Legal
In all industry there can be problems with the law in the sense that ideas/concepts can be stolen, The way that this is combated are with Intellectual Properties, these include:Copyright: Copyright is the legal right given to the creator of something, be it a piece of music or a video game franchise. This copyright protects that product from being infringed upon, if someone were to upload a full piece of music which is copyrighted it can be taken down. Copyright can last a
very long time, upwards of 70 years.
Trademark: Things that can be trademarked are words/phrases. You would trademark a word or phrase that you would want to name a product so that the name of the product cant be stolen or infringed upon.
Patent: This is something that you would register so that the way that your product works, this is so that your idea cant be copied fully.
Registered Design: This is something that you would also register but this is the way that the product would look, this keeps people from taking your design concepts.
These are exclusive rights to the people who own these rights under the law.
The only one different from these is Copyright, copyright is automatically owned by the creator of the product as long there are documents of the work to prove that you created it.
When interlectual property is infringed upon the owner can take action and take the case to court, over the years there have been many examples of this within the games industry, an example of a lawsuit includes Nintendo Vs Universal Studios. Nintendo created an arcade game called Donkey Kong, a game with giant ape antagonist, Universal Studios claimed that it was an infringement on their IP King Kong. Nintendo retaliated with the fact that King Kong is public domain. Universal Studios then had to give Nintendo 1.8 million dollars due to them losing the lawsuit.
An example of copyright being breached is when an Australian man called James Burt illegally distributed the game New Super Mario Brother Wii online, it was promptly downloaded by over 50,000 people. Nintendo then ordered James Burt to pay 1.5 Million for breaching copyright and an additional $100,000 for legal bills and court cost.
Ethical
Within the gaming industry there are many ethical issues that are present throughout the industry. some of these issues include:Violence: Throughout video games history there have always been issues with violence in video games, video games used to be seen as childish so when a game like Mortal Kombat appeared there was an outcry from concerned parents thinking that these violent games would influence children into copying what was happening in the game and in turn hurting themselves or somebody else. Mortal Kombat was the game that influenced the creation of the ESRB (Entertainment Software Rating Board) this rating system separated games into different categories depending of their content, more violent games would be rated for older audiences. Many other games have been accused for being too violent, these include games like Grand Theft Auto, Doom, Manhunt and many others.
Rating: PEGI (Pan European Game Information) is the European equivalent to the ESRB, they both do the same thing, both recommends the minimum age a game should be played at. These rating systems help parents determine if that the game that their child wants is appropriate. This age rating system has been supported by major console manufactures including Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo.
Education: There have been many different educational games throughout the years that are focused on children, there have been many different games teaching many different things on many consoles. the fundamentals of maths and English can be taught using Mario Early Years Series. Mario games have also taught different subjects also like History and Geography with Mario is Missing and Mario's Time Machine. Mario also taught typing on MS-DOS and windows. An example of a modern educational game is Minecraft, this game was a very open game inside and outside of the game, mods were created to help educate younger people as that was a target audience for the game. Minecraft Educational Edition promotes creativity, collaboration and problem solving.
Stereotypes: In the games industry there have been many stereotypes in the games industry from in game characters to the people in control of the characters. Some stereotypes include all children that play games like Minecraft and Call of Duty games are all high pitched, loud screamers. other stereotypes include the character Nighthawk from Mortal Kombat, he is seen as the epitome of an America Indian stereotype, he has weapons like tomahawks, bow and arrows and he can even call down thunder from the sky.
Addiction: Addiction to video games can be a very serious problem, people who get too attached to videogames can suffer the consequences, if they play a game for many hours straight everyday they run the risk of losing time with other communities or family. Some extreme cases include a man called Chuang who died after playing Diablo 3 for 40 hours straight. After the 40 hour marathon he was woken up by an attendant, he took a few steps the collapsed. This is an extreme case of addiction. There have been cases of people claiming that some video games like Fallout 4 are too addicting and there was no warning of this addiction, a Russian man attempted to sue Bethesda for 500,000 rubles ($7000) over the matter.
Contractual
Employment: The employment contract states the expectations of you just like other employment contracts. This contract states the terms of employment for the person receiving the contract.Development: When creating/developiong a came the company would hire developers to create the game for them, a development agreement lays out the expectations and terms of the deal. This would enclose the information like the money, time frame and royalties. Another piece of information enclosed in the development agreement would be the IP owner, either the developer owns it or the publisher owns it. Also the developer has to agree that they wont use other people code to create the game.
License: Licenses are a vital part in making video games based on already existing IP's such as movies or franchises, developers would have to go through license agreements which lays out the exact things that the developers can use of the IP, what the license can be used for, weather that the license is worldwide or country based and the length of the agreement.
NDA: Non-Disclosure Agreements keep Plans and other important thins involved in creating a game a secret between the publishers and the developers. if this was breached in any way, there would be serious consequences for the second party.
Collaboration: A collaboration agreements settles the issue recarding the ownership of the IP.