mp2020: Morality Play 2020 Tampere, Finland, June 2, 2020 |
Conference website | https://moralityplay.org/?p=144&preview=true |
Submission link | https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=mp20200 |
Submission deadline | February 7, 2020 |
The Morality Play workshop (first held at FDG/DiGRA 2016) will return to DiGRA 2020 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. Videogames 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?
Submission Guidelines
The research paper program will consist of extended abstracts (400-800 words) and full papers (up to 5000 words) 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.
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.
List of Topics
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
Committees
Organizing committee
- Malcolm Ryan - Department of Computing, Macquarie University
- Paul Formosa - Department of Philosophy, Macquarie University
- Dan Staines - Department of Computing, Macquarie University
Venue
The conference will be held in conjunction with DiGRA 2020 at Tampere University in Tampere Finland.
Contact
All questions about submissions should be emailed to Malcolm Ryan at malcolm.ryan@mq.edu.au.