Ethical playgrounds: unveiling a serious game for technology ethics within the TechEthos project

Abstract In this article, we present the TechEthos Game: Ages of Technology Impacts , a serious game rooted in the EU-funded Horizon 2020 project TechEthos. This game is built to support public reflection and perspectives on the social and ethical issues of new and emerging technologies, and to surface and collect participants’ awareness, attitudes, and values towards specific technology families. The TechEthos Game offers an immersive exploration of the interplay between emerging technologies and their societal implications by inviting players to discuss and reflect on ethically aligned technological futures. Within the game, participants are invited to take on the role of the “Citizen World Council,” tasked with the duty of guiding the trajectory of global technology. Through iterative decision-making processes, players grapple with the dual objectives of technological progression and societal well-being, ensuring that the balance does not tilt perilously towards either side, and expressing preferable solutions for mitigating risks. On the one hand, the game’s design demands continuous assessment and proactive intervention from players; on the other hand, it asks them to articulate their excitement and concerns regarding the four emerging technologies: climate engineering, digital extended reality, natural language processing, and neurotechnologies. In this paper, we discuss the process of designing a serious game for qualitative and participatory research, present the results from the game, and reflect on lessons learned from using a serious game as a citizen engagement activity.