Task 2+3: Understanding Ethical and Legal Constraints within the Media Sector Blog Link

In the video game industry there are 4 main ethical concerns that are commonly brought up: violence, religion, gender representation and racism.

Gender Representation

The 'casual' mobile phone
game 'Angry Birds'

In 2012 the Entertainment Software association did a survey of game players where they discovered that 45% of gamers are female, with a figure like that you're probably wondering why this is even an issue in the video game industry. Well seeing as this number includes the 74% of women who play games like 'Angry Birds' or 'Candy Crush Saga' on their phones meaning they are 'casual gamers', it would be more accurate to say that 12% of gamers are female, which is where the controversy arises. The lack on women playing video games has made it so a lot more games are made with men in mind, this resulted in negative claims being made that game creators are sexist and purposely choose to alienate the female audience but I believe this isn't true. Although some games like the 'Dead or Alive' franchise use women as sex objects, female characters in other games such as Elizabeth from 'Bioshock Infinite' and Samus from the 'Metroid' franchise being strong, independent women who are the highlight of their respected games and are good role models for women or anyone for that matter; and for quite awhile now popular video game franchises like 'Halo' and 'Pokémon' give the player the option to choose their character's gender, saying that game developers are being sexist and are alienating women is just inaccurate.

The option to choose your gender at the beginning on 'Pokemon X and Y'.

Violence

Jack Thompson, the anti-video-game activist
who tries to ban violent video games.

Violence has been around in video games since the 1976 game 'Death Race', as video games developed and improved overtime the graphics became better and the violence became more detailed; members of the public became concerned that video games were making people become more violent, especially children as they are more influential to do what they see. To quote Dr. Craig A. Anderson: " Violent video games are significantly associated with: increased aggressive behaviour, thoughts, and affect; increased physiological arousal; and decreased pro-social (helping) behaviour.", to put that into Laymen’s terms: violent video games make people bad; when looking at games like 'Dead Rising 2' where you shove axes into people’s spines and 'Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2' where you perform a massacre at a Russian Airport, it's safe to say that video games can be incredibly violent. This has resulted in many people finding the video game industry one of violence and corruption, something that is turning people into murderers; there are even anti-video-game activists like Jack Thompson who dedicate their lives to censoring and banning video games due to their effects on children and others. Video-game-activists do appear to raise a fair point at first though, incidents such as the Columbine High School massacre where two boys killed  teenagers at their school support the theory that video games are bad as the two who committed the crime liked to play violent video games; however like a magic trick if you do the research the trick is ruined, when you get down to it it's not the video game developers fault that a violent game made your under-age child violent, it's the fault of the parent who buys their under-age child a violent video game! If the child's parent said "No." when buying the game then they wouldn't have turned violent, it's the same with normal people, although a game could make you violent it's your fault for lacking self control and acting out highly inappropriate/illegal things; besides, violence has existed for a lot longer than video games have, if people like Jack Thompson blame 'Halo 3' or 'Mortal Kombat' for making people violent, then I'd love to know what video game people played back
during The Crusades some 1000 years ago.

Religion
Religion is a highly controversial subject in any form of media, video game developers usually avoid pushing their luck when using it in games, however that's not to say that controversies don't arise from time to time. Creationism groups claim that the 'Pokémon' game franchise is brainwashing players to believing in evolution, and 'LittleBigPlanet' made Islamic gamers deeply offended when one of its songs had words from the Holy Quran. Religious insensitivity have never really had quite as big an impact on the industry as violence, gender representation and racism; however it has had an impact on how some developers in the video game industry work it into their creations, the 'Final Fantasy' series for instance uses religious themes and imagery to  educate the western world of how religion is practised as a mixture in Japan, other game developers use religious icons such as those of Norse mythology to inject a touch of flavour and familiarity to the game. Although religion can be used in bad ways, in the video game industry it is mostly used to enhance the experience, not to offend; this makes the media format very unique and culturally diverse, one that anyone can enjoy.

Racism

Nintendos response to the racial
issue surround the Pokémon 'Jynx'.

Once upon a time, racism was virtually non-existent in the video game industry, however in recent times it's
become quite common. In 2002 there was a video game called 'Ethnic Cleansing' where the player has to go around killing African-Americans, Latinos, Jews and the Prime Minister of Israel to win the game; the 5th 'Resident Evil' game has you killing Africans in small villages, and of course there's 'Call of Duty' which has been painting a negative picture of Russian people for years now! Although not a lot of video games are racist, a lot of the players are from being subjected to them, if you go on a 'Call of Duty' or 'Battlefield' online game and speak to other players in a non-American accent then prepare to have tonnes of racist comments thrown your way; the amount of people who be racist when playing video games has given the industry (although mostly Microsoft and Sony as the XBOX 360 and PlayStaion 3 are where this sort of thing happens the most) a bad image and have attracted attention from groups such as the Anti-Defamation League and Red Cross to make it stop. This has had a dramatic effect on the video game industry, video game developers are afraid to do things in case they are called out for being racist, Nintendo had to change the 'Pokémon' character design on 'Jynx' because it looked like black face; the media has been surprised but in this case I believe for the better, unlike the other subjects I've talked about, racism in video games does but should not exist.

The Comic Book Codes of Ethics

Unlike the video game industry, ethics and legal issues have always been a predominant subject in comic
book publication. In the early days of the comic book media, there were no guidelines or laws suppressing comic books from including material which could be seen as insensitive, as comic books were aimed at a young audience there wasn't much inappropriate material, it didn't take long for the media became host to violence, crime and sexual situations; Dr. Frederic Wertham started to notice a connection between juvenile delinquents and comic book reading so he concluded that the inclusion of this inappropriate content was corrupting Americas youth which started an attack on the comic book industry.  This was when things became really bad, comic books were banned, recycled and even publicly burned in some cities across America; to quote Dr. Wertham when he spoke to the 1954 U.S. Senate Subcommittee Hearing on Juvenile Delinquency: “I think Hitler was a beginner compared to the comic-book industry.”

Dr. Frederic Wertham.

The 'Comic Code Authority' logo,
this was put on the cover of all
comics approved to be published.

To put an end to all this madness and controversy, the ‘Comics Magazine Association of America’ (or ‘CCA’) was formed and created the ‘Comic Code Authority’ (or ‘Comic Code’), this was a system that made sure comic books being published didn’t contain any inappropriate content; all comic book publishers at the time would submit their comics to the CCA who would check them for inappropriate material, if the comic passed they would authorize the use of their seal on the cover so that the public knew the comic would be okay to read.  By the early 2000s most new publishers decided not join the CCA as it meant adverts for products for older people (such as 15+ films or energy drinks) could not be advertised in them. In 2001 Marvel were suppressed by the CCA from releasing 'X-Force' #116, this was due to the comic featuring heavily detailed graphic violence as well as some 'implied sexual content' (according to the CCA), Marvel editor Axel Alonso and artist Mike Allred stated that they 'went all out to make readers feel the impact of the violence' as it was very important to the story and overall future of the series; Marvel refused to remove it so they withdrew from the CCA, released 'X-Force' #166 without a CCA seal of approval on the cover, and they started to work on their own rating system based on age groups like the 'BBFC' does. This was the 'Marvel Rating System', it follows almost identical guidelines as the CCA did for what is deemed appropriate and inappropriate, however instead of banning any inappropriate content from being published, they give the comic it’s featured in a rating that specifies the comic is for older audiences. Here is the guidelines for what comic gets what rating:

·         ALL AGES - This means the comic is appropriate for anyone of any age to read, this comics will have no inappropriate material present in them.

·         A - The comic will be appropriate for anyone aged 9 and up, this means there may be minor instances of mild violence but nothing to get concerned about.

·         T - This is the Marvel equivalent of a 12A film rating, meaning it's appropriate for most readers 13 and up, but parents are advised that they might want to read beforehand to approve it's okay for their child. Violence, sexual innuendos vulgar language will be included.

·         T+ TEENS AND UP - Appropriate for older teens; violence, sexual innuendos vulgar language will be included like with the 'T' rating but without a parental advisory.

·         PARENTAL ADVISORY - These are essentially 'T+ TEENS AND UP' rated comics that feature more mature themes and detailed graphic imagery of violence, sex and other adult situations. For teenaged readers it is advised that that a parent reads it beforehand to approve it's appropriate for their child (as with the 'T' rating).

·         EXPLICIT CONTENT - These are comics that are for 18+ mature readers only; they feature heavy amounts of strong violence, various types of sexual activity, discriminating behaviour, adult language and graphic blood and gore. Due to the adult nature of these comics you'll never find them on newsstands and will not be marketed to younger readers in any way, to help parents identify these comics there will be a 'MAX Comics' logo on it; 'MAX Comics' are an alias for 'Marvel' which they use for 18+ comics, no main 'Marvel' franchises will be 'MAX Comics' so as not to expose children to mature content.

By withdrawing from the CCA and establishing their own refined rating system, Marvel became able to publish anything they chose to in their comics with no art, story and advertising limitations at all; due to the new found freedom of including mature material as well as the increase in revenue this system created for Marvel, other companies followed suit and started making their own rating system, by 2011 the CCA was abandoned all together, allowing the industry to flourish into what we know it as today.

'X-Force' #116 cover art.

Racism

The front cover of  'Captain
Marvel Adventures' #23.

Pre Civil Rights Movement comic books were a cesspool of racial insensitivity, this wasn't particularly due to comic book publishers being racist or hateful but rather them following the cultural norm of what was socially acceptable for the time. The main victims of racism in comics were the Black British population and Germans, the Black British population were depicted with pitch dark skin, big eyes, and big red lips, they also performed menial jobs such as butler and janitorial work while eating watermelon and chicken, as these were the traits of popular minstrel show performers of the time it only made sense for comic book publishers to base the character designs after them; as World War II was happening at the time the Germans were depicted as being cowardly, bumbling, idiots who would act like poorly behaved children, as war propaganda depicted Germans like this it made perfect sense to treat them in the same way in comics. An example of racial discrimination would be 'Captain Marvel Adventures' #23

A panel from 'Captain Marvel
Adventures' #23 detailing the
racist portrayal of Black British.

which features a Black British character called 'Steamboat', in the comic he is drawn as monkey-faced doofus with the facial features mentioned previously, he is also conveyed as being unintelligent as his dialogue is written in such a poor way, indicating he is saying these words in an idiotic voice making him seems like a character to be ridiculed; by doing this Marvel enforced a negative racial stereotype of Black British people, affecting the minds of the children reading the comics, making them racist and enforcing Dr. Frederic Wertham's theory of comic books being evil. Thankfully these outdated racist views have disappeared from the comic book industry, it now focuses on bringing racial harmony amongst the readers and making the comics more accessible and appealing to people of other nationalities and those who live in other countries. For instance: Marvel have recently released the 'Ms. Marvel' comic book franchise which has the main protagonist as a teenaged Muslim Girl from Pakistan living in America, in the comics she is portrayed as an average female teenager who immigrants from Pakistan to New Jersey and is experiencing a culture shock, her storyline and multicultural routes have turned her into a relatable role model amongst female Muslim readers, this has helped the new franchise become popular all around the world and has made the character and Marvel very respectful and famous.

'Ms. Marvel' #1 cover art.

If anything then, the comic book industry is one that does everything it can to avoid controversy and focuses on equality amongst all peoples of the world, and there is no better proof of this than Marvel's 'X-Men' franchise. The central theme and moral of the 'X-Men' franchise is based upon the concept of tolerance and acceptance, it teaches equality with the story premise that regardless of your background, appearance, talents, abilities, skin colour or gender, a person can become a member of the X-Men; this plot point is used to teach readers racial tolerance, it tells readers that no one group of people is superior than the others, that everyone is equal and has the potential to be special, promoting equality amongst all peoples.

A group shot of the X-Men.

Task 1: Understanding the Creative Media Industry Structure

When it comes to the media industry, there are many areas of work, the major sectors of the industry are:

·         Film - The collective creation and distribution of feature length sound and moving image productions via cinemas, the internet and home media. Universal Studios is a major company in the film industry that has been creating and distributing films for over 100 years!

·         Television and Radio - The collective creation and distribution of sound and moving image productions through analogue and digital transmissions which are picked up and made accessible to the public through home media devices such as set-top boxes and personal radios. One of the most popular television and radio companies is The BBC which has been providing its services of quality media through television and radio the Great British public for 91 years.

·         Interactive Media - A specialised media that relies on a user's input to provide a products output, it engages the user the product and allows them to interact with what's happening with a controller of some kind; the internet, video games and home media devices like DVD players are considered interactive media.

·         Video Games - The dominant variant of interactive media, users are fully immersed in an enjoyable interactive experience by using a controller to play out an adventure; they are extremely popular and are distributed on cartridge or disc based platforms that run on video game consoles like the Nintendo 64 and the SEGA Mega Drive.

·         Animation - A specialised area of the Film, Television, Interactive Media and Video Games industry which is all based around creating the illusion of movement through a series of moving images created by hand or on a computer.

·         Publishing - The preparation, issuing and distribution of printed media for sale to the general public; these publications can be books, magazines, research papers and many other forms of print media.

·         Press - The press is a section of the mass media industry that focuses on presenting current news to the public via television, radio, interactive media and publishing.

·         Advertising and Marketing - Advertising and marketing is all about the promotion of products to the general public all with intensions of making the product renown and popular to increase sales; advertising and marketing companies are commissioned by other companies to endorse their products, they use all the above forms of media to promote the products.

·         Photo-imaging - A media industry that focuses on creating and editing photographs and other graphics for all the above forms of media, they specialise in visual language and printing high quality designs on a large scale.

All of these companies are either horizontally or vertically integrated. A company that is horizontally integrated is part of a group of similar companies that are merged together in order to work with each other to produce products; this is usually done to share resources, increase popularity/market power and reduce costs of international trade (if one of the companies is located in another country), all done with intentions of selling more products and maximising profits. Vertical integration is when a big company (that is usually well known) purchases other subsidiary companies, this benefits the big company because they get a healthy share in the subsidiary companies' profits and it increases their market dominance, it also benefits the subsidiary companies by gaining them popularity which results in more customers and higher profit margins; in theory everybody wins, but it is mostly the big company that ends up with the most money in pocket. The Disney corporation that specialises in all areas of the media industry is an example of a company that uses vertical integration, it's a big and famous company that has purchased other companies in the media industry such as LucasArts and The History Network in order to increase market dominance and profit, as of now they own over 129 companies via vertical integration!

 

In the following article I am going to talk about Nintendo, company that specialises in the video game media industry; and Marvel, a company that specialises in the comic book publishing industry. First I'll talk about Nintendo.

Nintendo started out as a small business in Japan in 1889, they originally produced and marketed Hanafuda playing cards, a game which has been played in Japan for over 400 years. After producing an officially licensed set of cards depicting Disney characters in 1959, the company became famous and started to expand their market to new business ventures including a taxi service, a chain of "love hotels", instant rice food, vacuum cleaners and toys; all of these ventured failed eventually apart from the toy making, this was all Nintendo had left after the 1964 Tokyo Olympics as the playing card industry had became over saturated with no one buying them anymore. Nintendo struggled to stay in the industry only making toys due to the other companies such as Bandai and Tomy working in Japan as competition, due to the introduction and success of the video game industry in Japan, Nintendo decided to invest and released the "Colour TV-Game 6" and "Colour TV-Game 15", two home video game consoles that got them into the media industry; this went onto the global release of arcade games such as "Radar Scope", "EVR Race", "Mario Bros" and most famously "Donkey Kong" in 1981, the money raised from these releases lead to the production and distribution of the "Game & Watch" handheld consoles and the "Famicon". The "Famicon" went on to sell incredibly well in Japan selling over 500,000 units within 2 months, so Nintendo made the important decision to distribute it globally as the "Nintendo Entertainment System" (or NES); the American video game industry had crashed in 1983 due to bad quality games at high prices being released, Nintendo created quality control procedures to make it so this didn't happen so when the NES was released in 1985, it became an instant hit which in-term gained Nintendo universal acclaim and saved the American video game industry. With once programmer Satoru Iwata running the company, the rest is history.

Nintendo Enterrainment System on left, Nintendo Famicon on right

Ever since the "Colour TV-Game 6" was released in 1977, Nintendo have stayed in the video game media industry and ever since the "Famicon" came out 30 years ago, Nintendo have been regarded by many as the best in the business. Nintendo are a 'first party developer', this means that they manufacture video game consoles for the public to purchase as well as video games exclusively for said consoles, this resulted in the creation of brilliant video game consoles such as the "Super Nintendo Entertainment System (or SNES) and the "Nintendo Gameboy", and beloved video game franchises such as "Super Mario" and "Pokémon"; doing this secured future sales of Nintendo consoles because if people want to play the next instalment of their favourite franchise then they'll need the new console too, this is very apparent when the launch of "The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker HD" game came out on the "Nintendo Wii U" console, the console's sales increased by 94% in a week! The target demographic for Nintendo's products has been for those aged 9 to 24 years old ever since 1977, however if you look at some of the games being produced then you'd be fooled into thinking that the target audience is a lot younger, especially when you look at the Nintendo franchises like "Kirby" and "Nintendogs"; from day 1 Nintendo have followed the principle of making video games fun and easy for everyone to play, by making games that look family friendly and are easy for anyone to be able to play, Nintendo have been able to appeal to a massive amount of people from casual gamers to hardcore gamers, making everyone happy.

Over the past 30 years, Nintendo have had to face many rivals and have had much competition. In June of 1982, Nintendo had to face Universal Studios in a massive lawsuit case where the Nintendo game "Donkey Kong" was being sued for apparently copying the 1933 Universal Studios movie "King Kong", during the time of the lawsuit Nintendo were banned from producing any "Donkey Kong" arcade cabinets, video games or any other related merchandise; in December of that year Nintendo's layer John Kirby proved in the New York courtroom of US District Court Judge Robert W. Sweet that Universal had filed the lawsuit knowing that they didn't own the rights to "King Kong" as they had declared it public domain property in 1971, Nintendo won $1,800,000 and became established as a legitimate company that could take the world on. The most infamous competition story in gaming history is that of Nintendo and SEGA from 1988 to 1999, SEGA (a video game company also located in Japan) set out to defeat Nintendo in the video game marketplace by making their system the "SEGA Mega Drive" cheaper, a series of advertising campaigns that attacked Nintendo and created the "Sonic the Hedgehog" video game franchise to be more popular than "Super Mario"; the two companies were constantly battling each other, distributing over 80 million "Super Nintendo Entertainment Systems" and "SEGA Mega Drive", this massive production and distribution of consoles resulted in consumers spending all their money on home video gaming and the arcade industry almost dying out due to consumers spending their money on video games for their home instead of at the arcade, in the end Nintendo came out on top due to its beloved first party franchises while SEGA eventually had to stop producing consoles and now only produce video games.

When it comes down to it, Nintendo is actually a very successful company, it's gone from producing playing cards in the 19th century, vacuum cleaners and instant rice in the 20th century, and video game consoles and games in the 21st century. Sure they've had to fight a few battles along the way, whether it is a giant American company or a fellow video game company back home; thanks to its loyal fan base, ever-present target market and beloved franchises, Nintendo will still be in the video game industry for many years to come.

The other company I'll be talking about is Marvel:

Marvel is an American comic book production company that is currently a horizontally integrated subsidiary of the Walt Disney Corporation. The company was founded in 1939 under the name "Timely Comics", super hero comic books were becoming very popular in America at the time so publisher Martin Goodman founded the company to produce and distribute "Marvel Comics", a comic book featuring a series of short stories for the public to read; after selling over 80,000 issues the company decided to publish and distribute a second issue in the next month, this process continued for 18 years until the "Marvel Comics" became discontinued, in that time however the company had created 3 new franchises: "Human Torch", "Sub-Mariner" and "Captain America" which would take over, thus forming the foundations the company uses to this very day. In 1951, superheroes had fallen out of fashion, to keep the company going they started to produce and distribute more general comic books featuring romance, mystery and comedy as the subject matter; with such a radical change of themes they renamed the company "Atlas Comics" and were able to survive, it wasn't until 1958 that they successfully brought superheroes back in fashion and returned to their routes. The company changed its name to "Marvel" in 1961 to honour the name of their first publication, from then on they gave the world some of its most famous characters including "Spider Man", "The Avengers" and "The X-Men"; with Isaac Perlmutter working as the current CEO of the company, Marvel continues to give the world some of the best media ever made.

Although Marvel as a whole has greatly expanded its franchises over the years into film, animation and video games to name a few, but that main area of the companies work (and what I'll be talking about in this article) is as it was back in 1939: comic book publication and distribution; in fact right now the company is doing this with 75 different franchises on a monthly basis! The majority of these comics have a target demographic of 9-16 year olds around the world, though some are aimed at older audiences; the reason why Marvel are able to make so much money however is because although the comics are written for a 9-16 year old demographic, the majority of people who purchase the comics are usually young adults and middle aged men who grew up reading the comics when they were younger, the comics are written with these people in mind so as to not alienate them because they are responsible for most of the company’s profits, so in theory, Marvel comics appeal to a massive target audience and should have no financial troubles in the near future. The main competition that Marvel has and always will be is the rival American comic book publishing and distributing company DC Comics, the two companies both started in the 30s making widely successful super hero comics that were designed to take each other out; when DC made "The Thing", Marvel made "The Incredible Hulk", when Marvel made "Captain America", DC made "General Glory", and that's the way it's always been. The companies rivalry is still going to this day, the only difference between this rivalry and the rivalry between SEGA and Nintendo I talked about earlier is that DC and Marvel are on good terms; they are constantly teaming up and provide their fans with special pieces of media which pair the two companies property together such as the "DC vs. Marvel" comic book series, doing these kindnesses increases the fan bases of each companies franchises and creates a positive impact which results in more comic book production and distribution for both companies.

Overall then, Marvel has used its organisational structure, its franchises, its target audience and it's rivalry with DC to become one of the biggest companies in the world. Now with the Disney Corporation running the show, the future looks brighter than ever for Marvel.