Eliya Cohen

This article introduces video game ethics as an emergent field. It then focuses on some of the pressing issues distinctive of video game design, issues which arise predominantly from the making rather than the playing of games. Many issues in video game ethics arise from an asymmetry in the relationship between designer and player. To play a game is to place oneself in a position of dependence on the designer. The designer shapes the player's experience. They structure the physical environment and how the player perceives and moves through it. They invite players to inhabit new roles and care about new goals and outcomes. Players thereby voluntarily enter into situations organized by such design choices. This dependence is part of what makes games so compelling, even valuable, especially when they are used to challenge, confront, or invite reflection, but it can also create vulnerabilities that can be exploited. This article examines three such vulnerabilities generated by game design: exploitative monetization practices rooted in economic and structural features of gameplay, gambling‐like reward systems such as loot boxes and the legal and moral concerns they raise, and socially manipulative design patterns that capitalize on player attachment and loyalty.

A variable domain model theory with accessibility is developed to interpret the language of second-order propositional modal logic. It is shown that propositionally quantified modal logics S5 and weaker as characterized by the classes of such frames are recursively isomorphic to second-order logic and thus not recursively axiomatizable. The result is then extended to a related class of logics validating a higher-order comprehension principle. While the primary objective of this paper is to explore formal systems, many of the model-theoretic decisions are informed by contingentist views. Given the attention to higher-order formal arguments against contingentism, the results of this paper might be of some interest to those concerned with that debate.