There plenty of games that don’t have the intention to entertain audiences, instead they sometimes try to deliver a message on something relevant in real life. This can be politics, world problems, addressing issues, or societal issues. Most of these games don’t focus on game play, they leave an effect however. Actually they do have a focus on gameplay but their main focus is delivering an ethical message
Some examples of these kinds of games are: We Become what we behold, and The Company of Myself
These games all focus on delivering a message on something that is actually happening. As someone who recently had to develop a board game that had to apply ethics, I found it rather hard to apply it without making less fun/innovative. To be fair most of the games that I have played which are strategy games are quite focused on game play and very few focus on ethical ideas that are intended.
There are plenty of instances where games do create unintended ethical ideas. Games that are role-playing based can often do this because you usually are involved in a world that changes through game play. I think Mount Blade Warband’s slave selling mechnic can unintentionally give way to discussion of slavery, though there is no way to reverse the mechanic.
Personally I don’t know how to really make a game with ethical focus have a good focus on game play. There are some decent examples such as Life is Strange, and Heavy Rain. But those are very narrative/idle based. I would love to figure out how to make an ethics based strategy game but I think it would be very hard to make it fun…
