Ethical Consideration
When designing a game that explore themes of online stalking and harassment such as out concept incel culture, it is important to address and understand the real world impact of this. Online harassment and stalking aren’t just narrative elements to our game, but they are a way we can hopefully bring awareness to the subject matter that many people experience.
Research on online gaming environments show that toxic behavior and harassment more often than not significantly affects a person’s mental health and safety. This issue is even worse within marginalised groups such as women, people of colour, and the LGBT. This includes their exposure to sexual harassment, doxxing, and the manner in which people interact. Situations like this can be triggering to some people, so it is important that we take the correct steps to ensure we approach this subject matter with respect.
Within out game we should treat the subject manner thoughtfully, as a serious cultural issue rather then simply and addition to a game concept. The game may be able to promote empathy and better understand of these topics, avoiding to contribute to the behaviours we seek to bring light to. Many of our players will be regular gamers, meaning that they are more likely to have experienced similar kinds of harassment, providing them with the relevant and correct resources somewhere within our game would hopefully be able to aid and prevent situations such as that portrayed within our own game narrative. Ethical concerns within games design are very real, especially when they are so closely connected to the industry. So how can we plan to be considerate?
What to do
- Don’t follow a real life story
- Do not dramatise
- provide resourses
- make the character her own person outside of the abuse
By following this we should be able to ensure our game topics are handled correctly moving forwards as this was a concern that our tutor had brought up to us within the pervious feedback.
Bibiography
McLean, L. & Griffiths, M.D., 2019. Female Gamers’ Experience of Online Harassment and Social Support in Online Gaming: A Qualitative Study, International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction, 17, pp.970–994. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11469-018-9962-0
Santisteban, M., 2025. Who gets targeted in online games? Study maps harassment risk by gender, age, and identity, Phys.org, 17 Jun. Available at: https://phys.org/news/2025-06-online-games-gender-age-identity.html
74% of players experienced harassment in online games | Game World Observer, Game World Observer, 25 Jul. 2019. Available at: https://gameworldobserver.com/2019/07/25/harassment-online-games