Ethics in the Game industry

Ethics in video games are always taken very seriously because the gaming market provides for a vast amount of people who all have different opinions and ideas about different things. Most cultures and countries play video games however different cultures would consider some things ethically incorrect whilst other cultures might not. An example is Resident Evil 5, in the E3 trailer we see American hero Chris Redfield (A large muscular white man, with blonde hair and blue eyes) running through an African shanty town slaughtering the Ethiopian locals. As gamers we recognise the locals are infected and are now murderous zombies; however anyone else viewing this footage could think something entirely different. The footage shows the infected acting entirely different from original zombies which were slow moaning chomping brain munchers, but the zombies in the E3 trailer were quick agile, held weaponry, and seemed to be able to do anything any normal healthy person could do. The trailer also failed to mention the existence of Sheva, Chris’ Ethiopian accomplish. The Japanese developer Capcom never intended for any racism; however there has been plenty of controversy over the matter. But the matter was resolved later.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NaQmoC-vMm8

However the biggest ethical problem in video games are the how women are portrayed, Most people issues are women are portrayed as Big breasted, Big assed, little clothing, blonde haired women, which doesn’t correctly portray women, as the average cup size is C, the average hair colour is brown, and the majority of females wear an appropriate amount of clothing for normal social interaction. If games have female characters, they are normally beautiful, well-endowed individuals, examples include; explorer Lara Croft, High school Juliet Starling, and every female fighter in any fighting game ever. These female characters are provocatively dressed and have possess excessive cleavage because the developers want to expand their audience and gain more interest from male gamers, who are the majority of gamers. However even teenage males can find this marketing strategy obnoxious since it is an obvious attempt at pandering to an audience to excuse a lack of game quality.

Examples of female characters in video games being overly sexualised are a common sight; however some cases have caused more controversy than others such as the Hitman: Absolution trailer where a group of women in provocative nun clothing walking through a car park towards the home of agent 47, riddled with Machine guns, and various weaponry, one of the women is even carrying an RPG. Agent 47 being the highly trained assassin that he is spots the women and manages to escape the room before its blown to smithereens. The camera then shows Agent 47 silently taking out the women until one of the ‘nuns’ sees his attack and fires her gun, alerting the others he uses blinding skill to overcome these worthy opponents, with staining injuries  of his own in the process. The video had so much controversy because people thought that this was sexist. The woman in the video were clearly trained professionals who meant harm to agent 47 and he only attacked in self-defence, however the people in the video were complaining that creating female characters to dress them in provocative clothing and then kill them is wrong. On the other hand many fans of the Hitman series complained as the developers were only using the nuns to appeal to the male audience. What do you think?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQ_jhw5TuxA