Ethics of Computer Games Week 1

Ethics of Computer Games       Samuel Bizley

There are clearly many potential impacts of video games on society and individuals. There are both positive and negative effects that have been suggested, some with evidence behind them and some are more speculative. It has been claimed that video games can influence us positively with things such as increased hand eye co-ordination and better critical thinking skills. However video games have also been linked with problems with addiction, social isolation and separation from reality. In this post I will be looking at both positive and negative effects.

Games in Society

Excessive game playing - With really hardcore gamers there are concerns that gaming actually distracts the user from other activities in their life. When someone is extremely immersed in a gaming experience they can often forget to eat properly, exercise and interact with others. This begs the question should gaming be treated the same as any other addiction, such as addiction to drugs, because it can have similar life damaging effects. People have reported losing their jobs, their marriages and their entire lives over being addicted to video games.

This clip is a documentary showing video game addiction in South Korea


Games can cost you a lot. A lot of money can be spent buying hardware to play the games and on the games themselves, but they can also distract from things you wish to accomplish in life. It is easy to be absorbed in a video game that simulates real life achievements, but it does not give the same satisfaction as in real life. Gaming, like anything else in life, needs to be moderated.

Social Isolation - Excessive game playing may link in to this second point. As spending all your time playing video games may make it difficult to socially interact with others. Social Isolation is the near or complete lack of social contact with other individuals and certainly some video games are very isolated. However not all video games are and some video games can be played with friends or other people through the internet, thus increasing the amount of social interaction a person has.





 "...a study by researchers at the North Carolina State University, New York and the University Of Ontario Institute Of Technology points out that gamers usually do not replace their offline social lives with online game playing, but rather it expands them. In fact, among gamers, being a loner is not the norm."   



source: http://www.raisesmartkid.com/3-to-6-years-old/4-articles/34-the-good-and-bad-effects-of-video-games

World of Warcraft has many reported addiction problems associated with it.

This next clip is a short documentary on one person's struggle with WOW addiction and they stunted life that it leaves you with.

In games such as World of Warcraft, it attempts to hook the player by giving fast and direct rewards for progress, in the form of levels. It can be very difficult to pull yourself away from a game if the next progress milestone is right around the corner. There is a concept in psychology and video games called "Flow". This is the complete immersion of someone in performing an activity where they are almost unaware of any other stimuli. Games like World of Warcraft try to bring this idea to the players of the game and essentially addict the player to the fun they are having.

Separation from Reality - Some people theorise that video games, especially the more realistic ones, can confuse the player's perception of reality. Citing such games as the infamous "Manhunt" as having directly inspired killings. There are incidents of people reporting after extremely long gaming sessions that the individual wasn't able to distinguish between the game, and the real world. Some countries such as Australia have a much stricter policy on what video games they allow into their country and go so far as to ban certain games that they deem inappropriate.

Here is a link to a famous incident that lead to the banning of the game "Manhunt" in several countries including the UK
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/leicestershire/3934277.stm

Benefits to Cognitive Skills - There are many cases of researchers reporting that playing video games regularly can improve hand eye co-ordination, reflex response time and thinking and problem solving skills. Some games are even created for the exact purpose of improving certain cognitive skills, Brain Training is an example.

In this game the player engages in several tasks that are designed to improve things like, memory, problem solving, mathematics, etc.

Here is a link to an article that talks about the several benefits to thinking and the brain that video games can provide.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/07/video-games-good-for-us_n_4164723.html

Playing certain video games has been linked with slowing down the onset of such mental disorders as Alzheimer's. Because of the mental stimulation linked with video games, players can gain similar benefits as regularly reading and writing and so it is a astute tactic for giving someone with Alzheimer's a fighting chance. Puzzle based games are the most linked with these cognitive benefits and there are now games used for educational benefits. Games like Brain Training can be used to teach basic skills such as maths, pattern recognition, memory but there are also games out there developed specifically for education. The Magic school bus and Dora the Explorer games are prime examples of this. They are arguably much more engaging, because of the interactivity, than watching educational films or listening to a teacher. And they give children who have issues such as ADHD a more pragmatic activity to engage in.

Future Impact - With the rise of virtual reality and the Oculus Rift being bought by Facebook it is natural to wonder how we might all interact with one another in 10 years time. Facebook is primarily a company that deals with helping social interaction through their website and it seems that their plans for Oculus Rift will fit into this mantra. So if in 10 years we are all communicated and playing games together using a virtual reality headset what impacts will this have on society? Will people become further removed from physical interaction with other humans? Or will it increase contact with those people that we simply cannot meet in person?

 

The Oculus Rift player view (left) and the headset itself (right)

Another thing to think about is the ease of access of video games these days. Mobile gaming is very cheap and very accessible to nearly everyone in society. But with something like a VR headset suddenly gaming becomes much more expensive and those people who have issues such as being prone to motion sickness may not be able to participate.

Gaming consoles are becoming more and more expensive in today's society and there is a certain amount of pressure from both peers and the companies themselves to upgrade to "next gen". If video games and their consoles continue the way that they are, the market may in fact alienate their consumers and find that only the more wealthy consumers will be able to participate. Companies such as Sony and Microsoft have considered ways of completely disbanding the "second hand" market with one person only DRM. But one has to wonder that if video games continue to become more expensive the "second hand" market will surely head in the other direction and grow dramatically.

Impact on Mainstream Development - Video games are now considered a part of society, a part of culture even. As with film, video games can affect the society that we live in and make us re-evaluate our moral code and what we allow younger people to consume. A great example of this is the court cases that surrounded Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2's "Airport Massacre" scene. The scene is where you as the player are an undercover agent and so as to not blow your cover you must participate in the killing of a large group of civilian unarmed people at an airport in what is a terrorist attack. The scene encouraged huge amounts of controversy and the developers of the game had to add a warning and an option to opt in or out of the content. Although you do not have to kill anyone yourself on this mission nor do you have to play the mission at all. It is the medium of games, where you are able to take control of a character and experience immersion more than any other media, that people find uncomfortable. It encourages a responsibility for what you do in a game and there are clearly many people who take issue with engaging in the airport scene.


                        An image of the "Airport Massacre" scene

Video game marketplaces have also changed the way media is viewed. Steam, the open marketplace where games can be downloaded straight from the internet have changed the way we purchase and play video games. Stores such as Blockbluster have been declining in popularity because of the sheer ease of access to media using sites such as Steam and Netflix. And the second hand market for games has become less used in recent times with only console games, as opposed to pc games, regularly being exchanged.

Piracy is also more common these days, and popular sites such as Pirate Bay make it fairly safe and easy to partake. It has influenced the production of many different games as we see cases such as EA's rebooted SimCity, where EA tried to enforce a system of "only online play". This is where the player must been connected to the EA servers to even play the game at all. In theory it is quite a clever way of combating widespread PC piracy because they can easily check if the player had a legitimate version of the game. However in practise it was very difficult to run effectively, especially around the initial release of the game when player traffic was at its peak, and backfired on EA causing many players to speak out against the system.

Psychological Effects

As time goes by, games are forever raising the quality of the experience. Game immersion is always improving with better, more realistic graphics and sounds. This heightened level of realism has a profound effect on players. Some argue that it makes it much harder to distinguish between the virtual and the real world. This may or may not be true but there are much more obvious symptoms of playing video games. If you have ever played games like Outlast, Amnesia: the dark descent, Penumbra or Five Nights at Freddie's I would recommend you do. These games use sound and visual themes to create a level of tension that is truly terrifying.

If you don't wish to try these games here is a short clip that demonstrates the terror that great game and sound design can have on people.



Sound does not only induce fear though, and games such as Skyrim are great examples of games that use orchestral music to bring out other strong emotions such as a sense of freedom and adventure. Some video game studios now have the budget to employ talented musicians and orchestras to create their music.

This is the main theme music to Skyrim and is a very powerful piece of music

In the early arcade era games did not have an in depth narrative and you would usually play the game continuously until you reached a game over. At which point you would then be left with the score you got in that game and were able to write initials to signify it was you that got this score. Most arcade cabinets only displayed say the top 10 highest scores. This inevitably lead to competition of who among the players could get the best score? This person would then have the bragging rights over everyone else. This culture created a kind of indirect peer pressure to play the games more to get better at them. This meant that people would be pressured into spending more and more money on these arcade cabinets.

Gaming has evolved quite a bit since then. However in the last decade we have seen the growing popularity of achievements and gamer score in video games. This concept is that you have an online avatar that collects points and trophies depending on how well and what you do in a game. This perpetuates the competition of casual gaming and Xbox live profiles show your gamer score clearly to anyone and everyone. Some people are so devoted to gaining these achievements that they cannot play a game unless they will get every single achievement available in said game. Achievement Hunter is a part of the online company Rooster Teeth that's entire purpose is to show viewers how to complete difficult or interesting Xbox achievements.

This is very popular internet show, so its shows the mass interest in achievements.

This links in to another concept, which is truly Competitive gaming. Certain games like Starcraft, League of Legends, Street Fighter, Counter Strike, etc, have a large competitive fanbase and have been elevated to professional levels. Esports is a term for competitions held where professional video gamers and teams compete to win a cash prize. In South Korea the national sport is video gaming and stars of Esports are treated like the stars of professional football in Britain. You only need to see the screaming fan girls in the crowd of said events to realise how serious some people take pro-gaming. This culture has a very strong affect on people as it is changing our ideas of what an "athlete" is. The perception of the average gamer is very different to the average sports athlete, but comparisons have to be drawn between Esports and professional mainstream sport. 

here is an in depth article on pro-gaming, the first two paragraphs summarise the point very well.
http://uk.ign.com/articles/2014/04/09/the-reality-behind-the-pro-gaming-scene