[Update: The submission deadline has been extended until Sunday April 23, 11:59pm]
[Update: The workshop will run in hybrid mode and accept online presentations.]
The Morality Play workshop (first held at FDG/DiGRA 2016) will return to DiGRA 2023 this June. We are calling for short or long papers dealing with themes of empathy and ethics in games and play.
Moral questions have always been a cornerstone of art. Many of our greatest dramas hinge on our struggles to decide between right and wrong and to put those decisions into effect, both on the grand stage and in intimate relationships. Games are no exception, with titles such as Disco Elysium, Frostpunk and Detroit: Become Human offering unique opportunities to explore difficult questions of morality first-hand.
Moral themes can also be explored for advocacy and education, with games allowing us to practise the skills of ethical decision-making in a safe and controlled environment. Role-play and hypotheticals have long been tools for ethics education. Video games are now being recognised as means for making such exercises more engaging and widespread.
The Morality Play workshop focuses on the moral significance of gameplay, in both in-game and real-world contexts, asking questions such as:
- How do players engage (or disengage) with the ethical significance of gameplay?
- What factors influence ethical decision-making in games?
- How do we create empathy for characters in games?
- Can games be used to improve real-world ethical decision-making?
- How does the representation of “ethical choices” affect the meaning of a game?
- What design factors affect these questions?
- How do we measure player’s moral engagement in games?
The workshop invites papers dealing with topics such as:
- Critiques of games with moral choices or themes
- Principles and frameworks for the design of moral gameplay
- Experimental evidence for moral effects of games
- The role of ethical dilemmas in games and other media
- Games for moral pedagogy
- Applications of philosophical or behavioural ethics to game design
- The design of games to promote empathy
- The ethics of subversive, taboo and treacherous play
We particularly invite cross-disciplinary scholarship from philosophy, psychology, education and other related disciplines, as well as the traditional fields of game design and criticism.
Paper submission: 23 April 2023, 11:59 AoE
Notification to authors: 28 April 2023
Workshop Organization:
The Morality workshop will be held on Monday June 19, in conjunction with the 2023 DiGRA conference in Sevilla, Spain. It will feature a half day of research paper presentations, followed by a group discussion on challenges and opportunities in ethics and game design, concluding with short presentations of group discussion results. The workshop will run in hybrid online & in-person mode. We encourage everyone to attend in person but will also accept online presentations.
Paper submission: The research paper program will consist of short papers (4 pages) and full papers (8 pages) selected via a peer-review process. Since the workshop is intended to explore new ideas and directions, submission of incomplete and in-progress results is encouraged. Papers should be formatted using the DiGRA template. Submission do not need to be anonymised.
Papers can be submitted using EasyChair at: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=mp2023
Demonstrations: We are also inviting demonstrations of games exhibiting novel design for ethically engaging play. Game demonstrations should be submitted with an accompanying 1-2 page abstract describing the game and its research purpose.
Organisers:
Dr Malcolm Ryan, School of Computing, Macquarie University.
Dr Paul Formosa, Dept of Philosophy, Macquarie University.
Dr Kevin Schut, Dept of Media + Communication, Trinity Western University
Dr Dan Staines, AIE Institute, Sydney