[Release Date: September 5, 2023] There are over 50 million players over the age of 50 in the USA alone and those numbers will only
Category: The Podcast
[Release Date: August 22, 2023] Games are particularly fertile grounds for extremist recruitment. Why is that? What’s special about games and gaming culture that might make
[Release Date: August 1, 2023] When game companies simulate cultures in their games they usually focus on the tropes that their intended audiences have about those
[Release Date: July 18, 2023] Gaming and game development work differently for the developed global north than the developing global south. What are those differences? How
[Release Date: July 4, 2023] In a couple of recent episodes guests have mentioned concerns about battle passes. So, in this episode we decided to explore
[Release Date: June 20, 2023] What can college esport teams do to blunt harassment against female players and make esports more inclusive? Are they in a
[Release Date: June 6, 2023] How can ads for video games and for stuff in games be deceptive or manipulative? What do they need to consider
[Release Date: May 23, 2023] In this episode we explore some of the ethical issues related to kinks in video games – mostly adult ones. How
[Release Date: May 9, 2023] We’ve rarely discussed the specific category of adult games on this podcast. So, we do so here and now and honestly,
[Release Date: April 25, 2023] What should we think about when we bring sex and intimacy into video games? In this episode, we explore issues
[Release Date: April 11, 2023] How do players morally engage with games? What can user experience research and moral psychology tell us about how players experience
[Release Date: March 28, 2023] Games are supposed to be fun and playing in a historical setting or replaying historical events can be really fun. But
[Release Date: March 14, 2023] The monsters we see in video games are usually antagonists that we destroy without remorse. But what is a monster and
[Release Date: February 28, 2023] How would you make a game about a topic as important, complex, hard to talk about,, and NOT fun at all
[Release Date: February 14, 2023] Toxicity in online gaming is an incredibly complex problem to solve. Teams of moderators often seem hopelessly outmatched by the amount
[Release Date: January 31, 2023] Making money playing games on Twitch or YouTube sounds like a dream come true! But money never comes without strings
[Release Date: January 17, 2023] This is part 2 of our first two-part exploration of predatory monetization. Our guest, Elena Petrovskaya has been researching player complaints
[Release Date: January 3, 2023] When it comes to monetization in games, what do players see as misleading, unfair, or aggressive? Elena Petrovskaya asked this question
[Release Date: December 20, 2022] When a player steps into a game, often that game will have a political structure and the player’s choices in that
[Release Date: December 6, 2022] Putting in blockchain and NFTs into games and marketing that as Play to Earn promises a revolution in gaming that will
[Release Date: November 22, 2022] Most players think that loot boxes (essentially randomized rewards schemes) are a form of gambling, and many are concerned that they’ll
[Release Date: November 8, 2022] Games have been getting more and more gamblified in recent years. This has occurred both within games and in terms of
[Release Date: October 25, 2022] Players, game devs, artists, voice actors, marketing people, and everyone else that works in the game industry – even game design
[Release Date: October 11, 2022] We’re always interested in the way that video games depict us. One topic that we think has got too little attention
[Release Date: September 27, 2022] We encounter poverty in lots in games. We might play in a GTA-“ghetto” or interact with people in a “slum” using
[Release Date: August 30, 2022] Game development is often a creative collaboration among people with very different skill sets, passions, and worldviews. What does it mean
[Release Date: September 13, 2022] In esports, players trash talk, fans trash talk – even commentators trash talk! Sometimes trash talk is fun harmless banter, but other
[Release Date: August 16, 2022] When we heard that David Churchill hosts an AI competition with the Real Time Strategy game Starcraft, we were instantly fascinated.
[Release Date: August 5, 2022] Have you ever considered how gaming and game companies contribute to environmental problems like global climate change? We haven’t! At
[Release Date: July 19, 2022] Hundreds of millions of players have pirated video games. Most of them didn’t feel any guilt about it. Some even
[Release Date: July 5, 2022] We’re used to the idea of organizations that try to do good as non-profits, but what about for-profit companies – like
[Release Date: June 21, 2022] It’s hard to imagine games without AI, but having AI in games also raises a host of ethical questions involving their
[Release Date: June 7, 2022] Game companies have lawyers to tell them how to operate within the law. They have accountants and data analysts to tell
[Release Date: May 24, 2022] Video games have been accused of being addictive and making players more violent and sexist. Studies have been cited that confirm
[Release Date: May 10, 2022] Someday people may be gods – all powerful entities able to control the physics of virtual worlds and the functionalities of
[Release Date: April 26, 2022] We’ve done 40 episodes about ethics and video games and the word “God” or “Religion” never came up. How do
[Release Date: April 12, 2022] There’s lots of research going on about video games. Some of it involves product testing like VR games or the effectiveness
[Release Date: March 29, 2022] Video game transactions are a highly unusual, perhaps unique, business model. Our guest Elie Cohen essentially calls it an exploitative
[Release Date: March 15, 2022] There’s deception in Among Us and bluffing in Poker. But then there are multiplayer games where players you trusted will scam,
[Release Date: March 1, 2022] A meritocratic system is one whose “winners” are those who earn their positions through greatest talent and hard work. That
[Release Date: February 15, 2022] Do men and women see the role of fun or leisure in their life differently? How does this translate to their
[Release Date: February 1, 2022] Is it ever morally wrong to enjoy fantasizing about immoral things in video games? On the one hand, it’s just a
[Release Date: January 18, 2022] One way to think about games is as experiences tailored to give us agency – to provide us with clear
[Release Date: January 4, 2022] In ‘Knights of the Al-Aqsa Mosque’ you play as a Palestinian resistance fighter working to end the occupation of Palestine. It’s
[Release Date: December 21, 2021] Online multiplayer games are notorious for having hopelessly toxic environments where harassment and griefing abound. Game companies are obviously aware of
[Release Date: December 7, 2021] When and how much is it ok for one game to “borrow” elements from another game? We often think of
[Release Date: November 23, 2021] What is it to “be” a gamer? How did the gamer “identity” become both masculinized and marginalized? How has this
[Release Date: November 9, 2021] John Gibson, the (now former) CEO of Tripwire Games tweeted an opinion about a newly enacted and unpopular Texas law.
[Release Date: October 26, 2021] In our ethics news and bits episodes we grab a few recent news items that we want to chat about,
[Release Date: October 12, 2021] How can you responsibly design a game about an ongoing tragedy like the corona-19 pandemic? How can you make ANY