Brookstar

Part 3 of 3 Darien Schmitz

Introduction

Video games are most often used as a form of recreation and relaxation, but can video games and their accessories be used to tackle sexism and racism? These two issues have been major problems for centuries, but no clear solution has ever been formed that could completely eliminate both of these problems. However, researchers have begun to test the idea of using virtual reality as a tool to help eliminate the racism and sexism that exists in the world. Throughout this paper I will discuss the potential effects, both positive and negative, that virtual reality can have on these two problems and in what way I believe this software should be implemented.

The first key idea I would like to talk about is the profound impact that virtual reality can have on the user's senses and also how that user perceives their surroundings. By its very design, virtual reality is intended to take the user and place them in a virtual environment without making them physically move anywhere. Often times this virtual reality is hard to differentiate from reality and the movements that are taken in the virtual world will have real and lasting effects, “ I found myself by turns atop a rocky peak, in a barn next to a snorting horse, and on a gondola making my way up a mountain. The gondola ride gave me vertigo” (Konnikova).

Virtual Reality isn’t just used to give people a sense of being in a different place but it also helps people to feel like they are somebody completely different from themselves. Aaron Souppouris, a journalist for the Verge, was at first skeptical of the idea but upon actually testing the idea began to realize how real this technology felt, “ ...but with the constant sensory bombardment, I had no time to think through which body was precisely doing what. Her voice, which was recounting her thoughts on feminism and self-image, became my stream of consciousness” (Souppouris). This technology is as real as it can be at the moment, but sometimes the experience isn’t real enough for certain people, “ I went in with a higher expectation than could possibly be achieved; I expected to somehow transport myself into Norma’s mind” (Souppouris). Technology is not advanced enough to achieve the results that are desired by some people, but researchers work with what they have to produce a realistic experience.

This equipment is also not available to the public, so many lack the required software in order to experience this potentially life changing event. The main reason for this is because of the enormous price tag that this equipment possesses. An oculus Rift just by itself costs six hundred dollars, but in order to run it effectively someone would also need at least a nine hundred dollar computer. An average person is not normally willing to spend fifteen hundred dollars on a toy that they may only use occasionally. In turn not many people get to experience what it truly means to step inside another person’s shoes and cannot gain the many benefits that virtual reality possesses.

The second key idea that I would like to talk about is the prevalence of racist and sexist images within video games. Without a strong female voice within the video game design community sexism is a very prevalent issue. Male designers have no idea what it is that women want within their games so they tend to cater games more toward male audiences. This includes hypersexualizing females, and making lead characters predominantly male (Burrows). Women feel out of place when working in the game design industry and because of this sexism is growing more and more prominent within the video game world.

Sexism is prominent not only in small independent companies, but also in major game companies. This is most prominent in such game series as Bayonetta, Dead or Alive, and Mass Effect. The female characters in each of these games have oversexualized and exxagerated body features such as oversized breasts and impossibly skinny wastes (Burrows). These characters are also often depicted in skin tight uniforms or little to no clothing at all. Their roles in these games are often very minor and only serve as “eye candy” for the player.

Racism is just as prevalent in video games as sexism. A study to determine the level of racism induced from playing video games was conducted where 126 students were asked to play Saints Row 2 with randomly assigned avatar races. The white avatar was displayed with well kempt hair while the black avatar was given a inner city dialect and cornrows. They were then told to either break out of prison killing every guard in the way, or find a chapel and try not to hurt anyone. After the study the participants were asked questions to measure their attitude toward each race. When answering these questions participants were more likely to agree with statements like, “It’s really a matter of some people not trying hard enough; if Blacks would only try harder they could be just as well off as whites” (Zadrozny). Games also have a way with reinforcing already pre existing stereotypes about the black community. Many games reinforce the idea that black people are “hoodlums” and that they are all part of gangs. Games such as Grand Theft Auto really drive this idea into the player. Black people are all represented as gangsters, thieves, and murderers in that series which fuels the idea that they are nothing more than that in real life.

The final point that I would like to talk about are the rules and regulations already set in place for this problem, and other similar problems. The main form of regulation that lies within the game design community is the ESRB, which can be seen as the formal rating system for video games. This system is put in place to properly label video games according to what age groups can purchase and participate in the content that lies within. The ratings range from E, which is available to everyone, to M, which is only suitable for a mature audience (Enforcement). An M rating on a game also puts limitations on its sale and distribution. If a game has this rating it can only be sold or distributed to someone who is at least seventeen years of age. In many situations this rating has an impact on the sales of games, either in a positive or negative manner. For many young adults playing games with M ratings is seen as the “cool” or “hip” thing to do which can have a positive effect on the video games sales. However, parents who pay attention to the rating system may not want their child to play any game with this kind of rating so they may choose not purchase these kinds of games, thus lowering the potential revenue of the game (Enforcement).

The impact that this system has on different problems is minimal at best. One major flaw that this system has is that it does not need to, by law, be used to label digitally produced and purchased video games (Enforcement). Digitally obtained video games can choose to contain whatever content they want without having to provide any label of what is contained within. Anyone can download these games which includes people who may not have been able to play them if they were physical copies. Even if the ESRB was implemented on these games a good portion of parents don’t regulate what games they purchase for their children. Only sixty nine percent say that they regularly check ratings on games before they purchase them (Essential Facts). On top of this, even if they check the rating system it does not include anything pertaining to racist or sexist imagery within. Overall, the current system that is put into place regarding the regulation and rating of video games is lackluster and needs to be improved in order to better define different rating levels.

Top 10 Factors

#1: There are no real laws and regulations in place regarding racism in video games.

Game developers, much like everyone else, have a right to free speech. This means that they have a right to individual expression, and the right to make any kind of game that they choose. These games can be designed to be racist against a people and that falls under their rights. It is up to game publishers and game distributions sights to filter out these games if they so choose, otherwise they are free to distributed as the designers please. The ADL is trying to combat the racism that appears in games but most places that offer open software can’t do anything about it because they need to remain , “consistent with constitutional protections and respecting the individual business practices” (Racist Groups).

#2: Racism is already deeply embedded into people’s mindsets.

In this article participants were given implicit racism tests to see if they had an ingrained sense of racial bias.They tested each participant by showing them pictures of people who were white and also pictures of people of color. The participants were then given a descriptor, either positive or negative, to use to describe the individuals. They then had to pick which picture best described that word as quickly as they could. People, without even realizing it, were quicker when they paired positive words with white and faces and when pairing negative words with black faces. (Hogenboom)

#3: Virtual reality can give a total sense of immersion, good or bad.

An experiment at BeAnotherLab, which involved the use of two oculus rift headsets, helped people to see what it was like to be in another person’s shoes. The technology allowed users to see the world through someone else’s eyes as well as hear what they were thinking at the time. This illusion fooled most people into believing that they had actually become the person that was being shown through the Oculus and it changed their mind set of that person. This technology can also be taken in a negative direction by placing the user in an environment that teaches them that people of different gender or race can be burdens or harmful to the world (Souppouris).

#4: The content of video games is protected under the First Amendment.

Video games, much like any other form of digital media, has it’s First Amendment right to free speech. This fact was reinstated by a supreme Court case in California in regards to violence in video games. In this case California put a law in place that prohibited the sale and rental of violent video games to minors, and required all violent video games to have packages labeled 18. The Supreme Court stepped into this case and decided, after applying the strict scrutiny test, that, “disgust is not a valid basis for restricting expression,” and that videogames are “entitled to the protection of free speech as the best of literature” (Arias).

#5: Women currently only make up 11 percent of all game designers, and only 3 percent of the programmers.

The video game design industry is infamous for its frat boy culture and oversexualization of women. Due to this women in the field tend to feel alienated and unequal to their colleagues. Many women have come forward in the past about this issue but nothing has actually been done about it. Women also tend to earn $10,000 less than their male counterparts even though there opinion is needed now more than ever. Male designers have no idea what female consumers are interested in so many games cater toward men, and the games that cater to women tend to only have a base understanding of what women are interested in (Burrows).

#6: 83% of the game design field consists of white individuals, while black people only make up 2%.

The vast majority of game designers in the field are caucasian males, which leaves much to be desired for diversity. They are the only strong voice in the field and the lack of different ethnic points of view is clear throughout many games that are released today. Many games portray harmful stereotypes of certain ethnicities and show a lack of consideration of how they could accurately portray these people within their games (Gourdin).

#7: Women are the target of many threats and abusive actions from the game design community as a whole.

In 2014 a woman by the name of Zoe Quinn became the target of a scandal in which she was accused of sleeping with a game critic in order to get a better rating for a game that she published. This was followed up with a series of threats against Zoe and other women who took firm stances against portrayals of women in video games. This group of people that decided to take it upon themselves to force, and continue to force, their opinions on others became known as Gamergate. Law enforcement and the game design community are not doing a whole lot to stop this movement, or the actions that this group is taking. They continue to harass female game designers and they remain unchanged in their ideals (Todd).

#8: Sexist character design is already a prominent feature in video games.

Video game design as a whole is lacking in female voices. The ratio of men to women in the industry is almost laughable, and the impact this has on games is fairly noticeable. Male protagonists are much more common than their female counterparts, and even when the main character is a female they tend to be hypersexualized and hard to relate to. A wonderful example of this is in the game Bayonetta where the main protagonist accesses her powers by becoming fully nude. This hypersexualization drives away female gamers and the females who do choose to play games are given the wrong ideals of how they should act (Einhorn).

#9: Players bring their own personal senses of racism, sexism, and homophobia into the multiplayer video game atmosphere.

Players are less threatened to verbally abuse other people as long as those people are not physically present. They believe that because these people are not present then there will not be an physical repercussions for anything that they might say online. Other players have little power when it comes to regulating what other people maybe saying in a lobby and can’t really force anyone to withhold their opinions. Companies try their hardest to stop these kinds of actions but racist, and misogynistic messages are still a common occurrence in the online community (Siegel).

#10: Some evidence points to the idea that video games build off of people’s stereotypes and make them more racist.

A study was done in which participants were asked to play sections of Saints Row 2 with either a black or a white avatar, and then as a follow up they were asked to respond to certain statements. The people who played black avatars were more likely to agree with statements like, “‘ It’s really a matter of some people not trying hard enough; if Blacks would only try harder they could be just as well off as Whites’”. These people were also asked to pair different faces with various different items, in which the people who were paired with black avatars paired black faces with weapons and other possibly dangerous objects. These specific cases imply that video games can have a direct impact on racism for at least a short period of time after exposure. If the gear of the video game is to imbed racism then it would be easy for a developer to put in very subtle ideas that help to establish racism (Zadrozny).

Data and Information

Fact#1: Currently the Oculus Rift is only available for developers and not for the general public.

Discussion of fact #1: This statistic shows that not a lot of people can get there hands on the technology in order to experience virtual reality. Currently only people who are willing to design games for the Oculus can obtain it. This means that a vast majority of the population cannot gain any of the benefits and surreal experiences that come with virtual reality. However, in the future they are planning for this technology to be completely accessible for the public. It would also be beneficial if this technology became a lot more cost effective, so that their could be a cheaper model that more of the population could afford (Introducing).

Fact#2: The ESRB does not, by law, need to be implemented on digitally obtained games.

Discussion of fact #2: This means that any game can choose to abstain from putting any sort of rating on there game. This can leave consumers completely oblivious to what kinds of racist or violent materials could be contained within the game. Games on the internet are also the easiest to obtain and can be created and distributed free of any actual fee. These games can be created and distributed on a mass scale while also spreading racist and vulgar ideas (Enforcement).

Fact #3: The number of people who play video games increases every year with the total number being 155 million just in America.

Discussion of Fact #3: The video game industry is continually growing and expanding its demographic of consumers. The content that is put into these video games can seriously alter how a person thinks and acts. These ideas won’t entirely change someone, but if someone is raised playing games that encourage racism and sexism it is more likely that they will grow up accustomed to these ideas. Since the video game market is expanding these games can have a profound impact on a large number of people at any given time (Essential Facts…).

Fact #4: Only 69% of parents regularly check a game’s rating before purchasing the game for their child.

Discussion of Fact#4: This means that roughly a third of parents will purchase a game for their child without taking any second look at rating. These children will have access to T or M rated games at an early age. These games can contain graphic content not intended for children, such as violence, nudity, sexicm, etc. The ideals of these video games will have some effect on the morales of these children, and in turn they are more likely to exhibit these emotions at an earlier age (Essential Facts).

Fact#5: Female gamers represent roughly 50% of total gamers, while female programmers represent only 3% of the total field.

Discussion of Fact#5: The world of videogames has, since its conception, been a primarily male dominated one. However, in the last few years there has been a shift in the demographic of people who actively consume video games. The female gamer population has grown at an astounding rate and female gamers now match male gamers in number. The game design community, on the other hand, has not seen remotely the same number of female participation. This leaves game design much to be desired when it comes to female character design. Characters are usually tasteless and blatantly hypersexualized due to the lack of female voices (Essential Facts). Groups such as Gamergate have also begun to speak out against having any female participation within the design community. These groups have become placant with the fact that the field of game design and the participation in playing video games have been male dominated, and they are unwilling to change (Todd). If no one steps in and speaks up for these women within the field then the situation will continue to spiral downward and women may no longer wish to be involved with video games in their entirety.

Solution Rationale

Moral system #1: Consequence-based moral system. In a consequence based moral system the primary goal is to produce the most desirable outcome for the given situation.

Solution and rationale #1: This system was selected because in the end there is no one clear solution that will satisfy all sides of the argument. The best that we can hope for is that most of the people participating will be happy with the outcome. My plan is that no formal law will be put in place that prohibits the exchange of racist or sexist video games, but instead expand the education system to include a more comprehensive approach to computer science and the ethics behind it. This plan appeals to both sides of the argument, but maybe not to the degree that they had hoped. Video games are protected under the rights of free speech so no law can be put in place that would violate this, but by teaching about the ethics in the cyber world from an early age people are more likely to have a stronger stance against racism and sexism in the cyber world.

Premise 1: Video games and their content are protected under the 1st Amendment.

Premise 2: Racism and sexism are deeply embedded into people’s minds from a very young age and continue to persist through much of their life (Hogenboom).

Premise 3: Public education lacks any real content regarding the cyber world and the ethics that go along with it. It most commonly addresses cyberbullying but rarely delves into representation and the cyber world.

Conclusion: The government cannot officially regulate what can and cannot be part of a video game because of the right to free speech, but they can implement cyber ethics into the public schooling system in order to teach about representation in the cyber world and how to avoid creating sexist and racist situations.

Moral System #2: Duty-based moral system: In a duty based moral system the focus is on the respect of people and the duty that people have to respect one another despite what might make them happy.

Solution and Rationale #2: In this case it is hard to appeal to every party involved in the situation so I believe it is in the interest of the people and the future, to show mutual respect for every person that is a part of this world. I believe that by updating the current rating system and also by making the rating system mandatory for all games this issue can have some resolution. Video games are protected under free speech, but if a law was put in place that the ESRB had to be enforced on all games then the contents of these games would be known before purchase. Also, by updating the ESRB to include racist and sexist images as criteria that warrant a game an M rating then many companies will think twice before including this content. Theoretically this would help to establish a sense of unity within videogames that shows a respect for all people and hopefully dissuade people from trying to publish possible racist or sexist ideals.

Premise 1: Video games and their content are protected under the first amendment.

Premise 2: The ESRB does not contain any formal rating criteria pertaining to racist and sexist imagery.

Premise 3: The ESRB does not, by law, need to be implemented on many online and indie games.

Conclusion: The government cannot officially regulate what content can and cannot be distributed within video games, but they can make improvements to the ESRB. They can make the ESRB have a more complete list of rating criteria, and they can require that all video games acquire an ESRB rating before publishment.

Synthesis

Racism and sexism are issues that has been around for many centuries now and they are not things that will go away overnight. One piece of technology that may help to slowly eliminate this problem is virtual reality. Virtual reality can be so realistic that people sometimes forget who they actually are and begin feeling more like the person that they are portraying. This can help people to take a step into the shoes of somebody who is completely different than themselves. This can be a great benefit for helping someone with racist tendencies to experience what it is like to be the person that they feel superiority towards. However, this technology can also be legally used to promote racism in the world.

I found it very interesting that there is currently no regulations set in place regarding racism in games, and that video games that are distributed online have no obligation to follow the ESRB ratings (Enforcement). This means that game developers can release games with very prominent racist messages, and their will be no repercussions for doing as such. Also if any game developers decide to publish their games strictly on the web then they have no obligation to mark any sort of rating information on their content.

I also found the article regarding women in the video game industry to both eye opening and informative. It is surprising that with our ever progressive movement towards equal rights for everyone in the United States there is still heavy sexism when it comes to the design industry.The fact that only 3% of all video game programmers is made up of women is shocking (Burrows). This leaves much to be desired with the video game industry, and it is no wonder that sexism is prevalent within games themselves. Trying to find more women that are willing to work in this field is going to be one of the big concerns for stopping sexism in video games. Until the game design industry is split evenly between males and females sexism will still persist within games.

The idea that 83% of the industry is made of caucasian people just blows my mind. If this statistic is put together with the statistic about women that would mean that 89% percent of the industry is male and 83% of the industry is white. Caucasian male game designers make up at least three quarters of the total game designers currently in the field. Diversity is non existent within the game design field, not only will it be a problem to stop sexism within the gaming industry, but racism will be just as much of a challenge if not more. If people of different ethnicities are not represented equally within the design field people’s implicit sense of racism will be even more prevalent within video games and future generations will continue to be taught about racism from an early age.

The idea of racism has been around for a long time and it is not a mentality that is easy to break. The fact that most people have an implicit sense of racism and they often times don’t even realize it makes it nearly impossible to stop racism all together. Virtual reality by itself is not going to be enough to prevent racism but it is a tool that can help active participants prevent racism in the world. People will also have to create a variety of programs for virtual reality in order to have a situation for all kinds of people. Otherwise this solution may only be effective for a small amount of people.

There is all too much information pertaining to the topic of racism when it is being used in a virtual environment. Most people agree that racism and sexism are bad things and that people as a whole should be more accepting of each other, but there are still some that don’t see a problem with it. A lot of people are beginning to see that virtual reality can be used to help reduce the amount of racism and sexism in the world. This is because of the profound impact that virtual reality has on a person’s senses and perception. The contrasting info would be that virtual reality could be used to promote these problems as well. To help solve this I believe that a new set of rules and guidelines should be implemented on online games in order to better inform participants about what kinds of games that they are getting themselves into.

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