Digital Games as Ethical Technologies

Abstract

What are the values of an object? How can philosophy illuminate the inherent rhetorical, social, political and moral meanings inscribed in any designed technology? And how can we do this without falling in the intentional fallacy, ascribing all responsibility to the designer? Because, as design researcher Nigel Cross has stated, “design is rhetorical […] in the sense that the designer, in constructing a design proposal, constructs a particular kind of argument, in which a final conclusion is developed and evaluated as it develops against both known goals and previously unsuspected implications” (Cross 2007, p. 51). In this chapter I will look at game design and how it is used to create ethical experiences, only I will not start from the perspective of the designer, but of the finished product as experienced by a user. In this sense, I am extending the rhetorical analysis of design proposed by Cross, and suggesting a way of understanding the ways in which design conveys meaning.