How much do you designers think about the effect your games will have on they people who play them?

For example my young nephew has a pretty decent idea for an ipad/android RTS WW2 themed game maybe in 3D. Now this got me thinking do we really need anymore violence in games out there. There has obviously been a pretty decent debate on the effect of violence in games even if it's in a cartoon style, see here, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_controversies, there are mixed results as to what the scientists conclude. The more graphically realistic the game then arguably the more potential negative effects it can have.

I do know that I find the GTA games to be pretty crude, GTA3 was exciting and novel at first however if I ever play a GTA game now I find it pretty sick to be honest....

Do you ever attend conferences on game ethics or does this kind of thing never cross your mind?

does this kind of thing never cross your mind?

As hobby game designer I always try to think about the ethic of my game. Thought not without violence, I try to reduce the visual effect for one (is it necessary to display blood or even detached body parts ?) and the effect of game mechanism. Eg. you are able to butcher creatures to receive resources (meat, bones etc.), I explicitly disable this features for humanoid creatures. Just the thought, that someone could do it in the real world or have done this in history, is disturbing enough to leave such features out of the game.

There are always other ways to display certain effects. Best example is the torturing in dungeon keeper 1/2 which is funny, cartoony and far away from reality.

But eventually I fear that ethic goes over-board first once a lot of money is involved

All the devs I've worked with professionally are intelligent, educated people, which tends to mean they're thoughtful and progressive... Which means, yes, they consider the ethics of their work.

In the Indie world this means a lot... But in the corporate world you don't often have very much control over the product at all. If you think the level of violence or sexuality or stereotypes should be changed, there's often not much you can do. Even resigning in protest won't change anything... Hence the same pulp keeps on being pumped out.

Regarding GTA specifically, in my country it's clearly marked as an adults-only product, so any concerns about the effects of violent media on children aren't really relevant. It becomes an issue of bad parenting if someone is giving restricted products to their kids.
i.e. The ethical issue there is about the inappropriate purchasing and use of a product, not the production of that product.
Also, the GTA games are comedy. Dark comedy. Absurd dark comedy sharply satirizing American culture. If your sense of humour isn't compatible with that kind of deliberately over-the-top debauchery and satire, that's fine, but many other well adjusted adults are able to safely enjoy such humour. I'd actually say that the kind of satire in GTA is actually extremely culturally important, and that overall more games need to express similar statements.

Regarding GTA specifically, in my country it's clearly marked as an adults-only product, so any concerns about the effects of violent media on children aren't really relevant. It becomes an issue of bad parenting if someone is giving restricted products to their kids.

I think that this is just too easy. If a child want to play a game, especially if it is forbidden for him, then he will play it, and not even most good parents are IT experts, who are able to control what their children consume.

i.e. The ethical issue there is about the inappropriate purchasing and use of a product, not the production of that product.

Well, this is true for many things, like guns, isn't it ? But most weapons are there to kill, whereas games do not have to be violent ? Or must a game be violent to be fun ?

I'm not against violent games, I play a lot of them too, but often the displayed violence isn't necessary to make the game interesting. But where is the boundary ?

Is a comedy game with explicit violence like Bullet Storm really neccessary to generate fun ? Is a ethic conflict in game like CoD where you play as part of a terroristic mission (air port) really neccessary ? Are really the financial backer saying that the game must have such a degree of violence or doesn't the game designers have more choices ?

All the devs I've worked with professionally are intelligent, educated people, which tends to mean they're thoughtful and progressive... Which means, yes, they consider the ethics of their work.

In the Indie world this means a lot... But in the corporate world you don't often have very much control over the product at all. If you think the level of violence or sexuality or stereotypes should be changed, there's often not much you can do. Even resigning in protest won't change anything... Hence the same pulp keeps on being pumped out.

Regarding GTA specifically, in my country it's clearly marked as an adults-only product, so any concerns about the effects of violent media on children aren't really relevant. It becomes an issue of bad parenting if someone is giving restricted products to their kids.
i.e. The ethical issue there is about the inappropriate purchasing and use of a product, not the production of that product.
Also, the GTA games are comedy. Dark comedy. Absurd dark comedy sharply satirizing American culture. If your sense of humour isn't compatible with that kind of deliberately over-the-top debauchery and satire, that's fine, but many other well adjusted adults are able to safely enjoy such humour. I'd actually say that the kind of satire in GTA is actually extremely culturally important, and that overall more games need to express similar statements.

I'm pretty sure the vast majority of people who play GTA are not thinking about its supposed criticisms of American society while playing it. Adults may play GTA be we all know that its not marketed towards adults. It makes it profits off from being "edgy" to attract the standard teenage to college male demo. GTA is satire like that Onion joke about Quvenzhane Wallis being George Clooney's next screw is satire. It's almost the ultimate expression of the Chappelle effect. As far as the cultural importance of GTA, lulz. Even if you accept the argument that GTA is intended to be satire, and that it's intended satire is not totally lost on its audience, its message is not new or original, its not portrayed in a compelling way.

Lots of the satire is supposed to be based on Rockstar's self awareness, as if self awareness was difficult. "How great is Jimmy?" Uh huh, top tier guys, a jobless loser playing violent games in your violent game played by a lot of jobless teenagers and college kids.

I only make games that are basically non-violent, for a couple of reasons, not all of them ethical. But my concerns are nearly tangent to the mainstream concerns about violence. I'm not concerned about the "fantasy becoming reality" bit, and the blood and gore doesn't really concern me. I'm not against playing violent games sometimes, or even against kids playing them. (I think a bit of fantasy violence is psychologically important for kids; it's one of the ways that kids come to terms with living in a big and scary world.)

My own concern is more about the output of the industry as a whole, that a really large portion of our creative endeavors as designers go towards the creation of ersatz universes where one's primary means of interaction is violence, on an almost genocidal scale. "I will slay thousands of foes who dared to get in the way of my goal!!!" Some of that's fine, that's certainly a kind of fantasy ideation that people have, especially when we're frustrated and angry. But as we're leaving behind real-world play (which is very diverse thematically and mechanically) and spending more of our time in videogame play (which is very uniform thematically and mechanically), we've enshrined one kind of fantasy play as "what play is".

I think that this is just too easy. If a child want to play a game, especially if it is forbidden for him, then he will play it, and not even most good parents are IT experts, who are able to control what their children consume.

I'd like to know where the kids are getting fake ID to buy the physical copy of the game, or credit-cards to buy the digital PC copy.

n.b. I was talking specificly about my country where it is marked as an adults only product.

If you want to argue that we should censor all adult-targetted products because parents are unable to parent in this day and age, then go ahead....

Or must a game be violent to be fun ?

No, games don't have to be violent to be fun... But some are violent and fun.

Video games are a medium that's still in it's infancy -- we're about where film was in 1920, and still inventing what a video game is. Sticking to shooter tropes is easy, but there's many many great non-violent video games struggling to be seen amongst the gore.

Stepping back from video-games, to games in general --
Poker is non-violent, but chess is a war game where foot-soldiers' lives are near worthless when it comes to protecting the monarch...
Baseball is non-violent (unless you have a malicious pitcher), but Gridiron or Rugby are extremely violent, with people occasionally killing each other in hand-to-hand combat, despite their protective equipment.

Is it unethical to play Chess or watch the Superbowl?

The fact is that many people do happen to enjoy safe, recreational violence. That's part of humanity. Uncontrolled violence is a horrible thing, but safe outlets for it seem to be important in almost every civilization.
There's endless industries that cater to the enjoyment of safe or pretend violence, including but not limited to video games.
Personally, I think that trying to portray all of these forms of entertainment as unethical is a bit extreme... and it's not up to me to prove a negative.

Some people like getting into a boxing ring, some people like watching a dozen athletes throw each other into the dirt in pursuit of an egg, some people like pretending to shoot hordes of nazi zombies, some people like to play cops and robbers.
If you want to argue that catering to these people is unethical, go for it.

I think that this is just too easy. If a child want to play a game, especially if it is forbidden for him, then he will play it, and not even most good parents are IT experts, who are able to control what their children consume.

I'd like to know where the kids are getting fake ID to buy the physical copy of the game, or credit-cards to buy the digital PC copy.

n.b. I was talking specificly about my country where it is marked as an adults only product.

If you want to argue that we should censor all adult-targetted products because parents are unable to parent in this day and age, then go ahead....

Or must a game be violent to be fun ?

No, games don't have to be violent to be fun... But some are violent and fun.

Video games are a medium that's still in it's infancy -- we're about where film was in 1920, and still inventing what a video game is. Sticking to shooter tropes is easy, but there's many many great non-violent video games struggling to be seen amongst the gore.

Stepping back from video-games, to games in general --
Poker is non-violent, but chess is a war game where foot-soldiers' lives are near worthless when it comes to protecting the monarch...
Baseball is non-violent (unless you have a malicious pitcher), but Gridiron or Rugby are extremely violent, with people occasionally killing each other in hand-to-hand combat, despite their protective equipment.

Is it unethical to play Chess or watch the Superbowl?

The fact is that many people do happen to enjoy safe, recreational violence. That's part of humanity. Uncontrolled violence is a horrible thing, but safe outlets for it seem to be important in almost every civilization.
There's endless industries that cater to the enjoyment of safe or pretend violence, including but not limited to video games.
Personally, I think that trying to portray all of these forms of entertainment as unethical is a bit extreme... and it's not up to me to prove a negative.

Some people like getting into a boxing ring, some people like watching a dozen athletes throw each other into the dirt in pursuit of an egg, some people like pretending to shoot hordes of nazi zombies, some people like to play cops and robbers.
If you want to argue that catering to these people is unethical, go for it.

Football is violent and dangerous, that's an indictment of football, not a defense of GTA or COD. Is football less unethical than the gladiatorial games of the late Roman Empire? Yes. Does that mean that it is ethical? No. Almost every human civilization treated women as sex toys and brood mares for most of our history. Does that mean that's a natural part of the human condition? Slavery was a universal cultural thing more or less, existing in most nations in some form and on every continent. Is that also natural? No. Is football as bad as those things? Probably not. But if you want to use an appeal to tradition or cultural universals then you'll have to accept the logical consequences of that form of argument.

Humans enjoy lots of things that are unethical and/or unsafe. Watching crowds cheer as some person knocks another person's teeth out or knocks them unconscious does disgust me. The same for watching people cheer 300 pound guys slam their heads/shoulders into each other for entertainment. Yes, football and boxing were/are subjected to outside regulations for safety. Because people that had a problem with it generated a controversy and forced it upon them, the same as any other regulation, say, on businesses.

People who enjoy these things are wrong not about enjoyment but about acceptability. They aren't as wrong as the people who promote or make money off of violent spectacles, but they are still wrong. Video games are physically safe recreational violence. Violent contact sports are not. People die, they get brain damage, many athletes get permanent back/leg/arm/etc. problems. The popularity of this stuff tends to tie into tribal identity issues. Do you think people would care as much if the teams weren't assigned to specific cities? They wouldn't.

As far as proving a negative, you are requiring us to prove a negative, unethical is the negative. You would only have to prove a positive, that it is ethical.

Its cool though, your identity is tied up in violent sports and games. So having an argument with you is mostly pointless. Its almost impossible to dissuade people from their bad behavior because saying that such and such is bad, when they identify as a person who does such and such, implies something about them as a person, and people don't want to feel like a bad person. Even if they have to fall back on arguments of tradition instead of having an actual defense for their behavior.

I generally don't play games that contain heavy violence. The content of games like GTA appall many people, but I have to acknowledge the fact that the act of playing violent video games doesn't inevitably make people more aggressive. Reasonably speaking, if they didn't find the game's content acceptable, they probably wouldn't have paid money for it or played it. If they did play it, they would undoubtedly turn it off when they came into contact with something that conflicted with the values they already held. Cognitive dissonance is a psychological explanation for this behavior. I imagine most game developers are already aware of this.

Still, that doesn't mean it's ethical to include exceedingly violent and graphic content in video games, and I feel more developers should strive toward broadening the gameplay of modern video games for diversity's sake.

On Rye

I'd like to know where the kids are getting fake ID to buy the physical copy of the game, or credit-cards to buy the digital PC copy.

n.b. I was talking specificly about my country where it is marked as an adults only product.

I'm living in germany and here we have one of the strongest kid protection laws, many games got even modified to be sold on the german market or completely banned. Still it is not really a problem to get illegal copies of games for older kids and it is quite common to get the cool, un-cut english/us version instead of the cut german version or of banned games. Digital distribution made it harder and a credit-cards almost impossible, but even buying a steam key in your local eletronic market by an older friend isn't really a barrier.

It is quite funny to compare the german market with the US market, thought I don't know the australian market . Here in germany we have strong anti-violence laws, but sexuality is handled in a more lax way (eg. a naked breast in a public advertising isn't unheart of). In the US market violence is quite common, but sexuality almost always a scandal.

If you want to argue that we should censor all adult-targetted products because parents are unable to parent in this day and age, then go ahead....

No, I don't want to censor them, as already said, I like to play violent games myself and it would be wrong to leave it e.g. out of war games, but I would wish that game designer would handle game content regarding violence and sex more careful and not as a cheap marketing bonus (ohh... let's add some boobs and brain splatter).

I just want to say, that you can't hinder young people of consuming violent media, that violent media are common (games, horror movies, fox news) and that the media/content creator has the best change to control the level of violence. Therefor, if you want to design a game, please think about the right dose of violence. Does explicit violence really enchance the game experience ?