The Major Issues Facing the Industry

It is no secret that the game industry has bad press. Interactive entertainment has been blamed for everything, including school violence, exploitation of women, teenage obesity, dysfunctional development of children's social skills, degradation of society's moral fiber, and even [Gamasutra02.2] permanent damage to the areas of the brain controlling creativity and emotion.

Some of the issues facing our community, however, are more serious than others.

Violence

Violent games and their supposed impact on the mental health of children have been a major political issue for over a decade. Commentators, both on the right and on the left, have blamed games for driving the Columbine murderers and the perpetrators of other school shootings to action. Grant Theft Auto's content, especially the part where the player can hire, rob, and kill a prostitute, has been the stuff of headlines all over the world. In addition, in the days following the Washington D.C. sniper shootings of October 2002, [Levine02] stated that the suspected killers were avid chess players, as if a love of the noble game were somehow relevant to the affair.

There is no doubt that a sizable share of the industry's production is made up of violent games. Among the reasons explaining this phenomenon is the fact that violence is much easier to implement into artificial intelligence characters than other human behaviors and emotions, like compassion and self-sacrifice. And some of these games' content is, indeed, very edgy. However, like the 1980's hysteria over so-called "satanic messages" heard when playing music records backward, this one fails in two crucial areas:

• Anyone who could be "driven to murder by a game" (or a movie, for that matter) could just as easily be influenced by acquaintances, by the phases of the moon, or by "voices" emanating from a toaster.

• Homicidal impulses would be much harder to act on if weapons were harder to come by and, in the case of children, if parents paid enough attention to notice the early signs of mental instability.

While covering an ever-wider variety of themes in our games would be healthy for many reasons, censorship of violent games is not a solution to the ills of society, and we must not tolerate it. It was not so long ago that Senator Joe Liebermann, the perennial critic of our industry who came within a hair's breadth of becoming vice president of the United States in 2000, sponsored a proposed constitutional amendment banning violent games so that children would be protected from Mortal Kombat and similar material. We must remain vigilant.

Freedom of Expression

Jason Della Rocca, program director for the International Game Developers Association, comments on the issues of violent games and freedom of expression:

"Public concern over violence in games, the addictiveness of games, and sexual stereotyping are just a few of the ongoing issues affecting the game industry and its perception in the media. And, with some courts stating that games are a medium incapable of expressing ideas, it is tough not to become overwhelmed by the battering of our creative endeavors.

"The various ratings systems around the world, and their associated marketing guidelines, have been a significant initiative in dealing with these negative perceptions. Yet, what is the true impact—creatively and financially—of a game's rating? What influences does the looming threat of government regulations have? How does all this play into the retail side, which seemingly wields the most power to censor content?

"Simply put, many developers do not take into account the full ramifications that game ratings, the threat of government regulation, and retail sensitivities have on the ultimate success (or failure) of their game. It is not uncommon for large retailers to reject your game because of questionable content—never mind an entire country banning it, which has happened in Australia and Germany, for example.

"Yes, but what about our creative freedom? True, this is a nascent art form, but we still have to sell our games. While we are pushing boundaries on many fronts, it is still important that we play by the rules. The last thing we need is for our games to be sold from the back room wrapped in brown paper . . ."

Links to help you stay in the loop:

• www.igda.org

• www.idsa.com

• www.esrb.org

Hate Games

While playing the role of a drug dealer bent on revenge, as in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, is bound to raise some controversy, there is much worse out there. Religious fundamentalists and racist fringe groups have taken to using games as vehicles for their repulsive political statements—and even as recruitment tools. [Blenkinsop02] reports that, among the hate games available for download on the Internet, are titles in which the player:

• Takes on the role of a suicide bomber trying to kill as many innocent civilians as possible

• Manages a concentration camp

• Scores points as a member of the Klu Klux Klan or of a skinhead gang by shooting at members of racial minorities

While the industry can do little to prevent this sort of thing, we can at least make sure to distance ourselves from the products produced by these people. Again, this does not mean that we should apply preemptive censorship where it isn't warranted: even if using a career criminal as a player character will not appeal to everyone, it is a legitimate design choice, and one that is crucial to the consistency of a game such as GTA or Kingpin. However, when game developers and publishers choose shock value for shock value's sake—for example, by advertising on tombstones or putting naked characters in an extreme sports game whose core audience is 10 to 12 years old—it smears us all with an aura of sleaze and, well, stupidity. It might even lend these hate games a modicum of legitimacy, because in the eye of the general public, they will not seem so different from what the official game industry does.

Piracy

Hackers and other software pirates are costing us a huge share of the income that is rightfully ours. The Interactive Digital Software Association, which regroups the world's major publishers and organizes the Electronic Entertainment Expo, estimates that worldwide piracy has cost the U.S. game industry alone over $3 billion in 2001 [IDSA02].

Pirates always come up with new types of fallacies to justify their actions: games cost too much, all of the money goes to greedy publishers instead of developers anyway, and so forth. The bottom line is that the game developers are always the ones who end up paying for piracy. Publishers have to account for probable losses by paying lower advances and royalties. Independent developers selling their games online lose sales to warez sites and have to waste time that would be better spent making new games on anti-hacking routines. Therefore, we make less money for our work. We don't have any sympathy for robbers who break into our homes, and we shouldn't have any for those who break into our computers.