Ethical and Legal Constraints in the Games Industry

Ethical
In the games industry, when you are making a game you have to make sure that everything is legal and that it is possible to do. Recently, the question has come up about having a 'gay protagonist' in a top AAA game.

In my opinion, having a gay protagonist in a game will not change the way the game is played. As long as the gay protagonist is done seriously and not done in a silly way with all the stereotypes there are about gay people then there should be no problem with it as its still the same game play as you would expect in a AAA game. A potential problem could be if the stereotypes are used in a game because in real life, not all gay people are the same. They like different things and they do different things, meaning that they will not want a bad image being represented about them on a game because of stereotypes. You could have 5 friends who are homosexuals, but you may not know because they behave and do the same things as you do, as they are just as human as you are. If there is going to be a gay protagonist, then it should still be made as you would make any character.

Ellie and Riley kiss

In games there are often gay or lesbian characters, but these characters are not normally main characters, but side characters with little to no importance within the game itself. (Bill in 'The Last of Us', it is heavily implied he had a partner named Frank. Ellie in the expansion pack 'The Last of Us Left Behind' has feeling for Riley, 'Naughty Dog' confirms that they have feeling for each other and the writer for the character Ellie said that he wrote her to be gay.) Some AAA companies are beginning to open up the idea on using gay protagonist characters in games. Even if they don't have much dialogue in, they are still gay characters within the game.

Gay marriage in Fable

In Fable, Fable 2 and Fable 3, the player technically has a choice whether they want their character to be straight, lesbian or gay (straight or gay in Fable 1 as you can only play a boy). This, to me, is a way they can have gay protagonists in games, but they can also do it where the protagonist is gay and it cannot be changed by anything that happens in the game.

I do not see the issue in using gay protagonists in games. There doesn't have to be any gay protagonists in the game because it would be the same as having a straight protagonist in a game as they act the same as everyone else. The people that does not want to play as a gay character are not being forced to play, or even buy the game in the first place, so i do not see any problem with them putting in gay protagonists in games as long as they are smart about how they make the character in the game.

Legal
Video Recording Act 1984
The video recording act was passed by parliament in 1984. This act was passed to prevent gory and explicit videos being shown to viewers who are under aged and/or disabled viewers. By September 1st  1984 all video recording had to be rated to be able to be sold in shops according to the age rating on them. The VRA allows people to buy games according to their ages and prevents underage people buying horror games or games that has sexual scenes in the game.

End-User License Agreement
The EULA is an agreement between the user and the publisher/distributor of the game. The EULA contains the licensing that gives the user permission to use the game but makes it so that you do not have the permission to anything other than the intended purpose.

The EULA also contains terms and conditions such as 'any damage caused will not affect the company, the company is protected from all damage caused and prevents them from being sued for any damage the game may have made to a console or a PC.

The EULA also lists terms on which you are not aloud to do to the game/disc.

World of Warcraft EULA

• Make copies of the game
• Lend the game to other people
• Re-sell the game
• De-compile the game or Derive source code (you cant take the game apart or change the coding in it to suit the players needs)
• Transfer the license in any way

EULA's are important because they protect the distributors/publishers product and protects them from most legal issues between the end user and themselves. It also tells the user what they are aloud to do with the game and what they can't do with the game.

Human Rights Act 1998
Every human is different, they do different things and they act differently to one another. You should always respect everyone as much as you want to be respected. Everyone is entitled to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. Everyone is entitled to believe and think as they wish. In the games industry, one person may think that it is a good idea to have aliens as the bad guys in a game, whereas another person on the same project may think that normal humans would be a better idea. Everyone is allowed to put their point in to share their ideas even though not everyone will agree with the same idea.

The prohibition of discrimination protects you from being treated differently because of your race, sex, religion and/or disabilities. In the games industry, when making games you have to think about all of these, (like the gay protagonist mentioned earlier). If work colleagues was to do this in the industry, this is a form of bullying and you would probably lose your job for it.