI to reduce toxicity in games (with Camille Guillemot) 02/14/2023

Episode 61 - The Ethics of Making Money on Twitch or YouTube (with Mark Johnson) 01/31/2023

Episode 60 – Which monetization tactics are truly predatory? (with Elena Petrovskaya) 01/05/2023

Episode 60 – Which monetization tactics are truly predatory? (with Elena Petrovskaya) This is part 2 of our first two-part exploration of predatory monetization. Our guest, Elena Petrovskaya has been researching player complaints about monetization and has categorized them into 35 different types of potentially predatory monetization techniques – from pay or wait to the use of battle passes to aggressive advertising and dark interface design patterns. In part 1 we went over all of them. If you haven’t listened to it yet, I highly recommend going back and checking it out. This time, we evaluate. We ask what is supposed to be predatory in these techniques, which ones we think are not actually problematic, which ones we think are particularly problematic, and what, if anything, should be done about them in terms of regulation. --------------------------- Our guest for this episode is Elena Petrovskaya, a PhD researcher at the Centre for Intelligent Games and Game Intelligence in the UK. She specialises in predatory monetisation in digital games and its consequences, and is particularly interested in the links of game design to gaming disorder. She uses her background in psychology and human-computer interaction to take a player-centric perspective: developing knowledge bottom-up and working directly with players as the primary stakeholder. Her work spans ethics, wellbeing, and the lived experience of technology and its use. Elena’s work has been published in high-impact venues, she has given invited talks, contributed to written evidence calls by the UK government, and engaged with the public through media outlets such as The Conversation. --------------------------- JOIN THE ETHICS AND VIDEO GAMES COMMUNITY: - Follow/like/share us on , , and - Explore our website and check out our Video Games Ethics Resources Center: - If you're game to lend us your financial support, we'd love to have it and can definitely use it! You can do that here: - Give us a review whereever you listen to podcasts - If you've got an idea or an ethical issue involving video games that you think would make for a good podcast, please let us know! Contact us at ethicsandvideogames.com or email us at . We’d love to hear from you! Hosted by Shlomo Sher, Ph.D. and Andy Ashcraft Production by Carmen Elena Mitchell Music and graphics by Daniel Sher /episode/index/show/ethicsandvideogames/id/25511202

Episode 59 – 35 potentially predatory monetization tactics (with Elena Petrovskaya) 12/14/2022

Episode 59 – 35 potentially predatory monetization tactics (with Elena Petrovskaya) When it comes to monetization in games, what do players see as misleading, unfair, or aggressive? Elena Petrovskaya asked this question to over 1000 players and organized their complaints to create a taxonomy of 35 potentially predatory monetization techniques organized under 8 different domains. There was so much here to talk about, we ended up with our first two-parter episode. So, in this episode (part 1), we go over each of these monetization tactics from unfair matches to how in-game currency can disguise real prices, to the use of aggressive advertising, and much more. Then in our next episode (part 2), we’ll explore whether these tactics are actually immoral and the potential consequences of predatory monetization on the gaming world. --------------------------- Our guest for this episode is Elena Petrovskaya, a PhD researcher at the Centre for Intelligent Games and Game Intelligence in the UK. She specialises in predatory monetisation in digital games and its consequences, and is particularly interested in the links of game design to gaming disorder. She uses her background in psychology and human-computer interaction to take a player-centric perspective: developing knowledge bottom-up and working directly with players as the primary stakeholder. Her work spans ethics, wellbeing, and the lived experience of technology and its use. Elena’s work has been published in high-impact venues, she has given invited talks, contributed to written evidence calls by the UK government, and engaged with the public through media outlets such as The Conversation. --------------------------- JOIN THE ETHICS AND VIDEO GAMES COMMUNITY: - Follow/like/share us on , , and - Explore our website and check out our Video Games Ethics Resources Center: - If you're game to lend us your financial support, we'd love to have it and can definitely use it! You can do that here: - Give us a review whereever you listen to podcasts - If you've got an idea or an ethical issue involving video games that you think would make for a good podcast, please let us know! Contact us at ethicsandvideogames.com or email us at . We’d love to hear from you! Hosted by Shlomo Sher, Ph.D. and Andy Ashcraft Production by Carmen Elena Mitchell Music and graphics by Daniel Sher /episode/index/show/ethicsandvideogames/id/25327038

Episode 58 - Politics Tyranny and Citizenship in Video Games (with James “Pigeon” Fielder) 12/14/2022

Episode 57 - The Ethics of Play to Earn -Part 2 (with Tom Rodgers) 11/07/2022

Episode 57 - The Ethics of Play to Earn (Part 1) 11/07/2022

Episode 56 - Loot Boxes and the Law (with Leon Xiao) 10/29/2022

Episode 55 – The Growing Gamblification of Video Games 11/08/2022

Episode 54 – How the Games and Online Harassment Hotline Can Help (with Jae Lin) 10/25/2022

Episode 53 - How Video games Depict Madness (with Stefan Simond) 10/11/2022

Episode 52 - How Video Games Represent Poverty (with Adam Crowley) 09/27/2022

Episode 50 – Trash Talk in Esports (with Sydney Irwin) 09/13/2022

Episode 51 – The challenge of Creative Collaboration in game development (with Casey O’Donnell) 08/29/2022

Episode 51 – The challenge of Creative Collaboration in game development (with Casey O’Donnell) Game development is often a creative collaboration among people with very different skill sets, passions, and worldviews. What does it mean to treat the people you’re working with in projects like these as a part of a team? What does it mean to respect one another? What can be done when interpersonal conflict inevitably arises? --------------------------- Our guest, Casey O’Donnell, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Media and Information at Michigan State University. His research examines the creative collaborative work of videogame design and development. This research examines the cultural and collaborative dynamics that occur in both professional ""AAA"" organizations and formal and informal ""independent"" game development communities. His research has spanned game development companies from the United States to India. His first book, ""Developer’s Dilemma"" is published by MIT Press. Casey is also an active game developer, releasing ""Osy,"" in 2011, ""Against the Gradient,"" in 2012, ""GLITcH"" in 2013 and ""Sparks of Eternity,"" in 2014.Other games can be found on his website. --------------------------- JOIN THE ETHICS AND VIDEO GAMES COMMUNITY: - Follow/like/share us on , , and - Explore our website and check out our Video Games Ethics Resources Center: - If you're game to lend us your financial support, we'd love to have it and can definitely use it! You can do that here: - Give us a review whereever you listen to podcasts - If you've got an idea or an ethical issue involving video games that you think would make for a good podcast, please let us know! Contact us at ethicsandvideogames.com or email us at . We’d love to hear from you! Hosted by Shlomo Sher, Ph.D. and Andy Ashcraft Production by Carmen Elena Mitchell Music and graphics by Daniel Sher /episode/index/show/ethicsandvideogames/id/24180135

Episode 49 - When AIs Compete in real-Time Military Strategy Games (with David Churchill) 08/16/2022

Episode 48 – Gaming and the Environment (with Paula Escuadra) 08/02/2022

Ethics and Video Games Podcast

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