Issues of the Ethical Kind

Ever since games have been developed there lied 3 lingering issues among the gaming world which was ethnics, regulatory bodies and legal. Today we shall be looking at ethnics in games. Ethnic are rules of principles and conduct of a group or society.

  

The first game to suffer a great deal of controversy was an arcade game called Death Race originally named Pedestrian (1976).  The public protest about the game because it promoted violence in which the players were encouraged to run over ‘Gremlins’.

Screen Shot of Death Race

Keeping in the theme of violence other games such as Mortal Kombat and Manhunt has been covered in controversy. Mortal Kombat is a bloodily and gory fighting game in which the main controversy was the games ‘Fatality’ finishing move, as it was a very graphical way of killing an opponent.

Sub-Zero's Fatality finisher

With the psychological horror game Manhunt the goal of the game is where the player are encouraged to kill off their opponent in the most graphical and goriest way possible. The controversy came when it was linked up to a murder case. The victim’s mother accused the killer that he was obsessed with the game and had been playing the game before the murder.

One of the gruesome ways of killing

Another game that has been taking the heat of controversy is the 3^rd person action shooter ‘Resident Evil 5’. The game was deemed as being racist as the game depicts a white protagonist going to a small African village and starts killing off infected African people.

The white Protagonist fighting off African Zombies

In the 1^st person shooter Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. In the optional level ‘No Russian’ the player plays an undercover CIA agent joining a group of Russian terrorist in where they partake in an airport massacre. The player has the option to skip the level without getting any penalties and even if the player decides to play through the game he/she will not get rewarded with any achievement or trophies. 

The Massacre of the No Russian level

In the upcoming 2013 reboot Tomb Raider game. The game shows that Lara Croft has been taken captive by scavengers on an island as they attempt to rape her. Where she has to be forced to fight for herself or die. Just the sound of ‘attempted rape’ caused an outrage of controversy throughout the public and media. 

Lara trying to get away from her captors