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Giordano Cabral

IF760 — Tópicos Avançados em Mídias (Advanced Topics in Media) (75 hours) · Undergraduate, CIn/UFPE · 2025.1 (May to August 2025)

Tópicos Avançados em Mídias — Jogos e Dilemas Sociais

Digital games as research tools for social dilemmas (cooperation, commons, game theory), with experimental design for the projects; affiliated with the PsyFun group.

An empty classroom at the end of the day: rows of chairs, a blank board, a louvered window; one red chair turned to face the others.

01 · Teaching

The course

Undergraduate course at CIn/UFPE on designing and implementing games to study behavior facing ethical and social dilemmas, within the research line of PsyFun. It was taught by Giordano Cabral with Guilherme Cabral, with whom he has collaborated on the topic since 2013. The article Lessons learned about the development of digital entertainment tools for experiments on resources distribution (Computers in Human Behavior, 2017), which addresses the same design problem, was part of the course material.

02 · Teaching

Semesters

Offered once, in 2025.1, from May to August, as Tópicos Avançados em Mídias (Advanced Topics in Media) (75 hours).

03 · Teaching

What students do

Students study social dilemmas and game theory, describe real dilemmas through a questionnaire, design their own ideation dynamics, write the Game Design Document, learn experimental design and ethical limits, lay out variables and hypotheses before running anything, and then build the game and collect data in class — the class plays each other's games, two groups per day. The final deliverable is the game, the experiment results, the publicly open link, and the 360 evaluation. A document by Giordano Cabral, "Macrojogo e Minijogo" (Macro-game and Mini-game), proposed implementing the games as mini-games inside existing platforms, to leverage their player base; one team adopted this format (Star Race, below).

Course page
Course page
Ideation session board (June 2025)
Ideation session board (June 2025)

Student work9 submissions · 2025.1

Ainda Estamos Aqui

Jogos e Dilemas Sociais 2025.1

Iasmin Gomes, Italo Lima, Lucas Vidal, Marcos Gabriel, Matheus Pinheiro, Victor Matheus

A web-based narrative decision-making game in which a journalist in a fictional country under a dictatorship makes editorial choices that affect three meters — relations with the government, relations with the population, and paranoia — and must reach the end without letting any of them drop to zero.

Carcinus: A Revolta dos Caranguejos
Jogos e Dilemas Sociais 2025.1

Carcinus: A Revolta dos Caranguejos

A multiplayer Android game inspired by Reigns, set in a dystopian Recife in 2040 where crab-men rebel: the group votes on event cards that affect four collective stats, while each player pursues personal objectives — the tragedy of the commons in game form.

Fragmentos de Kuma

Jogos e Dilemas Sociais 2025.1

Eliab Bernardino de Paula Junior

A narrative game with hidden moral decisions: the player follows Kuma, a young man capable of absorbing other people's pain, and the choices reveal dimensions of the player's empathy, inspired by psychological scales.

Futuros de Murphy
Jogos e Dilemas Sociais 2025.1

Futuros de Murphy

Beatriz de Araujo Andrade, Erlan Lira Soares Junior, Guilherme Maciel de Melo, Pedro Arthur Santana Patriota, Pedro Augusto de Almada Lobo Fonseca

A multiplayer web game (2 to 8 players) about herd behavior and misinformation: "time navigators" vote, amid true and false rumors, on whether to intervene in past events to prevent a devastated future.

Galaxy Smugglers

Jogos e Dilemas Sociais 2025.1

Eduardo Amorim, Felipe Moraes, Gabriela Pinheiro, Vinícius Resende

A web-based, turn-based cooperative strategy game for studying cooperation and risk aversion under inequality: players with different credits and abilities decide whether to participate in smuggling missions with varying risks and rewards.

Order & Chaos
Jogos e Dilemas Sociais 2025.1

Order & Chaos

Beatriz Barros, Bernardo Melo, Letícia Pedrosa, Rafael Teles

A coalition government in a fictional country in crisis: each group decision affects four indicators (stability, security, economy, freedom), and the experiment observes how communication among decision-makers changes consensus and alignment; a web prototype built with Django.

RESOLVE
Jogos e Dilemas Sociais 2025.1

RESOLVE

Bernardo Melo, Bonna Gil Borsoi, Lucas Vinícius da Silva, Maria Carolina Santos Berrafato, Victor Luiz de Paula Lima, Severino Carlos da Silva Junior

A murder investigation in which the player gathers evidence, hears different accounts, and identifies the culprit — to observe how emotional factors influence the decision.

Star Race
Jogos e Dilemas Sociais 2025.1

Star Race

Ellian dos Santos Rodrigues, Pedro Henrique Vieira de Moura, Jonathas Vinicius Rocha Alves da Silva, Miguel Gomes de Oliveira, Arthur Bezerra Calado, Tarcisio Rickson Campos Chagas

A model of the public goods dilemma within Transformice (Lua): over six rounds, each player chooses between contributing to a collective pot or accumulating private gains, amid environmental and social events, with a ranking that shows contribution, efficiency, and consistency.

The Chamber

Jogos e Dilemas Sociais 2025.1

Guilherme Maranhão Simões de Moraes Ramos, João Luís Gomes Agra, Layse Roberta da Silva Araújo, Luiza Diniz Mendes Monteiro Luna, Maria Letícia Maranhão Nascimento, Roseanne Oliveira Cavalcante Gama

A judgment game in which the player makes decisions about cases and suspects — to measure how quickly an initial judgment forms, how much it changes in response to new information, and how gender bias and stereotypes enter into the decision.

the-chamber-fhzi.onrender.com

04 · Teaching

Course offerings

2025.1 — nine teams, nine games

  • Star Race — the public goods dilemma in a gamified environment, implemented in Lua within Transformice: a minigame within the larger game. Team "Os cara da caixa": Ellian dos Santos Rodrigues, Pedro Henrique Vieira de Moura, Jonathas Vinicius Rocha Alves da Silva, Miguel Gomes de Oliveira, Arthur Bezerra Calado, Tarcisio Rickson Campos Chagas.
  • Ainda Estamos Aqui — the tragedy of the commons in narrative form: the player is a journalist in a fictional country under a dictatorship, and each editorial decision affects three metrics. Open to the public: https://ainda-estamos-aqui.vercel.app/. Team 2: Iasmin Gomes, Italo Lima, Lucas Vidal, Marcos Gabriel, Matheus Pinheiro, Victor Matheus.
  • Carcinus: A Revolta dos Caranguejos — a multiplayer game inspired by Reigns, set in Recife in 2040, where mangroves cover less than 2% of their original area; decisions made by voting on cards affect four collective stats, and individual victory can conflict with the common good. Android APK. GDD de Carcinus
  • Futuros de Murphy — herd behavior and misinformation: time navigators intervene in past events. Team 4: Beatriz de Araujo Andrade, Erlan Lira Soares Junior, Guilherme Maciel de Melo, Pedro Arthur Santana Patriota, Pedro Augusto de Almada Lobo Fonseca.
  • The Chamber — a variation on the trolley problem focusing on gender bias: a case revealed in six fragments, with voting in each round. Team "Carimba que é #brat": Guilherme Maranhão Simões de Moraes Ramos, João Luís Gomes Agra, Layse Roberta da Silva Araújo, Luiza Diniz Mendes Monteiro Luna, Maria Letícia Maranhão Nascimento, Roseane Oliveira Cavalcante Gama.
  • Galaxy Smugglers — a turn-based cooperative strategy game built for the web in JavaScript, designed to study cooperation under unequal resource distribution and risk aversion. Team "Entre o Certo e o Eu": Eduardo Amorim, Felipe Moraes, Gabriela Pinheiro, Vinícius Resende.
  • Order & Chaos (Ordem e Caos) — a narrative party game with cards and political simulation: how communication influences group decisions. Team 7: Beatriz Barros, Bernardo Melo, Letícia Pedrosa, Rafael Teles.
  • Fragmentos de Kuma — an interactive narrative with hidden moral choices, designed to assess empathy profiles; open to the public, approximately eight minutes long. Team "As ++": Alice Vitória, Eliab Bernardino, Marcelo Anderson, João Victor, Monyque Gabrielli, Tiago Campêlo.
  • Resolve — a murder investigation in which the player decides who is guilty, designed to observe emotional factors in decision-making; built in Ren'Py. Team 9: Bernardo Melo, Bonna Gil Borsoi, Lucas Vinícius da Silva, Maria Carolina Santos Berrafato, Victor Luiz de Paula Lima, Severino Carlos da Silva Junior.
  • Ideas from the ideation stage that did not become games: Cidade Dorme no Fim do Mundo, Maçãs Podres, Em Crise and Robozinhos.
Ainda Estamos Aqui, online in 2026
Ainda Estamos Aqui, online in 2026
Resolve
Resolve
Star Race
Star Race
Ordem e Caos
Ordem e Caos
Order & Chaos, GDD
Order & Chaos, GDD
Futuros de Murphy, final presentation
Futuros de Murphy, final presentation
Fragmentos de Kuma, final presentation
Fragmentos de Kuma, final presentation
The Chamber, final submission
The Chamber, final submission
Cidade Dorme no Fim do Mundo, idea from the ideation phase
Cidade Dorme no Fim do Mundo, idea from the ideation phase
Em Crise, idea from the ideation phase
Em Crise, idea from the ideation phase
Little robots, mechanics ideation map and experiments
Little robots, mechanics ideation map and experiments

Teaching

Materials and links

Frequently asked questions

What is Tópicos Avançados em Mídias: Jogos e Dilemas Sociais (Advanced Topics in Media: Games and Social Dilemmas, IF760)?

Digital games as research tools for social dilemmas (cooperation, commons, game theory), with experimental design for the projects; affiliated with the PsyFun group.

When was Tópicos Avançados em Mídias: Jogos e Dilemas Sociais offered?

1 class, in 2025.1.

Where are the materials for Tópicos Avançados em Mídias: Jogos e Dilemas Sociais?

In PsyFun.