Abstract:

In recent years, with the development of the technology, the raging of the virus and the attention of related industries, metaverse, which has not really appeared, has impacted many research fields including pedagogy, which has always regarded online learning and gamification learning as the focus of reform. The metaverse began in literature and was promoted by movies, nevertheless it initially took shape in video games, especially the open- world game with the highest degree of freedom. The research topic of game and morality has always been a multi-disciplinary field, early related research mainly focused on the negative impact of video games on people's morality. However, later, researchers gradually began to find the moral education resources in video games. In addition, the emergence of new technology, metaverse, is bound to change people's ethical life and bring a new impact on moral education. Therefore, in summary, the study, on the one hand, recognizes moral education resources in the metaverse by using the literature of open-world games as a medium, on the other hand, reveals the new moral education changes brought about by the metaverse.

The following research questions:
Q1 What are the similar moral educational resources for open-world games and metaverses?
Q2 What changes in moral education have been brought about by the metaverse?
Q3 What are the possible ways that moral education can take place in the metaverse?

In order to answer the questions, follow the above research ideas, this study conducted literature review to analyze which papers from two main topics. First of all, metaverse, selected from research after 2021. Second, moral education in open-world game, it should be noted that some open-world game researches are scattered in video game research, so video game research is also referenced and the papers are from 2009 to 2022. Based on specific inclusion and exclusion criteria, in total 17 metaverse articles and 25 open-world game articles could be included in the subsequent analysis process. First, in the research of open-world games, it was found that open-world games themselves have some moral dilemmas or phenomenological moments that let players make moral choice with morally thinking. In addition, there are many social events in open-world games that allow players to engage in long-term, joint coordinated action, the different cultures and values from players will meet in the interaction to help to reshape the player's moral identity by reflecting. Avatars in games also have an impact on players' moral cognition. Nonlinear narratives create more open moral choices, and improve the moral thinking. In the research of metaverse, moral dilemmas and social events are more similar to reality; by using virtual reality, augmented reality and mixed reality, metaverse divided users into embodiment, avatar and doppelgangers to experience social events in metaverse, which are hyper-immersive. Besides, there are many theories to reveal moral education approaches in the metaverse research, among which the most concerned are embodied cognition theory, immersion theory and distributed cognitive theory. Since the open-world game research started earlier, there are more theories that reveal moral learning methods, such as virtue ethics theory, mirror stage theory, and Neo-Kohlbergian theory. In general, the findings of the literature review help understanding the feature and approach of moral education in metaverse.

Keywords:

Metaverse, Open-world games, moral education.