I don't believe I've ever consciously put any efforts towards thinking about ethics in my games. The thing is, I make what I'd like to play, and whatever I do turns out to be what I set out to do in the first place.

I find little room for profanity and torture or racism simply because I'm not interested in making a profane, torture or racist game. The fact my games are "ethically correct" is simply a byproduct of where my interests lie I guess...

I don't believe I've ever consciously put any efforts towards thinking about ethics in my games. The thing is, I make what I'd like to play

Me too. I think this whole "ethics in games" is blown out of proportions.

BTW, contrary to common belief sex does not sell :) In practice, making games ethically correct brings more money :D With few exceptions, as usual.

I think games sit in a unique place in the entertainment world, as they offer the possibility of (virtually) committing acts of aggression/violence/wrongdoing, rather than simply watching/reading them. The notion of catharsis goes way, way back, and personally, I think it can be perfectly fine and even healthy, but I also think it can swing the other way into unhealthy territory. It kind of depends on the approach. (Personally, I'm totally fine with sci-fi/fantasy violence, but get uncomfortable rather quick if I'm, say, shooting regular people in the face with machine guns).

In addition to violence, which most people focus on, I think creators should be aware of what stereotypes and prejudices they're inadvertently perpetuating, what cultures they're appropriating, and what grand-narratives they're using. Individually these can seem rather harmless, but our work exists in a sea of creativity that shapes culture in really powerful ways. I absolutely think people ought to take a good hard look at their works and see how it fits into the larger picture.

I'm not arguing for censorship, or even self-censorship, but to be aware of exactly what statement you are making as a creator, and making certain that that really is the statement you'd like to make.

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

I always think about the affect of the game on the players. Is it fun and so on but not about ethics. No conferences on ethics for me and i do not think about it. And there is no violence slider tweaked when making games that equals to sales .

I'm not arguing for censorship, or even self-censorship, but to be aware of exactly what statement you are making as a creator, and making certain that that really is the statement you'd like to make.

You can try to be aware of what statement your game make but it's often a waste of time. People will interpret your game from their own perspective. If you know your game statement you have just weighted it towards the avarage opinions of what most people think. Most people think it's milk and you made milk. If milk is your thing then go for it, you at least know what you made and they what they get.

Okay, we have all jumped on the portrayal of violence and sex as the main ethical issue in games.

In my opinion the big problem right now is the mobile gaming market that encourages children to buy "gold" in freemium games, and encourages compulsive behaviour and addiction.

Not just this but the whole idea of immoral advertising, games targeted at kids that use shady ad networks that display sexually explicit ads where a mistaken click sends you to an adult dating site. It's just wrong on every level and mostly prevalent on android.I have uninstalled many games targeted at TODDLERS that do this, their developers fully aware and unwilling to change!

Then we have the bad ethics of data harvesting and unscrupulous ad networks who exploit social networks, and the social networks themselves and the games they peddle.

Maybe this is the worst set of issues right now?

Okay, we have all jumped on the portrayal of violence and sex as the main ethical issue in games.

In my opinion the big problem right now is the mobile gaming market that encourages children to buy "gold" in freemium games, and encourages compulsive behaviour and addiction.

Not just this but the whole idea of immoral advertising, games targeted at kids that use shady ad networks that display sexually explicit ads where a mistaken click sends you to an adult dating site. It's just wrong on every level and mostly prevalent on android.I have uninstalled many games targeted at TODDLERS that do this, their developers fully aware and unwilling to change!

Then we have the bad ethics of data harvesting and unscrupulous ad networks who exploit social networks, and the social networks themselves and the games they peddle.

Maybe this is the worst set of issues right now?

I agree.
I was never a big fan of the facebook model for f2p games and it has been borrowed for mobile games now.
I always felt that this compulsive approach often showed disrespect for the users save a few games that did it well (avoiding the pay2win and payORleave).
It is much more of a problem when your audience is younger.

I was in a very uneasy position 2 years ago as I was appointed to such a project (and a major one at that). For the most part I stuck witb the plan though, ultimately, I was discharged from the project at my own relief.

I think we should always strive to make more meaningful, socially-positive explorations of ideas. However, not something worth reinventing yourself for the 10th time over. You don't have the resources to really create something meaningful, socially-positive that will have any traction. You can only make games. Make games well. Games are explorations of new aspects and models of the world. Develop the technology now so somebody else can do something useful. Games are the modern equivalent of sitting around a bonfire. What is fire? I believe it's hard for developers to make something mundane, enjoyable. It takes effort. But it is the source of new ideas. 90% of games are killing simulators. Is it because we love to kill? I think it's just because people can understand that the most, immediately, and it creates the most spectical. Killing is the plainest, dumbest, brutest thing you can do. It has a visible, physical result. Pleasure is hard to quantify. It is subjective. You can make games about building things, then you need a metric for measuring how positive it is. But it's physical, and people understand that. I think people need a drive, and survival is the deepest. Otherwise, people are asking, "what am I supposed to do? this is confusing!" People need something they can do now, and only get better at with additional thought. However, there is always the drive to better one's condition, and that should be a driving mechanic.

My analysis of Farming Simulator: I know the results of any action (I suppose, I haven't played it) so there's no mystery of the bonfire to it. There's no multiplayer, so I'm not bettering my condition in real life with social interaction. Otherwise, it could be a good game as any other. There is the mystery of learning all that goes into a farm, but not the sort of thing that I can pile more logs into the bonfire to see what happens.

The Sims: why don't I like this? I tried it and I didn't understand the system. It must be brilliant though, with a psychological model. It seems like a decadent life simulator however. I don't care about managing my mood. It seems it will only do predefined things, so there's no surprise.

GameDev Tycoon: curious to see what the developers thought up for the different options and how it relates to what I do. I could as well gather this knowledge by reading about the game.

CoD: lots of stimulation from the minutest input, human conversation. Every move is unpredictable, depending on human action. No dampening effect of input on game action, like in RTS.

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?

The examples of other violent games was just to show that violence in entertainment is common, so an argument as to why video game devs should avoid violence should apply to sports/cards/tabletop/TV/books/film/etc as well.
Video games are a neat meeting point of all of those listed media, sharing all their issues.

People who enjoy these things [football, etc] are... wrong.
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.

Who are you tell those people that their lives are wrong. If they're making the informed choice to risk life and limb, that's their problem. Others climb mountains or jump out of planes... Which is stupidly dangerous, but it's some people's dedication. I don't understand them, but to flat out tell them they're wrong?? Wow.

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.

The 'un' prefix is grammaticaly negative... Thats go nothing to to with whether arguing on the side of right or wrong is the positive or negative side.

Violence is media is commonly acceptable at the moment. If you're arguing against it, you're arguing for change. You have to tell people why they should change
change.

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.

That's just ridiculously unnecessary.
I don't watch football, or boxing, or any violent sports. I don't make violent videogames at the moment either. The last year's of my life have been dedicated to trying to find a way to inject fun/drama into a collisionless and weaponless racing game.
The next game to launch that I've worked on is Wander, a non-combat, non-competitive MMO.
It's ok to accept and even present ideas that you don't personally believe in.
I have no idea why people choose to be boxers or footballers, and no idea why people watch it! But I can still defend their freedom to make those choices, as they're not harming me at all.
But sure, if you think that defending them means that my identity must be tied up in bloodsport, then you're not insulting me with that jab at all, you're only telling us about yourself with those words.

For me, the ethics of the content are a non-issue, because I view any moral quandry that comes up to necessarily extend from the story being told. If you're dealing with unhappy story and unsavory characters, its a given that some of the content represented will be unethical. But for Me to make it anything less than that by censoring or toning it down would betray the story. Take the classic Huckleberry Finn, if you were to go through and change some offending words to make it more PC, it looses some of what it is.

On the other hand, the ethics I do think about carefully are issues that affect players' real lives -- I have a real problem with games that don't respect the player's time or treat them as a resource to be milked. When I sell someone a game, I want them to be happy with the value they've gotten in trade, and I don't want to dictate terms of how they should engage with it (outside the rules of the game, of course). I have a problem with some games today who've confused player metrics with genuine enjoyment -- for example, just because the average player spends more time in your game does not mean they're enjoying themselves, it might only mean that they've successfully tricked you into believing that the tedium is necessary to get to the good parts. In some sense, games like that are literally robbing their players of life and health -- all so that the publishers can boast what high engagement they have on earnings calls.

I've also thought a lot lately about the ethics of representation in games, and of being color and gender blind. Not as a platform or big statement, but merely as saying that it really shouldn't matter what race or gender our characters are unless it is, in fact, essential to be a certain way -- and if that is the case, then the representation of those characters should be more in line with society. And besides, if it makes GamerGate types cry ethical tears over their tiny, fedora-wearing penises, I'm all for it. /troll