Good write-up by Leigh Alexander over at Sexy Videogameland and comments on a debate started on another blog (Sirlin.net)…

Sexy Videogameland: Can Games Teach Ethics?

1. people play a meta-game where game mechanics-based consequences outweigh any sort of moral or ethical dilemma
2. but this is highly individual
3. so, for some players they’ll just make decisions based on maximum benefit (acting “rational” in game theory terms)
4. for other players, personal and character identity do matter (see Gee’s discussion about projective identity in What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy, for example)

As I’ve said in my general exams and previous papers, I became a games researcher because of the ethical dilemma I found myself faced with in Knights of the Old Republic. 🙂