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Ethics are what the actual difference between right and wrong is, in an attempt to try and control society into a safe and guarded way of living. Morals are everyone's personal beliefs in life between the right and the wrong. Everyone will have different views (morals) in multiple things in life, but we are all put under laws, which are the ethical rights and wrongs that have been considered by people to be the most fair and understandable choices.
Ethics can be shown in quite a few ways within games, but mostly by the way you act during them. This could be by doing a specific action or choosing specific choices given to you that could alter the way you experience the gameplay.
Telltale games mostly all are ethical ones and do this by changing the outcomes dependent on the choices you make. Examples by them include: The Walking Dead and Minecraft Story Mode. Other games could include Red Dead Redemption 2 and Life is Strange which are story games that change depending on the choices you make playing them. One key theme within all of these games is that they are story games, with a story that you alter depending on your actions.
Other more subtle ways this is implemented within games is that other NPC characters may act differently around you, depending on the way you have acted towards them. If you help a character, they will treat you better and you could even get rewards from time to time by helping them. However, not helping them could make them dislike you and could
Minecraft Education Edition
This game is a great example of an ethical game since it teaches players about many things to do with subjects such as maths and science. There are many worlds that are pre-made by developers to teach it's players about many things. These are usually aimed at kids to help them learn about things by making it more enjoyable by doing it in a game. This can also be useful to give examples that can be shown to the player to give a more visual piece of education, rather than just some text projected onto the screens. One of the most important topics to stress to people, especially kids, is cyber-security, which can be taught through a map with custom models and entities to help explain it in a simple way to kids.
The Stanley Parable
This game is where you take the place of a man called Stanley at work in an office but he finds out everyone has vanished. Your job is to explore, and find clues to what has happened. This is quite an ethical game since you have to do some problem solving and the game makes you do lots of tasks that could determine the kind of outcome/ending that you get on a certain playthrough of the game.
Life is Strange
The choices you make in the game can determine how the game plays out. For example, if you treat a character well and are friendly towards them, they could help you later on in the story when you could need them. Choosing options that may not be right in the moment but better later on is something you really have to consider when playing this game. Some of the options can be really challenging and give the player a good perspective of what growing up and living challenges can be like for some other people, which is a part of it's educational aspect.
Minecraft
Minecraft has a very large target audience, being appealing for most people, no matter their age, gender, personality or the device they play on. This is because the game is playable on every device from smart phones and TVs to multiple consoles and computers, all cross-platform on the bedrock version of the game. You can have fun with friends on a server, or play alone and create the biggest world in creative or survival single player worlds. Minecraft isn't really aimed at a specific gender, since there's so much to it for whatever you'd like to do. And it is enjoyable to play for any ages, younger kids will like being able to show off their builds, and as you get older, there are more things that can increase the amount of content within the game to expand the amount of creativity. This could be adding mods and resource packs to the game which the user can freely and easily do to enhance their game time.
Fortnite
A large multiplayer shooter where players fly onto a map and fight it out to become the last standing player. Sounds fun, but there's a lot more that goes into it. The common target audience would be roughly teenagers
Ethnicity and Stereotypes
In a game such as GTAV, ethnicity plays a big role in the game's storyline characters. Racial stereotypes are easiest to identify in games, due to the amount they are exaggerated to. For example, Franklin lives in the cheap, rundown part of Los Santos where crime is high and there are gangs all around. He gets into a life of crime to escape poverty and get rich. A different character such Michael lives in the middle of the city, but is presented as an old guy that worked hard in his life by doing lots of crime to earn his expensive property. He is troubled by things in his life which lead him back into crime after he retires. The final main storyline character, Trevor, is living in a life of poverty despite having a life of crime beforehand with Michael. Due to his anger issues, he lives in a secluded town outside of the city in his unpleasant caravan, but also eventually returns to crime to help out his old friend.
This partly tells us the different stereotypes that we associate with various people, and explains how we usually assume they start out and why they might do whatever they do.
Tokenism
Tokenism is when you attempt to include certain ethnic and/or minority groups to make something feel more diverse. In certain games, the developers may include a random disabled person in a wheelchair or someone that is part of a minority group to make it seem as though they are making a diverse game. However, this character will commonly have little to no meaningful contribution to the story line, possibly making it offensive to people that are part of those specific groups in real life if the developers don't really make much of an effort to explain their story enough.
Alvarado's Racial Stereotypes Theory
Alvarado explores stereotypes in four different ways. We either associate a group of people as exotic, dangerous, humorous or pitied.
Exotic is usually referred to within the specific person's looks or the way they dress which makes them stand out compared to other people.
Dangerous is when we assume someone is not safe to be around due to seeing someone else of the same ethnicity do something bad.
Humorous is the most positive one since we would usually assume people from a certain area or country are fun beings if someone from there is like that. However, they would usually be thought of to not really take anything seriously, which could be both good and bad.
Pitied is when we feel bad for a group of people, or commonly a country, since we are shown lots of footage of poor kids and adults fighting for their life in horrific conditions.