John Morrow posts, in part:
It is my understanding, not having played MMORPGs
since the days of text MUDs, that (A) the "people"
getting "hurt" are largely monsters or evil humans
I think this depends on the game. Some games try to maintain that
situation; others less so. In many quests in World of Warcraft, the
most popular game currently, one pretty much accepts most quests - if
one does - because the quest giver happens to be the first to talk to
the player character, not because his position is in any way morally
superior to the people he wants you to kill.
Actually, come to think of it, one of the races you can play in World
of Warcraft is undead. One of their early quests involves feeding a
tainted apple to an unsuspecting prisoner in order to test a new
poison, and the race's entire starting area is set up along those
lines. It's quite clear that they are evil - though half the people
that play them still manage to rationalize that away.
and (B) PvP (the equivalent of one role-playing PC
killing another PC) is a fairly complex issue that
lots of people frown upon and lots of games limit,
It's not completely clear to me why it makes a difference whether the
victim is a player character. It strikes me that it's more im****tant
whether it's a consensual or nonconsensual situation.
At the one extreme, there have been games where the griefers exploited
unintended hacks and bugs to more effectively inflict pain on their
victims, a rather nonconsensual situation. At the other extreme,
there are battlegrounds where all the player characters on both sides
are there purely for the purpose of fighting each other; this is more
like the first person shooter situation, and it's completely
consensual. There are various gradations in between. There may be
situations beyond the consensual end of this, too, such as a chess
game, which is still at a very abstract level a simulation of a battle
where people are killed.
Where is the line between what's okay and what's not okay? How much
does it have to do with consensuality, how much with the behavior
****trayed, and how much with the player's enjoyment or nonenjoyment of
it?
and (C) the social aspect of sitting around a table
and looking the other players or the GM in the eye
is missing.
The social aspect is very much present; the main thing that affects
game loyalty is the social ties players form with one another. On the
"looking in the eye" part:
First, you don't look other real people in the eye
while playing a first person shooter, so there is
moral distancing
Why is this an improvement? It strikes me that in the situation from
a few weeks ago where someone shot and killed a whole bunch of people
with a sniper rifle, with surgical precision from a distance,
sometimes when they were mere silhouettes in windows, the culprit was
very much as culpable as a mass murderer who uses a knife from up
close. In fact, I worry more about the sniper more, since it's much
less amenable to a victim's defusing the situation.
Second, you are (to my knowledge) killing other
combatants (people who are there to kill you) and
not civilians (or innocent NPCs) because your
character thinks that killing helpless or innocent
people is fun.
This seems valid to me, and it applies to battlegrounds in online
roleplaying games as well. I think it's another aspect of
consensuality: it's consensual on the character level, as well as on
the player level.
Third, the voice and text message systems in many
competative first person shooters make it very clear
that you haven't really killed or eliminated a
person when you kill your opponent.
And yet, they can serve somewhat the opposite purpose in an online
roleplaying game; inflicting and maximizing psychological pain by
taunting one's opponent is such an issue in some of these games that
many of the games have moved to a faction based design where you can't
talk to the people you fight, and you can only fight people you can't
talk to.
Fourth, while they allow killing of other characters,
they don't generally emphasize pain or violence nor
do they allow you to torture, violate, or
humiliate other cahracters. Role-playing games are
much more flexible in that characters can do (or
at least try to do) anything that the players
describe. A tabletop role-playing game (or game
engine) doesn't need to have rules to handle torture
in a detailed manner in order for the players
and GM to play out such things in detail.
Most online roleplaying games have a freeform emote capability that
works perfectly well in this regard. Even when that isn't available -
say when the victim is on a different faction where the game mechanics
prevent communication - players are quite inventive about improvising
ways to make what they are acting out clear, particularly with regards
to rape.
I don't think computer gaming is any different from tabletop gaming in
this regard.
Warren J. Dew
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