“There’s No Winning, Just Decision-Making”: Prospective and Current Government Workers’ Morality in Serious Gameplay

This qualitative study investigates how prospective and current government workers collectively negotiate moral dilemmas within a serious game context. The study involved nine participants, including government workers, prospective workers, and instructors of a course on Internal Controls in Government, selected through convenience sampling. Nine participants engaged in three collective play sessions of a custom-designed narrative visual novel simulating an unethical hiring scenario. Data collected included video recordings of gameplay discussions and follow-up semi-structured interviews with five participants. Data was analyzed using narrative mapping and thematic analysis. Our findings indicate that participants prioritized established policies and procedures over narrative immersion or personal ethics. While collective play fostered dialogue and consensus, participants’ gameplay choices indicated a reliance on rational, rule-based decisionmaking, neutralizing the intended emotional impact of the game narrative. Although participants expressed empathy for the protagonist, emotions did not drive their final decisions. Though the study was limited in scope, our results suggest that professional accountability can overshadow narrative affordances in serious games. Future designs for moral training should consider non-linear exploration to better align with the complexity of professional decision-making.