Wired makes the case for more torture in games

 Posted by (Visited 7041 times)  Game talk  Tagged with: , , , , ,
Dec 152008
 

If you weren’t sick of this debate already, here’s more.

So this, really, is the problem with World of Warcraft‘s torture sequence. It does not model any consequences. You torture the sorcerer, but nothing particularly comes of it. You just move on to the next quest.

This would be lame in a TV show, but is arguably even lamer in a videogame, because it’s not too hard to imagine all sorts of repercussions that would have been dramatically fascinating while actually enhancing the gameplay.

For example, Lich King maker Blizzard Entertainment could have made the Art of Persuasion quest optional — but endowed it with some unusually lucrative loot or experience. That would have made it a genuine moral quandary: Should you do a superbad thing for a really desirable result?

— “Why We Need More Torture in Videogames“, Clive Thompson in Wired

Are games about torture evil?

 Posted by (Visited 17143 times)  Game talk  Tagged with: , , , ,
Dec 122008
 

…please explain to me again why killing NPCs in games is fine but sticking them with a cattle prod is evil.

Here’s your explanation, from my theory-of-fun/game-grammar point of view.

In killing NPCs (or popping any other sort of experience balloon), we are definitely seeing a “kill” dressing put on top of a statistical exercise. We are being entrained around measuring odds, optimizing behavior towards success, and then receiving a reward. The reward is generally utilitarian in some other aspect of the game. In other words, you do it, and there’s a reason for it — you kill the mob and you get back the loot, the XP, etc.

Although the killing is itself morally dubious as a ‘dressing’ for these underlying mechanics (see my previous writings on the subject), players do learn to see past the fiction fairly quickly, and cease seeing this as a moral issue, because they are smart: they know it’s just a game, and they move onto the underlying systemic reality very quickly.

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Cooking Mama, The Unauthorized PETA Edition: Mama Kills Animals | PETA.org

 Posted by (Visited 20460 times)  Game talk  Tagged with:
Nov 262008
 

Cooking Mama, The Unauthorized PETA Edition: Mama Kills Animals | PETA.org.

Given my kids’ reaction to it (glee), I am not sure that it will actually accomplish its purpose, but it is interesting to see games used as advocacy this way.

Although, once you get to the point that the eggs are bleeding, maybe it’s more accurate to call it propaganda.

Play it:

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The eyeballing game

 Posted by (Visited 5205 times)  Game talk  Tagged with:
Oct 252008
 

The eyeballing game is neat. I got a 1.08 on my first column, then finished with an overall of 2.87.

One presumes that doing this over and over again would improve your “eye” for angles. And in fact, I noticed that when I overthought stuff, I was more likely to be off, whereas when I just winged it, I did better.

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