Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

If you were at a video game company, would you shut it down after all the research that it causes violence?

It's all publication bias, but maybe in a post-Columbine witch hunt you'd end up in jail.




No, if the weight of evidence was there I'd push to pivot to non-violent, or less violent games, or patch it family friendly as appropriate -- but I already think many US movies and some games are absurdly OTT with violence, to the point of spoiling them. Course if there was enough research to show harm, I would hope for regulation setting an appropriate limit so everyone is accountable to the same standard.

The TL;DR the customer is the other party to mutually benefit from our offering, not a cow to be industrially milked regardless. After 40 years I still haven't bought into "greed is good", we should aspire - and regulate - to a higher standard to everyone's benefit. :)

In a more general business context I would hope to show we a) thought about it and investigated it properly then b) took a considered view that we could stand by if it was later publicised or leaked, i.e. properly exercised our duty of care and reasonable ethics.

Knowing there's a problem and carefully keeping quiet about it, or pretending the opposite and spinning against - maybe even hiring a PR agency to sow doubt, or ignoring contaminated product -- well those all seem to tip easily into criminal negligence and should come with serious consequence for both directors and company.

As an aside, I've always found it most odd that US tv is frequently laissez-faire on violence, but will beep out or overdub minor-friendly trivial profanity or get all puritan about a hint of nipple or human relations. Mostly the opposite of the European perspective. I quite often fast forward through the boring over-long fight sequence or shoot outs in US TV and movies... If it's an 18 rated horror I've sat down to watch, sure, bring it - though I'll probably still skip the 5 minute OTT shoot out to save yawns... :)




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: