Should Video Game Creators be Held Accountable for Adult Themed Mods?

[Beanieboy]

The Dark Knight was a pretty amazing movie, but had some very graphic violence. Should I blame the creators of the movie, if an 8 year old downloads it illegally, or if he watches his parents copy that they bought? Should the parents blame the creators when their child watches it at home, rather than taking responsibility for their own neglect?

I think the hackers are responsible.

I also believe, however, that video games where one becomes a vigilante, killing people, or a thug that steals cars, robs, and murders for money, has an effect on the player. It becomes equal responsiblity of those who demand the creation of such things, and in a sense, meditate on violence, and even being a violent person, as well as putting such a thing on the market.

I read a study about subjects who watched violent movies, and who also had to voice their opinions about real crime, and their opinions. They found that the more that they watched violent movies, the less compassionate they were to the victims of the stories. Imagine if what you are doing is making yourself the criminal, and the possible implications that may have on you, and society.

 

[pgp_protector]

The Dark Knight was a pretty amazing movie, but had some very graphic violence. Should I blame the creators of the movie, if an 8 year old downloads it illegally, or if he watches his parents copy that they bought? Should the parents blame the creators when their child watches it at home, rather than taking responsibility for their own neglect?

I think the hackers are responsible.

I also believe, however, that video games where one becomes a vigilante, killing people, or a thug that steals cars, robs, and murders for money, has an effect on the player. It becomes equal responsiblity of those who demand the creation of such things, and in a sense, meditate on violence, and even being a violent person, as well as putting such a thing on the market.

I read a study about subjects who watched violent movies, and who also had to voice their opinions about real crime, and their opinions. They found that the more that they watched violent movies, the less compassionate they were to the victims of the stories. Imagine if what you are doing is making yourself the criminal, and the possible implications that may have on you, and society.

I wonder how well that would hold up if we made a fully accurate movie of the Old Testaments.
Including the drownings of children during the flood, the execution (We'll let Mel Brooks handle it, he's good a gory stuff) of infants & children & mothers during the Wars, ect...

 

[Beanieboy]

From posts that I have seen from the harsher Christians, they love the God of the OT. He burns S&G into the ground. BOOYEAH! He turns Lot's wife into a pillar of salt for simply looking back, disobeying. TAKE THAT! And their God is ready to dish it out to anyone else that dare disobey.

The God of the NT, however, is more of hippy. He tells people to turn the other cheek, to love your enemies, and so that goes ignored.

To them, the people of the OT had it coming. When Elijah asks some children where their leader is, they tell him, and say, "Go up, baldy!" Elijah, angered, calls out to God, who sends 2 she-bears and mauls about 40 children. They see no problem with this. The children insult an elder, they deserve to be mauled to death.

And I can only hope that there are no children in their neighborhood.

 

[cantata]

I'm very suspicious about the obsession with panicking about "media effects", to be honest. It's passed into what's taken for common sense that violent media makes people violent, but it's mostly class-based snobbery at work. (Educated, middle-class people are of course wise and well-informed enough not to be affected, but the plebs might get a bit over-excited.) What nonsense. Sure, in a lab experiment, you might discover people are more relaxed about violence after seeing violent films, but there are frequently a lot of assumptions made about people's interpretation, and what they haven't shown is that people are then more likely to actually commit violent crime, despite the Daily Mail's claims to the contrary.

/rant

 

[Maren]

As an avid player of the Sims 2, I have recently found some (rather old) news articles about a "scandal" having to do with the "nude mods" easily available for the game: article from GameSpot, article from About.com, article from GamingIndustry.biz

While this was apparently right after the little circus that happened with GTA San Andreas' mini-game found through hex-editing the code, I think the issue still has some ethical implications. Do the creators of a game hold responsibility when game users hack the code to include adult situations? Should they be required to better secure their code, so that no hacking is possible? Or are the users responsible if they hack a game to have adult content?

Personally, I think that it is up to individual game owners to make sure their games don't include content they don't want in them. However, I can see some of the view point, that some games are made easy to change, and many people don't want games with lots of sex or violence in them available to their children. While GTA might be sold as "M for Mature" and (store) require that the buyer be 18, The Sims 2 is sold as "T for Teen", but savvy teens can easily make it into a game that would be rated "AO for Adults Only"...

I have a question that is a spin off of the OP. Should we blame God for his creation of the world because people have found it so easy to create "adult themed mods" in reality?

 

[WatersMoon110]

I have a question that is a spin off of the OP. Should we blame God for his creation of the world because people have found it so easy to create "adult themed mods" in reality?

Yes. *wink*

 

[pgp_protector]

I have a question that is a spin off of the OP. Should we blame God for his creation of the world because people have found it so easy to create "adult themed mods" in reality?

Thread Winner, case closed, game over.

 

[.Sabre.]

I don't think game companies are accountable for the actions of modders.


I play TESIV:Oblivion. It is rated "15" in the UK, but there are a lot of mods that make it adults only when used. It's not the fault of Bethesda for it being possible for people to make nude or sex mods. Modders and downloaders are responsible for themselves.

Even then, the users should be responsible enough to keep it away from minors, or if they are minors, they should be honest about their age and not download things that are clearly marked adult content.

 

[lawtonfogle]

Thread Winner, case closed, game over.

 

[morningstar2651]

In the case of hot coffee, it wasn't just a mod. The game contained the content, it was just made inaccessible. I blame publishers for giving developers overly tight deadlines. If the team had more time, they likely would have removed the content rather than taking the much faster route of making the content inaccessible.

Still, it's neither the developer's or the publisher's fault that the content was made accessible. Though, honestly, the content should've been axed from the design in preproduction, rather than after the production was finished. There's a lot of pressure to ship the game ASAP, and this wouldn't have been caught in QA because it was made inaccessible.