Video games are one of the richest and most popular forms of human-computer interaction and, hence, their role is critical for our understanding of human behaviour and affect at a large scale. As artificial intelligence (AI) tools are gradually adopted by the game industry a series of ethical concerns arise. Such concerns, however, have so far not been extensively discussed in a video game context. Motivated by the lack of a comprehensive review of the ethics of AI as applied to games, we survey the current state of the art in this area and discuss ethical considerations of these systems from the holistic perspective of the affective loop. Through the components of this loop, we study the ethical challenges that AI faces in video game development. Elicitation highlights the ethical boundaries of artificially induced emotions; sensing showcases the trade-off between privacy and safe gaming spaces; and detection, as utilised during in-game adaptation, poses challenges to transparency and ownership. This paper calls for an open dialogue and action for the games of today and the virtual spaces of the future. By setting an appropriate framework we aim to protect users and to guide developers towards safer and better experiences for their customers.

翻译：视频游戏是最丰富、最流行的人机交互形式之一，因此，它们在理解人类大规模行为与情感方面具有关键作用。随着人工智能工具逐步被游戏行业采纳，一系列伦理问题也随之浮现。然而，这些伦理问题至今尚未在游戏语境中得到广泛讨论。鉴于缺乏对AI应用于游戏时伦理问题的全面综述，本文调查了该领域的研究现状，并从情感化交互循环的整体视角探讨了这些系统的伦理考量。通过这一循环中的各组成部分，我们研究了AI在视频游戏开发中面临的伦理挑战。情感诱发环节凸显了人工诱导情感的伦理边界；感知环节展示了隐私与安全游戏空间之间的权衡；而游戏内自适应过程中使用的检测环节则对透明度和所有权提出了挑战。本文呼吁对当今的游戏及未来的虚拟空间展开开放式对话与行动。通过构建合适的框架，我们旨在保护用户，并引导开发者为其客户创造更安全、更优质的体验。