Media Education/Media Ethics Summit: Ethics Beyond Gameplay – Politics, Economy, Society

Video games play an increasingly large role in the everyday life of more and more people. This development has been expedited by the evolution of the smart phone to a mobile gaming platform as well as the rise of social and casual games and their easy to learn user interfaces. The video game industry has been among the most profitable sectors of the culture- and creative-industries for many years. Video games are also widely discussed in the sociopolitical context – beyond the topics of addiction and violence. Apart from their function to entertain people, they are also becoming more relevant as means to educate and inform. All these developments are accompanied by various ethical concerns: Who regulates what is played by whom? How do players interact in online- and offline communities and which processes of inclusion and exclusion can be watched? Which kind of person is open to video games in general? All these issues are just as important from an educational perspective: do video games per se support the idea of self-exploration or do they rather reproduce social inequality after all? How can video games be incorporated into an educational context? How does do new technologies like VR challenge the player? Apart from these questions we want to further investigate the circumstances under which games are developed and published, as well as the relationship between game-makers and players.

We will touch on all of the these topics at the media educational summit “Ethics Beyond Gameplay – Politics, Economy, Society” at this year’s Clash of Realities conference, where we will approach ethical and moral issues around gaming that affect the social, economic and political dimensions of gaming as a cultural phenomenon.

Contact Program Managers:
Angela Tillmann:angela.tillmann(at)th-koeln.de
André Weßel:andre.wessel(at)th-koeln.de