Designing Moral Games: A Manifesto for Ethical Imagination (2024-present)
A BOOK TRILOGY IN PROGRESS
Moral Code
What We Owe Our Players: A Field Guide to Deontological Game Design
Moral Engine
The Game of Greatest Good: A Field Guide to Utilitarian Game Design
Moral Compass
Who We Become When We Play: A Field Guide to Virtue in Game Design
I didn’t come to art and game design to entertain.
I came to it because watching how decisions that shape our lives—by algorithms, governments, corporations, politicians, institutions, parents, teachers, colleagues, neighbors, artists, and yes, game designers—have often been devastating. At the time of this writing, federal agents patrol cities like Los Angeles, Washington D.C., Boston, Portland, and Chicago (NPR, 2025). Will the protesters be successful? What city is next? The behavior of ICE agents mirrors the Brown Shirts (Siemens, 2017) and I fear for what we will leave to our children and grandchildren.
I noticed inequality and personal violence for the first time in my life around the age of fourteen. I remember asking my dad, “Why do people hurt each other so much?” And I cried for all the people who were excluded or hurt based on their gender or skin color or ability. I cried for the veterans and the people of Vietnam—the first war I remember seeing unfold. I will never forget my father’s face. He looked overwhelmed, unsure of how to console his teenage daughter weeping for the world. But what he told me that day never left me. He said, “The most we can do is work for a better world. You can be a part of the solution. Find a way to make it better. Everyone has something special to give the world, find your passion and use your talents to make a better world.”
I make art. I make games. I notice details. I have a firm, abiding belief that play is the antidote. These are the gifts that I can use to move the needle. Play is our process of learning how to be together, work together, decide things together, and survive together (Brown, 2009). It is an approach to administer the antidote. It’s how we practice being human. The people of Portland (Lozano, 2025) and Ronald Rael (Rael, 2017, 2021) both agree with me. At least their actions using play as a form of resistance speak to this idea.
