The gory world of video games

This is an area of law that’s evolving so fast anything I say will be obsolete by tomorrow. — Professor Joshua Fairfield

A former bank robber Michael, who is on the edge of a breakdown; Trevor, an arms smuggler-cum-drug dealing psychopath; and Franklin, a street gangster who will do anything for money. These are the characters your child gets to play in the second most popular video game of the world — Grand Theft Auto (GTA) and you’re paying for this from your credit card as a parent. The game explores the relationships through a series of robberies, carjackings, felonies and violent fights as they clash with every possible authority and stereotype in a fictional world called San Andreas, based on Southern California.

The good news, however, is that the most-selling video game is a gentle game where players create houses, farms and mines for resources in a blocky, pixelated world. This is Minecraft. In September 2019, The Guardian classified Minecraft as the best video game of the 21st century, and in November 2019, Polygon called the game the “most important game of the decade”.

In December 2019, Forbes gave it a special mention in a list of the best video games of the 2010s; it is also in the World Video Game Hall of Fame. Minecraft teaches positive skills like resource utilisation, teamplay, design of cities and infrastructure.

With the outbreak of Covid-19 across the world and subsequent lockdowns, video gamers in the United States reported that they spent 45% more time than the average playing games. Game sales and downloads have also commensurately skyrocketed. In India $1,698 million would be spent on video games in 2020, with an annual growth rate (CAGR 2020-2025) of 7.7%, resulting in a projected market volume of $2,456 million by 2025. While this is happening, there are serious concerns being raised about the appropriateness of the content of these games. Themes around violence, sexual crimes, inappropriate language usage and stereotypical portrayal of ethnicities and religious groups have raised critical issues about their effect on young and adolescent minds.

Content and concerns

Games have also been criticised for portraying a “white man’s world” as the primary characters and settings are predominantly white-Western. The Bechdel Test, popularised by Alison Bechdel’s comic Dykes to Watch Out For, says that appropriate representation of women characters needs to satisfy the following requirements (the game or story, etc):

1. It has to have at least two women in it.

 2. Who talk to each other.

3. About something besides a man.

Most games available would not pass the Bechdel Test.

Attempts at localisation of games have led to release of country-specific editions, such as those complying to so-called ‘blood regulation’ in China, where the show of blood or bleeding has been totally banned. Earlier game makers circumvented similar regulations by changing the colour of blood to green or any other colour than red. A

Addiction, violence and psychology

As online gaming continues to grow, it has rekindled worries over gaming’s potential negative effects and thus the need to explore the phenomenon of the socalled addiction of video games. In 2010, Anderson, et al, completed a meta-analysis of the effects of violent video games on aggression, empathy and prosocial behaviour, using international data (Anderson, et al, 2010). Another long-term metaanalysis at the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Dartmouth College, Hanover also yielded similar results in 2017. The Anderson study final sample included 381 effect-size estimates based on 130,296 participants. They came to a conclusion that violent video game exposure had a positive causal correlation with aggressive behaviour, aggression cognition and aggressive affect. They also found out that violent video game exposure was positively associated and causally related to desensitisation, lack of empathy and lack of prosocial behaviour. Thus, the concerns around gaming addiction and other effects are real, and need to be addressed.

 Pornography and obscenity laws

India does not have a rating regime for online and video games. This has created a regulatory vacuum where protections applicable in other countries are not available to Indian customers. There are a plethora of general criminal and civil provisions which can be applied on a case by case basis to the game content in question. Publicationdistribution-transmission of any obscene content is a punishable offence in India under Indian Penal Code, 1860 and the Information Technology Act, 2008. Any indecent representation of women is prohibited under the Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act, 1986 and is a punishable offence.

Development of video games is a technical process dependent on the development of ideas, software, visuals, testing the game and commercialisation of the game. The video game Inc or game developers or gaming companies need to be careful that such apps are in sync with the legal and regulatory compliances. Another important aspect being privacy principles applied to personal data, especially relating to minors and adolescents. For the video game Inc to keep safe of any material which is lascivious or appeals to the prurient interest or which may deprave and corrupt persons or would be considered obscene shall understand the parameters such as:

(a) Whether the work taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest.

(b) Whether the work is patently offensive.

(c) Whether the work depicts any indecent representation of women.

Certain sections of the Indian Penal Code and IT Act are of great interest and applicability in this regard, consider Section 292 of the IPC which deals with obscenity, and states that a figure or any object shall be deemed to be obscene if it is lascivious or appeals to the prurient interests such as to tend to deprave and corrupt a person. This section also makes it an offence to distribute, import, export, exhibit, advertise, etc, obscene content by means of traditional print media. Also, Section 294 of the IPC makes it an offence to do any obscene acts, or utter obscene words or songs in public places to the annoyance of others. Similarly, sections 67, 67A and 67B of the IT Act prescribe punishment for publishing or transmitting, in electronic form: Obscene material, material containing sexually explicit act, etc, and material depicting children in sexually explicit act, etc, respectively.

Internationally, attempts ranging from a credible self-regulation by the video game industry itself to governmental attempts at effective regulation have been observed. Introduced in 2013, the International Age Rating Coalition (IARC) is an initiative aimed at streamlining acquisition of content ratings for video games, from authorities of different countries. The Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) established in 1994 is an American self-regulatory organisation that assigns age and content ratings to consumer video games. The Australian Classification Board (ACB or CB) established in 1970 is an Australian government statutory body responsible for the classification and censorship of films, video games and publications for exhibition, sale or hire in Australia. The Game Rating and Administration Committee (Geimmul Gwalli-Wiwonhoe; GRAC) is the South Korean video game content rating board. A governmental organisation, the GRAC rates video games to inform customers of the nature of game contents. These regulatory attempts have brought a much-needed sanity to the video game space. In absence of regulation, the arena remains open to wide interpretation in India.

Conclusion

An Indian lawyer has filed a PIL in the Punjab and Haryana High Court asking for a ban on the wildly popular game “Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds” (PUBG). He contends that school going children who are losing interest in studies have become addicted to the game and the parents of such children are helpless as children have become aggressive and got into depression. Another PIL filed elsewhere also raises significant questions on the content, sensitivity and impact of these games.

 Worldwide, Video and Online Game regulation Policies have attempted to attain three major objectives:

• Policy measures limiting availability of video games (shutdown policy, fatigue system, and parental controls etc).
•  Measures aiming to reduce risk and harm (e.g., warning messages).
•  Measures taken to provide help services for gamers.

It is time that a mature classification system is evolved in India which engenders responsibility and credibility. Self-regulation by the game makers may not apply to India as the gaming industry is in a nascent stage and game makers may not be wanting to be saddled with curbs on their practices. A wider public consultation involving experts from academia, technology, governance, law and general society at large should be done to formalise norms which would govern the game space without being a hindrance to technology, creativity or business.

 Brijesh Singh is author & senior IPS officer. Khushbu Jain is advocate in the Supreme Court & founding partner, Ark legal.