Moral engagement in interactive narrative games: An exploratory study on ethical agency in the walking dead and life is strange

Abstract

The present paper focuses on moral choices in interactive narrative games. Particularly, it investigates factors that contribute to moral engagement in short-term decision making in games; as opposed to the somewhat better understood factors that underlie moral disengagement in games. To this end, the paper proposes factors for assessing moral engagement in games, that build upon (1) the general aggression model, (2) the moral disengagement model, and (3) self-determination theory. The paper reports on two case studies that explore the factors in actual interactive video games; it investigates meaningful choices in the games Life is Strange and The Walking Dead Season 1.