Your 'broad definition' of marriage isnt a definition of marriage at all. Its soap opera garbage fit for tabloids and super market bookshelves. If you want to take a good look at how it works all you need to do is look at the divorce rate, single parent increases, devolution of family value, and increases in youth violence. Look at when all these things started occurring. Its no coincidence that they all happened together, and its not the first historical documentation of such a thing occurring. Rome had the same problems in its decline. So did Egypt. So did many of the dynastic periods in Chinese history.
Since this has happened before, in some regard, is it really evolution, or is that simply a label uneducated people slap on a trendy idea to make it sound appealing?
Food for thought.
I hate to say it since its quite grim, but this^ is sadly correct. Both history and even our current family law system support what is being pointed out here. I would suggest that if you doubt this, you spend some time looking into family law. I should warn you that looking into it will possibly leave you with no faith in government. Marriage is simply a pretty packaged idea that is desighned to lead to divorce. Baseing Marriage on love is a recipe for failure. If you want to be with someone for the rest of your days, then just do it. Talk is cheap so you can imagine how little saying "I do" is worth. If the gays were smart, they wouldnt want marriage in the first place. The advantages are nothing compared to the liabilities it creates. Even alot of us straights are finally coming around on this one. That being said i dont think they shouldnt have the option of being able to get married, of course i also dont think commiting suicide should be illegal either.
Being edgy is throwing political agendas out into the light of public? Why not add religion to that too? "Religion and politics are too things you should never discuss in public. " I am sure everyone has heard that phrase before and there are a number of reasons why it is true.
You will find if you spend too much time discussing either in public, you won't have too many friends afterwards. Both are things people believe in and have passion for. Both are things people have actually died defending, so it is clear that both of these things are a little more than "edgy".
When creating a mmorpg, it is important to remember the MM part. If you are going to create one with the political undertones discussed here, you are just creating something the majority of people do not want to see and completely forgetting the MM part stands for Massive Multiplayer. Simply put, anything the majority of people do not want to see will be avoided.
So to me, it looks like the auther wants "edgy" games that are empty and not really mmos but rather rpgs. They have consoles for that, you know.
If we fail to change the things of today, they will become the lucid nighmares of tommorrow.
The ideas in the OP and the debate are fascinating but I expect it all really boils down to this: games are ENTERTAINMENT intended to generate a PROFIT (most of them, at least).
So it's simple: take whatever idea you have, like elves marrying orcs and having children, and ask 'Will it make the game fun for a large audience?'. If not, it won't likely make it into a game, even if its a lofty social principle.
I am sure exceptions will occur. Some game designers seem to stick to their principles as much as they can. But we'll always consider them to be the 'example everyone else should follow'...but noone does/
Very interesting article though my definition of edgier is different from Jaime's. What I would love to do in an MMO would be more on combat mechanics than RP or social stuff.
I like game world changes by players the most. Not enough games allow you do this. I know a lot of people hated Shadbow Bane, but I think kudos should be given to it for being one of the first games that allowed players to change the environment so very much.
Character customisation does need to be enhanced but I'm against breaking lore: elves in LotRO shouldn't have 'afro' or 'oriental' options since it doesn't fit the lore of the books. Elves are from Northern European folklore but most games follow the Tolkeinesque version of elves. There are spirits in African folklore too that share similarities with elves. If say we had a game that had Yoruban ijimere, I'd be disappointed if I could make a European-looking one. If a huge change were to be made, I think that the game should be started over with completely new lore that goes away from the usual European elves, dwarves, trolls, etc.
I'd like to see a lot more options for making characters: skinny characters, fat characters, female characters who don't look like barbie dolls, male characters who don't look like they pump steroids into their veins, male characters with really long hair (that one is really rare actually), really short characters, really tall characters. It would be cool to have those options. The games that really stand out for that are CoH/CoV and SWG that I've played. I've read that CO has great customization as well as APB. AO was ahead of its time for letting people make African and Asian solitus characters and giving a 'fat' option.
For marriage, I am against putting systems in place that make it beneficial to hook up outside of role-play, especially if there is PvP in the game. If there is a benefit beyond good role-play, it does 'force' you to hook up with someone. As for who can marry who or how many partners are involved? I really don't give a damn. The more options the 'marrier'. It's none of my business unless it's one of my character's getting married.
To many people watch Glen Beck in here. There is a simple solution for this, if a game is created with options such as creating avatars that are not what you deem to be socially acceptable, or are giving an option that you don't approve of (such as gay marriage) then do not play that game. I for one welcome more choices to customize my character.
That's why I uninstalled the garbage. And, I think Beck is an idiot by the way. Bill O'reilly on the other hand...
I stick by my statement...don't force RW issues on us when we are playing games to escape them. People have the freedom to RP marriages in a game without it being something everyone is exposed to.
Horusra, evolution means to move to a better stage.
<Internet pedant>
No, actually it doesn't, because "better stage" implies some kind of progression, and evolution has nothing to do with progression. Evolution, rigorously defined, is "a change in allele frequency". More colloquially, this means "adaptation to the environment in order to reproduce genes more successfully", regardless of our notions of what "better" or "worse" is. Evolution often means change that is apparently worse for the individual organism, but which causes better reproductive success. Eg: hive species, species with extreme sexual adaptations like the peacock and so forth
<Internet pedant?
Applying the above to MMOs, we can quite reasonably say that Farmville is a evolutionarily advanced MMO, even though it seems to us that it is very "inferior" to "real" MMOs. I would compare Farmville to one of the more baroque parasites like Sacculina.
It plays a nice head game by saying her ideas are "controversial" but that was only put in there so it could always be argued that people would be against them because they are controversial. Well, they aren't controversial, they are useless.
Jesus christ, MMORPG.com, I know you only have 3 female columnists, but I know good and well she is no where near as good as you could do. Most of her articles just have me palming my face off.
EDIT: I'm not against the things she says, rather, I think they would do NOTHING to improve the game itself, and should never have been made into an article. It looks like something I'd see on some college feminists blog rather than a well known genre site.
Considering we can't even get the people who like and the people who dislike PVP in games to get along with any civility, I shudder to think of the outrage that adding real life social issues to games could cause. Not to mention how much wasted time it would bring as people spent their entire game time bickering over pointless minutiae in global chat rather than actually playing their characters.
Let me borrow your horns and hooves to do a bit of Devil's Advocating myself, Jamie.
MMOs need more racial diversity!? Are you mad woman!? In games we have humans, gnomes, elves, orcs, trolls, hobbits, halflings, minotaurs, frog people, pixies, fairies, lizard people, half breeds, crossbreeds, hybrids, you name it. In real life we just get boring humans. And the color choices we get in real life are even more basic and boring than paint colors offered by German car manufacturers.
And the whole gender issue, since our toons can't have any actual fun with their fiddly bits, or in fact don't actually HAVE fiddly bits, what is the point? Having massively diverse avatars may be cool for eyecandy purposes, but it is far from the most important item to make a game fun. (People already burned out on APB can I get an Amen?)
Anyway I love reading your columns but I'm a little at sea with this one. Maybe it's because I enjoy playing slash and bash fiction games for the slash and bash factor and not for the social interaction. I want to log in on my bad ass warrior and go kick arse on a few trolls and other leggity beasties, not doll myself up as a hermaphroditic pixie, go down the pub and recite doggerel poetry.
Frankly when it comes to every item you've discussed, games such as Second Life already fill those needs quite nicely. I fail to see what benefit these kinds of changes could bring to a game such as Wow, Dark Fall, or Star Wars The Old Republic.
ADDENDUM: One thing that these additions could add to those games is some seriously excellent, if unintentional, humorous moments.
Town Guard: "Sorry there's no raiding today"
Grapthar the Barbarian: "Hey, what's going on?"
Town Guard: "Ah, those bums won their court case so they're marching today."
Grapthar the Barbarian: "What bums?"
Town Guard: "The *bleeping* Gnomish Nazi Party."
Dregzog the Half Elf: "Gnomeregen Nazis!?"
Grapthar the Barbarian: "I hate Gnomeregen Nazis."
OR
Dear Mrs. Boldheart,
We regret to inform you that due to your husband Flamestrike Boldheart's account being permabanned due to gold selling, you have now become a widow. Please accept our most heartfelt condolences.
"Gypsies, tramps, and thieves, we were called by the Admin of the site . . . "
Horusra, evolution means to move to a better stage.
No, actually it doesn't, because "better stage" implies some kind of progression, and evolution has nothing to do with progression. Evolution, rigorously defined, is "a change in allele frequency". More colloquially, this means "adaptation to the environment in order to reproduce genes more successfully", regardless of our notions of what "better" or "worse" is. Evolution often means change that is apparently worse for the individual organism, but which causes better reproductive success. Eg: hive species, species with extreme sexual adaptations like the peacock and so forth
Applying the above to MMOs, we can quite reasonably say that Farmville is a evolutionarily advanced MMO, even though it seems to us that it is very "inferior" to "real" MMOs. I would compare Farmville to one of the more baroque parasites like Sacculina.
Well there seem to be several definitions. By "better stage" I don't think it invalidates "adaptation to the environment in order to reproduce genes more successfully", even though that is talking about biological evolution. That is a better stage for the evolution of the species. Things fall by the wayside and other things replace it that can carry on. I think it's important to note that it's not an ultimate stage nor is there really an ultimate stage (short of the earth crubling to nothing and taking the last incarnations of its inhabitants with it.
So in the Farmville example (which isn't a bad example really) it does seem that social gaming has an evolution toward something that is more attractive to a greater amount of people. Of course, for those people who are looking for something that hearkens back to original UO or whatever their favorite game is, they are going to feel left out. I mean, it's already happened.
Luckily the evolution of online games isn't like biological evolution in that there can still be games made that can include ideas from earlier games. They are just going to be indy games for a while unless things swing around.
Regardless of whether you think love is a valid reason to get married or not, my point is that our idea of marriage includes that idea.
However, if you are saying that "getting married for love is not not a recipe for success then there is one thing we can agree on. But that is not my point. My point is that our society has evolved to include greater definitions of marriage.
Whether or not any of those can lead to success, well look, I'm the product of a divorced family, I know that song.
And sure, whenever I see a young couple saying they are getting married because they love each other but they have money issues, they don't know what they are doing with their lives and "oh yes" they want to start a family, I do an internal cringe because it takes more than love to actually make any marriage work from what I've seen.
My girlfriend's parents married because "it was time to get married". Father went to Taiwan, went to the singles district or whatever it was, met a nice woman, few days later they were married and he moved back to the states where she would join him months later. Is it a success? Well, they are still married but they stay as far apart from each other as possible. Not my idea of a success. My thought is that success in marriage is a personal thing. I've seen great, outstanding marriages. But they are few and far in between.
As far as things like devolution of family values and high divorce rate, my take on that is that a good many people never wanted those family values in the first palce and a good many people headed into the marriage thing because they felt they should, because they "loved" each other but had no other basis to successfully make a marriage work or because of social pressures. I've seen too many people espouse family values only to then learn that their behavior didn't support those so called values.
And in the end, most people shouldn't be married. I think people like the idea of marriage and I think it does work very well for some people. but it doens't work for many people. That still doesn't invalidate my statement that we as a society have included the idea of marraige for love. It just adds another reason.
As a point of note, I've never been married precisely because I have yet to meet a person who, after years of our relationship, I felt I could make a marriage work.
But again, that wasn't my point in the first place. We as a society have included the idea that one can get married for love. And love of same sex, and of course there are people who have polygamous marriages because it makes sense. That's not new of course, but I'm not convinced that polygamous marriages are always about some man wanting to have a harem. Having heard some interviews with people in polygamous marriages, they seemed to be about practicality as much as anything else.
And so to take it back to the article, since people have such different ideas of race, sexuality, morality, I would either prefer to have a game that allowed all game systems open to all players regardless of preferences, like the runes of magic marriage system or to keep it out all together.
and, as I've said before, if a developer wants to make a game that has a social message, no matter what that social message is, as long as they are clear about their intentions then they should have the right to make that game.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
Honestly I think the more options and the more diversity the better, as long as it is an extremely pvp centric game. This way as people really showcase who they are via their avatar, I can more accuratly focus in on who I really hate not only in real life but ingame as well, and then proceed to own them. ( hopefully not get owned by the male / Transexual elf, who recently got elected to mayor of fairyland )
As Feminists would say "Stay out of my womb" I say "Stay out of my games."
Oh, please. Women saying, "Stay out of my womb" is about a decision that impacts every area of life after it, while if you don't like the direction a game is going in or a new game comes out that does include more socially proactive themes, you don't have to play and it really doesn't matter. There's always another game to play and a dozen more coming down the pipe at any given moment. You can't just decide to move on to a new womb if the old one does something you don't want it to.
What's with the serious attitude here against trying to take the basic idea of a virtual world and do something different and potentially more interesting with it? Nothing is going to change for the majorty of gamers because most companies are only interested in the money, and playing it safe will always seem like the safest thing to do to protect their investment. If some developers (indie or otherwise) decide that they want to try something new and you don't like it, it's not YOUR game. Why condemn them for not catering to you when there's so much more on the buffet?
Here's an analogy for you: Let's say that watching student art films is torture to you, and you find that some of the films involve a lot of themes that you're uncomfortable with and imagery that makes you nauseous. Should those students stop making films because you don't enjoy it, or should you just not watch them?
Nobody makes you watch art films and nobody makes you play A Tale In The Desert, or Second Life, or Red Light Center*. That's not going to change. That doesn't mean that other people shouldn't have that opportunity. I would love to see some indies come along and bust the MMO box wide open.
I hope that creative developers keep working at finding ways to expand this medium in new directions we haven't seen, and if some of those games make me think or explore things I haven't thought of before, or realize things I might not have realized about the real world or myself, that would be awesome. I don't see anything wrong with me being able to play MY game that represents points of view that I might happen to hold IRL, or that challenges those views.
That can even be done in context-- do I help the little elf orphans that just had their homes burned down, or do I set them on fire, since the invading army missed a few? That's a choice that's going to reveal something about your character, or about you, not just to everyone around who watches, but maybe to yourself.... Oh, wait. That quest would be too edgy for today's games.
Gotta protect the children... But I'm not a child!
*I hope that the mention of Red Light Center doesn't get me into trouble on this site. If so, I'd appreciate a mod just deleting that bit. And this bit, where I mentioned it again. (LOL)
I've dedicated a lot of my educational career and research to the study of societal development of norms and the behavior and acceptance of said ideals. To me, this is an issue that is very important and to many others, very personal. However, there is a disconnect between reality and video games. A very important element of gaming to me is the level of immersion I feel. It's the reason I play games Fullscreen. I don't want to see the Windows Tasksbar, I don't want to see my borders, I want to have a full cinematic experience where I am this ridiculous looking creature or lore-appropriate humanoid swinging weapons or shooting guns. These are the things that, at least aesthetically, are important to me in MMO gaming.
Character creation should have the capacity to chose any skin color where appropriate by thelore. I completely agree that most games COULD have such decisions make sense with only a little effort, but they shouldn't need to. Games can chose what aspects of the game are important given the lore. Games with truly customizable characters (pink hair and green skin etc. etc.) have proven that these things do not matter in their world, but for several other games where these distinctions DO matter, it should be perfectly warranted to not have to alter their lore to accomodate. If you are of pacific island decent and would like to see your race reflected in your character choice, then perhaps a game set in medieval europe is the wrong game to be playing IF that is an important facet of gaming to you. There are plenty of games who could very easily have character creation feature more skin colors. The lore wouldn't be impacted, and in this case I completely agree that it is an ethically and politically correct addition to a character creator, but as soon as it oversteps the bounds of creative regard, it's inappropriate to ask that.
Regarding marriage. What I'm about to say goes to both sides of this argument and I always have and always will stand by this mantra: Who the **** cares!? Let people do what they want. If your game decides marriage is in the game, there shouldn't be any restrictions on who marries whom. Labeling it is pointless, just call it a bond. It doesn't need to say the word marriage for the traditional veiwers of marriage, it doesn't need to say marriage for those who chose to find their soul mates in less traditional partners. Simply put, what matters is the emotional connection of the two partners, not the title. If a game choses to include marriage, then the control they have over the decision should stop right there. Runes of Magic doesn't chose WHO can and cannot be wed, that is far from their control and it would be incredibly inappropriate to deem otherwise. This doesn't need to be a political issue, it's a personal one. Leave people alone, concern yourself with YOUR situation, not the situation of others. If you have a problem with people making decisions that differ from your point of view, then chose not to socialize with those people. That's YOUR call, marriage ceremonies are the decisions of the involved parties. So I restate my opinion: Who the **** cares!
As for gender neutrality in character creation, I link the importance of this issue closely with that of character creation skin-tones. If it's possible to program and doesn't overstep any boundaries of lore... sure, go ahead. It doesn't hurt. But I think there is a trend in the argument I'm reading from the author here that these are important in-game decisions to individuals who would find themselves in these positions in real life. The truth is that in this day and age, many people are actually far more accepting of their own unique situations and the non-traditional situations of others than it is perceived. I have worked closely alongside members of the LGBTIQ community and have done years of research amongst the community also. You'd be surprized to find how many of these people are becomming comfortable in their own skin after years and years of intolerance. Of course, there is still intolerance and I'm not trying to debate that point of this article, but I don't believe many members of this community log online and find themselves hurt or impacted by the inability to create a character with non-traditional gender roles. There are several games where physique, hight, weight and other body shape decisions can be contorted to the desired body view, but the creation of characters with non-traditional gender roles would almost certainly impact the lore of a world created by developers. I agree that it is a consideration of the design process involving a community that is typically neglected, and morally it couldn't hurt to discuss these issues. But when it comes down to it, it's not so much an intentional choice to leave out these features as a segregating method, it's simply a design choice that isn't implemented.
It's very easy for people who are not intimately tied to these communities to ignore the cries of their people on matters that directly affect them. But as a man who is immersed in the cultures of many minorities in work as well as in my personal life, I feel as though this call is made far too often by people who have their own voices to use on things that matter to them. Being an ally is a very powerful thing, and it's admirable to support their causes. But they can speak for themselves and if it's truly important, they will. Until then, I'd recommend everyone else leave their views on contested issues at the door and mind their own business, while the developers decide on their own whether the worlds of lore and politics may be crossed in a way that makes everyone happy.
Someday we'll all look back on the age of computers - and lol.
Racial Awareness? Ethnic heritage? Gay Marriage Online?
To be perfectly honest, this is all petty. The lore is the lore is the lore. Elves are pale skinned, with pale hair and fine features. Dark Elves are purple skinned, with white hair and fine features. An African heritage Elf while nice and politically correct, simply is not necessitated by the lore. Neither is a Polynesian elf. Im a Polynesian. Im not upset about it. Its not necessary! My race isnt even represented amongst most human oriented facets of gaming. Should I be insulted that Kupe isnt riding around in his wooden Katamaran discovering islands in the middle of Azeroth? No, because the World of Warcraft is precisely that. Theres a line between fantasy and reality. These distinctions unnecessarily cross it. Next thing you know we are going to have a portion of the online population in wheelchairs so that the disabled can be represented. Or maybe some folks will be forced to play a retarded character so that the demographic with Downs Syndrome is represented fairly online.
This kid has the right idea. Hippies and their utopian dreamworld where everyone gets along, is represented equally, all live the same, and all love each other are only one step away from cults like Heavens Gate and Jonestown.
Jamie, your article seeks to ruin the fun of online gaming and in its place turn the MMO into a giant online Drum Circle, smelling of virtual patchouli. If successful it will do nothing short of ruin what makes games fun: the escape factor.
As for Gay Marriage online, why is this even necessary? Just have people swear brotherhood or something and give them the same benefits. People need to realize that cramming social agendas down the throats of individuals through all media outlets isnt going to change the world for the better, its going to wreck it.
Honestly I think the more options and the more diversity the better, as long as it is an extremely pvp centric game. This way as people really showcase who they are via their avatar, I can more accuratly focus in on who I really hate not only in real life but ingame as well, and then proceed to own them. ( hopefully not get owned by the male / Transexual elf, who recently got elected to mayor of fairyland )
Well, the problem with PKer PvP MMORPG games as graphics move over to the next gen and-state-of-the-art is player profiling of characters in the game based on what the PKer believes they represent. MMORPG game publishers have a very real responsibility to the public when their games parallel real world social issues.
Honestly I think the more options and the more diversity the better, as long as it is an extremely pvp centric game. This way as people really showcase who they are via their avatar, I can more accuratly focus in on who I really hate not only in real life but ingame as well, and then proceed to own them. ( hopefully not get owned by the male / Transexual elf, who recently got elected to mayor of fairyland )
Well, the problem with PKer PvP MMORPG games as graphics move over to the next gen and-state-of-the-art is player profiling of characters in the game based on what the PKer believes they represent. MMORPG game publishers have a very real responsibility to the public when their games parallel real world social issues.
This is an excellent point. How do you think a gay man or lesbian would feel if it was assumed that due to there preference of charchter customization, that they were irl gay/lesbian as well and had to put up with being targeted by the certain types of people in game? Especially if they use the game as an escape (as many of us do) from the irl harrasment they recieve for the same reason. Do we really want to put them out there like that? Id like to beleive that the kind of people who would harrass them would be a very tiny minority that would be properly shunned, but stupid tends to travel in packs, and adding yet another layer to the pk griefing that happens in these games seem unnecessary.
I really wish we lived in the kind of world the OP believes we live in, but our reality is a bit different, and id rather not see this kind of thinking leading to furthur victimization of people who dont need more of it. Im not arguing for descrimination but the reality of our world is that it does exist and unfortunatly always will. The targets do change eventually and hopefully as the world see's gays as less of an issue, they will have there time in the sun with the rest of us. Im confident this will come to pass but we just arent quite there yet.
Why in the world would you want to bring every day life into a game? You can't just include the good or what you perceive as good, you have to take the bad with it as well. The good, the bad and the really screwed up, as some one posted you have people of all ages, both literal as well as mentally. Why bring race into it? All types of people play the game, as mentioned KKK and Black Panther's and any other race specific group that hates all other races. What about religion? Religion gets ugly some times, not because of the religion but because some one of said religion said something and they have a lot of followers. I dont want to get hit up in game by a Jehova's witness or any other religious group for that matter.
The internet is riled with all sorts of every day life and how screwed up it is. Why introduce it into a game?
And then most of the MMO's involve killing things, is it ok to kill stuff in real life? No its not, not really, we kill animals to eat them and we kill each other in war or because we can't help ourselves but be violent. In nature animals kill each other either to eat or to protect themselves, there family or there land (hunting grounds) or what ever you want to call it, we do something similar but we take it to a whole new level.... a lot of it is already in games, why bring every day screwed up situations into the game, I don't want some one to symbolically destroy the two towers then say they are some religious group that do not like way things are going in game. Or should we have some one go crazy in game and be able to kill everything?
Again too much screwed up stuff in game, you can not just ask for the good stuff in the game cause some one will figure out a way to make it bad.
I find it odd how people are arguing that it would be a mistake to give people the choice because other people would pick on them. The whole argument seems fundamentally flawed. I don't think people who belong to a group considered outside of the norm are asking for us to protect them. I think they just want a choice to play and be who they are without people stepping in to decide whats in their best interests.
The difference with religion and a biological trait is that sexuality, gender, or ethnicity is not something that someone picks. While religion is a choice a person makes in their life the other is not. Arguing that if we make a sacrifice to people outside what we consider normal that it will somehow ruin our game, then I wonder why person is more willing to accept an elf, troll, ogre, dragon as a viable option then a natural biological thing which happens in real life. If you are going to make an argument like that then we should perhaps ban all humans as playable characters because they in turn bring to much real life into a game.
I seriously do not understand how giving people a chance to play an avatar of themselves in a video game is going to 'ruin' a fantasy people have. Most video games (coming from someone who grew up with D&D and rocking gapper on his TANDY) were founded by people who were on the outside of popular social constructs. We all laugh at LARP'ers but in all honesty a lot of us did that, it just wasn't on YOUTUBE. I find it odd that while those people invented the genre, they pushed it into popularity, we now have people considering what is 'normal' or 'acceptable' for everyone.
The whole point of RPG's or video games for that matter is to go to a place where you can be who you want to be, not who society deems you to be. Most of us can't have blue hair and laugh manically as we shoot lightning bolts at some NEWB in real life. I think if you asked most of those people, they believe that their alter ego's are as much a part of them as their 9 - 5 persona is. So what is so threatening about a person having an option to play a character that they identify with?
I believe there are a lot of people out there that you know who are gay, but won't say anything for fear of parents or loved one's disowning them. They turn on TV and see people arguing about how people are fed up with political correctness. They go online to read up on games and see people saying how the idea of allowing them a fantasy persona that reflects who they genuinely believe themselves to be as crap and a ploy by hippies or progressives to ruin their video games.
I mean I for one welcome more fantasy and more choices for people to choose from. Are there going to be griefers for those people in game or on the internet, yes. Just read the responses in this article if you want to get an idea on how much crap those people will have to deal with. I honestly think we need to let the people who this affects choose. If they don't want to deal with the crap, they are free to roleplay a heterosexual white christian male, but if they actually want to play something that fits outside the perceived norm of modern society, why not let them. Why not let them log on after a day of crap and play something that makes them happy, like we want to do.
Sometimes I wish that party windows end in MMORPGs.
It would be cool if everyone was just an individual and if you wanted to help another player, you simply went along with that player and helped each other. Also keeping your character level and abilities a secret as Discrimination is at the heart of MMORPGs.
I've seen many who are kicked from parties because they dont have the right skill setup, equipment or other things out there. If they want to make games about character and individuality, why so much the focus on groups then?
Take an example from the real world...A page in my life:
In a hill campsite, a gunshot is fired and heard. At the time of the day everyone who leads a group returns to a meeting point. 30 minutes later, members of my group are missing and not everyone makes it to the meeting site. Other group leaders are also missing people.
I say I am going out to look for them. Others who felt the same way about it all said either "Im going too" and "not safe to go after dark." Others said "we'll handle things here, just find as many people and tell them to meet us"
We didn't see a "Party Window" and we didn't have a Sheet with each other's experience level. All we knew was we all wanted to find others...and we welcomed each other's help. We spent close to 50 minutes looking for people and we did find everyone eventually..
We had to help each other cross rivers at night, make ourselves not prey to animals out there or disrupt them, and try to call out and find those kids as some of them did not have cell phones to call them or some had no charge.
Each person in the group was an individual, and in the party at the same time under a purpose...Recovery. It had turned out a child had found a gun and misfired it and now had a wounded leg. We ran into that child and had to handle everything else.
If you wanted to translate that into a game, developers need to learn how to be less restrictive about how people play games. You don't need a party window. You don't need to give up so much information. What you DO NEED are situations and events that groups together pass not because of "EXPERIENCE LEVELS" and "WEAPONS AND EQUIPMENT" but from REAL LIFE Experience and expectation...
This is why I say that First Person Shooters in Objective Multiplayers have more Roleplaying elements than MMORPGs because while two teams exist, usually people on voice chat in the good teams are made up of smaller teams working together. Everyone can have EVERY WEAPON on a map and STILL die just as easy from being stupid, but a person has a CHANCE to make a difference or be an idiot in a shooter.
Play through a shooter multiplayer and you will find yourself thinking fast, becoming part of the environment and thinking about how you will survive and how you will make it to the next day...while in an MMORPG you meet an enemy....stand near it, all spam skills in a certain order for around 1 minute to an hour depending on the enemy...and that is your "roleplaying experience."
In fact, many MMOs aim to be the Michael Bay of the industry, rather than say Hitchcock or Godard: they seek to provide quick thrills rather than deep and intelligent interactions. Rather than create a dialogue about society, they seek to instead escape the thralls of it entirely in a safe haven for our fantasies and escapism.
A game about explosions (probably starring nicholas cage) or a game about talking and feelings? No offense Jamie but I think your trying to make a chick MMO
Honestly I think the more options and the more diversity the better, as long as it is an extremely pvp centric game. This way as people really showcase who they are via their avatar, I can more accuratly focus in on who I really hate not only in real life but ingame as well, and then proceed to own them. ( hopefully not get owned by the male / Transexual elf, who recently got elected to mayor of fairyland )
Well, the problem with PKer PvP MMORPG games as graphics move over to the next gen and-state-of-the-art is player profiling of characters in the game based on what the PKer believes they represent. MMORPG game publishers have a very real responsibility to the public when their games parallel real world social issues.
All I know is if I see you walking around with your name in red, YOU GOTS TA DIE!
I value choice of races and detailled character look choices as one of the most important features. It's one of my main reasons I never got into WOW. A handful of preset faces and all same body types just doesn't keep me. I liked games like Vanguard, CoX and the like for that reason.
Marriage... oh my. I still recall my ingame marriage in SWG. It was one of the unforgettable moments in my MMORPG history. My husband and me had a romantic ceremony with a few people at the balcony of Theed Palace and a HUGE party with way over a hundred people at the beach of our guild's player city, North Beach. Those were great days. It is why, even tho I want quests and story today, I want a good MMO to have a lot of tools to offer players to build a life of themselves, and not merely be led through some quest tunnel.
I mean, I can live with less in a MMO. But it were those social and community things which made SWG so great for what I seek. If they had ADDED quests and story to the basics of the sandbox, it would have been ideal. So my ideal MMo would prolly be SWG and SWTOR combined into one game, teh.
Good memories about a great community. *sigh* Long past like the Jedi.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
My wife and I had an interesting conversation about this...I said,'How far has PoliticalCorrectness gone if we are to this point?"..She said,"Before I see all that crap...I want to be able to make a 'Fat' chick, not a slightly overweight chick, but fat, like 275 lbs...But I guess our PCness doesnt extentd that far.' I see this as teh real issue our society faces..We are all about diversity as long as its the 'preaty' kind.
Sometimes I wish that party windows end in MMORPGs.
It would be cool if everyone was just an individual and if you wanted to help another player, you simply went along with that player and helped each other. Also keeping your character level and abilities a secret as Discrimination is at the heart of MMORPGs.
I've seen many who are kicked from parties because they dont have the right skill setup, equipment or other things out there. If they want to make games about character and individuality, why so much the focus on groups then?
Take an example from the real world...A page in my life:
In a hill campsite, a gunshot is fired and heard. At the time of the day everyone who leads a group returns to a meeting point. 30 minutes later, members of my group are missing and not everyone makes it to the meeting site. Other group leaders are also missing people.
I say I am going out to look for them. Others who felt the same way about it all said either "Im going too" and "not safe to go after dark." Others said "we'll handle things here, just find as many people and tell them to meet us"
We didn't see a "Party Window" and we didn't have a Sheet with each other's experience level. All we knew was we all wanted to find others...and we welcomed each other's help. We spent close to 50 minutes looking for people and we did find everyone eventually..
We had to help each other cross rivers at night, make ourselves not prey to animals out there or disrupt them, and try to call out and find those kids as some of them did not have cell phones to call them or some had no charge.
Each person in the group was an individual, and in the party at the same time under a purpose...Recovery. It had turned out a child had found a gun and misfired it and now had a wounded leg. We ran into that child and had to handle everything else.
If you wanted to translate that into a game, developers need to learn how to be less restrictive about how people play games. You don't need a party window. You don't need to give up so much information. What you DO NEED are situations and events that groups together pass not because of "EXPERIENCE LEVELS" and "WEAPONS AND EQUIPMENT" but from REAL LIFE Experience and expectation...
This is why I say that First Person Shooters in Objective Multiplayers have more Roleplaying elements than MMORPGs because while two teams exist, usually people on voice chat in the good teams are made up of smaller teams working together. Everyone can have EVERY WEAPON on a map and STILL die just as easy from being stupid, but a person has a CHANCE to make a difference or be an idiot in a shooter.
Play through a shooter multiplayer and you will find yourself thinking fast, becoming part of the environment and thinking about how you will survive and how you will make it to the next day...while in an MMORPG you meet an enemy....stand near it, all spam skills in a certain order for around 1 minute to an hour depending on the enemy...and that is your "roleplaying experience."
Its a MMO NOT real life, thank god, in real life I might cross a river or help find a kid, but I wont fight a giant monster...
Actualy I'd take the opposite position from yours Jamie. Let's leave aside, for the moment, the legitimacy or lack thereof of "political correctness" in the real world. Fantasy worlds are supposed to be something different..... they are not supposed to be mirrors of the real world...they are supposed to be something different..... an escape from the complexity of the real world, and the issues that come with it.... A simpler place and a more complex at the same time.... A place where we can even explore the grimmer aspects of human nature without anyone REALLY getting hurt.
Now I certainly believe that there is plenty of room for fantasy worlds that embrace utopian style ideals.....nothing wrong with that......if anywhere can reflect those type of ideals...it could be a fantasy online world. At the same time, not all worlds/games should be forced into embracing those ideals if they don't fit the milieu that the game is trying to represent. I mean come-on....can you imagine a Warhammer 40K game that tried to foist on it's players the concepts of acceptance of racial and cultural diversty...that Humans and Eldar and Orcs should all get along and and embrace each others differences? ( excuse me while I throw up a little).
There SHOULD be room for fantasy worlds that represent a dystopian vision of the universe. In fact, I might argue they are probably more entertaining and in a certain sense probably even healthier for people in general then the Utopian worlds. So as long as it's kept within the context of the game..... racism, sexism, religious intolerance, genocide, mayhem, mass hysteria, dogs and cats living together and all other forms of nastiness should be fair play. As long as players are able to maintain a healthy seperation between play and reality, it's all good.
That REALLY is the key.....and it REALLY is the players responsibility to understand the seperation between the two. Bob, the player of Ugrak the unlucky, needs to be able to comprehend that when Zog the severe is smashing Ugrak over the head with a warhammer because Ugrak is a "filthy green-skin"..... It's NOT because Tom, Zog's player has any sort of prejudice against Bob .... In fact, the 2 may be best of freinds in real life....it's all in the context of make believe...just like when we were kids and picked up a stick and pretended to disintigrate our friends with our "phasers" because they were "Klingons", we really weren't harboring any homicidal thoughts toward those friends. If a person has trouble undersanding that seperation between play and reality....then it probably isn't healthy for them to be playing these type of games in the first place.
So really, I think it depends on what the game is intending to represent. For games like Second Life (if you even classify that as a game)....where the character really is intended as a sort of avatar, an extension of the players personality...then I think you have point. However, for something like WH40K.... bring on the Inquisition! Glory for the Emperor, Death to Heretics and Aliens!
Comments
I hate to say it since its quite grim, but this^ is sadly correct. Both history and even our current family law system support what is being pointed out here. I would suggest that if you doubt this, you spend some time looking into family law. I should warn you that looking into it will possibly leave you with no faith in government. Marriage is simply a pretty packaged idea that is desighned to lead to divorce. Baseing Marriage on love is a recipe for failure. If you want to be with someone for the rest of your days, then just do it. Talk is cheap so you can imagine how little saying "I do" is worth. If the gays were smart, they wouldnt want marriage in the first place. The advantages are nothing compared to the liabilities it creates. Even alot of us straights are finally coming around on this one. That being said i dont think they shouldnt have the option of being able to get married, of course i also dont think commiting suicide should be illegal either.
Being edgy is throwing political agendas out into the light of public? Why not add religion to that too? "Religion and politics are too things you should never discuss in public. " I am sure everyone has heard that phrase before and there are a number of reasons why it is true.
You will find if you spend too much time discussing either in public, you won't have too many friends afterwards. Both are things people believe in and have passion for. Both are things people have actually died defending, so it is clear that both of these things are a little more than "edgy".
When creating a mmorpg, it is important to remember the MM part. If you are going to create one with the political undertones discussed here, you are just creating something the majority of people do not want to see and completely forgetting the MM part stands for Massive Multiplayer. Simply put, anything the majority of people do not want to see will be avoided.
So to me, it looks like the auther wants "edgy" games that are empty and not really mmos but rather rpgs. They have consoles for that, you know.
If we fail to change the things of today, they will become the lucid nighmares of tommorrow.
The ideas in the OP and the debate are fascinating but I expect it all really boils down to this: games are ENTERTAINMENT intended to generate a PROFIT (most of them, at least).
So it's simple: take whatever idea you have, like elves marrying orcs and having children, and ask 'Will it make the game fun for a large audience?'. If not, it won't likely make it into a game, even if its a lofty social principle.
I am sure exceptions will occur. Some game designers seem to stick to their principles as much as they can. But we'll always consider them to be the 'example everyone else should follow'...but noone does/
Very interesting article though my definition of edgier is different from Jaime's. What I would love to do in an MMO would be more on combat mechanics than RP or social stuff.
I like game world changes by players the most. Not enough games allow you do this. I know a lot of people hated Shadbow Bane, but I think kudos should be given to it for being one of the first games that allowed players to change the environment so very much.
Character customisation does need to be enhanced but I'm against breaking lore: elves in LotRO shouldn't have 'afro' or 'oriental' options since it doesn't fit the lore of the books. Elves are from Northern European folklore but most games follow the Tolkeinesque version of elves. There are spirits in African folklore too that share similarities with elves. If say we had a game that had Yoruban ijimere, I'd be disappointed if I could make a European-looking one. If a huge change were to be made, I think that the game should be started over with completely new lore that goes away from the usual European elves, dwarves, trolls, etc.
I'd like to see a lot more options for making characters: skinny characters, fat characters, female characters who don't look like barbie dolls, male characters who don't look like they pump steroids into their veins, male characters with really long hair (that one is really rare actually), really short characters, really tall characters. It would be cool to have those options. The games that really stand out for that are CoH/CoV and SWG that I've played. I've read that CO has great customization as well as APB. AO was ahead of its time for letting people make African and Asian solitus characters and giving a 'fat' option.
For marriage, I am against putting systems in place that make it beneficial to hook up outside of role-play, especially if there is PvP in the game. If there is a benefit beyond good role-play, it does 'force' you to hook up with someone. As for who can marry who or how many partners are involved? I really don't give a damn. The more options the 'marrier'. It's none of my business unless it's one of my character's getting married.
Playing MUDs and MMOs since 1994.
That's why I uninstalled the garbage. And, I think Beck is an idiot by the way. Bill O'reilly on the other hand...
I stick by my statement...don't force RW issues on us when we are playing games to escape them. People have the freedom to RP marriages in a game without it being something everyone is exposed to.
<Internet pedant>
No, actually it doesn't, because "better stage" implies some kind of progression, and evolution has nothing to do with progression. Evolution, rigorously defined, is "a change in allele frequency". More colloquially, this means "adaptation to the environment in order to reproduce genes more successfully", regardless of our notions of what "better" or "worse" is. Evolution often means change that is apparently worse for the individual organism, but which causes better reproductive success. Eg: hive species, species with extreme sexual adaptations like the peacock and so forth
<Internet pedant?
Applying the above to MMOs, we can quite reasonably say that Farmville is a evolutionarily advanced MMO, even though it seems to us that it is very "inferior" to "real" MMOs. I would compare Farmville to one of the more baroque parasites like Sacculina.
Give me liberty or give me lasers
To sum up her article
"LOVE AND FLOWERS WILL MAKE EVERYTHING BETTER"
It plays a nice head game by saying her ideas are "controversial" but that was only put in there so it could always be argued that people would be against them because they are controversial. Well, they aren't controversial, they are useless.
Jesus christ, MMORPG.com, I know you only have 3 female columnists, but I know good and well she is no where near as good as you could do. Most of her articles just have me palming my face off.
EDIT: I'm not against the things she says, rather, I think they would do NOTHING to improve the game itself, and should never have been made into an article. It looks like something I'd see on some college feminists blog rather than a well known genre site.
Considering we can't even get the people who like and the people who dislike PVP in games to get along with any civility, I shudder to think of the outrage that adding real life social issues to games could cause. Not to mention how much wasted time it would bring as people spent their entire game time bickering over pointless minutiae in global chat rather than actually playing their characters.
Let me borrow your horns and hooves to do a bit of Devil's Advocating myself, Jamie.
MMOs need more racial diversity!? Are you mad woman!? In games we have humans, gnomes, elves, orcs, trolls, hobbits, halflings, minotaurs, frog people, pixies, fairies, lizard people, half breeds, crossbreeds, hybrids, you name it. In real life we just get boring humans. And the color choices we get in real life are even more basic and boring than paint colors offered by German car manufacturers.
And the whole gender issue, since our toons can't have any actual fun with their fiddly bits, or in fact don't actually HAVE fiddly bits, what is the point? Having massively diverse avatars may be cool for eyecandy purposes, but it is far from the most important item to make a game fun. (People already burned out on APB can I get an Amen?)
Anyway I love reading your columns but I'm a little at sea with this one. Maybe it's because I enjoy playing slash and bash fiction games for the slash and bash factor and not for the social interaction. I want to log in on my bad ass warrior and go kick arse on a few trolls and other leggity beasties, not doll myself up as a hermaphroditic pixie, go down the pub and recite doggerel poetry.
Frankly when it comes to every item you've discussed, games such as Second Life already fill those needs quite nicely. I fail to see what benefit these kinds of changes could bring to a game such as Wow, Dark Fall, or Star Wars The Old Republic.
ADDENDUM: One thing that these additions could add to those games is some seriously excellent, if unintentional, humorous moments.
Town Guard: "Sorry there's no raiding today"
Grapthar the Barbarian: "Hey, what's going on?"
Town Guard: "Ah, those bums won their court case so they're marching today."
Grapthar the Barbarian: "What bums?"
Town Guard: "The *bleeping* Gnomish Nazi Party."
Dregzog the Half Elf: "Gnomeregen Nazis!?"
Grapthar the Barbarian: "I hate Gnomeregen Nazis."
OR
Dear Mrs. Boldheart,
We regret to inform you that due to your husband Flamestrike Boldheart's account being permabanned due to gold selling, you have now become a widow. Please accept our most heartfelt condolences.
"Gypsies, tramps, and thieves, we were called by the Admin of the site . . . "
Well there seem to be several definitions. By "better stage" I don't think it invalidates "adaptation to the environment in order to reproduce genes more successfully", even though that is talking about biological evolution. That is a better stage for the evolution of the species. Things fall by the wayside and other things replace it that can carry on. I think it's important to note that it's not an ultimate stage nor is there really an ultimate stage (short of the earth crubling to nothing and taking the last incarnations of its inhabitants with it.
So in the Farmville example (which isn't a bad example really) it does seem that social gaming has an evolution toward something that is more attractive to a greater amount of people. Of course, for those people who are looking for something that hearkens back to original UO or whatever their favorite game is, they are going to feel left out. I mean, it's already happened.
Luckily the evolution of online games isn't like biological evolution in that there can still be games made that can include ideas from earlier games. They are just going to be indy games for a while unless things swing around.
@Dar es Balat:
Regardless of whether you think love is a valid reason to get married or not, my point is that our idea of marriage includes that idea.
However, if you are saying that "getting married for love is not not a recipe for success then there is one thing we can agree on. But that is not my point. My point is that our society has evolved to include greater definitions of marriage.
Whether or not any of those can lead to success, well look, I'm the product of a divorced family, I know that song.
And sure, whenever I see a young couple saying they are getting married because they love each other but they have money issues, they don't know what they are doing with their lives and "oh yes" they want to start a family, I do an internal cringe because it takes more than love to actually make any marriage work from what I've seen.
My girlfriend's parents married because "it was time to get married". Father went to Taiwan, went to the singles district or whatever it was, met a nice woman, few days later they were married and he moved back to the states where she would join him months later. Is it a success? Well, they are still married but they stay as far apart from each other as possible. Not my idea of a success. My thought is that success in marriage is a personal thing. I've seen great, outstanding marriages. But they are few and far in between.
As far as things like devolution of family values and high divorce rate, my take on that is that a good many people never wanted those family values in the first palce and a good many people headed into the marriage thing because they felt they should, because they "loved" each other but had no other basis to successfully make a marriage work or because of social pressures. I've seen too many people espouse family values only to then learn that their behavior didn't support those so called values.
And in the end, most people shouldn't be married. I think people like the idea of marriage and I think it does work very well for some people. but it doens't work for many people. That still doesn't invalidate my statement that we as a society have included the idea of marraige for love. It just adds another reason.
As a point of note, I've never been married precisely because I have yet to meet a person who, after years of our relationship, I felt I could make a marriage work.
But again, that wasn't my point in the first place. We as a society have included the idea that one can get married for love. And love of same sex, and of course there are people who have polygamous marriages because it makes sense. That's not new of course, but I'm not convinced that polygamous marriages are always about some man wanting to have a harem. Having heard some interviews with people in polygamous marriages, they seemed to be about practicality as much as anything else.
And so to take it back to the article, since people have such different ideas of race, sexuality, morality, I would either prefer to have a game that allowed all game systems open to all players regardless of preferences, like the runes of magic marriage system or to keep it out all together.
and, as I've said before, if a developer wants to make a game that has a social message, no matter what that social message is, as long as they are clear about their intentions then they should have the right to make that game.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
I don't think any of the things you brought up should even be thought of as edgy n this day and age.
Have played: Everquest, Asheron's Call, Horizons, Everquest2, World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online, Warhammer, Age of Conan, Darkfall
Honestly I think the more options and the more diversity the better, as long as it is an extremely pvp centric game. This way as people really showcase who they are via their avatar, I can more accuratly focus in on who I really hate not only in real life but ingame as well, and then proceed to own them. ( hopefully not get owned by the male / Transexual elf, who recently got elected to mayor of fairyland )
Oh, please. Women saying, "Stay out of my womb" is about a decision that impacts every area of life after it, while if you don't like the direction a game is going in or a new game comes out that does include more socially proactive themes, you don't have to play and it really doesn't matter. There's always another game to play and a dozen more coming down the pipe at any given moment. You can't just decide to move on to a new womb if the old one does something you don't want it to.
What's with the serious attitude here against trying to take the basic idea of a virtual world and do something different and potentially more interesting with it? Nothing is going to change for the majorty of gamers because most companies are only interested in the money, and playing it safe will always seem like the safest thing to do to protect their investment. If some developers (indie or otherwise) decide that they want to try something new and you don't like it, it's not YOUR game. Why condemn them for not catering to you when there's so much more on the buffet?
Here's an analogy for you: Let's say that watching student art films is torture to you, and you find that some of the films involve a lot of themes that you're uncomfortable with and imagery that makes you nauseous. Should those students stop making films because you don't enjoy it, or should you just not watch them?
Nobody makes you watch art films and nobody makes you play A Tale In The Desert, or Second Life, or Red Light Center*. That's not going to change. That doesn't mean that other people shouldn't have that opportunity. I would love to see some indies come along and bust the MMO box wide open.
I hope that creative developers keep working at finding ways to expand this medium in new directions we haven't seen, and if some of those games make me think or explore things I haven't thought of before, or realize things I might not have realized about the real world or myself, that would be awesome. I don't see anything wrong with me being able to play MY game that represents points of view that I might happen to hold IRL, or that challenges those views.
That can even be done in context-- do I help the little elf orphans that just had their homes burned down, or do I set them on fire, since the invading army missed a few? That's a choice that's going to reveal something about your character, or about you, not just to everyone around who watches, but maybe to yourself.... Oh, wait. That quest would be too edgy for today's games.
Gotta protect the children... But I'm not a child!
*I hope that the mention of Red Light Center doesn't get me into trouble on this site. If so, I'd appreciate a mod just deleting that bit. And this bit, where I mentioned it again. (LOL)
I've dedicated a lot of my educational career and research to the study of societal development of norms and the behavior and acceptance of said ideals. To me, this is an issue that is very important and to many others, very personal. However, there is a disconnect between reality and video games. A very important element of gaming to me is the level of immersion I feel. It's the reason I play games Fullscreen. I don't want to see the Windows Tasksbar, I don't want to see my borders, I want to have a full cinematic experience where I am this ridiculous looking creature or lore-appropriate humanoid swinging weapons or shooting guns. These are the things that, at least aesthetically, are important to me in MMO gaming.
Character creation should have the capacity to chose any skin color where appropriate by thelore. I completely agree that most games COULD have such decisions make sense with only a little effort, but they shouldn't need to. Games can chose what aspects of the game are important given the lore. Games with truly customizable characters (pink hair and green skin etc. etc.) have proven that these things do not matter in their world, but for several other games where these distinctions DO matter, it should be perfectly warranted to not have to alter their lore to accomodate. If you are of pacific island decent and would like to see your race reflected in your character choice, then perhaps a game set in medieval europe is the wrong game to be playing IF that is an important facet of gaming to you. There are plenty of games who could very easily have character creation feature more skin colors. The lore wouldn't be impacted, and in this case I completely agree that it is an ethically and politically correct addition to a character creator, but as soon as it oversteps the bounds of creative regard, it's inappropriate to ask that.
Regarding marriage. What I'm about to say goes to both sides of this argument and I always have and always will stand by this mantra: Who the **** cares!? Let people do what they want. If your game decides marriage is in the game, there shouldn't be any restrictions on who marries whom. Labeling it is pointless, just call it a bond. It doesn't need to say the word marriage for the traditional veiwers of marriage, it doesn't need to say marriage for those who chose to find their soul mates in less traditional partners. Simply put, what matters is the emotional connection of the two partners, not the title. If a game choses to include marriage, then the control they have over the decision should stop right there. Runes of Magic doesn't chose WHO can and cannot be wed, that is far from their control and it would be incredibly inappropriate to deem otherwise. This doesn't need to be a political issue, it's a personal one. Leave people alone, concern yourself with YOUR situation, not the situation of others. If you have a problem with people making decisions that differ from your point of view, then chose not to socialize with those people. That's YOUR call, marriage ceremonies are the decisions of the involved parties. So I restate my opinion: Who the **** cares!
As for gender neutrality in character creation, I link the importance of this issue closely with that of character creation skin-tones. If it's possible to program and doesn't overstep any boundaries of lore... sure, go ahead. It doesn't hurt. But I think there is a trend in the argument I'm reading from the author here that these are important in-game decisions to individuals who would find themselves in these positions in real life. The truth is that in this day and age, many people are actually far more accepting of their own unique situations and the non-traditional situations of others than it is perceived. I have worked closely alongside members of the LGBTIQ community and have done years of research amongst the community also. You'd be surprized to find how many of these people are becomming comfortable in their own skin after years and years of intolerance. Of course, there is still intolerance and I'm not trying to debate that point of this article, but I don't believe many members of this community log online and find themselves hurt or impacted by the inability to create a character with non-traditional gender roles. There are several games where physique, hight, weight and other body shape decisions can be contorted to the desired body view, but the creation of characters with non-traditional gender roles would almost certainly impact the lore of a world created by developers. I agree that it is a consideration of the design process involving a community that is typically neglected, and morally it couldn't hurt to discuss these issues. But when it comes down to it, it's not so much an intentional choice to leave out these features as a segregating method, it's simply a design choice that isn't implemented.
It's very easy for people who are not intimately tied to these communities to ignore the cries of their people on matters that directly affect them. But as a man who is immersed in the cultures of many minorities in work as well as in my personal life, I feel as though this call is made far too often by people who have their own voices to use on things that matter to them. Being an ally is a very powerful thing, and it's admirable to support their causes. But they can speak for themselves and if it's truly important, they will. Until then, I'd recommend everyone else leave their views on contested issues at the door and mind their own business, while the developers decide on their own whether the worlds of lore and politics may be crossed in a way that makes everyone happy.
Someday we'll all look back on the age of computers - and lol.
Here here! Damn Hippies!
Well, the problem with PKer PvP MMORPG games as graphics move over to the next gen and-state-of-the-art is player profiling of characters in the game based on what the PKer believes they represent. MMORPG game publishers have a very real responsibility to the public when their games parallel real world social issues.This is an excellent point. How do you think a gay man or lesbian would feel if it was assumed that due to there preference of charchter customization, that they were irl gay/lesbian as well and had to put up with being targeted by the certain types of people in game? Especially if they use the game as an escape (as many of us do) from the irl harrasment they recieve for the same reason. Do we really want to put them out there like that? Id like to beleive that the kind of people who would harrass them would be a very tiny minority that would be properly shunned, but stupid tends to travel in packs, and adding yet another layer to the pk griefing that happens in these games seem unnecessary.
I really wish we lived in the kind of world the OP believes we live in, but our reality is a bit different, and id rather not see this kind of thinking leading to furthur victimization of people who dont need more of it. Im not arguing for descrimination but the reality of our world is that it does exist and unfortunatly always will. The targets do change eventually and hopefully as the world see's gays as less of an issue, they will have there time in the sun with the rest of us. Im confident this will come to pass but we just arent quite there yet.
Why in the world would you want to bring every day life into a game? You can't just include the good or what you perceive as good, you have to take the bad with it as well. The good, the bad and the really screwed up, as some one posted you have people of all ages, both literal as well as mentally. Why bring race into it? All types of people play the game, as mentioned KKK and Black Panther's and any other race specific group that hates all other races. What about religion? Religion gets ugly some times, not because of the religion but because some one of said religion said something and they have a lot of followers. I dont want to get hit up in game by a Jehova's witness or any other religious group for that matter.
The internet is riled with all sorts of every day life and how screwed up it is. Why introduce it into a game?
And then most of the MMO's involve killing things, is it ok to kill stuff in real life? No its not, not really, we kill animals to eat them and we kill each other in war or because we can't help ourselves but be violent. In nature animals kill each other either to eat or to protect themselves, there family or there land (hunting grounds) or what ever you want to call it, we do something similar but we take it to a whole new level.... a lot of it is already in games, why bring every day screwed up situations into the game, I don't want some one to symbolically destroy the two towers then say they are some religious group that do not like way things are going in game. Or should we have some one go crazy in game and be able to kill everything?
Again too much screwed up stuff in game, you can not just ask for the good stuff in the game cause some one will figure out a way to make it bad.
I find it odd how people are arguing that it would be a mistake to give people the choice because other people would pick on them. The whole argument seems fundamentally flawed. I don't think people who belong to a group considered outside of the norm are asking for us to protect them. I think they just want a choice to play and be who they are without people stepping in to decide whats in their best interests.
The difference with religion and a biological trait is that sexuality, gender, or ethnicity is not something that someone picks. While religion is a choice a person makes in their life the other is not. Arguing that if we make a sacrifice to people outside what we consider normal that it will somehow ruin our game, then I wonder why person is more willing to accept an elf, troll, ogre, dragon as a viable option then a natural biological thing which happens in real life. If you are going to make an argument like that then we should perhaps ban all humans as playable characters because they in turn bring to much real life into a game.
I seriously do not understand how giving people a chance to play an avatar of themselves in a video game is going to 'ruin' a fantasy people have. Most video games (coming from someone who grew up with D&D and rocking gapper on his TANDY) were founded by people who were on the outside of popular social constructs. We all laugh at LARP'ers but in all honesty a lot of us did that, it just wasn't on YOUTUBE. I find it odd that while those people invented the genre, they pushed it into popularity, we now have people considering what is 'normal' or 'acceptable' for everyone.
The whole point of RPG's or video games for that matter is to go to a place where you can be who you want to be, not who society deems you to be. Most of us can't have blue hair and laugh manically as we shoot lightning bolts at some NEWB in real life. I think if you asked most of those people, they believe that their alter ego's are as much a part of them as their 9 - 5 persona is. So what is so threatening about a person having an option to play a character that they identify with?
I believe there are a lot of people out there that you know who are gay, but won't say anything for fear of parents or loved one's disowning them. They turn on TV and see people arguing about how people are fed up with political correctness. They go online to read up on games and see people saying how the idea of allowing them a fantasy persona that reflects who they genuinely believe themselves to be as crap and a ploy by hippies or progressives to ruin their video games.
I mean I for one welcome more fantasy and more choices for people to choose from. Are there going to be griefers for those people in game or on the internet, yes. Just read the responses in this article if you want to get an idea on how much crap those people will have to deal with. I honestly think we need to let the people who this affects choose. If they don't want to deal with the crap, they are free to roleplay a heterosexual white christian male, but if they actually want to play something that fits outside the perceived norm of modern society, why not let them. Why not let them log on after a day of crap and play something that makes them happy, like we want to do.
Sometimes I wish that party windows end in MMORPGs.
It would be cool if everyone was just an individual and if you wanted to help another player, you simply went along with that player and helped each other. Also keeping your character level and abilities a secret as Discrimination is at the heart of MMORPGs.
I've seen many who are kicked from parties because they dont have the right skill setup, equipment or other things out there. If they want to make games about character and individuality, why so much the focus on groups then?
Take an example from the real world...A page in my life:
In a hill campsite, a gunshot is fired and heard. At the time of the day everyone who leads a group returns to a meeting point. 30 minutes later, members of my group are missing and not everyone makes it to the meeting site. Other group leaders are also missing people.
I say I am going out to look for them. Others who felt the same way about it all said either "Im going too" and "not safe to go after dark." Others said "we'll handle things here, just find as many people and tell them to meet us"
We didn't see a "Party Window" and we didn't have a Sheet with each other's experience level. All we knew was we all wanted to find others...and we welcomed each other's help. We spent close to 50 minutes looking for people and we did find everyone eventually..
We had to help each other cross rivers at night, make ourselves not prey to animals out there or disrupt them, and try to call out and find those kids as some of them did not have cell phones to call them or some had no charge.
Each person in the group was an individual, and in the party at the same time under a purpose...Recovery. It had turned out a child had found a gun and misfired it and now had a wounded leg. We ran into that child and had to handle everything else.
If you wanted to translate that into a game, developers need to learn how to be less restrictive about how people play games. You don't need a party window. You don't need to give up so much information. What you DO NEED are situations and events that groups together pass not because of "EXPERIENCE LEVELS" and "WEAPONS AND EQUIPMENT" but from REAL LIFE Experience and expectation...
This is why I say that First Person Shooters in Objective Multiplayers have more Roleplaying elements than MMORPGs because while two teams exist, usually people on voice chat in the good teams are made up of smaller teams working together. Everyone can have EVERY WEAPON on a map and STILL die just as easy from being stupid, but a person has a CHANCE to make a difference or be an idiot in a shooter.
Play through a shooter multiplayer and you will find yourself thinking fast, becoming part of the environment and thinking about how you will survive and how you will make it to the next day...while in an MMORPG you meet an enemy....stand near it, all spam skills in a certain order for around 1 minute to an hour depending on the enemy...and that is your "roleplaying experience."
In fact, many MMOs aim to be the Michael Bay of the industry, rather than say Hitchcock or Godard: they seek to provide quick thrills rather than deep and intelligent interactions. Rather than create a dialogue about society, they seek to instead escape the thralls of it entirely in a safe haven for our fantasies and escapism.
A game about explosions (probably starring nicholas cage) or a game about talking and feelings? No offense Jamie but I think your trying to make a chick MMO
All I know is if I see you walking around with your name in red, YOU GOTS TA DIE!
I value choice of races and detailled character look choices as one of the most important features. It's one of my main reasons I never got into WOW. A handful of preset faces and all same body types just doesn't keep me. I liked games like Vanguard, CoX and the like for that reason.
Marriage... oh my. I still recall my ingame marriage in SWG. It was one of the unforgettable moments in my MMORPG history. My husband and me had a romantic ceremony with a few people at the balcony of Theed Palace and a HUGE party with way over a hundred people at the beach of our guild's player city, North Beach. Those were great days. It is why, even tho I want quests and story today, I want a good MMO to have a lot of tools to offer players to build a life of themselves, and not merely be led through some quest tunnel.
I mean, I can live with less in a MMO. But it were those social and community things which made SWG so great for what I seek. If they had ADDED quests and story to the basics of the sandbox, it would have been ideal. So my ideal MMo would prolly be SWG and SWTOR combined into one game, teh.
Good memories about a great community. *sigh* Long past like the Jedi.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
My wife and I had an interesting conversation about this...I said,'How far has PoliticalCorrectness gone if we are to this point?"..She said,"Before I see all that crap...I want to be able to make a 'Fat' chick, not a slightly overweight chick, but fat, like 275 lbs...But I guess our PCness doesnt extentd that far.' I see this as teh real issue our society faces..We are all about diversity as long as its the 'preaty' kind.
Actualy I'd take the opposite position from yours Jamie. Let's leave aside, for the moment, the legitimacy or lack thereof of "political correctness" in the real world. Fantasy worlds are supposed to be something different..... they are not supposed to be mirrors of the real world...they are supposed to be something different..... an escape from the complexity of the real world, and the issues that come with it.... A simpler place and a more complex at the same time.... A place where we can even explore the grimmer aspects of human nature without anyone REALLY getting hurt.
Now I certainly believe that there is plenty of room for fantasy worlds that embrace utopian style ideals.....nothing wrong with that......if anywhere can reflect those type of ideals...it could be a fantasy online world. At the same time, not all worlds/games should be forced into embracing those ideals if they don't fit the milieu that the game is trying to represent. I mean come-on....can you imagine a Warhammer 40K game that tried to foist on it's players the concepts of acceptance of racial and cultural diversty...that Humans and Eldar and Orcs should all get along and and embrace each others differences? ( excuse me while I throw up a little).
There SHOULD be room for fantasy worlds that represent a dystopian vision of the universe. In fact, I might argue they are probably more entertaining and in a certain sense probably even healthier for people in general then the Utopian worlds. So as long as it's kept within the context of the game..... racism, sexism, religious intolerance, genocide, mayhem, mass hysteria, dogs and cats living together and all other forms of nastiness should be fair play. As long as players are able to maintain a healthy seperation between play and reality, it's all good.
That REALLY is the key.....and it REALLY is the players responsibility to understand the seperation between the two. Bob, the player of Ugrak the unlucky, needs to be able to comprehend that when Zog the severe is smashing Ugrak over the head with a warhammer because Ugrak is a "filthy green-skin"..... It's NOT because Tom, Zog's player has any sort of prejudice against Bob .... In fact, the 2 may be best of freinds in real life....it's all in the context of make believe...just like when we were kids and picked up a stick and pretended to disintigrate our friends with our "phasers" because they were "Klingons", we really weren't harboring any homicidal thoughts toward those friends. If a person has trouble undersanding that seperation between play and reality....then it probably isn't healthy for them to be playing these type of games in the first place.
So really, I think it depends on what the game is intending to represent. For games like Second Life (if you even classify that as a game)....where the character really is intended as a sort of avatar, an extension of the players personality...then I think you have point. However, for something like WH40K.... bring on the Inquisition! Glory for the Emperor, Death to Heretics and Aliens!