Designing Games For Ethics

As games become increasingly embedded into everyday life, understanding the ethics of their creation and use, as well as their potential for practicing ethical thinking, becomes more relevant. Designing Games for Ethics: Models, Techniques and Frameworks brings together the diverse and growing community of voices and begin to define the field, identify its primary challenges and questions, and establish the current state of the discipline. Such a rigorous, collaborative, and holistic foundation for the study of ethics and games is necessary to appropriately inform future games, policies, standards, and curricula.

Karen Schrier is a doctoral student at Columbia University, where she is finishing her dissertation on ethics and games. She also currently works full-time as the Director of Interactive Media at ESI Design, an experience design firm in New York City. Previously, she worked as a portfolio manager and executive producer at Scholastic, where she spearheaded digital initiatives for the Corporate and International divisions. She has also worked at Nickelodeon, BrainPOP and Barnes & Noble's SparkNotes. Karen was the Games Program co-chair of the ACM SIGGRAPH Conference in 2008 and 2009, currently serves on the advisory boards of the Computer Game Education Review (CGER), and is an adjunct professor at Parsons The New School. Karen has spoken on games and learning at numerous conferences, including GDC, SIGGRAPH, AERA, Games for Change, NECC, and SITE. She also helped develop numerous games and digital properties, such as Mission U.S.: For Crown or Colony?; Scholastic Summer Reading Challenge, and Scholastic.com; and Nickelodeon's ParentsConnect. Her digital and non-digital games have been featured in festivals such as Come Out and Play. Karen holds a master's degree from MIT and a bachelor's degree from Amherst College.

David Gibson is research assistant professor in the College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences, University of Vermont and Executive Director of The Global Challenge, a team and project-based learning and scholarship program for high school students funded by the National Science Foundation that engages small teams in studying science, technology, engineering and mathematics in order to solve global problems. His research and publications include work on complex systems analysis and modeling of education, web applications and the future of learning, and the use of technology to personalize education. His books include Games and Simulations in Online Learning, which outlines the potential for games and simulation-based learning, and Digital Simulations for Improving Education, which explores cognitive modeling, design and implementation. He is creator of simSchool, a classroom flight simulator for training teachers, currently funded by the US Department of Education FIPSE program. His business, CURVESHIFT, is an educational technology company that assists in the acquisition, implementation and continuing design of games and simulations, e-portfolio systems, data-driven decision making tools, and emerging technologies.