Ethical and Legal Constraints in the Creative Media Sectors

7.2       Ethical and Legal Constraints in the Creative Media Sectors              23/03/16

Ethical issues in game sector

In this section of my blog I shall be going over some Ethical issues within video games. 

Video games are widely played for entertainment and amusement; in addition, they can act as aid in relieving stress. Due to advancing technology, video games have evolved and grown into a large empire impacting those within this realm. Thus many ethical issues are brought to our attention due to this development. As a result, we should recognize how new video games are ethically affecting people who play them.

The ethical issues of video gaming that influence many people include: Violence, Stereotyping against women and addiction. Ultimately, each topic is linked to violence involved in video games. It is the player's responsibility to be aware of the negative effects of video gaming. However, the gaming industry should also take part in some social responsibilities as well. What they develop and sell can affect the people positively or negatively. For this reason, both the gamers and the gaming industry should acknowledge the ethical issues regarding video gaming, and both need to address need to address these ethical concerns accordingly.

Although video games can have many positivity, they can also affect gamers in a harmful way.

Witcher 2 was refused in Australia; the issue was a scene where sex is used as a reward for Geralt completing a quest, which he can choose whether or not to accept. Chances are this refers to a mission given to him by a succubus. The message is that sex as a reward is wrong.

The reason why I feel that its was banned is because it might encourage young people to start believing that women are a object and might confuse them into believing this is what you have to do get sex.

Battlefield 3 banned in Iran

In November 2011, the sale of Battlefield 3 was banned in Iran. It was all thanks to a scene where American soldiers lay siege to Tehran and the Grand Bazaar. Raids on game shops to nab all existing copies followed out the announcements. while a petition bearing the signatures of 5,000 Iranians accused the game of drumming up fear of Iran in the international community. Not unexpected, since the relationship between the US and Iran is famously sticky anyway. Battlefield 3 was never officially released in Iran. Publisher EA has no resellers in the country; so all copies available when the ban came down were pirated.

This was banned because use of Iran terrorism this doesn’t look good on the countries image if their own people are supporting this act because it is agreeing to what the western world thinks of this country already.   

Social games have taking over the future in the video games industry, with more games to play than ever for free its much more easier to find the right game for you.  Free-to-play is the dominant business model for most games on social networks, and increasingly so for mobile games and online games in general. Research firm Flurry found that over 65% of the top grossing game apps in Apple's AppStore are free to play. Only 6 months earlier, in January 2011, this figure stood at 39%.

But there are some dark clouds over the industry. One is its dependency on "whales": super-users who are spending enormous amounts of money on these games and who make up for the many non-spending users. It's very hard to find reliable data on this subject because the industry is still young and not many companies are publicly listed or willing to share data. There are even rumours of some players spending tens of thousands of pounds per month on their favourite games. but one with a business dimension as well. It's a problem other businesses have dealt with before, most recently the online gambling industry: the problem of addiction and users over-spending. Despite some innocent themes and the family-friendly character of most games, there is a real and growing problem with a portion of their players spending more than they should or can afford.

Violent video game is a massive debate, often center on topics such as video game graphic violence, sex and sexism, violent and gory scenes, partial or full nudity, portrayal of criminal behavior, racism, and other provocative and objectionable material. Video games have been studied for links to addiction and aggression. It can be agreed that enganing in video games does have many ethical conerns. Through violence, there are many games involving violent acts as well as other content related to violence. This may lead people to believe that playing these types of video games can cause a person to be more violent.

The video game industry focuses towards men more than women, therefore, many people think it is stereotyping against women. This is true whoever, men do play more games then women, however game developers do add the woman side to it, being it; able to create a woman character stereotyping if games add an experience towards both genders rather than justone.

Lastly, through addiction, participating in a long amount of time in a video game has caused people to be addicted to it. As a result, they lose valuable time within their communities and miss opportunities from other activities that could be more beneficial for them. This is one of major concerns that the video game industry is having, the problem being is that they want people to enjoy their games a lot, but then addiction comes and they don’t want that, otherwise a lot of health claims come along, so the ideal game is something that’s fun, yet not addicting.