Ethical design: a post-Lacanian ethnography of a serious healthcare game

Purpose This ethnographic case study explores how designers of a serious healthcare game internalise ethical challenges. Design/methodology/approach The analysis uses Jason Glynos’ post-Lacanian theory of ethics with its underpinning notions of fantasy, identification and detachment to interpret how designers wrestle with infantilisation (characterised here as overidentification with fantasy) insofar as it affects elderly people. Findings The research finds that game design ethically benefits when designers experience fantasy traversal. Originality/value Games as a means of promoting healthcare and lifestyle outcomes raise ethical conundrums. To address these concerns, researchers have generally adopted either a normative or a virtue ethics perspective of game design. In so doing, they have neglected how designers actually experience creating a game and, in particular, make decisions about the infantilisation that the process sometimes entails. The present study seeks to remedy such oversight.