Related to this is the lack of relevance of your choices evident in too many MMOs. Why even bother thinking about whether your actions are right or wrong when no matter what quest you do it only gives you more XP and assets, with no further consequences. Standard procedure : Pick up all quests in an area and do them. No need to engage brain.
For the same reason I can understand why a lot of people don't bother to read the Quest-texts ... they can be sure that beyond the basic instruction on what to do, where to do it and whom to do it to, the text contains no information you actually need to think about.
Some MMOs have things like Faction-Quests where you standing rise for one Faction and decrease for another when you finish them. That way there is at least some consequences to your actions. It would be nice to see that kind of systems be more common and more expanded in the future. Perhaps with the characters moving through a complex web of Factions.
And I don't mean that one behaviour should be punished and another rewarded in the game. Just that there should be consequences to your actions, and some of those consequences _should_ limit your character to what he or she can do.
That way you would have to take responsibility for your own decisions. For good or bad.
Great read-I didn't buy the game because of the brutal attacks at the airport. The real world is crazy enough and this type of game play where everyone was murdered at the airport just fuels the "crazies" that much more. Game or no game, it wasn't okay to put that kind of violence into the game.
Originally posted by Yunbei . For the human mind it is not possible to negate such things you see, but the conscious can rationalize them, push those emotions away. Though it is kinda odd as why someone would do it. If you feel a movie or a game is "just a game", it would be utterly pointless for me to play it. Either I do care, then I am interested to play, or I don't care, then I don't play it.
I wouldn't go so far as to say 'utterly pointless'.... but that's what I'm talking about with the word immersion. Honestly, (like you), I want more immersion in games/movies/books than less. But that's where choice comes in, as well as some themes we can relate to.
For example, I see some movie, some crazy guy killing young girls, cutting them up, selling their parts at a butcher shops, etc. It's gross, extreme, and something clicks in the back of my mind "ridiculous... I would never do that" ... then I just turn it off with "it's just a movie...boring actually". So I don't relate, I don't feel anything... to me, it's a waste of time to watch such a movie. Same with a game... actions/choices resulting in extremes, or perhaps no-choice at all, then I can't stop the switch flipping in my mind "it's just a game... click ... click... yawn".
But give me a choice related to something closer to home. I see a movie with a guy named Joe who gets mad at his peer Bill who has back-stabbed him at work to take his promotion... so he looses it, punches him out, and Bill dies. Joe runs... police find him, jail time, kids suffer, just a ruined life all around. If told right, it's sort of chilling... why? because we are tempted (possibly) in RL with the same scenarios.
That's when it gets chilling and immersive, when a game has choices (good and bad) and they are made in scenarios closer to what we might really experience in RL. If no choice, it's easy to watch anything and just turn it off... it might desensitize, but that can happen with any media (books, movies, games etc)... and the end effect of desensitizing is boredom (there's a lot of that around here imo).
Personally, I believe that a game is a game. Like a terrorist killing people in a blockbuster movie (which seems entirely acceptable,) a game should be no different. The scene in question is an important one that sets up the whole plot line of the video game, so why all the outrage?
Should your kids be playing Modern Warfare 2? Are they old enough to understand the difference between right and wrong? Can they understand that the game is just a game, and in real life, you have consequences for your actions? That's your decision to make.
But as far as controversy in general goes, every intelligent person should only take from it what was meant to be taken.
People create controversy to entertain themselves, and those who feel personally attacked.
I personally hope you 'are' attacked. By dogs. Big ones.
Hm, I don't know, I would feel uncomfortable with being evil, games or not. Just being a terrorist for some stupid story... sounds fishy. At least nothing I regard as fun time entertainment.
I play RPGs to be the hero. To do good in the world my character inhabits.
Games like the GTA series are disgusting and those who play them are not people I would ever choose to associate with. They are wish fulfillment for hoodlum wannabes.
Lol. WHo ever you are. You come straight out of a comic book. Even in games there is no hero. The line is not as clear cut as that. It's not even that defined in World of Warcraft and it's definatly not that clear cut in real life. Even as we sit here the world looks at eachother as the villian. The amerian men and women in Iraq would be considered evil. You bag on GTA series as though the main character in the game are bad people. In some ways they are and in many they'er not. Take Nicko Belick. He come state side to live a better life. To start anew. But some how he ends up get caught up with the wrong people. Something like that you can try to walk away from but it's not that simple. As it is in real life. Some situation you just have to play the villian. I went in to the military myself I did want to be a hero, but I didn't want to play the villian. I rather play the part of the necessary evil. Heroism is only clear cut when specificlly defined like Champions Online. To make the line clear cut in World of Warcraft though. The only villian in that is the demon pulling the strings and the Forsaken.
There are two saying I go by.
"In order to become the hero you must first walk the path of a Villian."
The other is. "You yourself and other may see you as a hero, but stand with your enemy for a while. You may start to see it differently."
Just cause you see you self as the Hero doesn't make it always necessarily true. The same could be said about God and Lucifer.
Even an elaborate rationalization is a rationalization nontheless. It is semantic playing around, or simply said, bollocks.
I had fun playing the bad guy for once and I oddly enjoyed the Airport massacre as well, however to the topic at hand games like this should be available to adults and only adults not 13yr kids the whole issue for years has always been about the children but parents are too stupid these days to look at the box they say do you want that Johnny? Ive seen it before at gamestores then they complain about the violence , sexual content, etc its not the developers , governments fault its your fault for failing to be a responsible parent and say no you cant have it. Dont ruin it for the rest of us that have hair on our balls.....
I'm not an enormous fan of shooters, although I will cop to liking Painkiller, as twisted as that was, because nothing in gaming is much more fulfilling than dicing zombies to millions of bloody bits with a weapon that resembles a blender made with straight razors....lol. There were no "moral" considerations in chopping up baddies in this game.
ANYWAY.....
I have never had this "moral dilemma" feeling in any MMO. However, I'm a big single player RPG fan, and I have run across that in a couple of single player RPGs....ONE of them to the point that I actually had to LEAVE THE QUEST and go sit on a hill in the game overlooking the city and THINK about what I would do.
To explain, while trying not to spoil anything, those two games where I did actually question the "morals" of my decision, were Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines, and maybe MORE surprisingly notable....The Elder Scrolls: OBLIVION. In the latter, during your "growing up" as an assassin, for the Dark Brotherhood, you are required at one point to decide how to "handle" a certain situation amongst people (npcs) that you have grown to like and trust. And they have grown to like and trust you. Now you are called upon to perhaps do something very very....horrible. If you choose to do it.. there may be great benefit to you. However, if you choose not to do it....that also will lead to another path.
I literally.....had to go sit outside of the city walls, on a hill overlooking the town.....and THINK about this decision. And I found myself pondering it very seriously, and reminding myself...."it's only a game." However, after making the choice that I did....I didn't feel too good about myself. I felt a little ill. I think this speaks to the great immersion of Oblivion.
In VtM: Bloodlines, it was a little easier because, well....even as a more "human" Toreador....I was still a VAMPIRE, ya know? So it made it a little more palatable. lol.....pun intended.
So all in all....I think this tactic can be used in games to create tremendous immersion, for one, and secondly, perhaps.....a bit of self-discovery. Even if you choose the option you likely wouldn't choose in RL.....at least you stopped to consider your choice for a few minutes....or maybe not. Either way....it says something about us, and about how we view our games.
Great article! I really enjoyed reading it and remembering some times of great decisions that were "life altering" to my characters in games.
My problem with the 'No Russian' mission is that the game will not let you do the morally right choice: defending the civilians. If you attack the terrorists, you lose. If you want people to think of the choices you make then you have to give them real choices with real consequences and not just shoehorn them into paths that you want them to go on. It creates a binary setup that excuses any number of immoral or evil choices.
Years ago I part of a Pen & Paper D&D campaign where the DM was an idiot who pretty much offered us the choice of do someting disgusting or your character dies. I promptly said 'thanks but no thanks' and packed up my dice.
Th big part of 'it is just a game' is that you can choose not to play if the choices you are presented are not acceptable to you.
My problem with the 'No Russian' mission is that the game will not let you do the morally right choice: defending the civilians. If you attack the terrorists, you lose. If you want people to think of the choices you make then you have to give them real choices with real consequences and not just shoehorn them into paths that you want them to go on. It creates a binary setup that excuses any number of immoral or evil choices. Years ago I part of a Pen & Paper D&D campaign where the DM was an idiot who pretty much offered us the choice of do someting disgusting or your character dies. I promptly said 'thanks but no thanks' and packed up my dice. Th big part of 'it is just a game' is that you can choose not to play if the choices you are presented are not acceptable to you.
Absolutely right. I always moved Undead characters out of the starting zone in WoW after the first few quests, because I was repulsed by all the poisoning and plague-spreading involved in the later quests.
We are still Human beings when playing these games, and I do believe that moral choices do have a small effect on how we live our real world lives.
It's better to treat in-game characters as real people than to treat real people as less than Human. Even in the PS2 game Ico, I made a point of guiding the girl gently along, rather than dragging her forcefully by the arm.
"" Voice acting isn't an RPG element....it's just a production value." - grumpymel2
Warhammer Online, if you play chaos, your 4th or 5th quest is to kill civilians. Oh yeah, they are armed, with farm yard equipment and are no challenge whatsoever to even the most incompetent player. So whats the difference?
EQ2 has you killing humans for body parts to cook.
Lotro Monster Race kills hobbits to collect parts.
So, tell me again please how MMO's don't do disturbing stuff?
The point with Modern Warfare is that they crossed a line. And a line that didn't need to be crossed. They even did it cowardly because else they would have made the criminals involved muslims. They didn't. Not afraid to upset the western world but afraid to offend the middle east?
And the game is supposed to make a point about blindly following orders? Yet if you don't follow the orders of not blowing your cover, the game ends. No, sorry. MW2 just tried the shock approach to marketing, and it worked but in doing so it has lost all credibility.
I think the most interesting thing about the "No Russian" scenario is that it calls into question the priorities of your off screen superiors.
What is your primary mission? Why are you an agent in the first place?
Is it to protect and serve the innocent?
Or is it to "play the game" and infiltarate the organization, no matter what the cost...to include your soul?
What is the cost in blood to keep your cover? Is there a limit to how many civilians can die before too many have, and the cold cost/benefit analysis reverses itself?
That's the moral dillemma here that isn't being examined by the mechanism of the game...which simply tells you that if you don't go along with the terrorists, you've failed.
Real life doesn't work like that. The pixelation distorts the moral issues involved.
One of the problems with MMOs in general is that when you've got PvP, there are all sorts of rulesets and artificialities put into place in an attempt to regulate player behavior. Temporary enemy flags provide an example of one of these ruleset "solutions" that don't exist in reality. Also the fact that the consequence of your life being over, as in permadeath, doesn't exist in MMOs, This fact alone changes the dynamic considerably.
IRL, PvP is turned on all the time. There are no game master imposed rulesets that regulate it. Well, except for the ultimate one, of course. Permadeath.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
In almost 25 years of running pencil-and-paper RPG games, this is something I have long grappled with. I've run a world that has run the whole gambit of history: from see-an-orc/kill-an-orc, to a re-envisioning of orcs as victims of history, through a grand peaceful unification of cultures and then plotting through a long, slow collapse of empires to where all empathy and understanding have been forgotten and there is no peaceful coexistence even though deep down a few old-time players tragically know there aught to be a better way.
I have a deeply held but ill-defined notions of "good" and in games nothing turns me off faster than being forced to act out scenarios that cast me as an anti-hero. As I get older, my feelings both soften and harden. I would never PvP in an MMO - it just has an elemental feel of being wrong and I also find I feel more empathy for the faceless pixel orcs and have to stretch my imagination further and further to rationalize why my character is wading through them instead of trying to understand the root cause of their grievances and make peace. On the other hand, I feel embarrassed that I can still root through ancient newsgroup archives and find one of my earliest Internet posts naively worrying that some day someone might write a Star Wars game with a player playing on (*gasp*) the wrong side.
However, I can't help but think that in MW2, the "controversial mission" was just a part of the coldly calculated marketing plan intended to get it free advertising on every evening newscast: the ultimate amoral use of morality.
Wow, there certainly are a lot of would-be moral policemen in this thread making a lot of baseless accusations and ridiculous claims.
You would think that violence was invented the day video games hit the market by the some of these people talk.
But talking to people like this is like talking to a wall. Most people who think violent video games cause violence in kids just believe it because they've heard it somewhere, and it's a convenient explanation. We certainly wouldn't want to probe too deeply into the real issues that cause violence: Wealth disparity, Resource problems, Uncontrolled population growth, Religion, and Ignorance. Then we might actually have to blame ourselves rather than pixels on a computer screen and the programmers behind them.
What people are really upset about is being put in a situation where concepts like "good" and "bad" become fudged and moral decisions are turned on their heads. People are so hilariously uncomfortable with taking on an "evil" persona or seeing the world as something besides black and white that they cower in the corner and scream how morally depraved the people are who show them a different perspective on the world. It would be funny if these people didn't have so much political power in real life.
This is all just scapegoating. All the moral police can go sodomize themselves with pine cones as far as I'm concerned. Their scapegoating hurts our economy, it hurts our species, and it detracts from the real issues at hand.
The problem lies with the inability of many of the fps players to realize the persistence of the avatar in an online world dictates a different behavior. A MMO is on no longer just a game it becomes a living world where the avatar establishes a prescence that follows them throughout their existence.
Some rebel at this situation and react by attempting to ruin the experience of others. They soon find themselves ostracized and react negatively by attempting to demean the genre instead of trying to understand it.
However, I can't help but think that in MW2, the "controversial mission" was just a part of the coldly calculated marketing plan intended to get it free advertising on every evening newscast: the ultimate amoral use of morality.
A great deal of truth in this sentence.
There is no such thing as bad publicity.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Wow, there certainly are a lot of would-be moral policemen in this thread making a lot of baseless accusations and ridiculous claims. You would think that violence was invented the day video games hit the market by the some of these people talk. But talking to people like this is like talking to a wall. Most people who think violent video games cause violence in kids just believe it because they've heard it somewhere, and it's a convenient explanation. We certainly wouldn't want to probe too deeply into the real issues that cause violence: Wealth disparity, Resource problems, Uncontrolled population growth, Religion, and Ignorance. Then we might actually have to blame ourselves rather than pixels on a computer screen and the programmers behind them. What people are really upset about is being put in a situation where concepts like "good" and "bad" become fudged and moral decisions are turned on their heads. People are so hilariously uncomfortable with taking on an "evil" persona or seeing the world as something besides black and white that they cower in the corner and scream how morally depraved the people are who show them a different perspective on the world. It would be funny if these people didn't have so much political power in real life. This is all just scapegoating. All the moral police can go sodomize themselves with pine cones as far as I'm concerned. Their scapegoating hurts our economy, it hurts our species, and it detracts from the real issues at hand.
They're afraid of true empathy and thinking of others because then they might have to change and admit to things they aren't willing to admit. They're like that complete moron several posts above that wants the terrorists to be arabs. White, English-speaking mass murderers can't possibly exist.
Every time an issue like this comes up in this forum, I see this horde of intolerant assholes circle-jerking throughout threads and making the world even worse than what it already is. I do hope they grow up someday, though, and learn to think instead of holing themselves up in an illusory bubble of reductionism.
Well kudos to MW2 for actually invoking emotions of the players. In the big picture this will help demostrate the potential of this form of entertainment. Whether you did it or not, killed or blew your cover, you had to take a minute and consider it.
Now as far as the "controversy" and how it applies to MMO's...well how about "not so much" I can count off on one hand the amount of "moral and or ethical" decisions I've had the opportunity to make in the 8 years of MMO game play I have endured.
Most MMO story lines boil down to "take the mission or leave it" and that is that. No true dialog trees no true impact on anything, kill your 10 rats and move on to the next farmer Bob. IMHO, that's not really a choice. It's the choice of "play the way we designed the game or log off".
Sandbox or themepark, there is virtually no dynamic impact whatso ever.
Now in regards to sandbox, that is slightly different. If the game has some type of open PvP you can be faced with all sorts of "moral & ethical" decisions but that is because of the game environment and how theplayers behave. EVE doesn't captivate it's cultist because it has a great story and great content, it's because you need to be on your toes and you can saw your mates head off at any time if you want. BUT IMHO you end up playing "Days of our Lives Online" in these type games with groups of players all trying one up each other day after day. The game itself never throws you a curveball, which is fine. All these types of game do is set down a playfield with some basic rules of engagement.
Everyone hopped into MW2 thinking "cool, time to kick some bad guy arse" and ended up in an awkward situation for a few minutes.
It's a shame that it's FPS games that are excelling at this type of thing more and more while MMO's which should be the leaders of the pack, stay the course and refuse to change at all.
It's a shame that it's FPS games that are excelling at this type of thing more and more while MMO's which should be the leaders of the pack, stay the course and refuse to change at all.
Well, single player games are much more controlled from a story telling perspective. You lead the player down a path, and they're on it. They can vary things a bit (KOTOR with lightside/darkside, GTA with its sandbox elements) but overall, you don't have many options. There's only one way to advance the story.
MMOs, especially sandboxes, offer a lot more freedom...and developers lose control. Which scares them. A lot. It's not just a control freak thing, but the fact that you can't anticipate what will happen like you can in a linear RPG or FPS. Players stress the rulesets in ways that you didn't anticipate because "working as intended" is the holy grail...you see this in WoW where players find other ways to beat raid bosses that the developers never saw coming, because they get tunnel vision, fast. So they go back and change the rulesets of the raid to get the players back on the path THEY (the developers) want them on.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
As far as Modern Warfare 2 is involved, i think Grand Theft Auto was more immoral and controversial than this one, maybe some players have reacted strongly to the Terrorist acts of MW 2 situations however to me that is no different than when one kills a father of 3 to steal their car or runs over a granny while avoiding to be caught by the police in GTA.
But games tend to downplay the moral considerations involved with the action that they contain, as Lum is is hinting in the article as well.
I however have some comments relating to the following points.
"And from a market perspective, the theme park has won, overwhelmingly. World of Warcraft’s position in the market alone sees to that, if nothing else."
I am sorry, but I do not agree with this. I do not think WoW can even be used as the point of reference to make that assertion.
First, we fail to consider the "what if" WoW was designed as a Virtual World instead of a Themepark game. We do not know if it would have had the same success, but chances are, in my opinion, that it would have, simply because WoW introduced so many non MMORPG players to the genre which came over from other genre of games as part of a loyal following of Blizzard.
Hence, since WoW did not get its success by attracting over to its side the majority of the existing MMORPG players, to assert that the Themepark has overwhelmingly won is false.
Even if from a market perspective, there simply haven't been two equal side that measure to one another in the History of MMORPG's. Ultima Online was the first that popularised the genre (in a sence EQ etc WoW etc would not be there if it were not for UO), but UO did so 12 years ago within a different demographic and Internet Gaming Period.
So when several games of AAA caliber make it to the market within the same gaming period then only can we have an accurate measurement of which design approach has more merits or even start thinking declaring a winner I think.
Until that actually happens, the question is not settled at all. Themepark games are simply easier and more manageable to make than Virtual Worlds, and the Industry is simply going after the $$$ here.
On the other hand, how many Themepark games have "failed" recently? And how does that make the Themepark game overwhelmingly victorious? There is really only 1 themepark game that made it big and it actually won over ALL of the rest of Themepark games, other Themepark games were the competition when WoW was launched, and ever since everyone and their dogs have been trying to copy WoW in hopes of a peace of the pie and ended up starving...
EVE did not lose any customers over WoW nor did UO. So i think someone has it wrong here in that regard, and would need to reconsider from making such statements.
"or the fact that by the time a typical player has reached the end of their character development cycle, they are a virtual mass murderer, having killed literally hundreds of thousands of orcs and goblins and bandits and what have you in the endless journey that is the art of beating up entities for their lunch money."
This is so very true, again however, in my experience, this is more kin to Themepark games than Virtual Worlds, since when we say World we also imply possibilities and there is more than 10 ways for a character to make a living in a Virtual World rather than in a Themepark game.
Therefore, if there is a statement to make in relation to this here, it would be that Themepark games encourage Immoral behavior in a much greater degree than a Virtual World game which in many case could actually also invite its players to make moral choices and encourage moral behavior.
Something that has sadly been lost over the years since the Lust of $$$ has taken over, and it is only normal that an immoral decision spawns immoral designs.
Other than that, a fine read
- Duke Suraknar - Order of the Silver Star, OSS
ESKA, Playing MMORPG's since Ultima Online 1997 - Order of the Silver Serpent, Atlantic Shard
I see a lot of hate for pvpers here... Keep in mind if people didn't want to pvp they would not put themselves into a position to be attacked (ie: Reroll pve ffs). It's called risk and reward. The best farming areas are usually in pvp enabled areas (0.0 in EVE, high level areas etc).
The best cure is prevention, if you go into an area of il repute at night, undefended and flouting your wares, and you get attacked and robbed, well you should have thought before you went there... In a perfect world you'd be safe everwhere, but the world is not perfect so you must take your safety into your own hands.
An example from EVE that i've seen and heard too many times is people whining after getting ganked after passing through certain camped gates - a little research and route planning could have kept them safe, but people want everything on a plate these days...
As said earlier, prescripted quests get bland after a time, the only true stories are the ones the players make, again citing EVE, a sandbox. It's tough to get real emotion in a theme park game, whereas sandboxes with real interaction between real people fosters emotion and roleplay greatly.
The EVE devs have been on record saying that everyone playing EVE is roleplaying just by participating, that there is no other option. The metagame is held as part of the world.
Sandboxes are very tough to play however, since you must make your own goals and work together to achieve them.
If you want an easy theme park you can't expect to have the potential rewards of a more difficult sandbox.
Anyway, having not played the MW2 scene in question i only have other's opinions to go on, and from what i've heard, it ranged from a good way of bringing out emotion in the game world, of making you really want to fight these terrorists (an enemy you can hate is much easier to fight, a technique used repeatedly in the real world) to a clumsy shoehorning of "morals" into an otherwise railroaded plot.
It could have been done much better, but it's good that we are having these discussions of ethics and immersion. I think gaming deserves to become a respected medium like art, film, music etc. Being able to cover important and taboo subjects without an outrage each time...
There are bad examples of all of the above, and I don't want to open the can-of-worms that is "Gaming as an Art Form" in this thread, so i'll leave it there...
Interactivity is a great tool for getting closer and closer to your target audience, making them feel strongly. I don't think gaming should just be about "fun" all the time, but rather "entertainment". Gaming will hopefully grow up some in the next few years to come. Here's hoping TSW and APB, being contemporary as they are, have some aspects we can all relate to....
edit @ ;Suraknar's awesome post that was done while making my post...
Great points there indeed, i remember gta4, though you were never forced to drive unsafely really. I had a friend that would never speed or run civilians over.
I would have prefered better police in gta4 however (what boils down to "consequences for actions), they did market it somewhat on how good the police would be at chasing you, but they were still useless.
Would have been interesting if jail actually forced you into an annoying minigame (peeling potatoes? ), so you'd be more inclined to avoid it.
About virtual worlds, indeed immoral actions will ruin you in a virtual world, when the community turn their back on you, exile is the worst form of punishment a virtual society can give, and an effective one when no-one is buying your goods or spending time with you. Though ofcourse, troll communities also thrive, it's an interesting mirroring of real societies, and honestly, it helps make the place more colourful.
As long as the infrastructure itself is solid (balanced, that holy grail of system design), I don't think players should have so many restrictions, let the players have the tools to police themselves and watch a society blossom...
Comments
Related to this is the lack of relevance of your choices evident in too many MMOs. Why even bother thinking about whether your actions are right or wrong when no matter what quest you do it only gives you more XP and assets, with no further consequences. Standard procedure : Pick up all quests in an area and do them. No need to engage brain.
For the same reason I can understand why a lot of people don't bother to read the Quest-texts ... they can be sure that beyond the basic instruction on what to do, where to do it and whom to do it to, the text contains no information you actually need to think about.
Some MMOs have things like Faction-Quests where you standing rise for one Faction and decrease for another when you finish them. That way there is at least some consequences to your actions. It would be nice to see that kind of systems be more common and more expanded in the future. Perhaps with the characters moving through a complex web of Factions.
And I don't mean that one behaviour should be punished and another rewarded in the game. Just that there should be consequences to your actions, and some of those consequences _should_ limit your character to what he or she can do.
That way you would have to take responsibility for your own decisions. For good or bad.
Great read-I didn't buy the game because of the brutal attacks at the airport. The real world is crazy enough and this type of game play where everyone was murdered at the airport just fuels the "crazies" that much more. Game or no game, it wasn't okay to put that kind of violence into the game.
I played that part of the game. I broke my cover. Started shooting the bad guys. Fuck them!
I wouldn't go so far as to say 'utterly pointless'.... but that's what I'm talking about with the word immersion. Honestly, (like you), I want more immersion in games/movies/books than less. But that's where choice comes in, as well as some themes we can relate to.
For example, I see some movie, some crazy guy killing young girls, cutting them up, selling their parts at a butcher shops, etc. It's gross, extreme, and something clicks in the back of my mind "ridiculous... I would never do that" ... then I just turn it off with "it's just a movie...boring actually". So I don't relate, I don't feel anything... to me, it's a waste of time to watch such a movie. Same with a game... actions/choices resulting in extremes, or perhaps no-choice at all, then I can't stop the switch flipping in my mind "it's just a game... click ... click... yawn".
But give me a choice related to something closer to home. I see a movie with a guy named Joe who gets mad at his peer Bill who has back-stabbed him at work to take his promotion... so he looses it, punches him out, and Bill dies. Joe runs... police find him, jail time, kids suffer, just a ruined life all around. If told right, it's sort of chilling... why? because we are tempted (possibly) in RL with the same scenarios.
That's when it gets chilling and immersive, when a game has choices (good and bad) and they are made in scenarios closer to what we might really experience in RL. If no choice, it's easy to watch anything and just turn it off... it might desensitize, but that can happen with any media (books, movies, games etc)... and the end effect of desensitizing is boredom (there's a lot of that around here imo).
Good read.
Personally, I believe that a game is a game. Like a terrorist killing people in a blockbuster movie (which seems entirely acceptable,) a game should be no different. The scene in question is an important one that sets up the whole plot line of the video game, so why all the outrage?
Should your kids be playing Modern Warfare 2? Are they old enough to understand the difference between right and wrong? Can they understand that the game is just a game, and in real life, you have consequences for your actions? That's your decision to make.
But as far as controversy in general goes, every intelligent person should only take from it what was meant to be taken.
People create controversy to entertain themselves, and those who feel personally attacked.
I personally hope you 'are' attacked. By dogs. Big ones.
Man I laughed when I realized my level 80 holy priest is a mass murderer...
My Thoughts on Content Locust
I play RPGs to be the hero. To do good in the world my character inhabits.
Games like the GTA series are disgusting and those who play them are not people I would ever choose to associate with. They are wish fulfillment for hoodlum wannabes.
Lol. WHo ever you are. You come straight out of a comic book. Even in games there is no hero. The line is not as clear cut as that. It's not even that defined in World of Warcraft and it's definatly not that clear cut in real life. Even as we sit here the world looks at eachother as the villian. The amerian men and women in Iraq would be considered evil. You bag on GTA series as though the main character in the game are bad people. In some ways they are and in many they'er not. Take Nicko Belick. He come state side to live a better life. To start anew. But some how he ends up get caught up with the wrong people. Something like that you can try to walk away from but it's not that simple. As it is in real life. Some situation you just have to play the villian. I went in to the military myself I did want to be a hero, but I didn't want to play the villian. I rather play the part of the necessary evil. Heroism is only clear cut when specificlly defined like Champions Online. To make the line clear cut in World of Warcraft though. The only villian in that is the demon pulling the strings and the Forsaken.
There are two saying I go by.
"In order to become the hero you must first walk the path of a Villian."
The other is. "You yourself and other may see you as a hero, but stand with your enemy for a while. You may start to see it differently."
Just cause you see you self as the Hero doesn't make it always necessarily true. The same could be said about God and Lucifer.
Even an elaborate rationalization is a rationalization nontheless. It is semantic playing around, or simply said, bollocks.
Hey Scott,
Cool story bro and I'm gonna let you finish but....
Now how about you get back to your new job.
Israphael is still filled with botters, gold sellers and spammers. Less MMORPG and more Game Security IMO.
In the time it took to write this you could have done the job personally. Public perception and all.
This kind of stuff may be interesting to read but only makes me think I'm already paying you not to do your your new job.
/nerd rage off
I had fun playing the bad guy for once and I oddly enjoyed the Airport massacre as well, however to the topic at hand games like this should be available to adults and only adults not 13yr kids the whole issue for years has always been about the children but parents are too stupid these days to look at the box they say do you want that Johnny? Ive seen it before at gamestores then they complain about the violence , sexual content, etc its not the developers , governments fault its your fault for failing to be a responsible parent and say no you cant have it. Dont ruin it for the rest of us that have hair on our balls.....
I'm not an enormous fan of shooters, although I will cop to liking Painkiller, as twisted as that was, because nothing in gaming is much more fulfilling than dicing zombies to millions of bloody bits with a weapon that resembles a blender made with straight razors....lol. There were no "moral" considerations in chopping up baddies in this game.
ANYWAY.....
I have never had this "moral dilemma" feeling in any MMO. However, I'm a big single player RPG fan, and I have run across that in a couple of single player RPGs....ONE of them to the point that I actually had to LEAVE THE QUEST and go sit on a hill in the game overlooking the city and THINK about what I would do.
To explain, while trying not to spoil anything, those two games where I did actually question the "morals" of my decision, were Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines, and maybe MORE surprisingly notable....The Elder Scrolls: OBLIVION. In the latter, during your "growing up" as an assassin, for the Dark Brotherhood, you are required at one point to decide how to "handle" a certain situation amongst people (npcs) that you have grown to like and trust. And they have grown to like and trust you. Now you are called upon to perhaps do something very very....horrible. If you choose to do it.. there may be great benefit to you. However, if you choose not to do it....that also will lead to another path.
I literally.....had to go sit outside of the city walls, on a hill overlooking the town.....and THINK about this decision. And I found myself pondering it very seriously, and reminding myself...."it's only a game." However, after making the choice that I did....I didn't feel too good about myself. I felt a little ill. I think this speaks to the great immersion of Oblivion.
In VtM: Bloodlines, it was a little easier because, well....even as a more "human" Toreador....I was still a VAMPIRE, ya know? So it made it a little more palatable. lol.....pun intended.
So all in all....I think this tactic can be used in games to create tremendous immersion, for one, and secondly, perhaps.....a bit of self-discovery. Even if you choose the option you likely wouldn't choose in RL.....at least you stopped to consider your choice for a few minutes....or maybe not. Either way....it says something about us, and about how we view our games.
Great article! I really enjoyed reading it and remembering some times of great decisions that were "life altering" to my characters in games.
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
What about those of us who shave?
"" Voice acting isn't an RPG element....it's just a production value." - grumpymel2
My problem with the 'No Russian' mission is that the game will not let you do the morally right choice: defending the civilians. If you attack the terrorists, you lose. If you want people to think of the choices you make then you have to give them real choices with real consequences and not just shoehorn them into paths that you want them to go on. It creates a binary setup that excuses any number of immoral or evil choices.
Years ago I part of a Pen & Paper D&D campaign where the DM was an idiot who pretty much offered us the choice of do someting disgusting or your character dies. I promptly said 'thanks but no thanks' and packed up my dice.
Th big part of 'it is just a game' is that you can choose not to play if the choices you are presented are not acceptable to you.
Absolutely right. I always moved Undead characters out of the starting zone in WoW after the first few quests, because I was repulsed by all the poisoning and plague-spreading involved in the later quests.
We are still Human beings when playing these games, and I do believe that moral choices do have a small effect on how we live our real world lives.
It's better to treat in-game characters as real people than to treat real people as less than Human. Even in the PS2 game Ico, I made a point of guiding the girl gently along, rather than dragging her forcefully by the arm.
"" Voice acting isn't an RPG element....it's just a production value." - grumpymel2
Does this woman actually play MMORPG's.
Warhammer Online, if you play chaos, your 4th or 5th quest is to kill civilians. Oh yeah, they are armed, with farm yard equipment and are no challenge whatsoever to even the most incompetent player. So whats the difference?
EQ2 has you killing humans for body parts to cook.
Lotro Monster Race kills hobbits to collect parts.
So, tell me again please how MMO's don't do disturbing stuff?
The point with Modern Warfare is that they crossed a line. And a line that didn't need to be crossed. They even did it cowardly because else they would have made the criminals involved muslims. They didn't. Not afraid to upset the western world but afraid to offend the middle east?
And the game is supposed to make a point about blindly following orders? Yet if you don't follow the orders of not blowing your cover, the game ends. No, sorry. MW2 just tried the shock approach to marketing, and it worked but in doing so it has lost all credibility.
I think the most interesting thing about the "No Russian" scenario is that it calls into question the priorities of your off screen superiors.
What is your primary mission? Why are you an agent in the first place?
Is it to protect and serve the innocent?
Or is it to "play the game" and infiltarate the organization, no matter what the cost...to include your soul?
What is the cost in blood to keep your cover? Is there a limit to how many civilians can die before too many have, and the cold cost/benefit analysis reverses itself?
That's the moral dillemma here that isn't being examined by the mechanism of the game...which simply tells you that if you don't go along with the terrorists, you've failed.
Real life doesn't work like that. The pixelation distorts the moral issues involved.
One of the problems with MMOs in general is that when you've got PvP, there are all sorts of rulesets and artificialities put into place in an attempt to regulate player behavior. Temporary enemy flags provide an example of one of these ruleset "solutions" that don't exist in reality. Also the fact that the consequence of your life being over, as in permadeath, doesn't exist in MMOs, This fact alone changes the dynamic considerably.
IRL, PvP is turned on all the time. There are no game master imposed rulesets that regulate it. Well, except for the ultimate one, of course. Permadeath.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Once a denizen of Ahazi
In almost 25 years of running pencil-and-paper RPG games, this is something I have long grappled with. I've run a world that has run the whole gambit of history: from see-an-orc/kill-an-orc, to a re-envisioning of orcs as victims of history, through a grand peaceful unification of cultures and then plotting through a long, slow collapse of empires to where all empathy and understanding have been forgotten and there is no peaceful coexistence even though deep down a few old-time players tragically know there aught to be a better way.
I have a deeply held but ill-defined notions of "good" and in games nothing turns me off faster than being forced to act out scenarios that cast me as an anti-hero. As I get older, my feelings both soften and harden. I would never PvP in an MMO - it just has an elemental feel of being wrong and I also find I feel more empathy for the faceless pixel orcs and have to stretch my imagination further and further to rationalize why my character is wading through them instead of trying to understand the root cause of their grievances and make peace. On the other hand, I feel embarrassed that I can still root through ancient newsgroup archives and find one of my earliest Internet posts naively worrying that some day someone might write a Star Wars game with a player playing on (*gasp*) the wrong side.
However, I can't help but think that in MW2, the "controversial mission" was just a part of the coldly calculated marketing plan intended to get it free advertising on every evening newscast: the ultimate amoral use of morality.
Wow, there certainly are a lot of would-be moral policemen in this thread making a lot of baseless accusations and ridiculous claims.
You would think that violence was invented the day video games hit the market by the some of these people talk.
But talking to people like this is like talking to a wall. Most people who think violent video games cause violence in kids just believe it because they've heard it somewhere, and it's a convenient explanation. We certainly wouldn't want to probe too deeply into the real issues that cause violence: Wealth disparity, Resource problems, Uncontrolled population growth, Religion, and Ignorance. Then we might actually have to blame ourselves rather than pixels on a computer screen and the programmers behind them.
What people are really upset about is being put in a situation where concepts like "good" and "bad" become fudged and moral decisions are turned on their heads. People are so hilariously uncomfortable with taking on an "evil" persona or seeing the world as something besides black and white that they cower in the corner and scream how morally depraved the people are who show them a different perspective on the world. It would be funny if these people didn't have so much political power in real life.
This is all just scapegoating. All the moral police can go sodomize themselves with pine cones as far as I'm concerned. Their scapegoating hurts our economy, it hurts our species, and it detracts from the real issues at hand.
The problem lies with the inability of many of the fps players to realize the persistence of the avatar in an online world dictates a different behavior. A MMO is on no longer just a game it becomes a living world where the avatar establishes a prescence that follows them throughout their existence.
Some rebel at this situation and react by attempting to ruin the experience of others. They soon find themselves ostracized and react negatively by attempting to demean the genre instead of trying to understand it.
A great deal of truth in this sentence.
There is no such thing as bad publicity.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Once a denizen of Ahazi
They're afraid of true empathy and thinking of others because then they might have to change and admit to things they aren't willing to admit. They're like that complete moron several posts above that wants the terrorists to be arabs. White, English-speaking mass murderers can't possibly exist.
Every time an issue like this comes up in this forum, I see this horde of intolerant assholes circle-jerking throughout threads and making the world even worse than what it already is. I do hope they grow up someday, though, and learn to think instead of holing themselves up in an illusory bubble of reductionism.
Well kudos to MW2 for actually invoking emotions of the players. In the big picture this will help demostrate the potential of this form of entertainment. Whether you did it or not, killed or blew your cover, you had to take a minute and consider it.
Now as far as the "controversy" and how it applies to MMO's...well how about "not so much" I can count off on one hand the amount of "moral and or ethical" decisions I've had the opportunity to make in the 8 years of MMO game play I have endured.
Most MMO story lines boil down to "take the mission or leave it" and that is that. No true dialog trees no true impact on anything, kill your 10 rats and move on to the next farmer Bob. IMHO, that's not really a choice. It's the choice of "play the way we designed the game or log off".
Sandbox or themepark, there is virtually no dynamic impact whatso ever.
Now in regards to sandbox, that is slightly different. If the game has some type of open PvP you can be faced with all sorts of "moral & ethical" decisions but that is because of the game environment and how the players behave. EVE doesn't captivate it's cultist because it has a great story and great content, it's because you need to be on your toes and you can saw your mates head off at any time if you want. BUT IMHO you end up playing "Days of our Lives Online" in these type games with groups of players all trying one up each other day after day. The game itself never throws you a curveball, which is fine. All these types of game do is set down a playfield with some basic rules of engagement.
Everyone hopped into MW2 thinking "cool, time to kick some bad guy arse" and ended up in an awkward situation for a few minutes.
It's a shame that it's FPS games that are excelling at this type of thing more and more while MMO's which should be the leaders of the pack, stay the course and refuse to change at all.
Well, single player games are much more controlled from a story telling perspective. You lead the player down a path, and they're on it. They can vary things a bit (KOTOR with lightside/darkside, GTA with its sandbox elements) but overall, you don't have many options. There's only one way to advance the story.
MMOs, especially sandboxes, offer a lot more freedom...and developers lose control. Which scares them. A lot. It's not just a control freak thing, but the fact that you can't anticipate what will happen like you can in a linear RPG or FPS. Players stress the rulesets in ways that you didn't anticipate because "working as intended" is the holy grail...you see this in WoW where players find other ways to beat raid bosses that the developers never saw coming, because they get tunnel vision, fast. So they go back and change the rulesets of the raid to get the players back on the path THEY (the developers) want them on.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Once a denizen of Ahazi
HelloKitty Island is thatta way ---->
If I want morality....I'll go to church.
Our greatest glory is not in never falling but in rising everytime we fall.
Interesting article, I enjoyed reading it.
As far as Modern Warfare 2 is involved, i think Grand Theft Auto was more immoral and controversial than this one, maybe some players have reacted strongly to the Terrorist acts of MW 2 situations however to me that is no different than when one kills a father of 3 to steal their car or runs over a granny while avoiding to be caught by the police in GTA.
But games tend to downplay the moral considerations involved with the action that they contain, as Lum is is hinting in the article as well.
I however have some comments relating to the following points.
"And from a market perspective, the theme park has won, overwhelmingly. World of Warcraft’s position in the market alone sees to that, if nothing else."
I am sorry, but I do not agree with this. I do not think WoW can even be used as the point of reference to make that assertion.
First, we fail to consider the "what if" WoW was designed as a Virtual World instead of a Themepark game. We do not know if it would have had the same success, but chances are, in my opinion, that it would have, simply because WoW introduced so many non MMORPG players to the genre which came over from other genre of games as part of a loyal following of Blizzard.
Hence, since WoW did not get its success by attracting over to its side the majority of the existing MMORPG players, to assert that the Themepark has overwhelmingly won is false.
Even if from a market perspective, there simply haven't been two equal side that measure to one another in the History of MMORPG's. Ultima Online was the first that popularised the genre (in a sence EQ etc WoW etc would not be there if it were not for UO), but UO did so 12 years ago within a different demographic and Internet Gaming Period.
So when several games of AAA caliber make it to the market within the same gaming period then only can we have an accurate measurement of which design approach has more merits or even start thinking declaring a winner I think.
Until that actually happens, the question is not settled at all. Themepark games are simply easier and more manageable to make than Virtual Worlds, and the Industry is simply going after the $$$ here.
On the other hand, how many Themepark games have "failed" recently? And how does that make the Themepark game overwhelmingly victorious? There is really only 1 themepark game that made it big and it actually won over ALL of the rest of Themepark games, other Themepark games were the competition when WoW was launched, and ever since everyone and their dogs have been trying to copy WoW in hopes of a peace of the pie and ended up starving...
EVE did not lose any customers over WoW nor did UO. So i think someone has it wrong here in that regard, and would need to reconsider from making such statements.
"or the fact that by the time a typical player has reached the end of their character development cycle, they are a virtual mass murderer, having killed literally hundreds of thousands of orcs and goblins and bandits and what have you in the endless journey that is the art of beating up entities for their lunch money."
This is so very true, again however, in my experience, this is more kin to Themepark games than Virtual Worlds, since when we say World we also imply possibilities and there is more than 10 ways for a character to make a living in a Virtual World rather than in a Themepark game.
Therefore, if there is a statement to make in relation to this here, it would be that Themepark games encourage Immoral behavior in a much greater degree than a Virtual World game which in many case could actually also invite its players to make moral choices and encourage moral behavior.
Something that has sadly been lost over the years since the Lust of $$$ has taken over, and it is only normal that an immoral decision spawns immoral designs.
Other than that, a fine read
Order of the Silver Star, OSS
ESKA, Playing MMORPG's since Ultima Online 1997 - Order of the Silver Serpent, Atlantic Shard
I see a lot of hate for pvpers here... Keep in mind if people didn't want to pvp they would not put themselves into a position to be attacked (ie: Reroll pve ffs). It's called risk and reward. The best farming areas are usually in pvp enabled areas (0.0 in EVE, high level areas etc).
The best cure is prevention, if you go into an area of il repute at night, undefended and flouting your wares, and you get attacked and robbed, well you should have thought before you went there... In a perfect world you'd be safe everwhere, but the world is not perfect so you must take your safety into your own hands.
An example from EVE that i've seen and heard too many times is people whining after getting ganked after passing through certain camped gates - a little research and route planning could have kept them safe, but people want everything on a plate these days...
As said earlier, prescripted quests get bland after a time, the only true stories are the ones the players make, again citing EVE, a sandbox. It's tough to get real emotion in a theme park game, whereas sandboxes with real interaction between real people fosters emotion and roleplay greatly.
The EVE devs have been on record saying that everyone playing EVE is roleplaying just by participating, that there is no other option. The metagame is held as part of the world.
Sandboxes are very tough to play however, since you must make your own goals and work together to achieve them.
If you want an easy theme park you can't expect to have the potential rewards of a more difficult sandbox.
Anyway, having not played the MW2 scene in question i only have other's opinions to go on, and from what i've heard, it ranged from a good way of bringing out emotion in the game world, of making you really want to fight these terrorists (an enemy you can hate is much easier to fight, a technique used repeatedly in the real world) to a clumsy shoehorning of "morals" into an otherwise railroaded plot.
It could have been done much better, but it's good that we are having these discussions of ethics and immersion. I think gaming deserves to become a respected medium like art, film, music etc. Being able to cover important and taboo subjects without an outrage each time...
There are bad examples of all of the above, and I don't want to open the can-of-worms that is "Gaming as an Art Form" in this thread, so i'll leave it there...
Interactivity is a great tool for getting closer and closer to your target audience, making them feel strongly. I don't think gaming should just be about "fun" all the time, but rather "entertainment". Gaming will hopefully grow up some in the next few years to come. Here's hoping TSW and APB, being contemporary as they are, have some aspects we can all relate to....
edit @ ;Suraknar's awesome post that was done while making my post...
Great points there indeed, i remember gta4, though you were never forced to drive unsafely really. I had a friend that would never speed or run civilians over.
I would have prefered better police in gta4 however (what boils down to "consequences for actions), they did market it somewhat on how good the police would be at chasing you, but they were still useless.
Would have been interesting if jail actually forced you into an annoying minigame (peeling potatoes?
), so you'd be more inclined to avoid it.
About virtual worlds, indeed immoral actions will ruin you in a virtual world, when the community turn their back on you, exile is the worst form of punishment a virtual society can give, and an effective one when no-one is buying your goods or spending time with you. Though ofcourse, troll communities also thrive, it's an interesting mirroring of real societies, and honestly, it helps make the place more colourful.
As long as the infrastructure itself is solid (balanced, that holy grail of system design), I don't think players should have so many restrictions, let the players have the tools to police themselves and watch a society blossom...
<Welcome to my world>