Is Anyone Regulating the Gaming Companies?
Whether you follow Oscar Wilde who asserted that “life imitates art…or the great Mark Twain who was quoted as saying truth is stranger than fiction. 2020 has so far been rather more George Orwell.
What is really going on behind the console? The point is that life is often more oblique, absurd and unfeasible to a greater extent than we think likely. You could make it up, but only if your imagination was seriously deranged — expect the unexpected.
Are games an artificial construct completely or do they in fact imitate real life, just more…graphically?
If lazy social shorthand wants to typecast all gamers as geeks, does that make geeks bullies? After all, ‘one in two’ young players are bullied according to some estimates at least.
If games are social platforms to what extent do they have a responsibility to safeguard the players from abusive behaviours and taunts? Given the possibility for games to worm their way into gamers psyches and become compulsions….How many players are putting up with abusive behaviours to carry on their love of gaming?
Brand statements abound. Without the external scrutiny to hold corporations accountable for their past, current and future conduct and systemic organisation, argue some.
In a quote from that article, we come full circle to the art and life …. who is imitating who:
“In big-budget video games, the real world is merely source material, a dry list of things that happened somewhere else, some time ago, to somebody else.”
Taking a knee is borderline mainstream as the world reframes through BLM lenses. How long before the new normal is reflected in video games and the art catches up with real life?
The same article states that COD (Call of Duty) has for some time had a significant minority of racist players.
And if life imitates art, are we turning out bullies by encouraging certain types of gaming — which in turn make gamers into a certain type of person?
All the time, the games creators and gaming studio companies’ shareholders might consider whether theirs is an ethical share portfolio.
Life and art, art and life, chicken and egg.
