The Ethics of Computer Game Design

Miguel Sicart's "The Ethics of Computer Game Design" argues that computer games should be understood as moral objects whose code and architecture embed ethical values and function as power structures shaping how players act and experience play. Drawing on Lessig, Foucault, and the concept of ergodic art, the work locates ethical meaning in the relationship between a game's rules, which constitute its code, and the experienced play space, which constitutes its architecture. Games are framed as agents with a degree of artificial agency, a positioning that grounds the claim that they can be genuine ethical objects rather than neutral entertainment.

The argument is developed through concrete examples. XIII hardcodes moral consequences into its gameplay, while The Sims is read as encoding an ideologized view of social life by making unhappiness difficult or impossible to represent. Doom, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, and World of Warcraft are similarly analyzed for the values their systems constrain or reward. From this foundation, Sicart concludes that designing games is itself a moral act, since designers inevitably shape the choices available to players and the values those choices express.

A notable critique targets the "morality meter" mechanics common in titles such as Knights of the Old Republic and Fable. Sicart contends that algorithmic moral scoring is shallow and fails to provoke genuine moral reflection, because it reduces ethical engagement to numerical tallies rather than situations that demand judgment.

The work closes by drawing an analogy between games and poetry, positioning game design as central to games' capacity to convey values and experiences and treating games as art forms in the sense of ludus as poiesis. The scope is primarily conceptual and theoretical; the text presents no quantitative data or empirical findings, and its evidence rests on close readings of individual titles and engagement with scholarly literature in game studies, ethics, and philosophy.