Ethics Within Video Games

Over time, the game industry has been evolving to meet the demands of an ever changing market.

During the beginning of the development  stages, and in many ways, the sensetive topic of Ethics should not be left ignored or untouched as it is critically important to the success of the game as if Ethics are not considered, the reputation of the company is at stake along with a loss in sales and potentially the game being banned in some countries.


Where It All Began...

                                                          By todays standards this is merely a laughing stock.
                                                          But back in the day it was a whole different story.



Ethical problems in video games date back to 1976 in the form of the game "Death Race" in which the player would run over pedestrians to score points, which got the game banned in the early 1980s for being unethical.
It was games like this in the following decade that decreased the sales of the NES meaning that nintendo had to release their "Seal Of Approval" to show the games were appropriate and Ethically correct and sales slowly regenerated.





Ethical Issues In Games Today.


Since the Late 70s. anyone would expect that by now the industry would have learned about ethical issues within the games they release and tried to avoid them...but no they haven't and its time to bring up the case of Resident Evil 5. 

Before even the release of the game, Resident Evil 5 was deemed racist as its trailer consisted of a white american protaganist slaying wave after wave of  african villagers. However, in the end, the game was deemed "not racist". The released game, appeared to be more racially diverse, but capcom deny this saying that "the game was already designed this way".