Regulatory Issues in games

Regulatory issues in the games industry is yet another big issues that occurs regularly. This is to do with the age rating certificates on all games, and the logos used to tell people what will be in the game. 

First, lets start with how the games are rated. This is done by the BBFC (British Board of Film Classification) and Pegi (Pan European Game Information). All games now a days will be rated by one of these two companies. BBFC are the same board that put the age ratings on films. Any game that uses this board has the exact same restrictions as the films do. Like for example, a game/film rated 15 can only be bought be a person ages 15 or over. There is also a small description of what is included in the game that is put next to the certificate. This may say, "Contains mild violence and one use of strong language", just like what it would say if it was rated on a film.

Pegi are slightly different. Their ratings are only used for games, but instead of having a brief description of the content that's in the game. Instead, they include icons of the content in the game, which is an easier and quicker way of saying what content there's going to be in the game.

In 2009 a law was enforced that only people aged above the age rating on the game were allowed to buy that game. This meant that before this law was enforced, anyone was able to buy any game no mater what the age rating was. But even though this law was enforced, it doesn't stop people that are under the age limit from playing whatever game they want. Call of Duty, for example is a highly played multiplayer game, with the majority of the players being under 18 children, even though the age rating for COD is usually 18. This shows that, even though the icons that Pegi and description that BBFC use for their games are their to warn the customer about what's on the disc they're about to buy, doesn't stop people under age from playing games they're not supposed to. 

This will continue to be an issues for specific companies which have younger audiences for their higher age rated games, like Infinity Ward for example. The company that owns Call of Duty are not only going to have a hard time because of most of their COD audience being kids, but also because they will find it difficult to make drastic changes to the game to make it stand out more, like more blood and more use of the Pegi logos. They won't just find this hard because it may upset their audience, but it's because the majority of their audience are kids, meaning that the graphic changes may upset the younger viewers, and if not, it'll definitely upset the parents of the children who play these games, meaning that Infinity Ward and other companies with similar problems are going to have a problem with trying to expand their audience. 

Regulatory issues are always going to effect companies who make games that use any of the Pegi logos. People who are under age are going to continue to play games that either not suitable for them, or that their guardian doesn't want them to play, because of the content that is shown on the back of the game box.

Links used:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Board_of_Film_Classification

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_European_Game_Information

Legal Issues in games

When it comes to creating a game, a lot of game developers are going to come across dealing with legal issues. Like ethical issues, these are a pretty big deal in the games industry. An example a legal issues is copyright. Taking a game, or the title of a game and saying it's yours is a pretty big deal. Most of the time, if this is done in a different country that the original owner is unlikely to find out that their product has been stolen/copied, the culprit can usually get away. But for the most part, you will get found out. An example of this was when Markus Persson, the creator of Minecraft, wanted to make a game called Scrolls. However, Bethesda Softworks, the makers of the franchise The Elder Scrolls did not like this, as they thought the name was too similar to their franchise name, and sued Persson for copyright. Persson actually challenged Bethesda to a Quake 3 tournament for the name, but unfortunately that didn't happen, and the case was taken to court. In the end, Persson was able to call his game Scrolls but was not allowed to create a franchise called Scrolls, as that was going a bit too far. As you can see, copyright in gaming is a big issue, even if the name of a game isn't fully copied.

One of the biggest legal problems the game industry encounters is the issue of piracy, where fake copies of a game are created, and a lot of times sold. This can be done by creating MODs of a game, or emulating a game onto a disc or cartridge. One of the biggest and most famous examples was the release of Tetris. In June 1984, the game was created by Alexey Pajitnov who lived in Soviet Union Russia. After creating copies of the game for some other people to play, the Soviet Union managed to get there hands on it, claiming it their property with them having all the rights to the game. Originally, they did not want to sell the game any where outside of their country, but after a few years ended up selling their product outside the Soviet Union. The two companies who were desperate for Tetris the most were Nintendo and Atari. Atari had already made millions of copies of Tetris, as they assumed they already had the rights to the game. But after court battles with Nintendo, Atari lost the rights to sell the game, and ended up having to destroy all copies of Tetris they had created. After their victory, Nintendo became an even bigger success, selling over 100 million copies throughout the Tetris franchise. But after almost 30 years, and the huge success Tetris became, Alexey Pajitnov still received nothing from his creation, with Nintendo and the Soviet Union taking all the money Tetris made. This just shows how dangerous privacy can be in the games industry, and it still is an ongoing issue.

Legal issues such as copyright and privacy are still big problems in the games industry today, and will still be in the future. There are still cases now of people emulating fake copies of games onto a computer then onto a storage device like a disc or cartridge, then selling them, meaning the companies of that game will profit with their game being sold illegally. And there isn't much the companies can do about this. With more and more games being created, more and more games will also be copied and emulated. Games that are unknown in other places that are copied can also be stolen under the thief's name, which makes it even harder for people outside of that area, like what happened to Alexey Pajitnov.

Ethical Issues in games

Ethical issues in games are usually considered a serious matter in the game industry. It can range from issues that are hardly noticeable to issues that are extremely dodgy.

Firstly, lets take a look at call of duty modern warfare 2. There's a level in the game called "No Russian". In this level, you are an deep cover central intelligence agency agent. You join a group of russian nationalist terrorists, acting as one of them. Your mission is to wipe out innocent civilians in an airport, and no matter what you do, shoot innocent lives or not, you'll get the same ending. You end up getting killed. This level is actually skippable at any point, and was removed from the russian version of the game. With this being one of the most ethically dodgy levels in a video game, it even brought up in the House of Commons of the UK. The issue was brought  up by an MP who was hugely against violence in video games, who was then argued against by a fellow MP, saying that the level was no worse then scenes from many books and films. This just shows how some issues can become so ethically bad, it can even be discussed by members of parliament, which would just show how ethically dodgy they must be.

One well known example is from the game Resident Evil 5. When the first trailer of the game was released, all it showed was the main protagonist of the game, Chris Redfield, a white american guy, shooting nothing but black-african zombies with no other white person in sight. The number one thing anyone would think of from watching the trailer would be racism. The first level of the game is basically the trailer, except you actually have a black-african partner, helping you shoot down more black-african zombies. The main reason why this was in the game in the first place was because Capcom, the creators of Resident Evil and a Japanese company didn't understand the racial issue that white and black people would.

Believe it or not, Batman Arkham City does have an ethical issue of sexism. Throughout the game, both Catwoman and Harley Quinn are repeatedly referred to as "bitch" by the henchman. Whereas Batman and none of the male characters are assaulted with any gender specific threats, which could possibly be quite offensive to women if they ever take a note of the dialogue in the game.
Another ethical issue to do with sexism is from the new Tomb Raider trailer. In it, Laura Croft is supposedly sexually threatened by the villains with rape. Now if that was a similar character to Laura Croft but male, for example, Nathan Drake from Uncharted, he wouldn't be threatened in the same manner, because he's a guy. This could lead to females choosing not to play these games, or any games with sexual ethical issues, basically almost halving the audience for games in the future.

Overall, ethical issues do seriously effect the games industry. With the possibility of losing members of the audience due to racism, sexism or any other ethically dodgy issue, this will lead to not being able to sell their game, meaning big trouble for the company that made that game. Companies that include the use of drugs, violence, alcohol etc. are going to have the hardest time dealing with these ethical issues, as these are the main reasons for ethical issues. Some companies may end up having to resort to more child friendly games, meaning no ethical issues but another big risk of losing their previous audience. As you can see, ethical issues have really affected the gaming community, and won't be going away any time soon.