Video game

Actually, it's about ethics in ... Video games

Cutscenes

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Video games, or computer games, are electronic games played on a personal computer (PC), a portable device (smart/dumbphone and tablet), or a dedicated device (console). The devices range in complexity from watch-like devices with inexpensive LCD screens all the way up to full-immersion devices such as flight simulators and virtual reality pods, and the games themselves cover every possible genre of gaming, including puzzles, action games, and major league sports fantasies. Video game consoles come in models intended to be used at home, like Microsoft's Xbox Series X/S, Sony's PlayStation 5, and Nintendo's Switch, or handheld systems that can be played anywhere,^{[note 1]} such as Nintendo's 3DS and Switch (again), along with Sony's PlayStation Vita.

The first "real" video game was a tennis simulator called Tennis for Two, created in 1958 by American physicist William Higinbotham at Brookhaven National Laboratory,^{[note 2]} which used a dedicated analog computer as a control system and an oscilloscope for output.^[2]

Moral panics[edit]

Ahhh, the good old days!

Like most new technologies, video games have spent the last fifty years being accused of corrupting the youth, joining comic books, television, radio, recorded music, role playing games and comprehensive sex education on a dubious list of moral panics created by people who forgot or maybe never knew what it was like to be a kid.

Making the issue worse, moral guardians (such as the infamous ex-attorney Jack Thompson) take the "kid stuff" concept to ridiculous extremes, failing to distinguish between games marketed to children and games marketed to adults, and making hysterical judgements on the effects of video games on players.

The Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) has a very, very long list of advisories — while most deal with sex and violent content, there are applications such as electronic cookbooks that include advisories for "alcohol references" and a few other similar sillies. However, the main rating is usually more than sufficient to determine the suitability of the product for your eight-year-old.

Moral guardians[edit]

When your dad tried to ban Space Invaders in the 80s but you're now defying his orders.

Liberty University prohibits students playing games rated AO (Adults Only) or RP (Rating Pending) by the ESRB. They also prohibit games with sexual content, alcohol/drug use, or strong language listed on the back (well, shit, those are all the best ones). Games containing violence may only be played at the discretion of Resident Directors. Bob Jones University takes things a step further and prohibits music games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band, since rock and roll is essentially the voice of Satan (literally, according to some religious nutjobs).

Outright bans are more common than many people are comfortable with. In English-speaking countries, Australia has banned several games, and at one point Greece tried to outlaw all public video gaming in a massive overreaction to a political gambling scandal.^[3] An earlier all-out ban on arcade games and pinball machines was enacted by Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos under Presidential Decree 519^[4] and Letter of Instruction No. 1176, s. 1981^[5] following pressure from parenting groups, viewing the likes of Space Invaders as a "destructive social enemy" and existing "to the detriment of the public interest"; the ban was rescinded following Marcos's ouster after the People Power Revolution.^[6] Perhaps in an ironic twist, Ferdinand's son Bongbong Marcos went on to make a vlog video reminiscing about the very same medium his father once outlawed as a social menace, even trying out a round of Mobile Legends: Bang Bang for himself.^[7] Though while no new games have been banned in the country since 1986, a localised ban on Defense of the Ancients was enacted in a barangay (village) in Dasmariñas, Cavite due to a similar moral panic of youth delinquency, brawls and murders ensuing from heated DOTA matches.^[8][9]

In gaming circles, Germany has developed a notorious reputation for its strict censorship laws regarding violent content in games, as well as for banning or censoring any game with Nazi references in it, even if that game is set during World War II and actually involves killing Nazis, such as the Wolfenstein series, although this "long-running and frequently ridiculed"^[10] practice has since been relaxed, now allowing games with Nazi imagery to be released without having it removed or censored (though this has to be approved on a case-by-case basis), as the authorities came to their senses and realized that video games are an artistic medium as opposed to being a children's toy. This resulted in Grand Theft Auto V being released uncut in Germany^[11] while the Japanese release of the game was extensively neutered due to CERO's draconian content restrictions which was spurred by a moral panic caused by a series of violent crimes in the country.

Sex[edit]

There are a good number of games that feature varying degrees of sexual content, from the relatively mild partial nudity in The Sims to the explicit sexuality of the Hot Coffee minigame in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.^{[note 3]} Game developers and modders also add their own sexual content, such as nude skins for characters, explicitly sexual third-party content, most notably the Nude Raider mod for Tomb Raider and mods for The Sims which removes the pixel blur whenever a Sim takes a leak or hits the shower,^{[note 4]} or even entire NSFW games like Custer's Revenge for the Atari 2600 by American Multiple Industries, a defunct erotic game publisher who licensed the Swedish Erotica brand from porn studio Caballero Control Corporation. The premise of Custer is the crude simulation of rape of an Indigenous American woman by an equally crude depiction of George Armstrong Custer with a visible erection, garnering outrage from both women's rights groups and Native Americans^[12] and the highly controversial RapeLay, a literal rape simulator developed and subsequently banned in Japan where players get to stalk and rape a family consisting of a mother and her two daughters: 12-year-old Manaka and 17-year-old Aoi. RapeLay gained further notoriety overseas when legislators took note of grey-market listings of the game on Amazon, who has since removed the game from sale.^[13]

Sex in video games has therefore long been a subject of both controversy and amusement. The game Mass Effect, despite being rated M (17+) by the ESRB, caused a moral panic in the conservative media because of one mild alien sex scene that would be just fine on an evening network television show; this culminated in a Fox News shitfest where feminist undertones were used to criticize it.^[14]

Fanboys[edit]

Fanboys, as extremely dedicated gamers of a particular console, game series, or genre are derogatorily called, frequently have their own moral mishaps that sometimes even make it into the mainstream media. For example, on November 17, 2006, Gamespot reviewer Jeff Gerstmann received death threats after awarding the high fantasy action-adveture game Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess an 8.8 out of 10 ("Great"), which apparently wasn't enough for fans of the series.^[15] Given that nearly none of the fanboys knew that any review is an opinion and therefore biased, multitudes of angry Zelda fans messaged death threats to the reviewer, and the Gamespot building was locked down in response, meaning that nobody could enter or leave the building due to fears of being lynched in the street over an opinion. Gerstmann vowed never to review a Zelda game again.

However, if that wasn't enough fanboyism for one gaming website, on December 19, 2013, another Gamespot reviewer, Martin Gatson, made the same mistake by reviewing another Legend of Zelda game. Again, the building went on lockdown after Gatson nominated the game A Link Between Worlds for the Nintendo 3DS Game of the Year, which, for batshit fanatics, was too much praise for a Zelda game that apparently broke the formula by being a top-down game, despite the fact that ten previous titles in the series had done the exact same thing.^[16] Gatson was one of the few employees that interviewers could get a hold of, considering all communication within the staff was limited:

The staff received one death threat every five minutes.^[17]

Of course, this isn't limited to just games, as the actual hardware used to play the games became a subject of nearly endless debate among video games players. In the transition between the third and fourth generations of video games, the Console Wars began between users of the famous consoles Sega Genesis and Nintendo NES (later it was the SNES, triggering the "Bit Wars" over 16- vs. 32- vs. 64-bit technology, ad infinitum, ad nauseaum), but more recently, due to Sega having left the console market in 2001 and Nintendo focusing more on novel hardware gimmicks and broader demographics such as families, casual gamers and non-gamers (e.g. seniors who are normally uninterested in video games but would otherwise be encouraged to play family-oriented titles such as Wii Sports and the Just Dance series due to their motion controls), it has switched to the Sony Playstation 5 versus the Microsoft Xbox Series S and X. Vicious attacks on both sides have ensued, but near its release the Xbox One had the greatest controversy due to its supposed invasion of privacy, which requires an online connection every 24 hours; as a result of the controversy Microsoft dropped its plans for DRM shortly before launch. Along for the ride are PC fanboys who detest consoles in general, many referring to themselves as the "PC master race" and to the console players as "console peasants".

Modding[edit]

Screenshot from Guitar Hero World Tour: Definitive Edition where CJ, Kratos and Snow White are jamming to "Bohemian Rhapsody". Custom character models are among some of the most popular mods for video games as it allows for humorous, personalised or even perverse additions to a game.

Video game modding has been a hobby among players especially those on personal computer platforms for almost as long as the video gaming scene existed. One of the first known mods to have gained notoriety was Castle Smurfenstein, a total conversion of Castle Wolfenstein themed after the popular Franco-Belgian comic book franchise The Smurfs.^[18] Castle Wolfenstein's spiritual successor, Wolfenstein 3D, was also the subject of mods, though it wasn't until Doom where id Software modularised their games' internals and designed them to be freely editable by players through its use of WAD files where key game assets are stored. This paved the way for future game engines and the modding scene, where games from that point on have occasionally come bundled with tools to edit new levels and other assets.

The scene isn't without controversy however: while Smurfenstein was done in good fun by a bunch of bored teenagers despite it flying in the face of The Smurfs' copyright holders, others such as nude mods^[19][20][21] and especially the "Hot Coffee" mod^{[note 5]} for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas gained notoriety and scorn from parental groups concerned about adult content creeping onto children's media.

Unauthorised portrayals of characters and people are also seen as a concern: a humorous tradition exists of Thomas the Tank Engine being modified into games, usually as a boss character. Mattel, who owns the rights to the Thomas media franchise, took umbrage and issued DMCA takedown notices against an Elder Scrolls mod featuring the train character.^[22] The law enforcement conversions LCPDFR and LSPDFR for Grand Theft Auto IV and V respectively made news in Australia in 2017, when New South Wales Police Minister Troy Grant denounced the mods on Seven News, calling the ability to install addons based on the NSW Police and harm in-game NSW Police officers or potentially commit police brutality as them "perverse" and "inaccurate". Grant's statements were met with criticism from the LSPDFR community, including a developer of one of the NSW Police mods, who said their content was harmless and that they "inspired kids to think of a career in the emergency services field".^[23]

Some developers have expressed hostile attitudes towards modding communities, such as Nintendo whose incessant litigation against fan games and console modding has left a sour taste in many a Super Mario fan's mouths, going so far as to banning users in the now-defunct Miiverse community forums for mentioning the Super Smash Bros. mod Project M,^{[note 6]} deeming it to be "criminal activity", as well as Take-Two Interactive with their draconian stance towards Grand Theft Auto mods and conversions,^[24] though others such as Valve and Sega have openly embraced modders and in some cases hired these modders to work for them in an official capacity, the best known example of which is Counter-Strike for Half-Life by Vietnamese-Canadian developer Minh "Gooseman" Le, which spawned its own franchise, as well as Sonic Mania, whose development team was composed of members known for their work in the Sonic fangame and ROM hacking community. Sega even took a belated potshot at their erstwhile rival by leaving a cheeky comment on a gameplay video of a Sonic fan game encouraging its developer to keep up their good work.^[25]

The childishness of the alt-right at work here.

The cultural zeitgeist of the 2010s and 2020s have also crept into the modding space when trolls attempted to disrupt popular modding site Nexus Mods by way of a texture mod for the Windows release of Marvel's Spider-Man replacing the rainbow flag with the flag of the United States,^[26][27] along with the description "changes the stupid pride flags with american flags"^[sic] in an apparent effort to sow controversy over the perceived gay agenda by the game's creators. The mod was taken down soon after, but not without outcry from some users who were butthurt by the ban; Nexus later stated "we are for inclusivity, we are for diversity. If we think someone is uploading a mod on our site with the intent to deliberately be against inclusivity and/or diversity then we will take action against it," also frankly advising users who disagreed with the ban to "move on".^[27] A similar announcement was also made by ModDB when a Twitter user informed the site that the flag modification was also mirrored on ModDB, which the site's moderators promptly removed.^[28] As if that wasn't enough, edgelords and sockpuppets of the banned user went further by uploading the so-called "Extra Progressive Pride Mod" which juxtaposes both the gay and transgender flag colours with the Nazi swastika, only for it to be deleted not long after for obvious reasons (along with a thinly-veiled mirror thereof by another troll^[29]), as well as the Joe Rogan Podcast t-shirt texture mod which edits the Empire State University shirt into a sardonic design of Sonic the Hedgehog and Shadow kissing each other and "THE JOE ROGAN PODCAST" scrawled on the shirt, likely as a veiled reference to Rogan's homophobic views in an effort to dodge censorship by the site's moderators.^[30] In response to perceived "woke" bias on mainstream mod hosting sites such as Nexus Mods, some wingnut "gamers" have taken the effort of coming up with pro-Freeze Peach alternatives to Nexus, ModDB and Gamebanana, such as Basedmods and DEG Mods who tout themselves as "censorship-resistant" and anonymous and will accept any and all mod submissions, no questions asked.^[31] Unsurprisingly, practically all of the content in those sites are vile, hate-filled trash, ranging from Doom WADs mocking mass shootings, in particular the Christchurch massacre, to neo-Nazi and Holocaust denialist skins as well as "tweaks" that remove any semblance of non-white skin colours in games such as Hogwarts Legacy.^[32]

Impact on attitudes[edit]

Video games have mixed impacts on players' attitudes towards violence, sexism, and racism.

Violence[edit]

Jack Thompson claims children may develop violent tendencies due to video games.

During the first surge of video game popularity in the late 1970s and early 1980s, there was a somewhat widespread belief that the use of multiple lives in a video game could lead players to not value their own lives (very much in the same spirit as the idea that video game players were allegedly detached enough that they wouldn't understand violence was wrong).

There's no getting around one point — many video games are violent. Some violent games such as Mortal Kombat and God of War are very successful. The former effectively sparked the entire violent video game panic,^[33] while the latter was particularly notorious in the early 2000s for offending various parenting sensibilities (it included, amongst other things, extreme violence, strong language, and general nudey themes, including a literal sex minigame). Games such as Grand Theft Auto (GTA) and Max Payne transpose graphic violence into gangster and police procedural settings, and first-person shooters (a genre dating to the 1980 arcade game Battlezone) gained a reputation from their 1990s flagbearer Doom for immense amounts of gratuitous and often supernatural violence.^{[note 7]}

Needless to say, like any other new media panic, the old media loves to feast on these things — Eric Harris, one of the Columbine shooters, for example, was a modestly talented Doom level designer,^{[note 8]} so many people blamed their gaming rather than their social isolation or fascist political leanings for the slaughter. Pop psychologist "Doctor" Phil McGraw has been known to do shows on the alleged danger of video games, as have police procedurals such as Criminal Minds and the Law and Order franchise. In the United States, in response to the 1993 congressional hearings on video games (where Joe Lieberman "famously blamed video games for violence"),^[35] the Entertainment Software Rating Board was organized to provide MPAA-like content ratings for video games; Canada uses the same system, while Japan, Europe, and Australia have their own rating systems. However, the perception (by and large a post hoc ergo propter hoc confusing of causality and correlation) continues that excessive video game violence can cause bad behavior in youth, presumably on the assumption that video gamers have a somewhat tenuous grasp of reality. The fact that this has been said about role-playing games, comics, and (in a recent case) horror novels without being borne out by studies on the subject really doesn't faze anyone involved in the moral outrage industry.

According to the American Psychological Association, existing research has established a connection between violent video games and an increase in aggressive behavior in children. While the APA have stated that children playing video games in general do not show an increase in violent or aggressive behavior, they did find that children who played violent titles saw an increase in "aggression".^[36] They have also claimed that there is a link "between violent video game use and both increases in aggressive behavior ... and decreases in prosocial behavior, empathy, and moral engagement."^[37] The APA has called on the industry to design video games that include increased parental control over the amount of violence such games contain. However, other researchers have contested these findings. Whitney DeCamp, an associate professor of sociology at Western Michigan University, says the evidence points to either no relationship between playing video games and violent behavior or an "insignificant" link between the two."^[37] According to psychologist Christopher Ferguson, "newer studies "with better methods" have typically failed to find much evidence of a connection between brutal games and even minor aggressive acts, let alone violence";^[37] in his analysis of their findings, he "concluded that evidence warrants a more cautious interpretation of the effects of violent games on aggression than provided by the APA technical report or resolution statement."^[38] Further studies have also challenged the assertion that video games affect empathy or cause "desensitisation".^[39]

In the wake of the 2018 Florida school shootings, the old, outdated canard of video games being responsible for the deaths of children was brought up again by then-Kentucky governor Matt Bevin and several other Republican governors.^[40] Donald Trump has blamed both violent video games and violent movies and has called for an age regulation system for them, even when both already have an age-rating system.^[41] A meeting was scheduled with the Trump administration and members of the video game industry, but with absolutely no psychologists nor scientists (i.e. the people who are qualified to talk about the links between violence and video games) in attendance.^[42] During the March 8, 2018, meeting with the video game executives, Trump showed a cherry-picked montage video of violent video games in order to cause shock about the content in such games. The video is currently unlisted, though other channels have picked it up and reposted it.^[43] Trump has relied on blaming on video games again after the El Paso and Dayton shootings in 2019, demonstrating that his earlier important meetings discussing video game violence in 2018 were totally effective and that minds were changed.^[44]

Less controversially, the violence inherent in most video games gave the medium a rather stigmatised reputation in the eyes of some organisations with respect to competitive gaming, such as the International Olympic Committee (IOC), who in 2017 acknowleged the growing popularity of esports but are deeply troubled with the violent imagery prevalent with the likes of Counter-Strike and Rainbow Six–being mostly based on contemporary military and police procedural scenarios–leaving a barrier to entry for esports' inclusion in top-level Olympic competition, though the IOC did admit that many of the traditional games in the Olympics are at least somewhat derived from violent combat.^[45][46] To this end, many of the video games included in esports events sanctioned by the IOC are only those seen as consistent with the Olympic values, e.g. genres which don't involve realistic depictions of gun violence such as sports simulations, fantasy-themed multiplayer online battle arenas (MOBA) or martial arts games such as Street Fighter, as well as specially-modified versions of existing action games such as Peacekeeper Elite with the battle royale mode removed in favour of an off-road racing-slash-target shooting mode.^[47] Curiously, esports events at the SEA Games did have events for games seen by the IOC as anathema to their values, such as Valorant and PUBG Mobile in the 2023 edition,^[48] even though the SEA Games is supervised by the IOC who previously nixed shooter games in the 2019 edition due to aforementioned violence concerns.^[49]

Sexism[edit]

Primary character by gender, race.^[50]

Sexism has long been a problem, both in games and in the gaming community itself (which in turn influences the content in the games due to consumer demand).

Despite a substantial and growing number of female gamers,^[51] there is still an overwhelming tendency for games to star male characters and neglect females, as well as an imbalance in the treatment of male and female archetypes.^[50][52]

Female gamers themselves are seen as special and denoted as such with terms like "girl gamer" or the arguably worse "gamer girl" in online multiplayer video games. That issue may devolve into harassment where the female player gets insulted or griefed (Gaming term for people who target their allies in multiplayer games).^[53]

Various excesses of immature behaviour (i.e., nativism, racism, sexism, and heterosexism) are normal in most gaming communities.^[54] Many of the more vocal gamers are not happy to be faced with women's rights issues within the scope of their "light-hearted" medium and display behaviour ranging from rude to overtly violent, such as the "Beat Up Anita Sarkeesian" game,^[55] which manages to do both of those with a heaping spoonful of immaturity thrown in.

The issue has been a major source of outside ridicule^[56] and an excuse not to take gamers seriously. This wound is one that even developers admit is self-inflicted.^[57][58] Inaction in the face of blatant sexual harassment in official gaming events is especially notable.^[59] Further incidents like Gamergate don't make it any better, as they not only intimidate female players and developers, but also make games appear more the playground of immature misogynists than a true art form.

There have been several scientific studies which examine the possible link between video games and sexism:

• Deskins 2015 ("The Effects of Video Games on Sexism Attitudes in Males"), sampling "117 undergraduate participants (41 men, 76 women)", found evidence that playing violent video games correlated with finding "screen shots of a series of sexist chat messages sent to female gamers" to be amusing (though this doesn't prove causation):

The relationship between amusement and offensiveness ratings were also examined for how much participants reported playing violent video games. [....] As can be seen in Table 1, a correlation of amusement with violent video game play was also (r(117)= .184 and p= .047). That correlation showed that as people who reported playing more VVGs they also reported finding the images more amusing. [....] In order to examine the suspected differences of Hostile sexism, gender and whether or not participants played Violent Video Games (VVGs) or not, a 2(Hostile sexism split: above, below median) X 2(gender: women, men) x 2(Violent Video Games played: yes, no) analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used for the mean amusement scores. That ANOVA indicated a marginal main effect for VVGs, F(1, 109) = 3.436,p = .067. That effect occurred because individuals who play VVGs reported more amusement across the images (M = .988) than did individuals who do not play VVGs (M = .635).^[60]

• Breuer et al. 2015 ("Sexist Games = Sexist Gamers? A Longitudinal Study on the Relationship Between Video Game Use and Sexist Attitudes"), sampling 4,500 self-identified "active gamers" (in the first wave of the 3-wave longitudinal study), found no evidence that video games increase or decrease sexist attitudes:

The current study addressed this issue by examining the influence of video game exposure on sexist beliefs and attitudes over a 3 year period. However, no evidence for a cultivation effect on sexist attitudes was found. [....] Although the findings from the present study are certainly not conclusive, the absence of any longitudinal links between video game use and sexist attitudes at least suggests two things. First, similar to what has been suggested for aggression,38 it is likely that there are factors, such as personal experience and family and peer influences, that affect the development, proliferation, prevention, or reduction of sexist attitudes more strongly than (fictional) media content. Second, general and broad cultivation effects of video games are somewhat unlikely, as players differ in the games they play, and the interactivity of the medium also causes the experience of the same game to differ between players.^[61]

• The abstract of Fox et al. 2015 ("Lifetime Video Game Consumption, Interpersonal Aggression, Hostile Sexism, and Rape Myth Acceptance: A Cultivation Perspective") reads:

In this study, we conducted a survey (N = 351) of male and female adults and used structural equation modeling to analyze relationships among video game consumption, trait interpersonal aggression, ambivalent sexism, and first-order (percentage of false rape accusations) and second-order cultivation effects (RMA). We found support for the hypothesized cultivation model, indicating a relationship between video game consumption and RMA via interpersonal aggression and hostile sexism. Although these findings cannot be interpreted causally, we discuss the implications of these associations and future directions for research.^[62]

Studies have also been conducted which examine the idea that objectifying people (i.e. perceiving people as objects, such as when a woman is nothing more than background decoration), and women specifically, dehumanizes them and makes it easier to cause harm to them:

• Loughnan et al. 2010 ("Objectification leads to depersonalization: The denial of mind and moral concern to objectified others"), sampling two groups (A:) eighty-six people (54 female, 32 male) and (B:) eighty people participating as part of a course requirement (40 female, 40 male), found that objectification did indeed lead to dehumanization:

In two studies we have demonstrated that objectification influences depersonalization, specifically the attribution of mind and moral status. As objectification increased, mind attribution decreased and moral status was withdrawn. Although this emerged as a main effect in almost all analyses, Study 2 revealed the important qualifying role of target gender. [....] A particularly worrying original finding of this research is that objectification diminishes a second aspect of personhood, perceived moral status. Whether this reduction precipitates less moral treatment of objectified others is an important question for future research. Study 2 demonstrated that the objectified are assigned more pain tablets, a finding which may indicate that they are seen as less sensitive to pain or that we care less about their suffering. Feminist theorists have argued that objectification plays an important role in facilitating violence against women (Dworkin, 2000).^[63]

• The abstract of Heflick et al. 2011 ("From women to objects: Appearance focus, target gender, and perceptions of warmth, morality and competence") reads:

Research on perceptions of humanness and the stereotype content model suggests that humanness is linked to perceptions of warmth, morality and competence. Merging these insights with objectification theory, we hypothesized that focusing on a woman's, but not a man's, appearance should induce objectification, and thus reduce perceptions of these characteristics. In three studies, females, but not males, were perceived as less competent (Studies 2 and 3) and less warm and moral (Studies 1, 2 and 3) when participants were instructed to focus on their appearance. These findings support our position and help rule out stereotype activation as an alternative explanation to dehumanization. Further, they generalized to targets of different races, familiarity, physical attractiveness and occupational status.^[64]

Interestingly, another study found that male gamers who were better at Halo tended to be significantly nicer to female gamers, and bad gamers were meaner. In other words, online misogynists are literally losers.^[65]

The conclusion of a 2017 paper by Ferguson & Donnellan sums up the issue quite succinctly:

"[There is] an increasing body of literature that suggests there may be little link between sexism in games and sexism in real life. However, this perspective does not mean that moral concerns about sexism in games are unimportant. Our concern is that claims about the power of scientific evidence to support moral agendas may backfire, especially when the evidence is equivocal."^[66]

Riot Games lawsuit[edit]

Riot Games, a studio famous for the online multiplayer game League of Legends, is undergoing a lawsuit filed by Jessica Negron regarding gender discrimination in the workplace in 2018.^[67] The allegations range from an illegal wage gap between genders to sexual objectification of female employees, including an alleged "Riot Games Hottest Women Employees" email chain, as well as requiring female workers to tolerate it. In terms of hiring, female applicants were generally excluded for not being a "core gamer" (heavens knows what that actually means). Negron's former supervisor told her that, "diversity should not be a focal point of the design of Riot Games' products because gaming culture is the last remaining safe-haven for white teen boys." Translation: this the last place where we can act like discriminatory, bigoted assholes. Negron alleges that she had took a managerial position at Riot Games and had no increase in pay and was even discouraged from seeking higher positions, despite her male employee receiving a promotion for doing the same job. Riot Game's response to the lawsuit was a rather generic non-response of "While we do not discuss the details of ongoing litigation, we can say that we take every allegation of this nature seriously and investigate them thoroughly. We remain committed to a deep and comprehensive evolution of our culture to ensure Riot is a place where all Rioters thrive."

Racism[edit]

Characters by race.^[50]

Characters by age.^[50]

Racism is common in video game culture. Be it on Xbox Live where the word "nigger" is thrown around as much as frag grenades in a first person shooter (FPS) or in the highly stereotyped characters of fighting games, video gaming culture has its own issues of racism on both the developer and consumer sides.

Western video games frequently face criticism for more or less portraying the same type of hero (heterosexual white males) all the time. Here's a fun image that actually illustrates this point quite well.^[68] This is so obvious that even large corporations like Ubisoft are developing videogames that openly try and break this trend as much as possible such as Far Cry 4.^[69] Despite this, Far Cry 4 has been accused of racism against Asians.^[70] This form of racism is based on exclusion, where minorities and people of color are either erased, stereotyped or objectified. For example, a study by the European Journal of Cultural Studies showed that Arabs and Muslims were frequently linked to terrorism in video games, promoting vicious stereotypes about both groups.^[71] Despite claims to the contrary, black and Latino American gamers are statistically proven to buy more video games and play them more frequently than white American gamers, showing that this erasure isn't an issue of sales.^[72]

Unlike television and movie media of the past, the racism in video games generally results from ignorance and erasure rather than outright malice. However, as with sexism, gaming culture itself makes it very hard to bring up the issues of racism. For example, when gamers playing the obviously racist video game "Ching-Chong Beautiful," complete with racial slurs against Asians and highly offensive portrayals of Asians, said, "Hey, this is pretty racist", other gamers told them to calm down because it was fun to play.^[73]

Non-white gamers who comment on racism on video games are often brutally attacked through social media or are ignored. For instance, when black gamers asked Bioware why there weren't any black characters in Dragon Age, Bioware's response was an incredibly condescending and borderline bigoted strawman of what the gamers asked, complete with the good ol' fashioned "Why aren't you asking if there aren't any vegetarians in Bioware" line of bad logic.^[74] Many gamers make the claim that they themselves aren't racist for playing a game that is racist. This is also a nasty form of strawman as it tries to individualize an issue that is intrinsic to an entire culture. (In other words, your individualism isn't relevant.)

While the subject matter of video games may be racist or exclusionary, video gaming as an activity isn't. Studies show that when people of different ethnicities and races play video games in teams, racism and prejudicial attitudes actually decrease.^[75] Racism in Western video games is really a larger reflection of Western culture, as long as racism is in Western culture, there will be racism in our media.

Health issues[edit]

Another common concern about video games is health — most children consuming games are usually sitting in front of the computer, TV, and/or handheld game console and not being active.

Other known health issues include:

• Dizziness and motion sickness (the most common)^[76]
• Back injuries and chair posture^[77]
• Blistering, bruising, or cuts^[78]
• Epileptic seizures^{[note 9]}
• Heart attacks^{[note 10]}
• Migraines / Headaches

Some see^[Who?] it as a case of correlation does not equal causation—suggesting that video games are the cause of developmental, attention and social issues in individuals does not address the actual problems that an individual might have, such as more sedentary lifestyles.

Warnings[edit]

Nintendo's systems (as well as newer games on the now-discontinued GameCube and Game Boy Advance) used to display notifications related to health and safety when starting up for the reasons listed above. However, since the 3DS and Wii U, they do not show the warning every time; the Switch never shows any warning mandatorily. Notably, its 3DS has a parental control option to turn off the 3D effect (which works differently from 3D TV and movies; for example, it doesn't require special glasses) on settings for young children due to safety concerns. As noted on the boxes of 3DS games, the 3D effect is only enabled if the parental control settings are set for players seven years of age or older (likewise, turning parental controls off entirely leaves use of the 3D effect unrestricted). Up until the 3DS (including the original DS and the Wii), the notifications could not be turned off, but they only required a press of a button to get past and only appeared when the system was turned on, so it ends up less annoying than it sounds. The 3DS only displays the warning when the system is first set up (i.e. when it's fresh out of the box), but includes health and safety application on the system's main menu.

Sony's PlayStation Portable, as well as its successor the PlayStation Vita also has health and safety notifications along the lines of what Nintendo has. While general health warnings for Playstation 3 software is generally relegated to game manuals, the PS3 itself displays a warning about photosensitive epilepsy on startup while little white dots of light flash on screen. Microsoft didn't seem to have added any to its Xbox 360 system or any subsequent generation, however.

Brain development[edit]

"Game brain" is the theory that playing video games for a long period of time affects a player's frontal lobe, inhibiting creative and emotional development (among other things). A relatively new theory, it is generally disregarded by science.

One study by Prof. Ryuta Kawashima suggested that video games impacts the development of the brain by not stimulating the frontal lobe, which the researcher concludes will result in an increasingly violent society.^[79] Details of the research are vague and do not show much promise in terms of methodology, as the study compared 30 minutes of adding numbers non-stop with playing a Nintendo game.^[80] Beyond the obvious ambiguity, this leads to issues of not considering the unstructured nature of most video games, and the wide range of video game types, both within and beyond Nintendo. The researcher appears to be using beta wave activity as a proxy for frontal lobe activation. A more robust way of collecting this data would be to use an actual fMRI scan. Lack of frontal lobe activation also does not automatically mean that less attention and conscious activity are inherently associated with video games. Individuals who have practiced at a specific task for enough time generally show less activation as the task is "farmed out" to unconscious mental processes.^{[81][note 11]}

Some recent research, conversely, seems to indicate that games are (gasp) good for your brain!^[82] Scientists in Berlin conducted an experiment in which they instructed a group of adults to play Nintendo's Super Mario 64 DS 30 minutes a day for 2 months; subsequent MRI scans show increased brain matter in areas involving spatial navigation, memory formation, strategic planning, and fine motor skills of the hands compared to a control group who didn't play video games. The researchers involved in the study concluded that video games could be used as a form of therapeutic treatment "for patients with mental disorders in which brain regions are altered or reduced in size, e.g. schizophrenia, post-traumatic stress disorder or neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s dementia."^[83]

Addiction[edit]

Concerns have also been raised by medical professionals, psychologists and politicians regarding video game addiction, based on the assumption that video games cause people to become socially introverted rather than being a release for people who already are. There is considerable unease in many nations over the disproportionate time (and sometimes money^[84][85]) some players spend gaming. In one extreme case, a Korean baby died of malnutrition and neglect while her parents spent roughly 12 hours a day raising a "fantasy child" online.^[86] Approximately 3% to 8% of gamers are "pathological players," associated with anxiety, depression, problems with social and family interaction, poor school and career achievement. Establishing which is cause and which is effect is difficult.^[87]

MMORPGs and other subscription-based games sometimes take advantage of Skinnerian operant conditioning^{[88][note 12]} to ensure a steady cashflow, but by and large, the question of gaming addiction comes down to whether a game is interfering with normal life functions and the related question of whether it's being used as a substitute for other interaction. The second is not an inherently bad thing; social gaming such as Second Life or MMORPGs often serves as a highly effective social outlet for people who find real world interaction difficult or uncomfortable. The first, however, is potentially very destructive; unfortunately, people do confuse the two issues regularly.

There has been controversy over the classification of video game addiction as a mental disorder. Despite recognition by the World Health Organization in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11), "[t]he American Psychiatric Association (APA) did not include video game addiction in its most recent edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), published in 2013. At that time, the APA said there wasn't enough evidence to determine whether gaming disorder is a unique mental health condition, but recommended further research in the area."^[89]

China was the "first country to label online addiction a disorder".^[90] To combat what has been described as "excessive gaming"^[91] amongst young people, the government of China enacted restrictions which introduced time limits on Massive Multiplayer Online games; players that had been playing continuously for three hours or more began to receive in-game penalties, such as loss of currency.^[92] However, this was only effective at discouraging players from spending too much time on a single MMO, since they were free to switch to another game that did not assign active penalties. In response to this, the Chinese governent have "barred online gamers under the age of 18 from playing on weekdays and limited their play to just three hours [on] most weekends",^[93] while Chinese state media have described online gaming as "spiritual opium"^[94][95] (although they're hardly the first nation to make such an absurd comparison; in 1993, US Senator Fritz Hollings referred to television as "a narcotic").^[96]

In addition to these measures, numerous treatment camps which claim to be able to cure "video game addiction"^[97] have been established throughout the country. Their methods range from solitary confinement and beatings to electroshock therapy (although the latter was officially banned by the Chinese Ministry of Health in 2009).^[98][99] "Several young people have reportedly died at the camps, according to state-sanctioned media in China. [...] [S]upervisors at a camp in China's Henan province reportedly beat a 19-year-old girl to death when she failed to ask permission to use the bathroom, The Beijing News reported. Other reported deaths at Internet addiction camps across the country include a 14-year-old boy struck with a baton and pipe for being unable to do push-ups, according to the Los Angeles Times, and a 15-year-old beaten less than a day after arriving at camp."^[100] An 18-year-old teenager died due to the abuse they received at a facility in Anhui;^[101] the owner was later sent to prison.^[102] Although these facilities claim a high success rate ("[o]fficials at the Daxing treatment center said that 70 percent of their patients overcame Internet addiction"),^[103] the evidence is dubious at best. ""For a treatment to work, it needs to last," Jenny Taitz, a clinical psychologist at the American Institute for Cognitive Therapy in New York, told ABC News. "And the very nature of a camp is that you can only stay there temporarily." [...] "I'm a clinician who bases my entire practice on evidence-based treatment, and I've never heard of a boot camp treatment in my scouring of evidence-based research," Taitz said."^[100]

Societal issues[edit]

Gambling[edit]

The ostentatious use of animations and imagery in this lootbox sequence in Overwatch is clearly designed to induce a lifetime's supply of dopamine.

Apart from actual gambling games (slot machines, casino games, etc.), there are some disturbing trends in the gaming industry regarding the practice of loot boxes. A loot box is a prize pack that can be acquired in-game that gives random rewards. The examples we will focus on are available for purchase with real-world cash, which can compel people to gamble on these boxes. In 2007, a Chinese free-to-play massively multiplayer game invented the modern loot box, where you would earn the boxes but have to pay for keys to open them. The first notable hit in the West to include this was Team Fortress 2, but over the next decade or so the concept would evolve to include pay-to-play games, such as the traditionally single-player series came with Mass Effect 3. This game contains a player-vs-enemy (PvE) multiplayer element. Multiplayer characters and weapons must be obtained or enhanced with loot boxes which when completing multiplayer games enhanced the single-player experience.

The issue came to a head with the success of 2016's Overwatch from Blizzard Entertainment (one half of the Activision Blizzard conglomerate), a pay-to-play game with cosmetic loot boxes occasionally handed out for free or available for purchase. This change caught on like wildfire within the industry with many major titles for 2017 now adopting both cosmetic- and power-based loot boxes. Previous games in some series that relied almost exclusively on acquiring items through leveling up were now being fed through loot boxes, while consumers were upset about game balance. In 2017, with the release of Star Wars Battlefront 2, Electronic Arts was set to tie multiplayer powers and progression that would devastate game balance (including some power-ups that allowed abilities to be used twice as often) to these crates until the rights holders (Disney) stepped in and told them to stop. For a while. this system continued, with in-game credits being required for purchasing crates, meaning that players still had to grind upwards of 40 hours to unlock and upgrade one hero (Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader, etc.). Post-launch, this has become a catalyst for political figures to get involved in games once again, as the system is psychologically exploitative and could prey on unsuspecting children who just want to play Star Wars (the game is rated for teenagers, meaning its easy to buy anywhere with no age restrictions). Thankfully, EA changed the progression to a more conventional system where playing a character gave points that could be used to upgrade said character.

Selected other titles with these elements:

• Halo 5: Guardians - (Microsoft Studios, 343 Industries) Certain modes (all labeled as Warzone) in the game have one-use or permanent cards to gain a tangible advantage that can be earned or bought with real currency. Stated in other terms, a fresh player starts with an unscoped assault rifle and a handgun, whereas tangible upgrades to these exist including scopes, bigger magazines with other guns (marksman rifles, SMGs, etc.), and all game vehicles (from the ATV to the tank) being locked behind these crates. On the other side, Arena matches puts all players on equal footing regardless of unlocks and give rewards much like Warzone. So you could play Arena to unlock goodies for Warzone then switch when comfortable. Another argument would be that the game is designed in a way that the average player will acquire three to four bronze packs, or one silver pack per play session, meaning a player will have cards to use next time.
• Middle-earth: Shadow of War (Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment, Monolith Productions) - Some critics have noticed that the true ending to the game is locked off from players unless they repetitively grind for a very long time or bunker down and buy the crates. As of July 2018, it is now impossible to buy loot crates as the "marketplace" has been removed from the game, and the true ending was made easier to achieve.
• Payday 2 (Independent, Overkill Software) - A pay-to-play title on Steam added locked loot crates safes (with $2.49 keys drills) that contained random cosmetics. Related, a previous pack that had been on sale for $20 that provided unique masks as part of an investment pack that would provide items down the road was just revealed to be a unique safe. The backlash was so heated that community moderators threatened to quit their jobs, the review rating tanked, and bad press all around with the player base seeming to tumble out of control overnight. The only way the developer would fix this was to buy the game (as in the intellectual property of the game) from their publisher 505 Games to go independent for $30 million and a cut of the eventual sequel, Payday 3. The safes were not removed, but the drills from all future safes came at no cost.
• Call of Duty: WWII (Activision-Blizzard, Sledgehammer Games) - You can earn progress by watching other people open loot boxes. Compulsory behavior training? It's simply common knowledge that our troops during the D-Day invasion in World War II had randomly spawning crates fall from the sky open up, reveal cards, and they gather around that crate to see what they got.
• Forza Motorsport 7 (Microsoft Studios, Turn 10 Studios) - All of your unlockable cars, car mods, suits, etc. that were once part of the game in previous entries can now be obtained only through lootboxes-er I mean, "Prize Crates"! As of November 2018, this system was removed in favor of a "buy what you want" model instead of random chance.
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered (Activision-Blizzard, Raven Software) - A beloved classic remastered and available by purchasing a deluxe edition of Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare or eventually standalone for $40. Originally the game featured no microtransactions or loot boxes. Then new guns were put in as microtransactions and loot boxes were added anyway, and the DLC was sold again rather than being free! You can get the original cheaper than all of this.
• Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (Valve, Hidden Path Entertainment) - Formerly a pay-to-play game, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (commonly abbreviated as CS:GO or CSGO) added a cosmetic system in the game with lootboxes and skins sold via the Steam Community Market & by in-game "drops". The system was so effective that Valve made the game free-to-play in 2018 focusing on revenue of these items exclusively. Several websites exist online just for the primary purpose of gambling said items for money or more rare skins, and have faced many legal actions from the European Union and the United States. These websites now require visitors to be 18+ or reside outside the United States.

Compared to a similar item, booster packs for collectible cards or trading cards such as those of Magic: The Gathering (MTG or Magic) generally have well-known odds, and thus the outcome of any trade is much more predictable. The typical Magic booster pack contains 15 cards consisting of one land, ten common rarities, three uncommon rarities, and one rare card. Across packs, a mythic rare comes in about one in eight packs, while a foil card comes in one in seventy cards (or one in five booster packs). These statistics are easily available from the game's publisher, Wizards of the Coast, and is also printed on the packs themselves, so calculating odds is a far easier matter, and gives you a better idea of what to expect. In addition, since these cards are physical items, a secondary market for them exists: One can, in fact, feasibly acquire their entire collection of Magic, or Yu-Gi-Oh!, or Pokémon cards without ever having to touch a single random product. Similarly, if one has lost interest in their card game hobby, they can recoup some of what they spend on it (or they could repurpose their cards as, for instance, bookmarks or drink coasters). When it comes to video games and associated loot boxes, the odds are often not published anywhere unless required by law or developer agreement. In Halo 5, you can buy packs in three flavors, with each stating which rarities are included (Common, Uncommon, Rare, Ultra-Rare, Legendary and Mythic), but nothing is guaranteed in any one individual box, and none of these items can be resold or traded to other players, and even in the rare instances where it is possible to sell or trade items from loot boxes on some kind of (secondary) marketplace (such as with Valve’s Team Fortress 2 or Roblox Corporation’s Roblox), these things happen entirely at the discretion of the publisher, who can put the kibosh on it any time they want—“The house controls everything”. Incidentally, Magic also has several video game versions, with the most recent being Magic: the Gathering Arena. Not only is it based on the exact same rules as the physical game, but it is also free to start, gives you five decks of cards to play with and is completely upfront and honest with its drop rates^[106] and costs.^[107] To compensate for the lack of a secondary market, if you get a fifth copy of a card (the game locks you at a maximum of four per deck), it is automatically replaced with another card from a set of the same rarity. If none are available, you are instead granted either premium in-game currency (in other words, the game pays you as compensation) or access to rarer cards. On top of that, as you open packs, you can eventually access "Wildcards", which can be exchanged for any card of the same rarity.

A common rebuttal from the industry and gamers alike is that the features and items involved are simply cosmetic, and therefore do not directly impact gameplay, an excuse which even the slightest bit of scrutiny reveals to be nonsense. Due to how people play video games in personal settings, options that cater to how a player wants to enjoy the game causes them to enjoy the game more, and arguably, these enhancements, no matter how minor they may seem, increase a player's enjoyment of the game and is therefore considered a viable part of the experience. Worse tends to be the low or limited value of some of these cosmetics. Overwatch has limited-use sprays (allowing players to decal walls with a picture) while Destiny 2 has textures (coloring) that can be used only once and only on a single piece of armor, limiting the ability to skin a whole character. Additionally, if these cosmetic items weren't important, greedy publishers wouldn't gate these items behind these chance paywalls to begin with (and these items aren't easily ignored) and wouldn't have developed a lucrative system behind scamming people who have gambling impulses to purchase loot boxes in hopes that it may contain a skin they would wish to use. Furthermore, many of these items used to actually be part of the game (see Forza Motorsport 7 above) and were already in-game rewards (before being artificially removed from the base game and placed behind a paywall), and many games to this day use aesthetically pleasing costume pieces as rewards for playing the game rather than asking players to play upfront, with recent examples such as Super Mario Odyssey and Sonic Forces. This doesn't take into account supposedly cosmetic features which do in fact end up affecting the game's balance or fairness, which is a particularly crucial component in multiplayer games.^[108]

Another common rebuttal is that loot boxes are simply up to the discretion of the player to buy them, and all of the negative consequences are up to the individual player weighing the risks and rewards and coming to their own conclusion to make that decision. The problem with this argument is the psychologically manipulative tactics used by said games to get players to part with their money, such as repeatedly badgering them with notifications, or forcing them to go through endless amounts of tedious and artificial grinding in order to gain access to the item they want without paying extra. In many of these cases, most players have already paid $60 for the game they are playing; the last thing they want or need is said game nagging them to part with even more cash. This is about as much choice the player has as with people who have psychological problems with gambling, and this is the main reason gambling in casinos or on the internet is restricted to adults only. Going back to kids for a second, Fortnite, which is popular with children, has an out-of-game bullying problem for in-game outfits that are used. Essentially, not having spent money on outfits is seen as an excuse to bully someone.^[109]

Beyond that is the derogatory language used to describe the player base, derived from casino terminology. The most common word is "whale," referring to someone who spends large amounts of money on any particular game (casinos also call them "high rollers", who make large bets); similar terms are "dolphins" for those who spend a moderate amount on a game and "krill" for those who spend nearly nothing. Whales tend to share similarities to people with gambling addictions, making it very obvious the ingrained problems with these models.

See also[edit]

• Essay: Video game genres
• Social media
• Brainwave woo
• Moral panic

Games with articles[edit]

• Ethnic Cleansing
• Grand Theft Auto
• Grezzo 2, a total conversion mod for Doom (1993)
• Pokémon
• Roblox
• Wolfenstein

External links[edit]

• The Cognitive Benefits of Playing Video Games
• Pretty much every title in Wikipedia's list of video games as an art form should probably be stored in the equivalent of a Svalbard Seed Vault (psst... starting with Journey)
• 5 Creepy Ways Video Games Are Trying To Get You Addicted - Basically, open-ended multiplayer games, such as World of Warcraft and FarmVille are just great big digital Skinner boxes.
• Slow Down the Violence and Tragedy and Video Game Violence
• Charlie Brooker's How Videogames Changed The World
• The greatest game of all time.
• RationalWiki's unofficial Steam group

Notes[edit]

References[edit]