Do pro-social video games promote moral activity?: an analysis of user reviews of Papers, Please

Abstract

Video games are the digital entertainment resource most in demand by young people, which has led an increasing number of education experts to study their possible benefits. In particular, in this research, we set out to identify the potential of ‘Papers, Please’ to promote moral learning. Thus, we have tried to identify those objectives that go beyond the success in the video game and could favor moral learning. For this purpose, we have investigated what types of moral discourses arise from playing ‘Papers, Please’, a video game where you adopt the role of a customs inspector in a totalitarian state who must obtain the necessary money to fund their family. To do this, we analyzed the moral content of 1,560 player reviews. Results showed that only 4.94% of the reviews presented Moral Intuitions (moral content), which occurred more in the players who had played longer and had declared more Negative Emotions. As for the analysis of the Moral Intuitions, results showed that the players mainly made references to Care for both Family and Immigrants and point out the Authority of the State. However, Fairness/Cheating is less represented, despite the many events related to Immigrant discrimination. Through Exploratory Factor Analysis, we identified three dimensions, one of them pragmatic, oriented to success in the video game, and the others aimed at epistemic aspects beyond the objectives of the video game and that delve into the moral aspects of the game events. Hence, although spontaneous video game use is oriented toward pragmatic goals, ‘Papers, Please’ can guide players to think about the morality of the video game. Nevertheless, if we want to favor moral learning with ‘Papers, Please’, it is necessary to promote epistemic goals aimed at the explicitation of the morality that underlies the video game. To this end, we propose the application of scaffolding that favors these objectives.