Seriously? Nobody is arguing that sexually assaulting toons in a game is identical to sexually assaulting women in the real world. But you’re saying that if someone gets on a game and starts going up to random female toons and sexually harassing them, you think that’s fine behavior that’s perfectly ethical?
Because that sort of shit is one small part of why geek culture remains a hostile place to so many women, and I am sick to death of it.
Goddamn, this is so missing the point it’s like you’re aiming in the opposite direction.
Communication is communication. Molecules is molecules. Energy is energy.
If I am standing five feet away from you, and I move my larynx in such a way that it vibrates air molecules such that they send energy waves through the air until they hit your eardrum, and those vibrations, transferred to your eardrum, activate nerves that signal your brain with the message, “I want to grab your tits” over and over, that’s harassment.
If I am sitting ten thousand miles away from you, and I move my fingers in such a way that it activates my computer keyboard, and electronic signals are sent over wires until they hit your computer, and those signals, transferred to your monitor, cause light waves to be emitted in a pattern that, upon striking your eyes, activate nerves that signal your brain wtih the message, “I want to grab your tits” over and over, that’s harassment.
The fact that you were pretending to be an orc in the latter scenario is completely irrelevant.
This was the statement to me: “Ethics and morality govern our interactions with other humans, and apply to all interactions with other humans, regardless of time, place, or circumstance.”
If there is a “female toon” (computer character?) whose name is “Hotchick69” and someone repeatedly uses their computer generated character to rub against the female computer generated character, then no I don’t think anything is unethical or immoral about that. It doesn’t matter that the person who owns the account of “Hotchick69” is a human being named “Lisa Simpson” it’s still just computer imagery doing stuff to other computer imagery. It is not based in the real world and nothing that you do in a fake world with fake people in is unethical or immoral. Hell, that’s half the reason we have fake computer worlds if not the whole reason.
Not quite. I said morals and ethics apply equally to interactions between people in the real world, and interactions between people online. This is not, as you continue to bizarrely misinterpret, the same as saying that murdering a person in real life is the same as murdering a character in a video game.
Pretty sure I already answered this question. No, it’s not unethical to grab the breast of a computer generated image, because a computer generated image is not a person. However, if that computer generated image is being controlled by an actual human being, then your interactions with that actual human being online are controlled by the same ethics and morality that would govern your interactions with them in real life. Again, this is NOT saying that grabbing their avatar’s breast is the same as grabbing their real, actual breast. What it is saying, is that calling some another player an ethnic slur in a video game is morally and ethically the same as calling them a slur in real life.
Did you get the names mixed up at the end there? Because this doesn’t really make any sense as written.
So if I go online and say “Man, that Elmo is friggin’ hot!! I really want to have sex with it!” I’m sexually harassing the person that puppeteers Elmo?
Perhaps you are the one missing the point that fake computer games are not real life. Saying or doing things to a computer character is not the same thing as saying or doing things to a real human.
It shows that the developers got a better understanding for their market and how to keep customers happy. Doesn’t really show initial intent. No one is arguing that the developers did a bang-up job of implementing it in the first place but that doesn’t make engaging in PVP unethical.
Well, when you say “player” do you mean the computer character or the actual person controlling the computer character?
I don’t think I did, but I’ve had a few beers, plus I got excited typing HotChick69 so my hands might have been shaking.
No, I just looked, I didn’t mix up the names. Perhaps you should look at it again from the perspective of “Computer characters are not real, and nothing can be done to them that is immoral, unethical, or illegal”
I’m saying, if you’re talking to another person, and you start throwing racial epithets at them, that’s fucked up behavior. I don’t think it particularly matters if it’s because you think the guy controlling him is of that particular ethnicity, or if it’s because the character he’s controlling is of that particular ethnicity. Either way, you’re interacting with a human being, and that interaction is subject to the same ethical and moral framework you use in the real world.
Put it another way - if I call you a nigger, right now in this thread, do you think I would be breaking the rules of this forum? I don’t know if you’re actually black, and I’m pretty sure your drivers license doesn’t say manson1972 - so would that be a slur aimed at you, or would it be a slur aimed at the “avatar” you control on this forum? Or would there not be a meaningful distinction between the two?
You’re right, that was my misread. Sorry.
But it’s still a bad example. Consider this: I’m a big time creeper, and I want to creep on a girl named Susan, whom I know plays WoW as a character named “Firestar.” I sign up for the game, get on her server, and start following her around saying, “Hey, _______! I wanna lick your tits!”
Do you think there’s an ethical or moral difference, in that situation, if I fill in the blank with “Susan” or with “Firestar?”
That’s what I mean when I say the same ethical rules apply to games and real life. If it’s unacceptable to do that to Susan in real life, it’s unacceptable to do that to her in a video game.
Well, this isn’t a game, and I’m not pretending to be a bard dwarf, so I don’t think the same ethical and moral rules apply. My user name here is just a random pick so I don’t have to use my real name. I would assume you calling me racial slurs would refer to me as a person, and not to a character I am pretending to play.
Yes, I think there is a difference. One is addressing the character and one is addressing the person. Reference my “Elmo” example.
Perhaps we have a difference of opinion of what is considered immoral or unethical. I don’t consider someone being rude or a jerk immoral or unethical. And I don’t consider anything a computer generated character does to another computer generated character immoral or unethical. Watch the South Park WoW episode. Do you think anything the bad guy did in that episode was immoral or unethical?
I was playing very early on, before they figured very much of it out. I mean, this was like September/October/November of 1997- literally the first few months after it was released.
To me, at least, the big difference here is intent. Yes, I was playing a character whose actions might piss off in-game characters. Who likes being robbed and/or killed?
But I wasn’t doing it to deliberately piss of the humans behind the characters. I was legitimately trying to play the bad guys. And know what? They’re called the BAD guys for a reason. How else are you supposed to play the bad guys on a server that allows for that sort of bad actions, if you aren’t going to do bad stuff? There’s no way around it.
It would have been more or less pointless in a non-PVP server, as I’d have been limited to garden variety thievery and harsh words, which wasn’t the character I wanted to play.
Truth be told, I really had intended to be my usual lawful good paladin-esque character, but was getting so annoyed and bored that me and my friends decided to flip it on its head and like Lemur866 noted, become the monsters.
So, if I have two WoW characters, one with a made-up name, and one with my actual name, that alone is enough to change the ethical calculus of how to treat me? That seems pretty iffy logic to me.
Further, who (aside from bump, I guess) actually plays a character in an MMO? Sure, you’re controlling a Tauren Shaman, but 99%+ of players aren’t talking about the Spirits of Earth and Air in the chat channel. They’re talking about what they saw on Jimmy Kimmel last night. They’re actively talking about their “alts” and switching toons while continuing the same conversations they’re having with the same people. They’re basically treating the game as a chat room or message board, that’s incidentally connected to a video game. The distinction between “Susan” and “Firestar” is precisely as sharp in WoW as the distinction between manson1972 and whatever is printed on your birth certificate.
Yeah, your Elmo example is also pretty bad, because in that one, you’re not even directly interacting with the person controlling the puppet - and, again, moral and ethical concerns apply to interactions between actual people. If you find the puppeteers Facebook page, and start posting, “I wanna fuck you, Elmo!” messages there, and on Twitter, and wherever else you can find that guy, yeah, that’s absolutely harassment, even if you only ever use the name of the character the guy plays.
No shit?
Neither do I. I’m not talking about what computer generated characters do to each other. I’m talking about what actual humans do to each other, and I’m not willing to grant arbitrary exceptions because some interactions occur in the context of a video game.
Are distance and anonymity the only differences between the morality/ethics of playing online with strangers VS with friends in person? If it makes someone feel good to grief strangers, and they “feed” off of the rage in chat or over the headset such that they get a rush when they get kicked and banned from playing. Do they act the same way towards their own friends and to the same extent? If their friends say the same things that the strangers said in chat, and are visibly mad at them, do they feel an even greater elation when their friends are crying and refuse to have them over to their house anymore?
What is the division between the morality/ethics of directly interacting with people face to face in a not fun or unpleasantly unexpected way, and doing the same thing while you are both interacting on the same level of avatar abstraction (playing with dolls together and interacting as the doll characters, characters interacting in a DnD game, a computer game’s avatars griefing others who just want to play another way, etc)? I say that there is a difference, If I get my boobs continually honked in real life when I made clear that I did not want them to be, that is abuse. If my doll’s boobs are honked by my brother’s doll, and my brother’s doll keeps telling my doll that its gonna honk my boobs, I feel that the game is ruined to the point that I stop playing and cry to mom, and I feel upset/disgusted at my brother for ruining the game and making his character say those things; But no abuse or psychological harm occurred as if he did it to me directly; anymore than watching a horror film that had the murderer talk to the camera and promise bad things to the viewer. The same of DnD, the game would be ruined and that experience would sour me towards my friends, but no real abuse occurred mainly because we were all interacting on that level of abstraction which any of us could have removed ourselves from at any time. If I spoke, as myself, to my friends directly and made it clear that I did not like what their characters were doing to mine and they continued… then I would consider that as an abusive act that was still below personal abuse. If that could occur in a computer game, I feel that it would be the same as DnD, but with the onus being on me to log out of the game. No one can really tell who is telling the truth or faking on the internet, so we might as well all act like everyone is serious in their complaints, but the game world is the shared space and the way to “go home” back to your safe space and leave the toxic community is to log out.
It is nonsensical to bring your friends to a clean river to swim in, later find out that it is polluted, and continue to swim in it while mumbling to yourself that the river is toxic. If you don’t want to be poisoned, get out as soon as you find out, and work with others to clean it up if you like that river so much.
No, because again, it is a game. You are trying to be someone else. If not, why are you playing? You can be yourself in the real world. That someone else in the game is not a real person. Doing something to that someone else cannot be deemed immoral or unethical.
Here, I am representing myself. Names don’t make a different person. I am representing my own person here. In a game, I wouldn’t be. Manson1972 IS me.
I don’t agree. Firestar may be a magic wielding 3 foot tall elf. You see any of those in the real world? If you asked me what manson1972 was, I would tell you my exact same characteristics that I am, because this message board isn’t a game where people pretend to be something else.
That’s my point. I’m NOT interacting with the guy controlling the puppet. I’m interacting with Elmo, a made up character. There is nothing immoral or unethical that I could do or say to Elmo, because he is a made up character. I’m not treating the guy who is controlling Elmo AS Elmo, I’m talking to Elmo the made up character from Sesame Street.
But it seems like you ARE talking about what computer generated characters do to each other. Computer generated characters that are evil killing computer generated characters that are good, in the world of a game. Nothing can be immoral or unethical about that. They are made up characters in a made up world.
I play a lot of games that don’t require me to pretend to be someone else. If we’re playing chess, am I pretending to be the black pieces? No, of course not. If we’re playing chess online, and you start insulting me, are you insulting me, or the chess pieces?
Exactly. If I call myself Miller, or Bob, or Firestar the Elf, you’re still talking to a person when you talk to me. Changing my name doesn’t change the ethics of how you interact with me.
Nine out of ten people playing WoW, if asked, “Describe yourself,” would describe themselves, not the character they’re playing. Because almost nobody in an MMO is pretending to their character in the game. They’re acting as themselves, while engaged in a largely rote mechanical process of leveling up and acquiring new gear. Practically speaking, there is absolutely no difference between a screen name in WoW, and a screen name on this board, except that WoW gives you prettier graphics to go with your screen name.
So, if you pulled out a hammer and beat Elmo mercilessly with it, that’s not an unethical act, because you’re only beating on a fictional character? The fact that there’s a human hand in there is immaterial, right?
Controlled by non-made up people in a real world, with whom you are interacting - which means that ethical and moral concerns apply, same as they do to any other human interaction.
You, a real person, cannot interact with a made-up character in any ethically relevant way. You can, however, interact with another real person via the proxy of made-up characters.
I am flabbergasted that you see this as a difference. Do you really?
Bob really wants to yell racist epithets at people. But he adopts your ethical system, and he wants to say ethical. So he puts on a wizard’s cap and tells the people in the nearby park that he’s pretending they are actually disguised lizard aliens, and he starts screaming racial epithets at the fictional characters he’s assigned them. And this makes a difference to you? The people that he’s screaming at shouldn’t be bothered, because he’s actually shouting at pretend characters, not at them?
This makes no sense at all to me. You’re responsible for the effects of your actions, and the medium through which you conduct those actions doesn’t matter.
To be clear, if Bob starts shouting, “You fuckin wop lizards, I’m blasting you with my plasma ray guns!” I don’t think that some second-amendment enthusiast is justified in taking him down. Pretending to shoot someone isn’t the same as really shooting them. But pretending to ruin someone’s day can actually ruin someone’s day, depending on the actions you take in the course of the pretend.
The unethical part isn’t the killing. The unethical part is deliberately disrupting someone else’s game, in a manner I’ve described a bajillion times above.
Well good for you. but UO or WoW IS pretending to be someone else. Do you see people walking around in the real world with chain mail or anything like that?
Do you pretend that you are an Elf that can do magic on this message board? No? then it is not the same thing. Therefore, I can do whatever I want to your Elf magic character without it being immoral or unethical.
I’m sorry but I reject your premise that people in WoW are not pretending to be someone else in the game. How many magic users do you know in real life? How many people do you know in real life that have a “+2 to strength belt”? Everyone in WoW is pretending to be a different person there. That’s the whole point of WoW or any game really. If someone asks me to describe myself, I wouldn’t rattle off my stats in Dragon Age: Inquisition.
This would be Bob interacting with REAL people in REAL life, not a computer game with a fake world with fake people in it. You cannot compare computer generated characters with real life.
Again, you seem to have lost track of the fact that, in an online game, you are interacting with real people.
Well, I’m sorry, but if you think interacting with characters in WoW, or interacting with characters in any game really, is the exact same thing as interacting with real people in a real park in the real world, then we will never agree on anything that has to do with computer gaming or the ethics/morals of characters in that world.
Killing or maiming or treating any computer character less then you would treat a REAL human being is NOT the same as doing the same thing to a REAL person in REAL life. If you don’t agree, of course that’s fine, it’s your opinion. But I play games to NOT be a real person, and do things that I wouldn’t do in REAL life, the same as most people I suspect. If you want to equate them, then good on you, but most people won’t.
OH SHIT I MISSED THAT. I should have said a bajillion times that killing a computer character is not the same as doing the same thing to a real person! My bad, dude!
Are we even having the same discussion? Are you reading what I am saying? Are you reading what Miller is saying?