Ethics and Game Design

CALL FOR CHAPTER PROPOSALS

Proposal Submission Deadline: January 15, 2009
Ethics and Game Design: Teaching Values through Play
A book edited by Karen Schrier and Dr. David Gibson

Introduction
Ethics is the practice of enacting moral judgment to achieve a better life—the process of making choices according to one’s own conception of how to be a good person. Games and simulations can be rich playgrounds for the practice of these ethical choices, as they offer the ability to iterate and reflect on multiple possibilities and consequences. As such, educators and researchers are beginning to consider the use of games in supporting ethical reasoning and character development. Moreover, games have been and continue to be the subject of conversations, controversies, and deliberations about ethics. Game developers, publishers, and the public often differ in opinion about the choices made in the creation and promotion of a game, bringing up larger questions about the role of entertainment, art, and business in our society. The potential for games to foster ethical thinking and discourse—and not whether games are inherently good or bad—will be the thrust of this timely book.

Objective of the Book
Ethics and Games Design will provide a diverse and comprehensive compendium of case studies, theoretical frameworks, and empirical research in the emerging field of ethics, values, games, and play. This book will take a cross-disciplinary approach, inviting research, critiques, and perspectives from computer science, education, philosophy, law, media studies, management, psychology, and art history. The publication has three main goals. First, it will seek to define this emerging and essential new field. Second, this book will serve as a collective source for students, educators, practitioners, and researchers who are interested in understanding the current state of the discipline. It will locate the field diachronically and thematically, while highlighting the work of both well-established and emerging researchers and practitioners. Finally, this publication will inspire and motivate further interdisciplinary dialogue and research on the topic of ethics and games. It will frame the major research questions, issues, methodologies and problems, which we can then use to both expand and refine the field. Such a rigorous foundation for the study of ethics will help to appropriately inform future games, policies, standards, curricula, products, and the like.

Target Audience
The target audience is very diverse, ranging from practitioners of game development to journalists, to philosophers and educators. Researchers and students studying game design, media and games will find this an essential text for understanding how to better design, teach, and study the current generation of learners. Educators will use this to further their understanding of the potentials and limits of games, and how to creatively incorporate emerging technology into their curricula, standards, and policies. Game developers and publishers can use this text to further their designs, to help refine their choices and practices, and to better think through the implications of their decisions. Journalists, cultural critics, and reviewers can use this publication to consider alternate ways to view games and the nature of their controversies. Finally, this text will attract members of diverse academic, development, and consumer communities to interact, share and discuss findings, frameworks and theories.

Recommended topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Definition of the field of ethics and games
• Historical and contemporary context of ethics and games
• Limits and constraints in assessing ethics
• Criteria for studying ethics and games
• Case studies (from researchers, educators and practitioners)
• Ethics and new media literacy
• Teaching ethics skills
• Educational opportunities and limits for teaching values through play
• Schools and the ethics of gaming
• Ethics and standards in game development
• Ethics in the promotion of games
• Communities of play and ethics
• Cheating and games
• Issues of race, sex, violence, and gender in games
• Ethics and the games business
• Future implications and the ethical citizen

Submission Procedure
Researchers and practitioners are invited to submit on or before January 15, 2009, a 2-3 page chapter proposal clearly explaining the mission and concerns of his or her proposed chapter. Authors of accepted proposals will be notified by February 1, 2009 about the status of their proposals and sent chapter guidelines. Full chapters are expected to be submitted by April 1, 2009. All submitted chapters will be reviewed on a double-blind review basis. This book is scheduled to be published by IGI Global (formerly Idea Group Inc.), publisher of the “Information Science Reference” (formerly Idea Group Reference) and “Medical Information Science Reference” imprints. For additional information regarding the publisher, please visit www.igi-global.com.

Inquiries and submissions can be forwarded electronically (Word document) to:
Karen Schrier
Teachers College, Columbia University
E-mail: kschrier <at> alum <dot> mit <dot> edu