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Gender bias in video game dialogue (with Melanie Clinton, Elena Ioannidou, Liana Oh, Charlotte Clooney, E.T., Edward Healy and Sean G. Roberts)
Royal Society Open Science (2023).
Gender biases in fictional dialogue are well documented in many media. In film, television and books, female characters tend to talk less than male characters, talk to each other less than male characters talk to each other, and have a more limited range of things to say. Identifying these biases is an important step towards addressing them. However, there is a lack of solid data for video games, now one of the major mass media which has the ability to shape conceptions of gender and gender roles. We present the Video Game Dialogue Corpus, the first large-scale, consistently coded corpus of video game dialogue, which makes it possible for the first time to measure and monitor gender representation in video game dialogue. It demonstrates that there is half as much dialogue from female characters as from male characters. Some of this is due to a lack of female characters, but there are also biases in who female characters speak to, and what they say. We make suggestions for how game developers can avoid these biases to make more inclusive games.
‘Gender bias in video game dialogue (with Melanie Clinton, Elena Ioannidou, Liana Oh, Charlotte Clooney, E.T., Edward Healy and Sean G. Roberts)’ is available here
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The Video Game Dialogue Corpus (with Sean Roberts)
Forthcoming in Corpora.
This paper presents the Video Game Dialogue Corpus, the first large-scale, consistently coded, open source corpus of dialogue from video games. It contains over 6.2 million words of English dialogue from 50 games in the Role Playing Game (RPG) genre. This includes: games produced between 1985 and 2020; rated for children, teenagers, and adults; and in both “Western” and “Japanese” subgenres. The corpus design is described, including custom data formats for representing branching dialogue. We demonstrate the use of the corpus by comparing the dialogue of female and male characters, where we find reflections of gendered language in other media as well as patterns that seem specific to video games. We provide the source code for a “self-inflating corpus”: a pipeline that obtains the data then processes and parses it into a standard format. This makes the corpus available for teaching and research purposes, providing the first such resource for empirical analysis of video game dialogue.
‘The Video Game Dialogue Corpus (with Sean Roberts)’ is available here
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The Use and Usefulness of Peer Feedback (with Charlotte Newey)
We undertook a pilot study into the use and usefulness of peer feedback, involving undergraduates and postgraduates from Philosophy at Cardiff University – where peer feedback was not widely used – and for comparison, undergraduates from Law (where peer feedback was well-established).
The study identified three main concerns students have with peer feedback: the expertise of their peers, their motivation and investment, and their ability to interpret and apply grading criteria. Here we outline some simple recommendations to help to mitigate these concerns while allowing educators and students to repeat the many benefits of incorporating peer feedback.
‘The Use and Usefulness of Peer Feedback (with Charlotte Newey)’ is available here
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Improving video game conversations with trope-informed design (with Sean Roberts)
Game Studies (2021).
This paper examines tropes in video games pertaining to conversations between player characters and non-player characters (NPCs). Drawing from the fields of pragmatics and Conversation Analysis we show how these tropes differ from real, face-to-face conversations. We demonstrate how politeness theory (how to avoid unsociable, face-threatening behaviour) can help us understand when and why conversations with NPCs disrupt player immersion. Based on these insights we propose alternative designs to improve immersion. We call this approach Trope-Informed Design: tropes are tools that can make or break a player’s experience. Considering how and when to perpetuate, subvert, or transcend tropes can help guide designers in improving their game mechanics.
‘Improving video game conversations with trope-informed design (with Sean Roberts)’ is available here
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Self-Fulfilling Prophecies
Philosophies, Special Issue: "Time Travel" (2021).
DOI: 10.3390/philosophies6030078
Causal loops are a recurring feature in the philosophy of time travel, where it is generally agreed that they are logically possible but may come with a theoretical cost. This paper introduces an unfamiliar set of causal loop cases involving knowledge or beliefs about the future: self-fulfilling prophecy loops (SFP loops). I show how and when such loops arise and consider their relationship to more familiar causal loops.
‘Self-Fulfilling Prophecies’ is available here
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Trope analysis and folk intuitions
Synthese (2021).
DOI: 10.1007/S11229-020-03013-3
This paper outlines a new method for identifying folk intuitions to complement armchair intuiting and experimental philosophy (X-Phi), and thereby enrich the philosopher’s toolkit. This new approach – trope analysis – depends not on what people report their intuitions to be but rather on what they have made and engaged with; I propose that tropes in fiction (‘you can’t change the past’, ‘a foreknown future isn’t free’ and so forth) reveal which theories, concepts and ideas we find intuitive, repeatedly and en masse. Imagination plays a dual role in both existing methods and this new approach: it enables us to create the scenarios that elicit our intuitions, and also to mentally represent them. The method I propose allows us to leverage the imagination of the many rather than the few on both counts – scenarios are both created and consumed by the folk themselves.
‘Trope analysis and folk intuitions’ is available here
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Foreknowledge
Oxford Bibliographies in Philosophy (New York: OUP, 2017).
DOI: 10.1093/OBO/9780195396577-0332.
Foreknowledge transcends traditional discipline boundaries: discussion of it appears in philosophy of religion, time, action, free will, decision-theory, logic and epistemology. Nonetheless, the literature can be divided roughly into three overlapping categories. The first concerns divine foreknowledge, and the problems thought to arise from it: theological fatalism (that is, the incompatibility of God’s foreknowledge and human free will) and divine providence. The second covers the diverse texts exploring the potential prerequisites of foreknowledge – such as future contingents having truth values, or the reality of the future – and their consequences: logical fatalism, determinism, necessity, predictability. The final category, loosely conceived, contains the literature connecting foreknowledge and causation, explaining the former in terms of backwards causation or time travel, or postulating the generation of causal loops as a side-effect. This entry covers each of these, and more, beginning with general overviews and historical classics, and then undertaking a hitherto unattempted journey through the complex and varied landscape that is the philosophical treatment of foreknowledge.
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Improving Peer Review: A Pilot Study (with Charlotte Newey)
Cardiff University Learning Hub, (September 2017).
‘Improving Peer Review: A Pilot Study (with Charlotte Newey)’ is available here
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Review of The Routledge Companion to Free Will
Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 96 No. 3 (2017), pp. 626-627.
DOI: 10.1080/00048402.2017.1384847
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Prophetic Foreknowledge in Game of Thrones
Eric Silverman and Robert Arp (eds.), The Ultimate Game of Thrones and Philosophy (Chicago: Open Court, 2016).
There is a pervasive and prevalent folk intuition permeating much of fiction and philosophy: that if someone knew your future, it would prevent your being free. Many of the characters in GoT have prophetic dreams or prescient visions: some self-fulfilling, most cryptic, and many misleading. But some, at least, are accurate; Jojen Reed for instance, insists his prophetic green dreams always come true. This chapter explores this intuition and debunks it, demonstrating the compatibility of true prophecy and free will. Drawing on a variety of examples from GoT, I highlight the difference between a prophecy that describes future events and one which causes them, and show why even the latter should not lead to fatalistic worries. In doing so I discuss the difference between third-person and first-person foreknowledge (i.e. when a character is prescient concerning someone else’s fate versus their own), and the puzzles of self-fulfilling prophecies.
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Review of Tim Mulgan’s Purpose in the Universe
Australasian Journal of Philosophy, published in advance online 25th September 2016.
DOI: 10.1080/00048402.2016.1231697
‘Review of Tim Mulgan’s Purpose in the Universe’ is available here
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Things mere mortals can do, but philosophers can’t
Analysis, Vol. 75 No. 1 (2015), pp. 22-26.
DOI: 10.10/93/analys/anu097
David Lewis famously argued that the time traveller ‘can’ murder her grandfather, even though she never will: it is compossible with a particular set of facts including her motive, opportunity and skill (1976: 150). I argue that while ordinary agents ‘can’ under Lewis’s conception, philosophers cannot – not only will the latter fail to fulfil their homicidal intentions; they will fail to form them in the first place.
‘Things mere mortals can do, but philosophers can’t’ is available here