Gaming Censorship: Moral Choices
The real battle in games censorship won’t be fought over sexual content and violence but over the ability to make moral choices, according to Sony Europe. AustralianIT has an article quoting SCE (Europe) senior vice-president Phil Harrison saying the main difference between films and games is that films carry the audience as passengers along the director’s view of the world, while games allow players to chose moral actions. As a result games are censored much more harshly than films. He goes on to say that allowing governments to tell people how to make moral choices in their entertainment is “a very dangerous route to go down”, and points out there has never been a scientifically proven psychological link between violence in a video games and violence in people.
Many people and most gamers have strong opinions on this issue. While I’m not totally against some form of censorship (there’s no way a six year old should be playing Soldier of Fortune for instance), I’m a bit on the fence about where to draw the line. The oft-repeated media myth that video games directly cause violence in players has been studied and refuted pretty soundly (despite the deaf ears of the Righteous Right - just because a violent person played Quake does not make Quake a causal influence, else you may as well incarcerate Hanna-Barbara), the trend toward the explicit and the morally ambiguous is still worrying - to me at least. What worries me more is why noone seems to have bothered to consult gamers.
I snaggled one back from QGL
AustralianIT
posted by monty · at 11:01 pm · filed under News
My take…
RATING a game more harshly due to its interactive nature presents no problem to me. CENSORING a game does (just as CENSORING TV and CENSORING movies does).
Adequate RATING systems (read: one that contains an R rating) ensures that a child of 6 can’t buy Soldier of Fortune II, just as they can’t go and see The Debie Does Dallas marathon or Natural Born Killers. However, If the kid’s parents bye it for her, well that’s none of the governments business.
CENSORSHIP removes something from our range of choice. It should NOT be the role of government to decide what WE can and can’t, as adults, see or do (within the bounds of law). When a governement has that power our society places itself at the top of a very slippery slope.
RATING on the other hand, allows control of the images and realities a non adult can unwittingly be exposed to without removing the choice from the hands of the adult. A six year should (in the opinions of this adult) be racing monkeys not shooting prostitutes and cab drivers. But that isn’t up to the government other than removing that choice from the six year old and giving it to the adult. It’s then up to the parents of said six year old to decide what their cild can play. I of course hope if the parent purchases a morally ambiguous and R RATED movie or game etc for their child, that the moral dilemas of the title are accompanied by parenting by the parent.
Cheers,
Ryan