essay on ethics in games

Opening

The games industry has been one of the best ways to tell stories for the last 5 decades. over the last 50 years thousands of games have been made each telling their own story. Games have been used as a great media form to represent ideas and issues. Throughout the last few decades of the industry there has always been a question on ethics of them whether its violence in games and how it affects our behaviour in the world, or the mental effects games can have on our health. So let’s look at some of these issues and see how much they affect our lives today. In this essay I will talk about the portrayal of games in the media e.g. the news, the effect of monetisation in the games industry and how it affects the players of the games, mental health issues there representation in games and how games can affect our mental wellbeing. For some of these points I will site case studies from the past news articles All of this to answer the question are video games ethical

 How games are represented in the media

Since video games were first commercialised in the early 1970s there have been many news articles that talk about games and the effects, they can have on young children playing those games many news articles show that video games can cause violence oin young children but also there are just as many articles talking about how they can be good for mental health support and how they are useful means to tell stories

Mental health and video games

Mental health is an incredible part of our day to day lives and it can have a incredibly large affect on the way we view life and the things we do in it but the question is what affects do video games have on our mental health? To answer this we will have tpo look at numerus aspects of mental health in video games.

During in early march of 2020 the whole world went in to a small thing called lockdown and the whole world shut down during this period of time the rate of depression doubled according to the office for national statistics it is reported that around 1 in 5 adults twenty one percent experienced some form of depression between January and march of 2021 an increase since the year prior where it was nineteen percent and double before covid 19 the year before that bare in mind this is an estimate based on confirmed cases so many more may have been suffering in silence during this time. If we look at young adults according to the office of national statistics younger adults and women were more likely to feel depressed during the same period of time with over 4 in 10 women forty three percent between the ages of 16 and 29 experienced depressive symptoms compared to twenty six percent of men so during this time mental health was one of the biggest issues during this time and has been one of the United Kingdom’s biggest concerns since during that time there has been numerous findings on mental health and how playing games can affect it  the British broadcasting service released their findings on an article on BBC bitesize titled “Why gaming can be good for your mental health” in this article they talk about how video games can help with mental health while studying according to their research they have found that “ games can be effective for rebalancing your mood – often boosting it more than other activities such as reading, cooking, or listening to music.” They believe that this is due to the immersive nature of games. This correlates to the theory of escapism.

 Escapism in psychology is about the intricate ways we seek to detach ourselves from reality and is incredibly useful when dealing with trauma and stress so it makes sense that this can help with managing mood 

However, things that are dangerous is playing games becomes the only way you can feel better this is indicative of some serious mental health issues it is best to have many ways of relieving stress

Overall playing games can be incredibly good for helping with mental health issues and processing emotions which makes them quite ethical if you ask me

Monetization in games

Video games are made buy some incredibly creative people and those people obviously need to get paid for there work and to make that money we as consumers have to spend money on games like any other good so the producer can sustain themselves the consumer pays a little bit of money for that good or product. What I just described is basic economics there are some me complex fact6ors in it like supply and demand but that is the basics of it  however how much we pay for things like games is less simple obviously we need to price our games fairly so if we have a studio of 50 coders and each person is paid around £2500 a month which is around the industry standard for computer coders how do you price that game you could do 50 then to pay all the coders you would need to sell 2500 copies which is doable but you also want to make money as a company for future projects and if it took 2 months then you would need to sell 5000 copies and that’s just the coders so it is difficult to price the games so that everyone is paid fairly for their work some companies to choose to solve this through micro transactions like loot boxes and skins the problem is a lot of the time plyers feel pressured into buying these items when they don’t have the money for them and this isn’t verry ethical and a lot of companies use loot boxes which give a chance to win something good  usually a verry small chance this leads to players developing gambling addictions and a lot of people don’t see them as gambling because its hidden under the disguise of a video game this is also unethical thankfully in the European union these became banned in games due to the Europeans parliament report on consumer protection in online games enacted on the 18thy of January 2023

Summary

Throughout this essay I’ve spoken about mental health in games and the monetisation of video games while the mental health side of things is incredibly good for mental health used with other things and monetisation is good in games but it is difficult to get right especially with large studios that design and make the games itr can be done well through DLC and special editions but also badly through loot boxes and skins

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