[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 them what is and is not profitable. But it’s very rare for them to consult with an ethicist about the morality of their games or operations. Well, we think that’s unfortunate and shortsighted. What are ethicists and how can they help video game companies?
SHOW TRANSCRIPT
alright welcome back to the ethics of video games podcast uh i want to start out by giving a shout out to my co-host
andy ashcraft who can’t be with us today because he’s been taking care of his mother he’s a good son that guy
and i hope he’s back with us soon uh it is kind of strange doing an episode with the without you andy if you’re listening
uh but i’ve got katherine flick here and it’s going to be interesting uh dr catherine uh flick is our um is a reader
in computing and social responsibility in demand for university in leicester uk and a visiting fellow at staffordshire
university her specialties include the ethics of emerging technologies and video games uh she’s infamous for her
paper at the ethics of human chicken relationships in video games it is currently working on convincing as
many game companies as possible to not implement blockchain related technologies within their games um
i want to ask why but i there’s so much stuff i want to talk about today catherine so let’s let’s
table that um in fact be we were going to talk about um about being an emphasis what is uh why
video companies need ethicist but before we get all that um what do we need to know about the ethics
of human chicken relationships in video games basically video games mostly gets it wrong
um they you they tend to have things like um uh flocks of of male chickens which
doesn’t ex wouldn’t exist in real life because they basically fight each other to death uh they um
have them in kind of like strange places but the the big thing was is that we wanted to look at the the roles they
placed so a lot of them like the roles of things like domesticity comes up so they’re usually used in safe spaces that
you can go to in games um like in villages and things like that which might be considered safe
they also there’s also a lot of uh fighting uh you can kick smash punch hit
whack smush blend to a pulp chickens um which reflects the uh history and archaeology
of chickens and humans in the past we used to do terrible things to chickens um for fun basically like tie them to
sticks and throw stones at them until they died for example um and yeah and then also of course
there’s the food related food another um produce that that chickens provide so eggs feathers
um you know meat uh manure for compost and things like that as well so we we
have a long history with as humans with chickens um and this is reflected within the
games they’re sort of seen as part of the i guess part of the scenery and sometimes um part of the amusing things
to do within games as well and that’s humorous side of things is actually really long that goes really far back in
history but i’m not really the archaeologist i was really just i was i was worried in the ethics side of things and what does that say about um how we
play games and how people get it right within games or don’t get it right because you’d think that people would do like
the games people would do it better considering we have such a close relationship relationship with chickens but no they
mix up female and male chickens um they they kind of do strange uh things like
putting male male heads on on female bodies and things like that like it’s just it’s all sorts of weird
well if we ever won a franken chicken i mean this is video game seems like the place to create franken chickens
so you you’ve been in packs uh pax east for like seven years uh with the booth until 2019 we had the pandemic then
everything changes but you had a booth that was essentially ask an ethicist something i always want around you know
as someone that comes from moral philosophy and is really interested in bringing uh
you know discussions of ethics to people uh you know in more
applied regular uh world situations that’s exactly the kind of thing i want to see so uh how did that come about and
what were you trying to accomplish how did that whole thing go uh well it sort of came about um when they set up the
diversity lounge they were looking for people to basically come and exhibit and alongside all of the sort of
lgbt groups and there was some um uh sort of women’s women’s gaming groups
and things like that just disabled gamers ablegamers has had a presence there for a really long time um
basically uh i happen to know through my husband one of the organizers for of pax
east and uh managed to get an invitation i was having a chat with them and
told them about what i did and what i was interested in i’d given a talk at the previous packs about ethics and games and it had a huge audience and
everyone was very impressed with it so um i thought well why don’t i come and have a booth uh i can ask people
questions about how they play the game their games the whole point of it was to basically start getting people thinking
about their relationship that they have with games and getting them to reflect on on what they do so i use what i have
when i go to packs with my booth is i have a set of two questions every day
and i set a little post-it notes and people come by the booth and they answer the post notes and that’s that starts a
conversation and usually the questions are things like what do you do in video games that you
don’t do in real life uh that was my my first big one that went viral on reddit
for example um and i think it was when goat simulator had come out
and someone wrote be a goat um and that went viral on reddit that was pretty good um but you know people it
got people thinking about hey look i do some weird stuff in games that i wouldn’t do in real life and
you could really see kind of the cogs turning and getting um you know that reflection that reflection happening which you know
as a moral philosophy you know that’s kind of a key aspect of um of understanding kind of you know
um really actual like ethics in in in the field sort of thing right so so i did
that i collected all of that information actually and all those post-it notes and i’ve been i typed them up and i’ve
actually got them all as a big data set but it’s not the best data unfortunately because it’s a little bit bitsy pc but
it’s been really interesting to see the trends over time because i was there pre-gamergate for example and some of the questions were things
like what advice would you give to the games industry and you know what do you um what makes a great female character
in games and stuff like that so i’d ask these you know various different questions across the weekend
and um i’ve seen like the rise of gamergate come through i gave a talk about kind of
some of the results that i’d had from previous years at one of the packs one of the pax easts
um and i had some gamergate people show up the back which is a little bit creepy but um fortunately they didn’t make too much
of a fuss they just sort of videoed me and you know i don’t know talked about on twitter or something um
but yeah it was but it was quite a stressful period actually because you know it’s the sort of environment where
you get a bit worried about um making particularly strong claims about right uh ethics in particular
right because the whole thing was about ethics theoretically um but anyway so we managed to weather
that and um over time then also people you can really see the rise on in diversity of
content um that as games companies are realizing that you know diverse audiences play their games
we’ve seen the rise of more diverse characters i mean there was a whole kind of controversy about
women you know portrayals of women in games that has shifted as well and it’s really been really nice to actually see
that reflected in the the collection of post-it notes that i’ve collected over the last few years so
yeah so so was the point uh to get people essentially thinking about the issues or uh to give them answers uh for
uh for these issues well as you know every good ethicist never gives any answers they only ask questions
so the idea was to get people thinking um i mean i wasn’t really after i mean
there’s no right answers right like i wasn’t after any you know there wasn’t a prize given to the best
answer or anything like that but what i was after was really just kind of getting getting having conversations with people
about their game play and like these post notes would open up really interesting conversations so i usually would ask them you know
what have you written um and then they usually talk about it and you know some really interesting stories came out like there was stories
about um how you know things like one of the questions i asked was how video games changed your life and i got lots
of really poignant stories about how you know it helped one person um you know
play with their um autistic brother who didn’t who was who didn’t speak but would type through
minecraft and you know would would talk about would would talk about minecraft with them and it basically opened up a a
communication relationship that they didn’t have before which was really nice and you know people connecting with
grandparents who are overseas or you know um you know finding their best friends or you know the best thing about
video games is that like the sort of the battles we’ve had along the way kind of thing you know with all their with mmos
and things like that so it’s been really it’s been a really interesting source of little just like anecdotes and
you can really tell that the people who um who wrote these were were very keen on
like it was actually quite a nice thing for them to real to realize for themselves right so in in
some ways you know just having that little experience of reflecting on on their game play kind of consolidated the
positive benefits of that for them as well i want to push back a little bit about right this idea that in ethics
there’s no answers right because right i mean it it’s interesting what uh as us at this number one which we try to
do which is obviously get people to think about it right and i’ve always considered that you know uh the the
number one goal right uh to have but of course there’s people that have ideas about what is the right thing to do and
especially what is the wrong thing to do and you know the judgments we make about something like gamergate uh and about
let’s say the representation of women in games and uh the treatment of women in companies etc
right um the diversity of uh well the need for diversity lounge you know to begin with but uh all come from ethical
claims rights that that people have given actual answers to so it’s yeah it’s kind of interesting what the role
of the ethicist is because on the one hand it’s to get people to think is it also to guide people in terms of
the right to the right direction and i know talking about the right direction part of me wants to put a quote on that
yeah um yeah how would you characterize that yeah so i guess it’s a bit facetious to say it’s just about asking
questions you know it’s not there’s no answers there’s any questions i guess i use questions as a tool really you
know it’s kind of like this you know classic socratic method right so right you know it’s much better to have so much much better to have someone realize
something for themselves and for you to say oh here’s how you do it you know i’ve done i mean i’ve been in ethics and
and applied ethics particularly uh for a really long time now and you know the worst way you can get
someone to change their behavior is to tell them what to do so like it’s just that just doesn’t really work they’ve
got to kind of come to it themselves so so in terms of things like you know interrogative questions this is i guess
it’s one of the tools that i use to to do that and so i mean things like you know if someone did write down
something that was perhaps a little controversial or whatever on one of these post-it notes i would then say oh you know why did you write that what do
you think about this you know you know have you have you thought about these other options you know what about these other people
that could be potentially impacted all that sort of stuff right you know have you thought about it from this other person’s perspective so these are all
questions right but they they are guiding questions so um you know i mean obviously i have an opinion as well
about what the right and wrong thing is and a lot of that is kind of couch and experience and the ability to kind of
think through these problems with a view to broader impact and you know um what
uh you know who who who might be worst affected by partic you know potential decision making and things like that
um but yeah yeah so it is a little bit facetious saying no no answers notice it’s also really interesting what
the role of the ethicist is in different situations right i mean there are points where you know you’re trying to say what
you think is right and wrong and why uh and there’s a point where you think that would just be counterproductive or
right yeah but that’s not the aim right exactly i mean so if you’re writing a code of ethics for example you have to
be very specific about what’s good and what’s not so good and what you know that what the community would expect as
as you know ethical behavior right um whereas in these sorts of more personal kind of one-to-one situations it’s
almost like you know you’re playing a kind of a convincing role but through a a particular method that allows them to
realize that as well because they’re the ones who are likely to be implementing it rather than being judged against it
directly like you might be judged against a code of ethics for example in terms of compliance or whatever so so
let’s talk about so you helped write the association for computing computer machineries code of ethics professional
conduct um what are some of the challenges of coming up so first of all what is the association for computer
machinery what does it have to do with video games right so it’s one of the oldest professional organizations in
computing um it’s got over a hundred thousand members around the world probably more than that by now i suspect
um there’s been a lot of recruitment drives recently um and basically i was kind of roped
into doing this as a i was a member of the acm um because it’s for computing professionals and i
do computing stuff including teaching computer science students and things like that so um
and uh anyway i was invited by the committee on professional ethics to join the steering committee for for this
because of my background in things like ethics of emerging technologies and things like that so
um basically yeah they invited me to do that and we over a series of weekends
and locked in a hotel in chicago we um we sat down and we
we re-wrote the code of ethics because it was actually a 1992
code of ethics that we were updating and a lot of changed as you can probably imagine since 1992 i’m assuming this is
i’m assuming this is one of the challenges of coming up with a code of ethics for technology companies right i
mean that the fact that technology changes i feel like with every technological change
you know i mean god nfts immediately the minute we get nfts what’s what’s the right thing to do with that with nfds
right i mean it’s sort of interesting though because while the technology’s changed the principles don’t tend to change very
much at all so it’s more about the application of that than it is about oh you know we need a whole new
uh idea of what ethics is right just to apply it to this new technology no it’s all it’s all got the same old problems
it just needs to be kind of explained in such a way that makes sense for that particular you know um that technology
right but i mean it was actually surprised the 92 code was actually surprisingly forward-thinking
which we were quite you know again it was pre-internet it was pre mobile phones it was pre you know
surveillance state stuff like it was it was it was actually surprisingly um uh future-proofed i mean it had a lot about
physical security as opposed to technical security but that was a one and that was one of the big things and
it had some very odd ideas about copyright but um it was actually surprisingly um you know
future proof um i mean obviously there are some technologies that didn’t need to be updated like like that sort of
stuff right so right so so so can you give us a few highlights from again that would apply
to to game companies like you know things that would be in the code of ethics then uh that are supposed to apply to game companies
right so i think probably i mean there’s a key some key things like avoid harm right
and you know i mean there are there is the opportunity for game companies to cause harm especially when they go into
things like virtual reality and augmented reality um you know the actual like there’s physical harm also potentially like
psychological and other types of harm as well um so i mean those sorts of classic
kind of principles are you know ones that video game companies should probably think about and
individuals also who develop games as well right because the um the code of ethics isn’t actually aimed at companies it’s aimed at individuals so it’s about
what would a um an ethical computing an ethical computing professional do um
and then the uh another one is like one of the big ones we introduced actually was about
diversity essentially and um and equality and making sure that um you
know that that vulnerable groups are protected et cetera et cetera and it that was actually one of the ones that
got uh pushed back on a lot by uh the let’s say less uh more right-wing
side of the acm membership um and uh we managed to kind of uh
keep that in because obviously it’s very important and we all agree like we and the majority of the membership also
agreed so it’s really important to say we weren’t just a group of you know ivory tower you know academics
saying here’s what you should do everybody we actually we did actually do like four i think three or four rounds
of consultation with the committee on professional ethics which is made up of industry academia and and lay people
quote-unquote um we uh also we balloted the entire
membership a couple of times but so so it was really about we wanted to make sure it wasn’t just us saying here’s
the the top-down kind of rules for thing it was it was a community kind of
lead it was a community built i guess approach to what what what makes a computing professional uh an
ethical computing professional okay i mean there are some other highlights as well as a lot about
copyright you know about making sure that like you know like i mean following
rules obviously there’s a bunch of like follow the law unless there’s um you know really good reason not to um but
also be aware of the fact that you know the code of ethics doesn’t protect you from breaking the law but there are some
instances in which say breaking the law might be a reasonable thing to do um i mean and we’ve seen we see that happen
quite a lot and we’ve been seeing that in things like ethical hacking and you know push back against um you know um
certain regimes let’s just say in terms of uh you know um and and you know so we’re saying
we’re seeing a lot of this kind of come into practice now and there’s some other company there are some companies that actually picked it up and adjusted it
and adopted it for their own uh their own purpose that’s their own use um and also it’s been adopted by a whole bunch
of local computing organizations around the world through ifip which is the internet international federation for
into information processing um and there’s so it’s got a pretty broad uh a pretty broad uh appeal um and
i mean i wouldn’t say it’s specifically aimed at video games but uh it’s something that perhaps video game
companies particularly ones that look to building things like platforms like one of the other um really useful ones that
we’ve got is that if you if your platform becomes like a part of the infrastructure of society
that you need to take particular care about you know how you care for your community and things like that and we
also have some stuff about like what happens when you withdraw your software from i’m i’m just curious do you think
steam would would count as because obviously those are aimed at things like facebook and twitter but yeah you think
you know you do you think most of our i mean i’m assuming the the apple app store would count as those things
yeah and we and we actually have like so we have things about how you know companies who do provide these
sorts of services you know that are essentially but are kind of like walled garden or you know
gated system type things right they have you know they have their own kind of um
rules that you have to follow in order to be on you know on these and some people fall afoul them in various ways
we talk about how there needs to be like you know space for uh reconciling any differences and things like that as well so it’s it’s
it’s it’s you know it’s basically making sure that they don’t become you know the next i guess dictators
right of the of the of of the internet um space right and and and
yes so it’s it’s but i mean obviously you know we’ve only got so much power it’s it’s a code of ethics it’s not like
you know we can’t find them or anything like that and so it’s nice actually to see some of these principles coming through in some of the legislation
that’s happening around the world now so in europe for example and the uk are bringing in uh regulation that kind of
reflects some of these uh these principles that we put into the code of ethics too yeah it’s interesting that
one of the things you have to point out is that look this is ethics this is this is not the law and ethics doesn’t mean
the law and the hope is always you know for so many people whatever is legal kind of uh
legitimizes uh what they want to do they look to the law for moral legitimization where we
normally think the other way around the law should be essentially made based on the ethics so maybe the code of ethics
is the start and some of that maybe needs to be legally codified okay i want to i want to go back and i want to talk
about uh the idea of being an ethicist what is an emphasis oh what is an emphasis um so i would call myself an
applied ethicist so there’s sort of uh different types of ethicists there are people that come up with the you know do
the heavy thinking side of things like the moral philosophers for example um which i don’t know if you you would
self-identify as an ethicist on occasion yeah sure exactly yeah yeah i mean i i
think of myself as an ethicist in that uh i’m concerned uh philosophically with ethics very much that yeah so it’s
that’s a very much at the kind of the thought level right so i’m very much in a i mean you know it doesn’t mean you
can’t do other things as well but that’s that’s that level of it right um i’m very much an applied ethicist so i do a
lot of reading about what people like you write and i go hmm you know maybe i should write a paper about how this you
know works with certain technology new technologies particularly so my special interest is
merging technologies um i mean there are ethicists that work in uh very you know much more narrow focused stuff so
looking at things like developing countries and you know ict for development um
there’s um ethicists that work on like kind of the the the
relationship between things like um religion and and you know what in
computer ethics anyway religion and and and technology um there’s uh and how that kind of reconciles and stuff like
that um there are ethicists that look at very specific aspects so artificial intelligence for example has got had a
huge bandwagon associated with it the last few years right so they’re very specialist ai ethicists now um i mean
that you know there are people that’s focused on social media there are people that focus i’m more a generalist so i’m
i’ve got a computer science degree as well in a history of philosophy of science degree um and so i kind of see
myself as kind of trying to bridge the gap between um the philosophy side of things and the industry and
and individual use of of technology and how emerging technology can can affect
society basically so so uh lots of companies have lawyers and human resource peoples who focus on compliance
right and they make sure that companies do what they need to do within the bounds of the law uh then there’s people that specialize in things like diversity
and inclusion that companies might consult with and maybe hire for for training what’s the difference between
having people like dad in the company as opposed to like having an ethicist so bringing in an ethicist right like what
do ethicists do that these other people uh don’t do um i mean i don’t really see an ethicist as being a particularly used
to say very small companies like you know on a on an ongoing basis they might you know for example i might go and do
some consulting work or something for them but it’s more about looking at the overall strategy of the company and how they um
you know how do they how do they come about decision making processes basically how do they look forward right do they look forward just in terms of
how much money do we make or do they look forward in terms of other questions like do we want to build a strong robust
resilient community do we want to give back to the world in some way and it’s and it kind of you know you’re starting
to see some um some of this kind of getting encapsulated in things like b corp uh b corpse for example so us two
is a really good example of um a games company that is a b corp and b cop looks a lot more social responsibility and has
a whole load of hoops you have to jump through in order to get as really i mean us two is one of my favorite video game companies to talk about
but they also you know the gate and that then that gets reflected in the games that they make so they make games that
um have positive benefits for society so like alba for example i mean this is like the the shift from let’s just make
loads of money off you know the latest kind of match three game mobile game or casino game or whatever on on mobile
phones is is you know it’s it’s very much the other side it’s about how the the company kind of moves forward and
what their their goals are with the company so i see it more as a kind of strategic thing but don’t i mean don’t
get don’t get me wrong you can also look at like like much more specific um aspects of that so things
like diversity inclusion can all be part of what an ethicist might help with um you know looking at things like uh you
know recruitment strategies um like what might be useful policies within the workplace that sort
of thing um also you know like i think the strategy thing though is the main thing because i
mean what i’ve been talking to a lot with companies at the moment has been about should we do nfts for example
right um and you know or should we incorporate should we do a blockchain game um you know how do we integrate
crypto into our games in a way that’s you know okay right um hence my trying
to convince everybody not to because it’s just not a good idea so so notice right i mean from the
ethicist perspective right because you get a question like okay there’s this new technology right um
you know we’re thinking about incorporating it into our games you know we have engineers that tell us
about how this could be you know viable that way we have accountants that tell us how financially viable this is the
ethicist comes in and i’m assuming the idea here is how morally viable that is right well it’s not just morally viable
it’s about sort of it’s about socially acceptable social acceptability as well so will the community accept it um i
mean because sometimes those things don’t necessarily equate to each other either right oh absolutely
we expect we accept a lot of things that uh we feel like we have no choice uh but
to accept right yeah i mean things like loot boxes right that’s a classic example so you know a lot of it yeah so
exactly so so i mean i might get asked okay how do we implement this this in our game or whatever in a responsible
way and so i mean even comes back to the silly things like the chickens right so how do we you know make sure that we
accurately represent other cultures um you know um animals you know in relationships with
animals in their games like do we really want to have like i think some like have you seen the twitter account you know
can you pet the do you can i pet the dog right the pet the dog twitter account no no so there’s a twitter account that
basically goes through all the video games that come out and if there is a dog in it it asks can i pet the dog
ah okay right right always love petting the dog yeah exactly right and everybody loves petting the dog but sometimes you
can’t pet the dog and sometimes the poor dog gets horribly murdered or whatever right and so there’s like
so so even like little things like it can come down to little things like that right where you think oh you know yes it
you know like classic mmo style thing is one of the first quests you you do is you go
off and you kill 20 animals and bring their skins back or whatever right like it’s a fairly
classic sort of thing but do you really need to do that like is that something that actually is a reasonable thing to ask in in terms of
how people relate to the the game that you’re playing right so it’s not it’s about trying to push back against lazy
tropes i think in some ways as well so i mean um you remember the ubisoft you know women are too hard to animate for
example right right right assassin’s creed yeah exactly yeah so like an ethicist would have said hey
look that’s a bad idea don’t go there it’s gonna cause you more trouble than it’s worth but they you know um
and sometimes because of that we’re seen as a bit of a roadblock to to an aesthetic or you know
or innovation or whatever it is that they’re trying to do um but actually what we’re really trying to do is make
sure that you know they don’t end up in a kind of a twitter flame war and you know with everybody getting grouchy at
them um and and hat and there being that sort of um potential for for harm to the
community or to the games industry you know on the whole um further down the track as well so it’s more about yeah
holding them back a little bit and say just stop wait a second just think about this think about the broader impact think about the future impact what’s
this going to look like in you know six months two years time sort of thing
it’s interesting how much of that is practical and how much of that i want to say from my perspective is aspirational
it’s i mean you said so many things i want to touch on a few if i can remember them the b corp for example right so so
decide there’s this uh you know ideas about what are the corporate social responsibilities of
companies and in fact we have an episode on this uh about what are the responsibilities
of the game maybe it was episode it was 14 or 15 early on um and you know people have different ideas
about what companies are responsible for so um for example our b corps b corps are
uh companies that feel like really it’s part of their core mission right they
gotta they gotta they need to do good and some people feel like that should be the role of every company
right this is not a choice that you could have but this is the moral obligation of any company you’re not
really a good company right if you’re not contributing something positive to the world and other people have
different ideas about what the corporate social responsibility is but notice this idea of um nobody wants to be seen as
the i wanted to say the ae of the world but uh yeah no one wants to be seen as
kind of like you know the evil company right everybody want you know people want to be seen as a company that you
know that is a good company whether it’s uh um whether they’re good members of the of
the gaming community uh whether they treat their their employees well i you know part of that just connect connects
i think to our desire to be good and be seen as good and
it seems to me that one of the things that you say that the ethicists do bring in
is consideration on how best to do that so notice how part of that is acceptable but it’s not just what’s acceptable it’s
also maybe a little looking forward beyond what’s acceptable to let’s say what we think might be the
right thing to do us who have thought about ethics for a good bit because i mean if you look
over time you know acceptability changes right so right you know 10 15 years ago the idea that you know facial
recognition is so you know part of just part of the fabric of society that would horrify a lot of people right but these
days you’re just like oh yeah whatever i go shopping you know so so these things these things shift and it’s because of
the normalization of these potentially problematic technologies that you get this sort of shift you get this this
except like this the acceptability of that changes i mean a really good example also is like is is uh augmented reality right so
google glasses was seen as being like a horrible you know privacy invading thing
and now we’ve got ray-bans got facebook glasses there’s you know snapchat’s got their glasses there’s you know
everyone’s coming out with glasses and that’s shifted right yeah yeah exactly and this is what happens in
technology this is why my i really like looking at emerging technologies um because of this right yeah so i mean i
think i think that’s what’s really interesting because it’s not so much about the technology bringing in something completely new
most of the time you know that all the old problems are still the same so you know privacy security um autonomy um all
of these sorts of things are the same across all these different technologies and it’s it’s really just about the
application in many ways it’s about the application of that and what an ethicist can do is help to
show what that looks like for this technology if that makes sense through you know some of these tools that i’m talking about
right yeah it’s interesting a lot of that when you think about an issue concerning uh you know
privacy of a player let’s say and the amount of uh information a company might have that and what it might
do with that information whether it use it to uh sell to that person or
uh or to potentially try to uh you know get that person whether it sells that information or uses it let’s say to try
to sell something to to that person um you know we can kind
of go back and look at the history of how uh companies have dealt with you know information and and take
the principles that have been kind of thought up over time though i do think that there’s
i mean maybe this is because uh you know when i teach uh on moral issues i’m
always looking for the specific interesting new thing that seems uh to take our old principles and challenge
them in in new ways yeah so i think i mean the thing the key thing here is that you know you challenge those those principles right
so the principles aren’t necessarily they don’t go away they they just they change like the application of those
chain changes and we adapt how they kind of apply to new technologies in these
new situations i mean privacy’s been a thing around like we’ve had privacy for a really really really long time and um
it’s not so much about like really good examples in that the code of ethics i was talking about right so it’s like we
had physical security was the key thing back in the 1992 code whereas now it’s all
about things like information security and cyber security and all that sort of thing so it’s not that the underlying principle has
has changed so much it’s the more the application of it and what it looks like in the this current century i suppose
back in roman times for example it probably would look very different right so you know security would have been
more physical as well you know with guys with swords and stuff right but we don’t
tend to do that these days so yeah right though it’s it’s interesting if uh
you know it’s interesting i haven’t thought a whole lot about privacy but uh certainly norms about privacy have changed and it’s interesting how
changing norms you know when we talk generally about respecting privacy uh the way we apply
that principle in one period could be very different from the way we apply it in another period because our notion
uh of privacy and which are culturally relative notions uh of privacy
absolutely which which also has to be a really kind of big one uh you know it’s interesting
how video game companies localize uh their products and a lot of times when they localize
the ideas they want to localize to the ethical norms um yeah so in china for example you
can’t have blood right because it’s it’s considered part of you know kind of a forbidden thing to talk about like right
you know and so they have green zombie goo or something like that instead right
right right i mean or or um you know in some say in some cases it
seems very very benign like you know like that in other cases uh the sexualization of let’s say japanese
games and the way they’re localized differently in the united states uh or maybe the way you might depict uh
religion in your game uh might be different in different cultural contexts and uh it’s interesting you know i’ve
had for example uh now mind you i mean we’re moving away from the privacy issue but but notice right it is really
interesting because if you’re a game company so much of you what you’re looking for is very practical in the
sense of you know you don’t want to piss anybody off you just want to essentially deal with accepted norms but then you
get things like the the case of the japanese situation that i just you know uh brought up uh where
you have people complaining of look it’s just not right to censor the game right and then we’re talking about things like
censorship and when you’ve got a problem like censorship right you can bring in
your people that are going to tell you what the what the law is you can bring in people that are going to tell you what the
audience expects but then there’s also the question of right and wrong
right and with something like censorship i mean to me it really seems like it’s
where uh ethicists can really play you know an important role in figuring out
at least helping you think through the policy that you’re gonna have i think that’s and that i you know i i can
almost hear you stopping yourself saying what’s right and what’s wrong there right because it is it isn’t that easy
either right like a lot of these questions are not just oh well it’s obvious you should just not do the game
or whatever right like you should right right in that area there’s a lot more nuance than that that needs to be thought through and a lot more like
you know i mean you know yes it might earn you loads of money or whatever i mean that’s only one aspect to to to
doing that sort of like you got to think through how will this make our company look you
know but yeah i mean it’s about sort of like not just the expectations and the norms and the and and of the society
that that you’re taking the the the game from but what are the expectations and the norms of the society that you’re
putting that game into and then there’s also the um like the broader society and then there’s also the gaming community
as well because there is a very niche gaming community that quite enjoys those sorts of games within say north america
and they’re usually the ones that yell about censorship right so there’s a kind of there’s some classic ones particularly like i think it was i can’t
remember which game it was now but there was one where they changed the sliders so you couldn’t change the the breast
size as much yeah right yeah right um we’ll just yeah but stuff like that for
example it reflects a certain kind of gaming culture within the company the country that’s come from and it doesn’t
necessarily translate so well to you know potentially a broader audience in say you know europe or north america and i
think that that’s sort of um i mean it’s heavily cultural right and then you know this is where you start
getting the conversations about moral relativity and all that sort of stuff right you know all these kind of classic oh yes but if everything everything is
just relative relative then you know what it really is right and wrong right and it’s like well it’s still relative
it doesn’t really matter it’s about understanding the society and the culture and the and the expectations and
norms and of behavior that that that happen within this particular space that you’re that you’re specifically putting
your game into right and then if you want to kind of um violate the violate those norms and
expectations then you should expect some backlash and and if you want to put a controversial game in that someone
really likes the original version of or whatever then yes you’ll also get some backlash so i mean it’s about weighing
those up and deciding okay well what do we actually want right what do we want to do you know i was thinking of um i just
gave i have a workshop that i walk my my students through where they deal with government
requests for uh private information and uh censorship uh and uh they have to advise those
companies all right and and they have to think through through a whole and it’s interesting with these with these kind
and it’s also a cross culture or international kind of kind of issue if if you’re thinking of
you know i’m i’m as an ethicist going to talk to a company right here’s a company
and let’s say you know it’s square eunuchs and uh and and they’re thinking about uh these kinds of localization
issues as we call them which to me are sometimes practical and sometimes ethical uh what do you think is would be
the hardest thing of um getting a company or the people within that company to do in terms of reflecting on
uh the morality of what they’re trying to do oh well i mean i think the first thing the hardest thing is just getting
in the door to be honest um because certainly one of the one of the things that i’ve found having done this with lots of companies is if you don’t
have you’re essentially your ceo but you know if they if they’re not interested in it then it’s never going to happen um and
you’ll see often like corporate social responsibility arms of companies they’re off over there in another office and they you know spit
out reports every so often but nothing ever actually happens right google’s shown this particularly well recently as has facebook for example right like i
mean some big companies that really you know um there’s a lot of talk about ethics washing and stuff recently
yes where they have essentially like yeah we have an ethicist we consulted with them the end you know like nothing
ever happened nothing changes or google getting rid of their ethics getting rid of their ethics exactly starts
criticizing them yes exactly yeah that’s i mean i was alluding to that but yeah that’s exactly what happened right so
yeah so getting in the doors the first the hardest part i think that the other the other part is is trying to get
trying to come up with ways for the people who actually need to make the decisions to
get outside of the bubble that they’re in right so um it’s you know a term that we we use
called reflexivity is the ability to kind of think about you know how you make decisions right the how do you
reflect on things how do you make decisions based on that and um one of the hardest parts is to
kind of get outside of your own head and i mean we see this a lot in kind of like in in venture capitalist world silicon
valley right we see you know the tech bros creating um solutions to their problems right and
then thinking that that’s the solution for everybody’s problems right or they create a solution that’s still looking
for a problem you know or they’re doing the the you know like uber but for x right the disruptive
type stuff which you know really um suits a particular demographic right so
the hardest part is actually getting these people to think outside of that you know not just what would solve my
problem um but potentially cause harm to a whole load of other people but what you know what would a more inclusive um approach
look like so we talking and i identi identify your stakeholders take the perspective of your stakeholders yeah
yeah and i mean so one of the frameworks that i use with companies um this is in general and you know technologies not
just games companies but one of the frameworks i use is um called the area framework which looks at anticipating
reflecting engaging and acting and the engagement part is is really key because if you bring in diverse sets of
stakeholders you know not just the ones who are going to get you know give you money right right but the ones who are going to be
not just and not just your users which is a different like that is a set of stakeholders but it’s not the the sum
total of your stakeholders um you know like for example you’re developing medical technology your user might be a
doctor but your pa the patient is still you know affected by that their family is affected by that you know they have
might have brought in carers that are affected by you know whatever device it is that you’ve created right so i mean
the same can be sort of told for for games and particularly i mean this is i think you know as we move into things
like ar and vr these are going to become much more pronounced than they have been in traditional gaming situations where
you know yeah but but i mean even even things like accessibility is a really big you know it’s a huge issue and and a lot
of games companies really want to solve that issue um but then you know just getting the people who develop develop the games to
actually design accessibility without actually consulting any people that um that would actually work for is is
just disaster you know before you even like you might as well just not bother in some in some cases right um so it is
really important to get people on board who actually understand you know what the accessibility requirements are i
mean this is kind of like classic requirements um you know gathering right but but trying to diversify that group as
much as possible so you get as many perspectives as possible and then you can kind of make um
you know i mean there’s always going to be decisions hard decisions you have to make about you know doing one thing or and which might potentially mean that
you don’t do another thing or whatever but at least you have that input and you can make you know you can maybe make
some compromises or or you know work with those people to
kind of work out how how you might address these issues otherwise um so i think that there’s you know
the engagement side of things is actually super key for companies because i don’t think a lot of them do it and
you know if they do they might like just look up a tutorial on accessibility options or something like that because
it’s money without an obvious return on investment right often there is a return on investment but you know certainly not
an obvious one and that that’s uh that’s a really really big one yeah well exactly right yeah though you know what’s interesting as
you’re talking it really kind of made me think about uh you know part of our everyday decisions
that we make as as people always takes into consideration a lot of the practical stuff but moral considerations
always kind of come into play in in our lives as we make daily decisions
companies a lot of times you know i think forget that right that uh you know so part of this whole you know uh
engagement um and being aware of of your of your stakeholders is if you’re if
you’re gonna make a decision about what your company is going to do um let’s say whether they are going to
use blockchain right in some way right you’re going to normally look to the really practical
stuff and it’s really easy to deal with the practical stuff but it’s easy to ignore the fact that good decisions always
involve some sort of relation to uh to an ethical background again if it’s for normal people why wouldn’t it be for
companies and yeah i think what you’re saying a lot of it is to kind of make companies aware of that and incorporate
that into their their decision making yeah i mean like you said i think a lot of companies make decisions but they don’t
really understand why they’ve made those decisions as well so one of the exercises i often do with students is like you know we’ll talk about um you
know some sort of current event you know like technological event or you know that that is controversial right and
students will have this kind of gut reaction to it like they’ll be like oh that’s a bad idea i’ll be like okay now stop there we need to unpack why is that
ugh you know what what causes that response right um or you know it might
they might say oh that’s great you know it’s like okay let’s stop here let’s unpack why is that a great like why does
that make you feel personally surprised and secondly that it’s great right and and so that that kind of unpacking of of
the decision-making process and and the that that gut reaction um i mean that all that stuff underlying
that is is is sort of assessment against a set of moral values right and so being
able to unpack that as part of that reflexivity stuff that i was just talking about right being able to actually understand how is it that
you’re that you you come that you factor into it and your your values your understandings of what’s good and bad
etc you know how does that actually factor into then how do you how you live your life right and i think that’s a really
interesting exercise for a lot of people because i just don’t think about it yeah yeah yeah abs absolutely okay so um
what do you want to live our listeners with uh when it comes to how we should think about gaming and ethics or about the use of ethicists by game companies
i’m just going to kind of leave it open uh to you to decide how you want to end it well firstly make sure you depict your chickens correctly
um don’t do nfts now i mean i’ve got a whole laundry list here right but um i
think the key thing is actually really about thinking through you know not just what the next step is but what is what are the likely you know
further steps that go beyond this i mean every every company’s got a strategy and it might be a one-year five-year 10-year
strategy but um it’s about then not not just looking at it from a financial perspective or you know what games we’re
gonna you know develop but about about thinking about the whole um
the whole package what do we want what do we want our games to achieve what do we want our community to to to be like
do we want you know how and how do we actually achieve that right because communities are hard right um
um you know what you know uh who do we need to actually bring on
board in order to achieve all of these things you know how do we make our decisions at the moment is it just one
person who just decides everything is there kind of like can we can we get more people involved in that decision making process you know um can we kind
of start to unpack some of these you know that’s this sounds like a good idea versus this sounds like a bad idea kind
of stuff and what’s what’s behind that maybe come up with some sort of like company value set of values that you
know that that are really out there and obvious to not just you know the people who are developing
the games within the company but you know making that open and transparent to your your your users as well right
maybe even looking to ex some external uh like corporate social responsibility goals so things like b corps for example
i mean we now have some good examples of games companies that have done that um and i mean yeah um i just saw the
news today that us two’s actually become employee owned as well which is actually a really really good step in in games
companies too so yeah so so things like that making things more democratic um which then
not by default but is part of the step of the process of actually bringing more people in to you know diversify these
decision-making processes so i think i mean yeah and then you know when it comes down to individual games it’s about then
understanding you know the context in which you know that the game that might be published isn’t just going to be the
people that you know you bring in to do your user testing or whatever it’s going to
be a much broader audience and and they might have you know opinions about whether or not it’s too hard to animate
women for example um or you know where how big the breast sliders should be or whatever it is
i mean just just just opening yourself up to to understanding that there’s going to be a broader impact of your
game and you need to take you need to take control of what that’s going to be rather than letting it kind of just fall
out in the you know after the the release of the game i think is probably the main main message here
all right thank you thank you for that all right catherine uh thank you for coming in our show uh catherine flick
good podcast gp play nice everybody
