game-responsibility-review

Game Responsibility Review

Use this skill to evaluate what a game teaches, rewards, pressures, or normalizes. The goal is not to remove all friction or intensity; it is to make deliberate choices about player impact.

Source Traceability

Primary source: The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses, Third Edition by Jesse Schell, especially chapters 33-35 on transformation, responsibility, and purpose. The workflow is transformed and paraphrased.

Supporting sources include accessibility guidance and community safety practice where relevant.

Workflow

1. State the intended player transformation or after-effect.
2. Identify pressures created by rewards, scarcity, social comparison, streaks, ads, monetization, and notifications.
3. Review vulnerable player contexts: children, compulsive behavior, spending pressure, harassment, exclusion, and accessibility barriers.
4. Distinguish deliberate tension from accidental harm.
5. Recommend design changes, policy limits, instrumentation, and review gates.

Required Output

• Purpose Statement: what the game should leave players with.
• Impact Map: beneficial, neutral, and risky effects.
• Pressure Review: retention, monetization, social, scarcity, and notification mechanics.
• Risk Controls: product changes, limits, disclosures, parental or accessibility options, moderation, and telemetry.
• Ship Gate: unresolved issues that should block release or require explicit owner approval.

Local References

Before producing a responsibility review, read:

• references/core/guide.md
• workflows/responsibility-audit.md