Blog 5: Beyond Bloggerdome

Real quickly I'd like to say that I hope Anastasia recovers quickly from her sudden illness. I know they are pretty horrible, I succumbed to a rather sudden illness myself Sunday morning and probably will this next Sunday as well, and it's no picnic.

[making "drinking" motion with hand]

But back to the topic, which was about game developers and morality and being responsible or something like that...
I don't see how game developers wouldn't be responsible for the morality of their games; isn't that like asking if directors were responsible for the morality of their movies, or if authors were responsible for the morality of their books [are they? It's been a while since I actually read a book, and I don't know if most books are as preachy as that one was].

That's not to say that they have to make a game with good morals -- they're free to make whatever kinds of games they want -- but ultimately the developers are held accountable for the quality their games. I think that a developer can make it as bloody and gory as they want but still maintain a certain level of morality. They shouldn't make the players choose between two horrible situations -- there should be the option for the player to do the morally right thing.

On one hand, games like Fable and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic offer the player the chance to make the morally right decision in most situations [sometimes you still may have to steal things, but in video games that's often unavoidable] and keeps track of how many good or bad deeds you have done.

Then there are games like Grand Theft Auto.
Some might say that it is a highly immoral game [possibly referring to such activities such as running over people with stolen ambulances and killing prostitutes] and actually, they're absolutely right. You are required to kill people and steal things in order to complete a mission, it is essential to progressing beyond the first level.

I read Julian Dibbell's article A Rape in Cyberspace -- or as I like to call it, Dibbell's Driv-el because I am super clever and I was annoyed by the pretentiousness of his writing. Honestly, is there any reason to use words like "oleaginous" and "simulacrum" when "greasy" and "image" or "representation" would suffice? You can just imagine this smug douchebag proof-reading his own article on his MacBook in some super-trendy "underground" cafe while listening to indie music, getting a hard-on thinking about how vast his vocabulary is. And I bet he'd be twittering about doing so shortly thereafter.

But I digress...

It took me hours to do so but I read his article and, chock-full of pretentiousness as it was, it was an interesting story. Kinda horrifying, what Mr. Bungle had done, but interesting at how the community had grown so much because of it.

I feel that the developers held no responsibility for Mr. Bungle's immoral behavior because the option to NOT rape other players was always there, and odds are the option to do so was not intended in the making of the game.

I also feel that Julian Dibbell is douchebag, in case I was not clear before.