The Ethical Games Manifesto
We commit to 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 no harm.
We do not make design decisions that will take away from player's health, relationships, well being or wallets. We always focus on giving.
We design for emotion.
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 design with love, empathy and humility.
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 design for a positive purpose.
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 design for autonomy.
We don't design to manipulate or control. We trust and respect our players and don't speak down to them.
We treat time as more precious than money.
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.
We do not design to make money.
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 are committed to anti-oppression.
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.
Parents and gamers!
Would you like companies to follow principles like ours?
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