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

Playing Our Way Into Better Futures

New technologies like brain-computer interfaces, climate engineering, and immersive virtual worlds can feel distant and abstract—until they reshape our daily lives. This article introduces a board game that invites ordinary people to sit at the same imaginary table as scientists and policymakers, helping to decide how such powerful tools should develop. By turning ethical questions into a cooperative game, the TechEthos team explores what citizens actually hope for and fear when they think about tomorrow’s technologies.

A Game Where Citizens Rule the World

At the center of the project is the TechEthos Game: Ages of Technology Impacts. Players become members of a fictional “Citizen World Council,” charged with guiding the future of one technology family—climate engineering, digital extended reality, natural language processing, or neurotechnologies. Around a shared board, they choose which technological options to support, how these tools might be used in everyday life, and which side effects and dilemmas deserve the most attention. Each choice nudges three abstract social factors, such as fairness or stability, along a track. If any factor is pushed too far, the world tips into crisis, forcing players to agree on corrective “council responses” that symbolically set ethical boundaries on technology’s growth.

From Thought Experiment to Research Tool

Unlike many educational games, this one was deliberately designed as a research instrument. The team used a "triadic" design method that balances three elements: the real-world details of emerging technologies, the deeper meanings and goals of the game (eliciting people’s values and attitudes), and the playful mechanics that keep participants engaged. Simple rules and clear visuals lower the barrier for non-experts, while carefully crafted cards embed concrete tensions—like personal benefit versus collective risk, or rapid progress versus long-term caution. By asking players to debate and then vote, the game captures not only what they decide but also how they argue, negotiate trade-offs, and express what truly matters to them.

Listening to Many Voices Across Europe

Between late 2022 and early 2023, the game was played in 20 workshops in six European countries, involving 321 participants, about a third of whom belonged to vulnerable or marginalized groups. Before and after playing, participants filled out short surveys about how aware they were of each technology and how excited or concerned they felt. During the game itself, facilitators carefully noted comments and arguments at the tables. Later, researchers coded 782 of these remarks, grouping them into value themes. Popular culture shaped awareness: chatbots, virtual reality, and brain–computer interfaces were widely recognized, often through science-fiction films and recent media stories. Attitudes were rarely purely positive or negative; most people felt both hope and worry, depending on how these tools might be governed and used.

What People Want From Powerful Technologies

Across all four technology families, three broad expectations stood out. First, safety and reliability: people wanted tools that do not harm health, ecosystems, or mental well-being, and that are thoroughly tested before wide use. Second, equity, diversity, and inclusion: participants worried that expensive or specialized technologies might deepen divides between rich and poor, or between different kinds of minds and bodies, and they stressed fair access and global justice. Third, responsible use and accountability: citizens wanted clarity about who is answerable when things go wrong and strong protections against misuse, from data abuses to manipulative applications. These concerns were not abstract; they were expressed in concrete terms, such as which sectors should deploy neurotechnologies, or whether climate engineering might benefit some countries at the expense of others.

Why This Matters for the Technologies We Get

The authors argue that asking whether “society accepts” a technology is too simple. Acceptance, they show, is conditional: people are more open to powerful tools when they are designed and governed in line with their core values. The TechEthos Game offers a practical way to uncover those conditions early, before designs and policies harden. By turning ethical reflection into a shared, low-pressure game, it gives citizens—especially those who are usually unheard—a chance to shape the questions engineers and decision-makers must confront. In doing so, it points toward a future where new technologies are not just technically impressive, but also safer, fairer, and more accountable to the people whose lives they transform.

Citation: Mehnert, W., Bernstein, M.J., Umbrello, S. et al. Ethical playgrounds: unveiling a serious game for technology ethics within the TechEthos project. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 13, 484 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-026-06645-x

Keywords: technology ethics, serious games, citizen engagement, emerging technologies, responsible innovation