“Ethiquest”- An Engineering Ethics Game
Niranjan Kumar, Huda Iftekhar, Tim Koo, Kevin Cochrane

For this project, we had two main goals. First, our project should introduce others to the importance of engineering ethics and enable them to develop their ethical perspectives. Second, our project should capture people’s attention and be entertaining. In some ways, these goals are somewhat conflicting, but we felt that a good balance between the two would achieve our goals satisfactorily. After some discussion, we decided that the best way to meet these two goals was to make an ethics game. We titled the game “Ethiquest” as a concatenation of the words “Ethics” and “Quest.” Initially, we thought of making Ethiquest a computer game, but we then realized that a computer game does not facilitate interaction between players. From what we learned in this class, it is important to discuss your ethical views with others and hear their opinions. It is beneficial to understand others’ points of view and hear their response to yours, since it enables you to learn more about your viewpoint, including its potential flaws, and thereby develop your ethical perspective. Therefore, the ability for players to communicate is an important part of our game, and we felt that a computer game was not the best way to achieve this. Even for multiplayer LAN games with chat enabled, communication is somewhat compromised because the players stare at their computer screens exclusively and communicate with each other solely through text. A less technologically advanced board game, on the other hand, requires players to gather around the board and meet face-to-face. Our hope is that this will better facilitate the exchange of ethical ideas and viewpoints to make the experience more enriching for the players. In another effort to make Ethiquest more useful for players, the game presents dilemmas that are set in the high-pressure situations that often accompany ethics in the real world. The Event Cards in the game are miniature case studies that achieve this purpose.

Also, on a higher level, the game is not about simply making the obvious “ethical” choice. The game is structured as a race to finish, and the winner is determined not just by ethical integrity, but also by accomplishments and results. The final score is the sum of “Ethics Points” and “Quest Points.” In the game, there are many shortcuts which help players gain Quest Points at the expense of Ethics Points. The fact that the game is a race puts pressure on players to take these shortcuts, but those who finish with many Quest Points but too few Ethics Points will not win. This parallels the real world, where choices are not black and white. Life is about finding balance and most choices involve some sort of tradeoff between advancement and integrity. However, choices in life are generally not binary. When we encounter an ethical problem, it is not a simple yes/no choice, but rather a multitude of different options that are available, each with its benefits and drawbacks. For instance, an engineer working in industry with a family to support has several goals that need to be met. These include, but are not limited to, earning enough money to support the family, trying to earn promotions to advance a career, ensuring that his or her work is positively impacting society as a whole, being loyal to the company, and giving others involved in product development appropriate credit for their work. We thought about including such multi-pronged ethical dilemmas in Ethiquest, but we soon realized that this would be difficult to integrate into the game without making the rules overly complicated. Instead, we made each Event Card involve ethical dilemmas in many different ethical dimensions to simulate the multitude of goals one strives to achieve in life and the tradeoff involved in many everyday decisions.

In terms of physical implementation, the game board will be medium-sized, about the size of a Monopoly board, and will fit easily on a standard desk or table. Each player has one token to represent him or her. Over the course of the game, these tokens will move along a path on the board in an effort to finish first. The path will include some shortcuts, a visual representation of the kinds of ethical dilemmas that occur in the real world. Each turn, Event Cards, printed on cardstock, and about the size of a standard playing card, will be drawn. The Event Cards contain miniature case studies that enable people to think about issues similar to those they may encounter the real world.

Here is a picture of the Ethiquest game board:

Here is an example of an Event Card mini case study:
You are a chemical engineer and you are looking for a job. Chevron hires you as part of the “Environmental Cleanliness” unit which helps the company reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the US and comply with, and even exceed, EPA regulations. You happily take the job. Later on, you find out that this is largely achieved by outsourcing Chevron’s pollution to countries in Africa which don’t tend to have much environmental regulation. Will you whistleblow?

Our “kickstart” activity, designed to show other students this game and get them interested, will involve us playing one round of the game during our allotted presentation time. As we play, we will explain various features of the game and our rationale behind including them. Instead of boring the audience with the complete description of the rules at the beginning, we will give a brief outline and explain the subtleties as we play. We will station the game on one of the middle rows so that everyone can gather around and see it. The length of the game is variable, depending on luck and the choices made by players, but will design it such that the audience understands the main ideas of our game and how those ideas relate to ethics, by the end of the allotted presentation time. The goal of the “kickstart” activity is to get students interested in the game so that they will want to play it themselves afterwards. If sufficient interest is expressed, someone could make additional copies of Ethiquest and distribute them to people who want one.
We sincerely hope that Ethiquest will effectively convey the ideas of this class and encourage players to develop their ethical perspectives in a fun and engaging format.