Adult pastime or cause for concern?

The ethics debate:When the topic of digital games comes up, usually the subjects of violence, degradation and sex will rear their heads.

Grand Theft Auto achieved notoriety some years ago as one of an increasing number with dubious morals as characters in the games killed, gouged, raped and slaughtered their way through the various levels.

Interestingly Grand Theft Auto and others have been with us for many years but it wasn't until subsequent versions became more three dimensional with new photo-realistic effects that people began to question the ethics, morality and responsibility of the companies creating the games.

Parents were beginning to get worried that these games, strictly aimed at over-18s, would fall into younger children's hands. Certain parts of academia were also wondering what sort of effect prolonged exposure to such titles would have - would people be propelled to commit violent actions?

At the CGames06 conference in Dublin recently, Dr Aphra Kerr, lecturer and sociologist at NUI Maynooth, said care needed to be taken when talking about games and ethics, as it often turned into a conversation about censorship.

"A lot of the issues vary from country to country. For example, violence is more of an issue in Australia and discussed in Ireland, though interestingly the censor here doesn't get a lot of complaints about it, whereas the sex scenes are more an issue in the US."

These sorts of controversies usually highlighted that many games now were firmly aimed at adults, she said. "Part of the story is a little about the emergence of games with adult themes such as sexuality and violence against women.

"I'm not advocating violence against women but these are themes which are addressed in other audio-visual products. So part of the issue is education of parents, children, families and shop retailers about the importance of making people aware what games are for adults.

"The industry is a little ambiguous on this and it probably needs to have a stronger line on it; however you need to be careful where you go because you'll probably end up talking about censorship."

Dr Kerr said proper research on negative effects needed to be carried out in the right conditions. "The industry carries out its own studies but there are lots of complex issues, such as where is the effect coming from and what it might lead to. You can't say games, or for that matter the media, has no effect; that would be disingenuous, but you do need to be careful saying these things have the same effect on everyone."