When Real Life Meets Online Games
GTA 5 considered one of the most realistic virtual game has been taking over the gaming industry for years as its players are from all ages, whether kids or adults. This violent/action game is mainly about shooting, stealing cars and money in order to achieve certain tasks in each level and to reach higher ones. Guns, prostitutes, and strippers are the most showcased elements in the game. Which makes sexism and violence combined into one game. Although this game was designed in a way that gives the player the capability to have access to everything as it’s a ‘free world’ without any boundaries, gets us back to the concept of shooting, stealing, having sex with prostitutes and even killing in order to get whatever the player wants. However, the presence of such realistic graphics makes GTA 5 a sexually violent game where women are getting objectified and makes her equal to a gun (an object). Therefore, as the game was criticized for its bad portrayal of women, it has been banned from several countries such as Australia. As GTA 5 encourages the players in order to make them feel power, taking control over everything, and some claim that it gives them satisfaction and higher thinking motion. It causes social harm as it highlights women objectification and violence. That’s why we should raise ethical challenges to such video games.
Video game manufacturers have ethical responsibilities and restrictions to take into consideration while launching games like GTA 5 that mainly are composed of violence and portraying female. They should mostly think about their players when it comes to their age and gender. For example, according to Matthews, parental involvement should take place (in the case of GTA 5) where parents get to choose whether their child can tolerate such amount of violence. Also, manufacturers should use ratings system in order to leave it to the consumer’s decision whether to play the game or not to. But what is mostly important is to take into consideration the gender of the player, and to think that female players are also involved in such violent games.
Moreover, not only it is a bad portrayal for women, but also it portrays the most violent ways of torture while killing/shooting a character. Other than that, it contains uncensored audio which makes the rape scenario even worse while listening to all the noises occurring at the same time. This adds up the fact that GTA 5 also contains racism as the black guy is always portrayed to be the bad guy (its main character) as he is the one doing all this harm in order to get whatever he wants. However, the impact of violent games on their users is on the rise as every now and then new video games are coming up such as CSgo, Fortnite, and PUBG. According to the international game develops association such games have many harmful consequences such as increasing violence, increasing the feeling to participate in real-life crimes in general, increasing the probability of wanting the have an affair with prostitutes, and reducing respect to women in general. Which combines into one and makes the player even more aggressive and wanting to apply everything that he can see in the game to his real life such as killing, shooting, and steal.
To conclude, censorship in a game is a must in order to reduce any potential harms. As an alternative to banning a game, game designers must reconsider the rewarding schemes in such games as they should set boundaries and limits to what a player can do in order to make it more realistic and logical. Also, they should reconsider the ratings system as age counts when it comes to violent/action games.
References:
(2014, December 4). Retrieved from BBC: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-30328314
Mathews, R. (2015). Ethical Responsibility of Video Game Manufacturers. Hearst Newspaper.
Reynolds, R. (2002). Playing a “Good” Game: A Philosophical Approach to Understanding the Morality of Games. International Game Developers Association, 4.
