Here are all of our thoughts about how to make ethical games...
If you are a games business you can sign up to follow these principles. What you get for signing up:
~ A pdf version to print out for your wall.
~ Email notifications if there are changes.
~ A licence to use the words of the manifesto as an advocacy and promotion tool for family audiences for your own business.
~ Use of the manifesto to focus your thinking around making ethical games.
Our manifesto has developed over the past 10 years and will continue to develop. We are always learning and developing. We have these to hold us accountable and ensure that we always hold our values at the heart of what we design.
We have often been told these principles are not conducive to good business. We believe committing to ethical games is good business.
We do not make design decisions that will take away from player's health, relationships, well being or wallets. We always focus on giving.
How we make people feel is the most important aspect of the design vision, we design intentionally with emotion in mind. Our intent is to gift people with an emotional experience to remember.
We hold the people we are creating for in our heart and mind. We involve them in our design process with play testing. We accept when we were wrong and focus on the learning and design process.
We believe every game should have a meaningful purpose, with a clear vision of the positive impact the game could have on people's lives.
We don't design to manipulate or control. We trust and respect our players and don't speak down to them.
A player’s time is precious and life is short. When you design around "player engagement" with no other beneficial motive or purpose, you are designing to steal time. When you steal time you steal all the other things that are good about life, love, health, meaning. Time cannot be given back. We do not steal time.
Design decisions based on making money are not human centred. We design for the benefits of people not markets or business. Making money is a business problem, not a design problem.
We commit to deconstructing, dismantling and destroying systems of oppression and to designing games which do not prop up or tacitly comply with these systems.
Would you like companies to follow principles like ours?
Share this page with the hashtag #ethicalgamesmanifesto to be visible about what you want to see in the games industry.
Help us prove that there are people who will buy and advocate for ethical games!
