Censorship, Violations of Fair Use, Media Lies. Thoughts and Discussion.

[marvelvscapcom2]

 I have seen a few users recently talking about censorship and many other major flaws with gaming as a whole and how often gaming is unfairly targeting by censorship laws when often times Movies and TV aren't held to the same standards and I just wanted to get everyones thoughts on certain intangibles with unfair laws and censorship practices.

Censorship- More and more the SJWs desperately try to censor or alter video games replacing historical accuracy and artistic freedom with "political correctness" and lies.  So many restrictions already hinder developers artistic freedom when making a game to begin with but more and more things have been getting deemed politically incorrect and games are so cliche and developers butt kiss to avoid scrutiny.   COD WW2 for example has censored the Nazi flag from their multiplayer mode and also limited it's usage in campagin in a WORLD WAR 2 game!  Because of backlash from Germany and other primarily European countries who deem the Swastika as too offensive to be in the game.  In which point COD should have said "Bye than"  At what point does being politically correct outweigh historical accuracy?   Than their was another COD mission where you shoot civilians that got banned and scrutinzed on a mass level.  GTA not having children in it's game is because it's illegal to do so based on the standards they have in palce.   Countless examples and I'm sure everyone has more too.  I know what you are thinking "But those are horrible and shouldn't be in video games anyway"  And I agree too. But they are also horrible when they are depicted on TV and In movies but nobody backlashes against those multi billion dollar platforms.  It's like whenever the liberal wind blows the wrong way they change the entire perception of a game and get moms riled up over games they don't even play.  But they watch tons of TV and Movies while stuffing their face with nachoes so they never stand against what they like.  Hypocrites!  Murdering kids, the nazi flag, shootings and violence can exist with almost no filteration in both TV and Movie platforms but Video games always get this shadow of public scrutiany since the whole "moms agaisnt video games" movement of the mid 2000s.   It's truly ridiculous.  Even weak games like Rule of Rose or Mortal Kombat that weren't even that bad were targeted or banned and misrepresented by the media as some sort of vile game when it's truly not any different than the other forms of media they cater to.  This has been happening for decades.   It's almost like movie directors, tv show directors have so much more artistic freedom than video game developers do which might play into why video games are getting repetitive and it's harder to think outside of the box.     What are your thoughts on this very large and divisive topic?

Violations of Fair Use -  This is mostly about streamers and YouTubers who have been getting videos copy right striked for streaming themselves playing a game.  This is a very touchy subject and most companies typically do not strike these videos but Nintendo seems to deem the gameplays which is often a critical or transformative use of the game as a infringement on their copyright instead of accepting it as blatant unpaid advertisement of their game which I find crazy.   But any time billion dollar congolmerates and fortune 500 businesses strike down people trying to feed their kids with twitch it leaves a sour taste.  What are your thoughts on streaming.  Should it be strikable or should it fall under fair use as a transformative or critical piece of the work.

Media Lies-  The media is literally ebola. It manipulates people to hate entire groups, single people, it can alter facts effortlessly and exaggerate the truth. From game reviews being paid off from the likes of IGN and Gameinformer to make it so good games get overpowered by the better marketed ones and just out right overblowing bad games (Mass effect andromeda, no mans sky) because they were money pits or not giving enough attention to indie titles thus saturating the market with repetitive trash. They share negatives for ratings and hide the positives of anything they don't support and as a whole media has targeted gaming since the 80s.  First it was "Gaming is bad for the youth because they don't go outside and play and get excersise"  than it was moms against gaming in the 90s - 2000s.   "These games are violent and making children violent and cause shootings and columbine"   The idiocy then went to the supreme where it was laughed at by luckily a judge with common sense and the ruling was that video games were held to the same sale criteria as movies with ratings and age restrictions.   And all around media paints gamers as a jobless, violent virgin that swears at his mother which is evident in countless Dr. Phil episodes (paid actors)  and news clips for whatever unwatchable junk show.  It's gotten old and eventually we will have to stand for democracy and fairness with our hobby. 

What are your thoughts on the political aspect of gaming and these 3 topics?

[maximo310]

Oh boy, this is gonna be a big one to break down.

Censorship- You are quite incorrect on the whole " tv/movies/media never get scrutinized to the same degree of games".  A number of shows, most notably Game of Thrones, have constantly been criticized by people for showing too much violence, gore, and sexuality. While I do agree that a number of censorship is unnecessary and is only there to help make it marketable, a game dev should always consider what the point is of adding stuff in a game like " you can kill children". In addition, lots of movies and tv shows have been criticized recently for being repetitive ( superhero movies, certain tv shows for unfunny comedy), so it more of a case of the business side of marketability dominating the creative aspect, as money talks in these large industries.

 Some games, like Hatred do this for either shock value which may seem liberating at first, but if it doesn't have an impact on the game or it overshadows numerous other problems that the games exhibits, then it won't be a meaningful experience worth playing again. After all, the goal of a game should be to not only fulfill a developer's vision, but to provide an gameplay experience that is engaging and worth replaying numerous times.

Violations of Fair Use- This is more of a problem of IP laws being different by each country ( Japan's is very strict) and having to be enforce worldwide, and that IP law as a whole is not adapted for the modern age. Most of IP Fair Use issues are with automated systems that also manage challenges to those claims, which is pretty unfortunate. This would need to be addresed with another congressional act to fix defencies with current IP law, but as it stands, it'd only become worse due to the way our country is now.

Media Lies- The toughest aspect. Just look around the net, find sites that have decent reviews and commentary, and find good people.

[shadowzero]

Take all the blood out...unless you press A, B, A, C, A, B, B. If this was done correctly, the text will turn yellow and you will hear Scorpion say "Get over here!"  There all our problems are solved. 

[torchickens]

Censorship:

Yeah. I feel the issue of censorship is tricky. Developers may remove controversial themes out of respect and to avoid potential conflict. It not only can be seen from a social justice perspective but also from a business perspective because if a company include something controversial in the game it could hurt their business' image.

But yes, I remember a discussion with a friend about this subject. I can't remember what he said but he argued against it and there is an idea that by introducing censorship it reinforces the idea that the subject is bad and could enforce a covert form of control/action against freedom of expression not only in the legal world but also in recreation like video games.

I personally support censorship in games targeted towards younger audiences but feel if a developer wants to include more mature themes (which would end up being rated for older people) so be it. This said what is taboo varies from culture to culture with I think more tolerance towards themes like nudity in Japan.

Fair use:

On the subject of fair use I think it ought to be implemented in more countries/states. Here in the UK we don't actually have fair use but rather fair dealing, where it is only permitted to use copyrighted media for purposes like teaching (in official schools) and there is a legal issue which is like this:

What if you were to edit for an American-based wiki but you lived in the UK, would you still be allowed to post artwork and screenshots if it was for fair use? This could also apply to YouTube.

Though we have fair use and I agree with being able to share official artwork/screenshots for illustration I personally don't endorse those who upload high resolutions artwork, public ROMs, public text dumps online. I don't discourage people using ROMs but only if they have the original game (but on the other hand there is a theory those who pirate music are more likely to buy an original officially licensed copy).

Media lies:

When it comes to media lies I often don't get sensitive to it unless people come across insisting in an unsocial way about it.

This said they seem more common than we think and there are rumours like "MissingNo. will break your game. Don't use it!" when in actuality English MissingNo. is only capable of Hall of Fame corruption at worst (although a Level 0 'M (00) can freeze the game when withdrawn from a PC due to its experience group. This can be avoided by releasing it). However the process of getting the 8F and ws m glitch items can erase your save file if you accidentally press A on an unterminated name glitch item while scrolling the inventory to look for 8F or ws m).