Ethical And Legal Constraints Within The Media Sector

In the gaming industry, ethical and legal issues are taken more lightly than they are in other industries such as the movie industry, one of the major differences is the fact that you have control over the video game. Most games almost include anything they want. Most games have murder, war, stealing, illegal drug use, killing of civilians and the list goes on. The age rating changes what you can and can’t put in a video game, in a game that is rated a 12, you couldn’t pass off more than a swear word and some violent scenes, in a game rated 18, like Grand Theft Auto V, you can go on a murder spree and your character is constantly involved in drug smuggling. To sum up, the gaming industries have a lot of free reign when it comes to putting content in games that would be deemed hurtful to certain cultures and religions.

In the gaming industry a large issue they have is underage people playing a game that is rated above their age. To stop young people being drawn towards such violence videogames, the PEGI rating was introduced.

The PEGI rating tells users how old you should be to be able to purchase and play this game, this stops younger people playing such violent games. If someone who looks younger than they say tries to purchase a game that is made for age groups above them they will be asked for identification thanks to the PEGI rating system. Unfortunately, to get around this, young people will ask their siblings or parents to buy it for them.

In the work I do for college i must be sure not to offend anyone from a certain culture or religion as this will show that I haven’t thought about how people may react to my work and how they may be offended. To get around this I make sure to not put any racial or stereotypical like comments in my work. For the trailer I made, no one spoke in it, this way I didn’t have any trouble making sure not to offend anyone.

 

Making sure that your games are legally and ethically acceptable will make other companies and advertisers want to show off your game which will make more people want to buy it which would also in turn give the company more money. Games have started putting disclamers on their game title screens

This is the Assassin’s Creed title screen, this is shown due to the fact that the Assassin’s game series is based on historical events that have been altered for the games purposes.

There are plenty of laws that regulate the videogame industry, one of them i talked about earlier, that one being age ratings, this law protects young people from violent videogames. Something I didn’t mention however was videogame classification.

This would show the more specific reasons as to why a game is rated how it is. You may see a 16 rated game and it would also tell you the reason for that is violence.

Another law that regulates the game industry is the the data protection and privacy law. This means that if you were to give some bank details to a company (I.E. PlayStation Network) they would have to keep your details private. To make sure of this, companies make sure that not only will your details be leaked digitally but physically too, which is why password protection on consoles is so important.

It is good to know about these laws and all the others if you want to create a game, this way you can’t be seen as breaking any of these laws and people will have much more respect for your game.