Day One DLC (Ethical, Legal and Regulatory Issues)
Unit 7: Assignment 1 – Day One DLC (Ethical, Legal and
Regulatory Issues)
Note how these things affect the gaming industry
(through deeper research, forced diversity etc.) as well as the consumer (what
effects does this have on the players who notice possibly offensive material?)
Ethical
Is it ethical to force diversity to maintain political
correctness with public relations?
The plot and content must revolve around a specific
theme which has certain specific things that may relate to ethical issues and
cause offence even if unintentional. It seems to come under two main
categories; people who get offended by something just because that particular
theme has been chosen for a specific story/idea (with regards to Resident Evil
5), and secondly things that are just quite obviously offensive without having
been given some thought beforehand (the Fat Man and Little Boy names given to
nuclear weapons, disregarding the impact it would have given that they were
named after real weapons deployed on certain countries)
At times it seems like the ethical ‘issue’ may simply
be a part of the story and therefore a plot device that doesn’t necessarily
breed offense by design but insights it first in people who are far too
susceptible to more touchy themes. Often it isn’t the fault of developers
overlooking a blatantly offensive issue with regard to; race, gender, sexuality
etc. but more to do with the kind of person who can’t help but look for
something to complain about. Though this might be a cynical approach to looking
into ethical issues but a lot of the time the offensive content is viewed out
of context and without appropriation for it’s meaning within a story that
hasn’t been fully understood before drawing the conclusion that it could be
taken the wrong way. There can be something offensive drawn from almost
everything if viewed in a certain way or by misinterpreting non-existent
subtexts, this shouldn’t fundamentally change design solely to not offend
people, though we see a lot of the time that this isn’t the case because
regardless of people being overly sensitive about issues there will often be a
media uproar about the issue and however minor this is it can have dramatic
repercussions on the sales figures of a game and may result in massive
changes/patches/updates in order to rectify the particular problem, though at
this point I imagine that most of the time the product is completely lost on
the offended party, whether it be a particular country, gender or persons of
particular sexuality.
Legal
Legal issues that may confront certain areas of the
game industry vary from the product marketing and placement to arbitrary things
such as their name or themes. There are various cases of legal issues within
the video games industry whether it be regarding the legal licensing of a
particular title (as seen with the Tetris fiasco) or something as basic as one
company arranging lawsuits against a small time developer for something as
basic as the use of a particular name of their game (Zenimax Vs. Mojang). With
the specific example of Zenimax Vs. Mojang the dispute was over the use and
trademarking of the name ‘Scrolls’ for a digital card game that Mojang was
developing because it conflicted with Bethesda’s series ‘The Elder Scrolls’,
the parent company (Zenimax) felt that if Mojang got a trademark for the name
‘Scrolls’ then it would cause confusion with their own brand and possibly
damage the sales market of their series because the use of the name with a
different product would possibly fracture the consumer’s approach to both
brands. Eventually the dispute was settled and the trademark was denied to
Mojang and fully given to Bethesda’s parent company, however this wasn’t
entirely a failure for Mojang as Zenimax licensed them the use of the name and
mark for their current project and publication, they were specifically allowed
the use of the name Scrolls on a one use basis for that particular game and any
updates and expansions for that one product however they were not to use the
same name/mark for any sequels. Mojang’s CEO ‘Notch’ said that they were just
happy to be able to use the name still, they had never really planned to make a
sequel for this specific title as it wasn’t that sort of game. In this scenario
both companies kind of got what they want but a lot of the time there are legal
battles between companies within the games industry that don’t get settled in
quite the same way, Robert Altman (CEO of Zenimax) said that “We are pleased to
have settled this matter with Mojang amicably”.
Regulatory
Within the games industry there are certain rules
regarding the regulation and even censorship of certain content given the
country or premise it is released into. Certain games get banned altogether in
certain areas of the world as a result of legal or ethical issues but ultimately
this falls under a regulatory point of view. In Australia they have a number of
issues with regard to regulations from the import of goods and the immigration
of people, but this stretches into the video games market there also. The
regulation standards board of Australia has certain things that it looks for
with new games that want to release publically there that have to be looked at
carefully and either censored horribly (like with Left4Dead 2) or just
completely banned in the country because it’s content promotes the wrong kind
of behaviour or is just considered inappropriate. Of course this doesn’t always
do what it’s supposed to do, a lot of the time when a particular game goes
through that sort of controversy it receives even higher levels of publicity
due to people being curious about just how bad this content might be. This
leads to a high level of patching and or piracy with regards to the game, which
wouldn’t have made money anyway in that country I suppose but it raises a moral
debate slightly.
A lot of the time the old paradigm that anyone over the
age of 18 is free to see and hear whatever they want, however this is often
contended by regulatory bodies as it becomes difficult to keep this kind of
content away from people under the ‘legal’ age of the classification of the
material their products contain. It’s not enough to put a stamp on a game cover
and have stores only sell to people of the appropriate age as there’s no way to
restrict where they go after that, who’s to stop a friend/parent/sibling buying
a game for a child that is deemed ‘inappropriate’ for someone of that age
group. At the same time who’s to say that the day difference between being
nearly 18 and actually being 18 makes any difference at all to a person’s mental
ability to distinguish what’s real and what isn’t from any age. Some people
develop a better sense of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ at an earlier age, is it right to
regulate what someone sees if they feel like the content is suitable for them.
This is the problem with blanket regulatory rules, a lot of the time the only
way to get something out of consumption is to ban the product entirely, but the
counter effect this has that the product gets even more hype because of content
that is deemed suitable to get rid of entirely. This leads to more and more
people going out of their way to try and find copies of versions of the banned
game and replicate it themselves to spread it anyway, in terms of monetisation
this doesn’t really make a difference to the producing companies in terms of
profit for the title as they aren’t allowed to sell it anyway, the difference
is that people still get hold of it and get to experience something that may be
perfectly acceptable for the games industry but has been subjected to a ban on
the grounds of unsuitability of perhaps even just one scene in the game.
Bibliography:
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/ZeniMax-Mojang-Bethesda-Scrolls-Trademark,14982.html
(Accessed 02/10/12)
http://uk.gamespot.com/features/censory-overload-an-in-depth-look-at-australian-video-game-classification-6188493/
(Accessed 02/10/12)
Also how good is that soundtrack on the opening to Borderlands 2.. yeh yeh I know it's from Batman aswell but hey, that's what happens with things that work really well. Been singing it all over the place for about three days.. 'this ain't no placeeee for a hero!'Wondering how much I'll be able to get done on my own at the end of this course.. possibly have a good idea for a full sized project, think I might be capable of something decent working solo. Will have to see X_X
~ZH
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