Ethical Issues Within the Gaming Industry

There are many issues in the gaming industry for example one of the main ones are ethical issues.

For example:

• Violent content
• Addiction
• Gambling
• Ownership of virtual property
• Emulation

Violent Content

The very first ever major ethical issue is violent content. The first video game to have had that problem is Exidy's game in 1976 called Death Race where you seem to run people over with a race car. Many people has thought that the game has bought on anti-social and violent behavior to the players. Though that was only a theory.

Even though it could be just a theory, research has shown that users who plays violent video games which usually contain killing, drug-use, discrimination and many other aspects has actually encouraged teenagers to bully a lot more. This just shows that video games doesn't encourage teenagers to commit huge crimes such as mass murder and other things society assume teenagers would imitate off a violent video game.

Another game which is known for violent and also a bad influence for teenagers is Grand Theft Auto and all its series. In that game you play a character that goes around killing, doing drugs, gambling, buying prostitutes and have many other bad images that are bad for teenagers. The problem is we can't stop teenagers from playing these games even if we put a rating on it which says only adults could play because their parents could buy that for them. So this has become a huge issues.



This is Mortal Kombat and that was known to be extremely graphic and many thought this was ethically wrong. There are a lot more games like this too...

Addiction

Another major issue is addiction. Many people have died from playing for too long on games and this is a huge issue probably even worse than violent content. Addiction causes people to die. This usually happens when people play for too long without a break and I'm talking about one week straight without sleep and sometimes not even food. There are some people who prepare for long gaming marathons where they collect rations and nutritious food that they can quickly eat as they game but even them they die from lack of sleep. Lack of sleep can cause a lot of problems like hallucination and illnesses and other physical issues.

On a lighter side of addiction, some people skip work or school to play games which results into them being just as bad as a drug addict. Problems happen like them not getting a job in the future or if they are not going to work and gaming the whole time they don't have the money to live and that eventually leads to death. Addiction is a huge problem with people not being productive enough and throwing away everything just to play a game. 

This is not always the producer's fault as many games now has added in features where they force the player to take breaks and they reminds them to occasionally take a break from playing. Addiction is difficult to avoid as there is no law for this and people have free will. Though the government has thought of new plans to tackle the addiction problem with a little device called the Time-Scout. This device can limit the amount of time spent using a gaming device through card access.  When the time allocated on the card runs out, the power to the gaming device is cut. The problem with this is that the player can unplug this device and continue gaming so this is difficult to control but for the people who are actually trying to cut down on gaming this is a good device to use.

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/358603/man-dies-after-playing-diablo-iii-for-40-hours/
Here is a real case of a man dying from playing too long on Diablo III!

Gambling

This hasn't been a huge issue with the gaming industry. The reason why it's still a problem is that morally gambling is wrong. There are online video games where you can gamble with another person or just with a computer controlled machine. This is addictive because you can sit at home gambling instead of going out to gamble instead the PC is at home and it is accessible almost anytime you want it to be. This increases money loss and ruins the economy slowly if the right amount of people play online gambling games. Another problem is that if someone who is not entirely interested in gambling and they play gambling games they can start gambling and that is an addiction too which connects to the addiction section of the ethical issues. Even though this is a problem, the gaming industry does not pay too much attention to it as it is not completely mainstream.

Ownership of Virtual Property

This is a big problem for MMO's and similar games where you can trade items to each other. The question here is: Who owns the items in the game world, is it the players as they have found it/earn it or is it the creators as they have created it and designed it. The answer was not clear so players started aunctions outside of the game on eBay where they display their items on the game and to sell it off. The producers thought this was wrong and took down all of the items that were being sold on eBay.

This has encouraged players to create small groups to find items and collect money and this is commonly known on World of Warcraft as "Gold Farming" and the people are called "Gold Farmers". Sometimes these people are not even interested in the game itself and works only for the money that the organizer gives them and they get paid very little money. This is common in China and the government there take absolutely no notice for this and the producers can't control this either. These people work in terrible working conditions with almost no breaks and get paid very little. They even have beds there so the workers can sleep for maybe a few hours after they've worked.

http://news.cnet.com/2100-1043_3-6154372.html
Here is an article on banning the auction of virtual items on Ebay.

Emulation

Emulators are bad and good at the same time. Bad for the producers and good for the users because emulators keep old ancient games alive but that does not take away the copyright of the game and this still upsets the producers because this encourages piracy of the game also emulators require ROM or BIOS data that is itself copyright protected. Emulation can enhance many games, by improving processor speed, increasing graphics resolution, or adding network play. Many game companies has sued and theatened the producers of emulators and at the court, the emulator side wins as there is nothing inherently illegal in emulating hardware using software.