Uganda’s Road to Peace May Run through the River of Forgiveness: Designing Playable Fictions to Teach Complex Values

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Author(s): Sasha A. Barab (Indiana University, USA), Tyler Dodge (Indiana University, USA), Edward Gentry (Indiana University, USA), Asmalina Saleh (Indiana University, USA)and Patrick Pettyjohn (Indiana University, USA)
Copyright: 2011
Pages: 22
Source title: Designing Games for Ethics: Models, Techniques and Frameworks
Source Author(s)/Editor(s): Karen Schrier (Marist College, USA)and David Gibson (University of Vermont, USA)
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60960-120-1.ch019

Keywords: Information Science Reference / Media & Communications / Multimedia Technology

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Abstract

While gaming technologies are typically leveraged for entertainment purposes, our experience and aspiration is to use them to encourage engagement with global, politically-sensitive issues. This chapter focuses on our game design concerning the struggle of Uganda, a design that allows players to experience the atrocities and inhumane conditions and, by illuminating such values as peace and justice, helps them more generally to appreciate the moral complexity of a humane intervention. Rather than theoretical constructs to be debated in the abstract, the ethical struggles involved in determining a humane intervention in the game setting are grounded in different Non-Player Characters’ perspectives and operationalized within the underlying game dynamics. Beyond reporting on the designed game, the chapter draws the reader into the struggles of designing such an ethically contentious game.

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Uganda’s Road to Peace May Run through the River of Forgiveness: Designing Playable Fictions to Teach Complex Values

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