Regulatory Issues In The Gaming Industry

Regulation is the prime aspect of games that keep them on the market and available to us, the consumers.

What Is Regulation?

Regulation by the dictionary definition is: A rule or directive made and maintained by an authority. This basically means that in the context of games that are developed, games need to abide by certain rules of content and the references that are made throughout them.

Games that contain high amounts of violence such as Left 4 Dead 2 are sometimes banned or censored in some countries worldwide, mostly because of the games content that is not seen as appropriate in the eyes of the government or the game regulators. Left 4 Dead 2 was censored in Australia because of its high content of violence and gore which is not surprising when the game is based upon the killing of zombies throughout a movie scripted style campaign. The main features of the game that were cut due to it’s explicitly were the Zombie riot cops that were shown in ‘The parish’ campaign in the first mission. The reason these were cut were because of the violence that was encouraged towards authority figure which was considered as unacceptable. Another feature axed was the extensive blood and gore that the game really gets its sparkle from. Left 4 Dead 2 and its gore are for myself the most appealing thing about the gameplay and the style of play. I enjoy slicing the heads off zombies and watching their heads slowly roll towards my feet. With the censoring, the bodies also disappeared shortly after they were killed. Although this was censored, the game ran around 40% faster which could be a massive improvement to many gamers and even an even better reason to play the game censored as the performance of the game would be much higher and more fun to play with a higher frame rate.

Who are regulation?

Now in the UK, PEGI are one of the main game regulators and are the ones who put the age ratings on the front of our beloved game titles we see everywhere. PEGI or Pan European Game Information are responsible for the age ratings on games and if they are suitable for distribution to the general public.

Another Company responsible for the content in games and if they are suitable for the gaming community are TIGA. TIGA Represent the games industry by attempting to make the United Kingdom the best place for games development and suitability. Without TIGA, many games we play and love may not have been put through as suitable to play and simply not released.

A lot Of Countries feel strongly about the content is games and many are much more concerned about the content than others are. Germany are extremely careful with the games that are allowed to be sold in their country. Any game that have references to the Nazi party are banned straight off such as Wolfenstein and The Darkness, not to mention the Nazi Zombies Game mode in the Call of Duty Series. Although this may be the case, Germany also ban the most intensely violent games, simply because of the blood and content. Left 4 Dead 2, Dead Rising 1 & 2 and Manhunt are all banned in Germany and other games that are soon to be released with high ratings of blood and gore will probably go down the same path. Other countries like Saudi Arabia have games banned simply because of the negative portrayal of Arabs, or the perception of them with games like Assassins Creed or Even Call of Duty: Modern Warfare.

Legal Issues In The Gaming Industry

The gaming industry is bombarded with many legal issues regarding Piracy, Copyright and Game Content that affects the Developers, Publishers and most importantly us, the consumers.

Earlier on this year, Bethesda criticised Notch (Creator of Minecraft) on the title for his new game he is working on, ‘Scrolls’. Bethesda were more than unhappy about the choice of name as their highest grossing game series, ‘The Elder Scrolls’ with its latest release of ‘Skyrim’ (November 11^th 2011). Notch proposed to ‘throw down like gentlemen’ on Quake 3 to settle the matter yet Bethesda were reluctant to comply with the offer. The court case proceeded and the only outcome was that Notch could only use the name ‘Scrolls’ on the first game and that he would have to use an alternative name if he were to then release a sequel. I’m sure that Notch wouldn’t have been affected by this outcome but the prices for his lawyers might have been a little steep.

Another issue with Law in the gaming industry are the amount of redundancies that occur with new and upcoming developers. A classic example of this would be 38 studios, founded by curt ‘bloody sock’ schilling in 2006. 38 studios were a small games industry founded by a professional baseball player, Hence the nickname ‘bloody sock’ this nickname came from a match where he was about to hit a ball that could potentially give him and his team the upper hand of the game yet blood could be seen coming from his ankle by the crowd just above his sock. This information not needed but still, nice to know I guess. Schilling although being extremely athletic and sporty extremely enjoyed his MMO and RPG games. With him being a professional baseball star, he had a fair bit of money that he wanted to use to start a games development studio and was then encouraged by friends to do so. He invested quite a lot of money into this business with the intention of getting big in the industry. 38 were then offered $75 million by the state of Rhode Island to move their studios over to Rhode Island to create 450 jobs in the area and to start developing the projects that the team had proposed. Schilling and the team leaped at the offer because frankly, who wouldn’t if they were in this situation. After shortly accepting this offer and moving their team and the offices over to Rhode Island, they began working on 2 projects, An MMO called Copernicus and an RPG, Kingdom of Amulur…At the same time. This from day one was not also a bad idea, but an idea that would then put the whole studios into an extremely dangerous position. As weeks went on, the MMO was eating away at the resources and money that 38 studios had while the RPG was using significantly less. This ended, as you can imagine, not very well as the MMO wasn’t the big success that the team were hoping for. This meant that they did not have enough profit from selling the game to pay for the staff’s wages or any other costs that were needed. Disastrous.

Another incident In the early days of 2011 had Sony taking legal action against the hackers that published security codes for the PlayStation 3 online.( http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12171423). The Hacking group named themselves ‘failOverflow’ and gained knowledge about the security codes that are written/signed to games to prove that they are genuine copies. By knowing this code, many people could potentially write this code to games they had torrented from the internet thus making piracy a large threat to the gross that Sony and its developers have coming in.

As this would cause a problem, the hackers were searched for throughout the internet and their website was closed down overnight with a message saying ‘Sony sued us’ and a brief message about the current circumstances. Sony then took legal action on the hackers and the main culprit for the damage he had done. Mr Hotz was requested to be issued a restraining order from Sony that banned him from further hacking and the distribution of the software that allowed people to hack the PlayStation.

As You Can Obviously See, Legal Issues are a massive part of the gaming industry and affect us as an individual and a community as the hacking scandal prevented all PSN users to be blocked from using the services for around a week or so. Other issues solely affecting the games that are made and sold to us and the content games have inside them.

Ethics in Video Games

Ethics in video games are a massive part of the reputation that games receive from controversy of the media and crimes that are commited worldwide. Games are constantly adding more and more issues that could offend people which aren’t intended. Chris Redfield for example in the game Resident Evil 5 (Released 2009) was shown in an E3 preview shooting zombies which if no-one knew what the game was about looked like crazed people which were black (due to the setting being in Africa) this goes to show that Capcom did not think wisely about the content they put into the game. We can understand why many people were offended by this as the trailer preview did not show any other companion, antagonist or mentor. Chris Redfield the stereotypical buff white guy is shown, like I’ve mentioned, killing African black infected. Capcom who are a Japanese games development company, probably didn’t see the offense that this trailer could have caused because in japan, they do not have the racism issue as much as people in the US or the UK which is completely understandable.  Bioshock could be considered as a slightly controversial game with some of the concepts and characters such as the little sisters for example. The little sisters are some of the crazed beings in Bioshock that were originally used in the city of rapture, led by Andrew Ryan to syringe sea slugs for the ADAM they have. ADAM is a currency in rapture that allows you to buy new plasmids that are genetic modifications that allow one to have powers such as telekinesis or to throw fire from your hands. The little sister in-game can be either harvested or rescued in order to get ADAM from them. While these may seem valid choices that sculpt your overall ending, this may be seen as a little off form being humane. If you harvest a little sister you get 180 ADAM while rescuing them and saving their lives gives you only 80 ADAM. This game fortunately gives off a bad vibe with sounds and visuals that show symbols that tell you that you are making the wrong decision if you choose to harvest them. The little sisters are cute are demented girls that seem to be possessed by something and there world seems much different to the world you see in game as they constantly refer to dead people as ‘Angels’. Some games do not have as many symbols that show you that you are making the wrong decision. The Airport mission in Modern warfare 2 is a massively controversial mission which gives you the option to play the story form the antagonist’s point of view by strolling into a Russian airport and spraying down innocent civilians with an M240. The game does not show any signs to stop you from doing this or tell you that you are doing wrong. The mission itself however can be chosen to be skipped before you start it.These are just a few examples of ethics in videogames but there are many more which affect the production of games and the games industry.