A response to: "Ethics and Bullshit Morals"

A writer going by the alias "K" has posted an article over on Angry-Gamer titled "Ethics and Bullshit Morals". The article is a profanity filled analysis of the video game industries hypocrisy. K's arguments can be broken down into a few main points:

• "Its human curiosity to find out what kinds of reaction you can get by employing force and it’s simply natural to enjoy the suffering of someone else."
• If a gamer wants to he should be allowed to kill children in Video Games because it’s not any worse than anything else he can do in the game (his example is killing the child's parents.)
• Sex should not ban while hardcore violence is encouraged.
• "Rapelay" (A Japanese rape simulator) is a great game that has been given a bad rap.

K's entire rant seems to predicate on the idea that human's enjoy the suffering of others. This statement is widely inaccurate and highly generalized. I personally find human suffering to be a horrible condition and seek to alleviate it (as I did in Fallout 3). To say that it is a fundamental human characteristic is flawed and shows K's warped view of reality which led to this article.

His second argument about the double standards of video games has more merit. He cites Fable 2 and Fallout 3 as games where you can go on a murderous rampage - slaughtering whole villages - but as soon as you attempt to hurt a child you find yourself unable to do so. Yet what K doesn't understand is that video game developers have made their in-game children invincible for a variety of reasons. Video game developers are first and foremost, businesses; they must take public outrage and ESRB ratings into account when designing a game. A "MA" or "AO" rating would put a serious dent into a games sale as younger gamers find themselves unable to purchase the game. Public outrage may have worked for Grand Theft Auto but it seems to be the exception, not the rule.

Another reason developers frown upon the killing of children is for the simple fact that it is the killing of children. Society reacts differently to the death of a child because "they were so innocent" or "they were so young", a child’s death disturbs people because as creatures whom take of their young we are conditioned to protect our offspring -- we are given the inclination to protect those that are unable to protect themselves.

Video games create outrage every time it includes sexual content or is alleged to have sexual content. K has a valid point when he asks why sexual content is taboo when murder is not. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas generated controversy when a secret mini game titled "Hot Coffee" was revealed. The mini game depicted the main character having sexual intercourse with his in game girlfriend. The scene was never intended for release, it showed no nudity, was crudely animated, and feature animation problems. In addition the programmers locked away the game so that players could not access it. The only way to play the scene was to hack into the games software and make modifications. Despite all this "Hot Coffee" sparked media frenzy, news agencies condemned it, politicians decried it, and parents were incensed.

When Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was only about running around and killing people there was no uproar, people accepted that it was a violent game but still bought it for their children. Yet as soon as something sexual was revealed (regardless of the fact that it was the gamers, who went to extraordinary means to access it,) people went ballistic. K equates this rightly as a double standard, it is indeed hypocritical to criticize one and not the other, but his argument that "more developers should have the balls to display some nudity or show a sex scene" is again erroneous for the same reason as the killing of children: Video game developers are trying to sell games, if the ESRB dislikes it or parents don’t buy it for their children then sales will drop and the company may go out of business.

The most incendiary of K's arguments is his belief that Rapelay, a Japanese rape simulator, is harmless. Rapelay is an extremely controversial game which made my skin crawl just by reading about it on Amazon (yes the internet giant briefly sold the game online.) I won't go into any detail but if you really want to learn more or just want to see something horrible you can look at its Wikipedia page. K's twisted argument is that because the developers were paid and the consumers paid for it, the game isn't hurting anyone. It goes back to the argument that video games are fiction and therefore no one is really getting hurt. His argument goes further and calls Rapelay a "well deserved piece of entertainment", but is it really? Is a game whose main objective is rape really a "well deserved piece of entertainment?"

K does make a valid claim when he asks why rape is considered worse than murder. Why do people accept games whose only goal is to assassinate people and then condemn Rapelay? To understand this you must first examine mainstream violent video games. In every case the developer has tried to put in a story explaining why the protagonist is doing the things he does. The player could be fighting Nazis, or terrorists, or a myriad of other unsavory characters, but there's always some kind of reasoning behind it. When players go out and wantonly slaughter civilians it is their choice but not the intent of the developer. Rapelay is different; the developers specifically made the objective rape and are unashamed of it. Its players are playing the game for one reason, they enjoy that sick concept. And that is why Rapelay is so disturbing to people, there is no use for the game other than to appease a sick perversion; the game adds no real value to society. Unlike contemporary games it has no well written back-story, no attempt at teaching morals and ethics, no entertainment value - it is the very definition of useless garbage.

The article is brought to a close with the following summation:

"All I wanted to say is that developers shouldn’t enforce their bullshit morals unto us and that there should be no limit to artistic expression. Good labeling to warn the buyer of the content is essential, but never should someone’s imagination and creativity be limited by someone else’s fear or displeasure."

The closing argument is well written and has valid points. Some people feel that developers are hypocritical enforcers of a double standard and as such cannot tell us the gamers what is acceptable and what isn't. He has a valid argument that imagination and creativity shouldn't be stifled by one person’s personal objection (an argument that has been debated inconclusively in forums much greater than the blogosphere.)

Then he ruins his arguments by jokingly suggesting that the Pussycat Dolls should be "gagged, raped, sliced up and fed to wild orcas". Seriously? Not cool.