There are many legal ethical issues, implications and results of playing a 3D online game. When the fun of playing turns to addiction and when money becomes a question, there are bound to be people resorting to unethical ways to get what they do not have.
The first ethical issue would be cheating in the game. There are two ways which you can cheat. That is either by human botting(spell correctly or not?) or downloading a system known as the “cheat engine” which modifies the game system to work in ways to your benefits, such as winning the game to level up fast and thus earning online tokens unethically to purchase online items. It is simple as you don’t have to put in any effort to win the game; the system does it all for you. However the implications would be such as the intention of playing the game will be defeated if everyone cheats. Online games are for people to have fun challenging each other in terms of their skills. Nobody likes to play with someone that cheats. If there are people who cheat, it disrupts the whole game. What’s more if someone files a complaint against the person who cheated to the general manager (GM) of the game, the “cheater’s” account will not only be banned, but his or her efforts in training the character of the game will go down the drain.
Second ethical issue faced will be the buying of virtual items using cold hard cash. As there isn’t a price tag to virtual items such as the cost of producing it etc, it is difficult to gauge the actual monetary value of virtual items. You might end up paying someone a $100 just to help you level up your character, or even using cash to purchase a virtual item worth 1million tokens in “virtual currency”. Worst still, when comes to online transactions between two players, there isn’t any contract signed. Hence when fraud cases occur such as the virtual item was not given to you after paying up; it is difficult to nail the guilty party.
Third ethical issue faced would be the use of profanitites in the game. As much as there isn't any law stating it is illegal to exchange vulgarities online, but it affects the quality of the game and mood of the player if such language was to be used. Which explains why nowadays games are installed with anti-profanity filter to prevent players from using vulgarities, else they get banned from playing.
This brings me to the fourth ethical issue of defamation online. Defamation is punishable by law, however there isn't much control over defaming someone in a game. After all conflicts happen between players. But the implications can be serious to the extent of affecting a player's emotions and self esteem in the real world. This does the player more harm than good to play that particular online game.
The last ethical issue would be hacking into another person’s account to gain their personal info for own use. Most players hack into other players’ accounts to steal their items or sabotage the characters to bring about the player’s downfall. The victim involved will definitely feel demoralized as he or she has to restart a new character all over again after all the effort that has been put in. Besides that, hacking is a crime. The person found hacking will face not only a fine, but a possible jail term too.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
My friend once was hacked. He lost all his money n items. It was such a poor thing. I think they should have some rules to protect the players.
ReplyDeleteactually some games do have sercurity to prevent hackers but IT is advancing in a rapid mode, so we think that it will be harder for hackers to hack when the users change their password frequently
ReplyDelete