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.