Homework Assignment 6

Online Gaming

(Note to students: Rather than have you analyze the ethical issues in Second Life (www.secondlife.com), I decided to have us build our own online game).

We are collaborating on an online simulation game whose object is to promote ethical decision making for IT professionals.  Our audience is the “Gamer Generation”, that is, young adults who grew up playing video games.

The learning style for this game (which needs a title, by the way) will be based on a study written up in Got Game, How the Gamer Generation is Reshaping Business Forever by Jon C. Beck and Mitchell Wade (2004, Harvard Business School Press). That style must take into account:

• “Aggressively ignores any hint of formal instruction;
• Leans heavily on trial and error (after all, failure is nearly free; you just push “play again”);
• Includes lots of learning from peers but virtually none from authority figures;
• Is consumed in very small bits exactly when the learner wants, which is usually just before the skill is needed.”

Write up your ideas for how the game should be played generally. Include specifics about the rules of the game, the objects of the game, whether it matters if someone “wins” and how the game will meet the style objectives above.

Then, as subpart of your ideas, explain how you would teach the lessons in Section 3.5 of Quinn on the ethics of pornography.