Data-Driven Game Development: Ethical Considerations

TL;DR: In this article, the authors discuss several factors affecting the use of game data in the development cycle and raise issues with algorithms marginalizing certain player groups and flaws in the resulting models due to their inability to reason about situational factors affecting players' decisions.

Abstract: In recent years, the games industry has made a major move towards data-driven development, using data analytics and player modeling to inform design decisions Data-driven techniques are beneficial as they allow for the study of player behavior at scale, making them very applicable to modern digital game development However, with this move towards data driven decision-making comes a number of ethical concerns Previous work in player modeling as well as work in the fields of AI and machine learning have demonstrated several ways in which algorithmic decision-making can be flawed due to data or algorithmic bias or lack of data from specific groups Further, black box algorithms create a trust problem due to lack of interpretability and transparency of the results or models developed based on the data, requiring blind faith in the results In this position paper, we discuss several factors affecting the use of game data in the development cycle In addition to issues raised by previous work, we also raise issues with algorithms marginalizing certain player groups and flaws in the resulting models due to their inability to reason about situational factors affecting players' decisions Further, we outline some work that seeks to address these problems and identify some open problems concerning ethics and game data science