Good ideas often inspire more a sense of discovery rather than invention. Such was the case when I came up with the idea of using The Walking Dead by Telltale Games as a learning tool in my unit on moral philosophy. I had my intuitions confirmed after an initial trial run late on the second semester of my first
year of teaching. When I later started building the curriculum for the final unit, it was like putting together a jigsaw puzzle that assembled itself. At its heart, The Walking Dead is a game about how humans cope with difficult decisions in a world where the safety of modern society is torn apart and altruism is a virtue few can afford. The game’s dilemmas synergize well with teaching moral philosophy, as its setting excels at exposing the inherent differences between deontology and teleology – whether an action is good in and of
itself, or if the value of an action is dependent in its outcome. It robs us of the luxury of an “easy way out” or “doing what is right”; it demands that we make deep sacrifices on order to preserve our humanity and hold on to our moral virtues.
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