Hey Everyone!
I’m so psyched to be here on Steemit. I’m Cryp-tac-to, games developer and crypto investor. I’ve been in games development for a while and software development even longer…too long probably. I’ve not been investing in crypto very long, but like everyone else I’m enjoying the wild ride! My portfolio is now up to 10 different coins and it all started with Ripple at $0.2! :-D
I’ll be blogging about my games development, games in general, crypto (of course) and anything else that springs to mind!
For my opening blog post I’m going to draw a (possibly broken) line connecting the censorship of violent games and the possible upcoming regulation of crypto currencies. By the way, you could substitute violent games with any subversive media content.
For those with short attention spans, or if you just can’t be bothered wading through my ramblings, just jump to the tldr at the bottom and let me know what you think in the comments!
A while back some of my company’s games (e.g. Whack Your Neighbor) were removed from Google’s Play Store for being too violent. Now, these games were violent, there’s no denying that. They also depicted violence against other people, although in a clearly fantastic and comedic setting. The games were giving an adult rating (18, R) by the way, so it’s not like we tried to disguise the fact that they contained mature content.
Google obviously have the right to remove whatever they want from their own store, but I think it’s slippery slope. The logic is that by having content on their store that allegedly depicts violence in real world settings, they are somehow encouraging gamers to go out and garrotte their neighbors with a power lead! As you can probably guess I do not agree with this, for several reasons.
Let’s not even go over the whole argument that violent games/music/movies cause violent tendencies in consumers, it’s been debunked so many times before and quite frankly it’s boring!
Instead I want to look at where this sort of thinking may lead. For example, how long is it before companies/governments aren’t happy with just stopping you from obtaining subversive media from the main online stores.
What is next?
Stopping you from obtaining this media full stop, even from smaller app stores/retailers?
Making it illegal?
Tracking who buys what media, and then taking preemptive action before the media turns them violent?
OK that last one might sound a little farfetched, but are we that far away from this dystopian scenario? We already have politicians clamoring for the large portals to remove any media that they disagree with or find objectionable.
So, after a lot of rambling that brings me to the regulation of crypto. I have no doubt that regulation is coming, if not this year then very soon after. When we do regulate I really hope we resist the temptation to make crypto that supports anonymous, untraceable transactions illegal. If we do, society may regret it.
I have no doubt that we will reach a time when the majority (if not all) of the worlds digital transactions are performed using crypto. If/when that happens, we will also reach a point where the only way we can purchase any media that isn’t pre-approved and considered mainstream is by using…
…anonymous crypto currencies.
Tldr;
What do you guys think?
Should we censor games and other media or allow people to decide what they consume for themselves?
Should we regulate crypto and is there a place for anonymous, untraceable transactions in the modern world?
Can you see yourselves needing to use such currency in the future?
Am I just salty because our games were removed from the Play Store? 😊
If you found this interesting in the slightest please up-vote me and make sure you follow me, I promise most of my blog posts won’t be this long!