Remind me, should we ever play Monopoly, not to let you be the banker.
I should think that anyone willing to cheat at a game, is, at heart, likely not a very ethical person in real life either.
Yes, in real life people don’t get to make a choice. The basic terms of life are unfair from the start, and there’s no element of consensuality to it. Are you then advocating social darwinism, that whole “go with the flow” thing of fundamental unfairness, or do you think ethics has any place in society?
Sort of thing that happens, I suppose, to people who can’t handle Civ. Pity.
Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t know I had to get your approval of my credentials before posting on a topic. How careless of me.
Interesting you should bring that up. The rules of baseball are not arrived at democratically, but still provoke a great deal of discussion and debate among baseball fans, many of whom don’t actually play. Think “designated hitter rule.”
I’m sorry my savage tut-tutting of you provoked such anger. Perhaps I was a bit harsh. However, just giving someone the option of opting out of a game doesn’t make ts rules fair or reasonable. Based on what I’ve read in this thread, AI think the rule is fair. I don’t think its reasonable, in the sense that I don’t see it working without a much more powerful detection and enforcement regiment than the WoW creators can probably manage.
Fair enough. But I think it’s reasonable to say that mods are generally expected to have a clearer understanding of the principles on which the Dope is run than others.
If I had attempted to dictate terms to WoW you might have a point. And the business about “capitalist oppression” is a side issue, a way of thinking about when it’s right to think about rules.
OK, I’ll bite. What cheating in Fizbot is okay, and what would other players say about it? If other players agree it’s okay then, well, it’s not cheating. It’s called “house rules.”
As a svelte liberal, I feel the need to point out that the salient fact of “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” is that it was written from a Birmingham Jail. If a player were to e-mail WoW beforehand, and let them know that he was going to violate the rules, and why, he might resemble one of those people the world honors (albeit a very, very, very silly version). Otherwise, the world abounds with people who have been dishonored for doing so.
Whoa, wait a minute. Why the hell did I have to send God a $19.99 paypal, then?
There is no card game called “fizbot”. The game is called “Fizzbin” , and as you can see from the link, Evil Captor couldn’t have it at home, and if he did he couldn’t possibly “cheat” at it, considering the game’s makeup.
Bullshit, and you know it. I’d expect the same reaction is I barged into a thread about baseball atheletes choosing to take steroids and getting burned. I know shit about baseball and you know shit about Warcraft, yet you want to question the rules by comparing yourself to Revolutionary War heroes. Please.
Yet, at the same time, how well do you expect I’d be received if I said “Well, I’ve never played baseball, I don’t know the rules, I don’t know how it works, but I think people should be able to break unjust rules because that’s how our country was founded!”
Fine. Explain exactly why this is relevant to World of Warcraft. Why should cheaters be allowed?
So cheating should be allowed unless it can be utterly and completely disallowed by technology? Your argument is really “cheating is OK unless it’s detected”? Seriously?
Please explain to me how expecting people to have a basic understanding of a topic before pontificating about it on philosophical points violates the principles of the Dope.
Which is totally not the point of this thread to begin with.
I see. Wow. So the attempts to justify that cheating at games might be okay in certain circumstances has gone from the Founding Fathers and constitutional rights to economic inequity to a fictional Star Trek card game…That’s the most tortured logic I’ve ever seen on these boards.
If I am born into a country with unjust laws, I can see the argument that the unjust laws should be disobeyed. Rosa Parks was born in the the Jim Crow South and acted appropriately.
Now if Rosa Parks had voluntarily emigrated to Saudi Arabia and then bitched that the laws were unjust with respect to women, I’d have very little sympathy for her. She would have chosen to move there and that’s how things are there.
Even that isn’t really the same as an on-line game. The player and the company make a contract. The WOW people get money and in exchange the player gets to play but only by the rules. It’s a contract. How can one think that there is any moral ambiguity here? If the WOW people changed the rules after you signed up, then I can see how one would be upset and could possibly have a case for circumventing those rules that had been changed.
Anyway, Evil Captor, let me try to put this in terms that you can understand. Let’s say that a woman and I agree to a BDSM relationship. She agrees to submit to me but only if I agree to some rules, let’s say they are that I must respect her safe word and wear a condom for intercourse. We have a fun time for a few months and then one night I have her tied up and I find that I am out of condoms. I then unilaterally decide that this is an extenuating circumstance since I can’t use what I don’t have and I just tested negative for HIV the day before. I can justify this too. We never explicitly discussed what would happen if condoms weren’t available and no one is harmed since I tested negative for disease. So I do her bareback. Is this ok?
Sure, but ethical behavior in real life is not the same as ethical behavior in a game. Besides which, someone who will act unethically over something as paltry as a video game is likely to also act unethically when the stakes are substantial.
Wow, that’s awfully irrelevant. The issue at hand is not someone complaining that a rule is poorly made or unfair. No one in this thread, not even the OP, has said anything like that. Baseball fans may not like the designated hitter rule, but they still recognize that it is (for now) part of the rules of the game, and has to be followed.
Again, the issue is not wether or not the rule is fair or reasonable, although I will point out that you are in absolutely no position to make that judgement, having never played the game yourself. The issue is breaking a rule unilaterally because it is to your own benefit, and never mind how it effects the other players in the game. Even if the rule in question were unfair and unreasonable, by taking it upon yourself to break it while others are still following it, you’re giving yourself an unfair advantage over other players, and reducing their enjoyment of a service they’ve bought and paid for. That’s a shitty thing to do, and it’s very troubling that you can’t recognize this simple fact.
Since when is cheating one of the “principles” of the Straight Dope? Judging by this thread, I’d say it’s something the board as a whole frowns on very strongly.
Funny, I was going to ask you exactly the same question. You certainly don’t seem to have any grasp of ethical principles, just going by your posts to this thread.
And if I ever see this cheating FUCK in the game, will I stick my sword up his ass and play “blender”? You betcha.
Of course, the odds of this happening are negligible since I don’t and have never played World of Warcraft. If I did, though, I would certainly have a keyboard shortcut for “blender” or the available equivalent.
Now, excuse me, I have a Master of Orion 2 game to finish.
That’s a cryin’ shame. I’ve been looking for a good guild.
I’ve had dozens of invitations, but they’re mostly from “starter” guilds, and frankly, I’m just not interested in joining a guild which sent me an invite without even the courtesy of speaking to me first.
As a game designer one of the most useful books I’ve found for understanding the underlying structure of gameplay is Homo Ludens, a slim volume written by the Dutch historian Johan Huizinga in the 1930’s.
Huizinga argues (correctly, I believe) that “play” requires three things:
- The choice to engage in it.
- A playspace (either real or imaginary) that is separate from the real world.
- Boundaries that define the playspace physically, temporally, and behaviorally.
This definition is very broad because Huizinga is interested in exploring the playful nature of many aspects of culture besides just sports and boardgames. (Things like religous ritual and poetry.) But it’s very useful because it helps us understand what conditions are necessary for creating an effective playspace.
Cheating is the enemy of play because it breaks Huizinga’s third condition. It violates the boundaries (i.e. the rules) of the playspace and lets the real world intrude. Here’s what he has to say on the matter:
There is no argument to be made for breaking the rules of a game. The rules of a game are what defines it’s reality. It has no existence other than in the expression of the rules. That’s what makes a game world appealing. It’s systematized in a way that the real world never is. Cheating destroys the illusion, thus spoiling the fun for everyone.
Most of this is being beaten into the ground already but I couldn’t let the irony of this go…
It’s guys like you who make it profitable for guys like the thieves who ripped off your friend.
Sorry for the aside, but that last little bit that you stated is just the teeniest, tiniest pet peeve with me. Hope you don’t mind the interuption in this case. 
I know that it’s a prevailing attitude among some (a lot?) that what you said doesn’t always (ever?) hold true, but instead is quite the opposite… that when you ‘break a small rule’ it means you’ve considered it against much bigger quandaries and have decided, all things being judged equally, that it’s of a less import because you’d never, ever dream of doing anything larger. A justification yes, but I don’t believe that one necessarily leads (like a gateway drug) to a worse wrong. Nor is it indicative, in my humble opinion, of one’s over all character. YMMV.
And while I’m here and know absolutely zilch about anything to do with online gaming, could anyone tell me what the feelings would be towards a person who really did NOT get (for whatever the reason – intelligence level, naivete, etc.) that this was cheating? I’m just not sure what the stance should be in those situations. Oh, and could we please not get into whether someone shouldn’t be that dense or however they might be described? Let’s just say, as Og’s witness, that they truly aren’t aware this would be the case and indeed did this in all innocence. Should they be forgiven if they’ve then “repented/reformed”? Or should the castigation remain the same?
There is no way that a player of World of Warcraft could claim to be anything but *willfully *ignorant of the rules against gold-buying or power-leveling services. They are banned explicitly in the enduser licensing agreement (EULA) which you are forced to view and accept at the installation and at every update of the game software, which happens frequently. The World of Warcraft game also has a “launcher” which has news and links to the main World of Warcraft site, which has headlines every time that tens of thousands of accounts are banned for violations of the EULA. So basically, my feelings would be that anyone claiming that they “really didn’t get” that this was cheating was full of shit.
Thanks for the reply.
I see and I know better than to make the observation that there are those who don’t read the small print. 'Cause I understand that would be a death wish here and there’s no justification ever for not doing so. However, I’d just like to point out, that in light of the fact that some people honestly do that, many might be ignorant of the rest. Or is that not possible in any way on WoW? Other games besides them? I genuinely don’t know.
The sheer irony of you lecturing a guest on what is and isn’t acceptable behaviour on the Dope burns, man, it just burns. You have shown many times that you have no fucking clue what is and isn’t acceptable behaviour here. If our guests could search, there’s more than one Pit thread he could find to that effect.
DigitalC, pay no attention to Evil Captor, you seem like a suitable fit. Stick around.