Ethical game design is still a fairly new topic. It was not really a consideration at all when the first arcade games appeared, as games had to be so abstract that it was hard to map real-world issues onto them. Over time, of course, this changed, and the world around games changed as well. In […]
As an archaeological ethicist, my work involves considering how archaeologists ‘do’ archaeology, and the ramifications of our professional choices and actions as archaeologists. More specifically, my main area of research is digital archaeology, and the archaeology of immaterial places like video-games, virtual worlds, and internet-based communities. To be an archaeological ethicist studying immaterial places, I […]
In public discussions of history, it is sometimes said that ‘history belongs to everyone’. This is often used to assert someone’s authority to interpret the past, their attempts to understand, talk or write about things which they perceive as having happened. It is also used to reject the (now old-fashioned) idea that professional historians have […]
“Prior to photography, places did not travel well” (Urry and Larsen 2011, 166). If the advent of photography heralded the increased conceptual portability of places, what does the representation of those places in video games mean? What are the ethical implications of engaging with video games as a form of digital tourism, especially when the […]
The next theme for #HGN will be (Post) Colonialism and we’re now looking for proposals! If you would like to contribute to the discussions on the site, please read on! If you have an idea but aren’t too sure whether it fits with the theme please e-mail us. As we move through our current them – […]
Games have often lacked nuance, dealing in heavy-handed constructions of black and white morality, heroes and villains. Even when they depict (or try to portray) anti-heroes and good-bad people, it’s rare to find a game that does so unproblematically. The often-triumphalist, teleological narratives and gameplay orientation of many games means that nuanced engagement with ethical […]
From Robert A. Heinlein’s short story ‘–All You Zombies–’ (1959) to films such as Groundhog Day (1993) and Tenet (2020), the literary and audio-visual arts have nurtured and popularised the ethical quandaries that arise when humans alter the fabric of time. Such experiments, though, rarely feature in historical fictions. If they do, the focus is […]
In my post last week, I discussed the role of ethics in historical representation. I argued that, as a narrative pursuit, all history involves subjective decision making. Decisions, some of which, will inevitably be made in alignment with our own ethical criteria and the ideological biases they are entangled with. But how does this relate […]
By Adam Chapman Ethical practice is important to historians. From the earliest days of our history education we are told of the care with which we must treat evidence – that it is our duty to those in the past to ensure we don’t purposely or selectively misrepresent the traces that they leave us. Similarly, […]
As promised in last week’s update, we are now firmly in the terrain of Ethics and Historical Games. You may have seen our call for contributions for the theme, which focuses on the difficult questions developers must face when making games about the past, and the difficult questions players must encounter when playing them. These […]