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MMO Gaming - Virtually Too Real?
bippy writes "The Rocky Mountain News has an article about the evolving face of massively multiplayer online games. PC MMOGs have fostered debates about free speech, made money for people and been home to virtual and real crime. Or as the Rocky put it: 'In a time of global terrorism, high crime rates and world hunger, the virtual evils of a computer game are really trivial. But in a way, that's the point: Why do even our games have to be subject to crime, no matter how virtual?'" A spokesperson for Ultima Online comments on Electronic Arts' view of virtual crime: "EA owns your gold, your swords, your characters - they are all just digital bits. If your entertainment is to destroy other peoples' entertainment, you're going to be tossed."
when someone KO me in a game.. there is pride at stake
Hey, that's my password you are typing
Anyway, it turned out to be different. It just turned out that huge, smart databases transformed MUDs and BBS games to have many real-world dynamics, and make the virtual world more exciting to some than the real world. And now they are forming relationships in the virtual world. Healthy for some, unhealthy for others.
But the success of different games over others shows that it's all about the gameplay.
The point of having a massively multiplayer game is so that large numbers of players interact, otherwise why not just make work like diablo where everyone just plays with people they have agreed to play with.
The point of making large numbers of people interact could be many things; however the G part of MMPOG means game, thus you might expect peole to treat it as a game and try to win. Now most MMPOGS don't actually have a way to win, so players make up their own rules. For some, winning and "beating the system" are the same thing, or at least, the interesting thing since the AIs have always been too simple.
So while stalking and calling names etc is certainly uncalled for, messing with other people seems to be the whole point of most MMPOGS. With guild v guild and kingdom v kingdom and pvp, what do you expect but that people will be competitive. And competition means winners and loser, and in an MMPOG thats one winner and a thousand losers.
So the games bring it upon themselves in a way, the unhappy newbies being picked on by the powergaming kiddies. Thats what they are designed to do, deep down. And since the rules arent written down anywhere, and in fact change randomly, who is to say what is legal and what is not, really, if the game lets you do it, it must be legal unless they tell you otherwise, and even then like in sports, is it only not legal if the umpire notices?
my favourite part ... A 12-year-old boy in South Korea stole $16,000 in real money from his father to finance his gaming addiction at a local cyber cafe.
My opinion, but that is just crazy.
I read in the papers last year one of the South Korean MMOGs had an actual war, with thousands on either side fighting coordinated battles, complete with military hierarchies, to achieve solely in-game-decided game-relevant game-objectives.
--
Sal
Writings: saltation.blogspot.com
Wravings: go-blog-go.blogspot.com
um, i beg to differ. I doubt if any terrorists currently planning any strike anywhere in the world were inspired by any game in general. bin Laden never played Quake. I doubt if Saddam's ever fragged anyone at UT. If a guy has voilent, anti-social tendencies, nothings gonna stop him. on the other hand, a "soft" guy playing hours of such stuff would hardly be affected by it in real life.
The MMORPG 'A Tale in the Desert' is (in addition to a great city-building/RPG game) largley a social experiment where the players have opportunities to decide how the game-society should go about achieving most goals.
The developers have created tests in each of seven 'disciplines' that are flexible enough to be solved a number of different ways. Though blind, malevolent ambition is one way to get things done, the populace seems to have gravitated toward mature, cooperative solutions. This might be partially because of the 'legal system', which allows any citizen to create a legal petition to punish certain behaviour or change certain game mechanics. If 2/3 of the population agrees with the petition (and it's feasible for the developers), that punishment or change is performed or coded into the game.
Respecting the players by giving them this sort of control over the fate of their own society is a risky thing to do for the company, but I think it's paid off. ATITD is by far the most interesting and challenging game I've ever enjoyed.
--Owen--
So you'd feel better about your computer if you knew that someday I could just creep into your apartment and take it from you?
I remember (ok, so it starts silly, bear with me) as a kid of 14 getting my 1st summer job. It paid like, oh, $500 a month or something. I was saving for a VCR as my parents were of the opinion that they don't need it, they get enough TV as it is. So I worked for a month and spent all of the money on a VCR. Yes, back in those days they really DID cost that much. I felt really good about that VCR and I don't think a potential threat of someone stealing it might have made it better for me. Ok, in a real world there is always a possibility of getting robbed and thus in a realistic virtual world there should be, too. But in any online game that allows PKing and/or stealing from other players it happens ridiculously often. It should be allowed to some extent but it would also have to be illegal in the gaming world and punishable as well. In the real world you get to pay fines in mild cases and go to jail in the more extreme cases. And you always, ALWAYS lose the benefit from your crime if you get caught and the one you have wronged should be recompensated as well. In the virtual world jail-time would probably translate to losing the gaming time you have paid for and well, fines and suchlike are pretty straightforward. If it needs to be truly virtual as in real-life-like, then make it truly virtual. Implement police force etc. Thief should be a possible occupation but it should also be an occupation that is easily short-lived and/or difficult to play.
This, by the way, from someone who only has experience on Everquest, not UO. All comments are welcome.
Sigs for Nerds. Sigs that Matter.
Clay Shirky has an excellent article on his site about how online groups are their own worst enemy. Basically, he states that in any online community there will eventually come hordes of people who miss the point and spoil the fun for everybody. It's a great read for anybody who's ever been player-killed, trolled or flamed on the 'net.
I might add one exception I've found; puzzle pirates. When I tried this game during the beta testing, I thought I'd accidentally connected to the wrong internet or something. In general the users are helpful and benign, and there's hardly a mention of 'I w1ll 0wnz0r j00 f4gg0t!!'.
I ran a benchmark on my quantum computer, now I can't find it anywhere!
This is a good opportunity to study different rule sets and see what can encourage people to play fair and not turn to crime.
And not just rules, but what cultural elements make for a stable society. Crime in MMOG may turn out to produce some quality information.
Perhaps games can alter society faster than wars.
why is parent modded as troll ?
so, i played neocron. the first person shooter mmporg with lots of pvp because the quake ppl feel right at home with the area damage weapons. the problem with most mmporgs is that when people PK, scam or spread grief they are not held responsible for it. in neocron this meant that someone who just mowed down 20 newbs at some spawn event could stand around in a no PvP zone and shout abuse at the respawning players. GMs just said 'pvp is part of the game'.
so what is the player supposed to do ? try to have a good time with the game or 'take care' of the griefers. in the end i just canceled my account.
there is a specific type of people that play the game in a way where they exploit the game mechanics to grief other players. they dont care about retaliation from other players or temporary bans from GMs, they grief on as long as they can and ruin the game for others in the process. a real world example would be someone who grabs the football from the field at the superbowl and runs away, not minding the horde chasing after him with torches. its just that these people dont care about the virtual world at all, knowing that whatever might happen to their character it doesnt mean anything in reality.
now IMHO.. this is a distance to a mmporg that more EQ players should have, but then no one would be there to grief.
so the mmporg police force will accomplish nothing as to the griefer it means nothing. permanent ban for life is the only option if a company doesnt want to loose players that just want to have fun.
One perceived problem with many MMORPGS is that they do not allow or were poorly designed for player-vs-player contests. Ultima Online allowed this right from the very beginning, but was was completely unbalanced due to its open and realistic character design (no classes or levels, just a bunch of interesting skills), essentially rewarding people who wanted to find ways to exploit the awkardness in the design to take on other players. These people were essentially using loopholes in the rules to create their own game at the expense of others who did not know the unintentional (and unintuitive) rules. These loopholes are known as "exploits" and use of them is usually punishable by cancellation of your account, but they are often hard to spot.
Everquest avoided this altogether by simply disallowing players to take each other on. For many though, this leads to boredom. And boredom leads to trying to find ways around the restriction. Using exploits to affect other players indirectly (a form of hacking) is a game in itself.
Games like Dark Age of Camelot and Shadowbane were specificly designed for Player-vs-player combat from initial concept. While classes and levels are a disappointment to those seeking realism, they do allow excellent control of balance by placing some artificial limits on what abilities players can combine. Players attempt to tweak the characteristics of their characters for the best possible combination of features, but the games are becoming so complex now that if they are well-designed there will never be a single "best template" for any character. The best games of such type maximize both complexity and balance, allow players to beat up on each other, and preoccupy them with exploring the intended rules and not the unintended rules.
In the early days of UO, I recall that there were only two or three ways to develop a character for player-vs-player contests. Exploits were much more interesting, and use of them was considered "1337". In Shadowbane there are already so many interesting tactical and strategic avenues to pursue to get an edge over your opponents that using exploits seems positively childish. To label someone an exploiter is insulting.
vreeJack
"Will future ages believe that such stupid bigotry ever existed!" -- Ivanhoe
Yes, of course people get upset emotionally if their characters are harmed or their items stolen. Would you not be upset if someone ruined a painting you have been working hard on? Someone keying the classic car you've slaved over many hours to restore it to its former glory? Same deal... you get pissed at the person who is wilfully destroying something that gave you intense enjoyment.
That, by the way, is what so-called 'grievers' do in these games: they go out of their way, not to steal your money or kill your character per se, but to ruin your fun. Game companies are right to boot such players.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
OK here I'm with EA - you ruin the game for other players you can't play. It's their ball after all. If you spoiled a "real game" (something non-cyber) you'd expect to be ejected, right?
How is this different? Why do people think it's okay to ruin the game for other players? What about their rights? They have paid good money to play (real money) and enjoy the game. This is like someone who talks through the movie.
And this is happening in LOTS of games too, even Rainbow Six 3. I encountered some moron who though it was funny to stand in front of a door half way through the mission so we (the other players) couldn't complete it. Where did this guy get off? I just don't get it, spend all the money om an online game, just to ruin it for everyone one else playing. Okay the damage done was small, we moved off that server and contiuned, not so easy with other games, but still annoying.
Why can't we all just play the game and get along?
but by doing that you get nowhere closer to a more realistic virtual world. Ok, granted, in real world people expect to be shut away for a long time (life or close to it) for a premeditated (spelling might suck here) murder. And it should be something like that in online games, too. But for instance them dark elves hate humans in Everquest. Yet human PCs don't get to kill dark elven PCs or vice versa, unless it's a PVP server, in which case everyone gets to kill everyone anyway.
I don't know the right solution to killing, especially if you want to have character classes such as assassin (what would be the point of making a character specializing in killing if it's not possible?) but I do feel very strongly about the so-called neutral alignment classes. I would LOVE to play a thief or a rogue if I was able to actually pick someone's pockets occasionally and perhaps even break into someone's house but in order for it to be fair it'd either have to be NPC houses (booooring) or there should be a limit to what and how much you can steal or something (not quite fair busting your chops off for that Wondrous Armor of Immortality +792 if the very next night someone busts into your home and steals it) One way of dealing with these issues is to declare that "life is not fair" and another is to ban just about everything.
No MMORPG (that I know of) has the balance between these anywhere close to what I think is right so I don't play any of them. Which is probably for the best, all things considered.
Sigs for Nerds. Sigs that Matter.
So basically, what you are saying is that if I find 100 other people with yellow penguins and walk around town with them, then it's suddenly okay and acceptable? From the inside of this group, it sure looks okay. I mean, from the inside it appears that everyone is doing it. However, if an outsider takes a look at this sort of behaviour ( 101 people walking around with yellow penguins while said penguins beat eachother up and shock eachother with tazers ) they'd get worried and sooner or later, all 101 of us would end up in the local funny farm. Now apply this to a bunch of people who ARE their respective RP characters. From the inside it looks perfectly normal; Everyone else is doing it so it's probably okay, right? From an outside perspective, it's still scary as hell to see people going that far for something as simple as a game.
But, you've got a point. It's not like all MUD/MMORPG players are mentally instable. The majority of people in said games are ( I hope... ) stable enough to keep a firm distinction between reality and the game. They just play the game, enjoy it, have fun with others and still maintain the ability to be able to let go of their onlines "lives".
Ah, very true. Very good point, too. Yes, i would be upset if someone destroyed something I've been working hard on. Like I said, I've been on both sides regarding this kind of behaviour. I myself had 1,5 years of hard effort on a MUD thrown away after some minor incidents which ended up being grossly exagerated by people who opposed me back then. All in all, I ended up with a nice ban on my IP adress and everything from the past 1,5 years more or less got deleted. Of course I myself was mad at this... Downright seething. It took me a while but I realized that it just really did not matter a bit and that I should have been GLAD I got banned. After all, it did help me get rid of my addiction to MUDding ( albeit not voluntarily... ) and it made me realize that people should keep a firm grip on reality.
The comparisons to ruining a painting or wrecking a car would be comparable to this, yes. But you never really "own" your character or your equipment in a game. It's all imaginary and thus you never own anything at all except the PRIVILEGE to use it. Unlike the car or the painting, which you do own yourself. Having your character and all your items deleted by an admin is something you can't do much against, considering it's their computer and their data.
Besides, the wilful destruction of property is against the law and thus you can go to court if someone decides to be a "griever" and ruin your fun. Unlike blocked accounts/bans/whatever on online games, there's allot you can do about destruction of property in real life. Sure, it still pisses you off but at least you can get back at the "assho-" ... err... "griever". :)
Hate me!
Who said anything about Jocks, Preppies, Goths, or geeks? I don't recall anyone saying anything about being good at sports...
He's talking about antisocial behavior... sociopaths who prey on their fellow man and society in general. I happen to agree that those people are what's wrong with society, and that they should be appropriately sanctioned.
Now, those people can come from any social strata (you are making the mistake of equating social strata with social worth). Lots of working class joes volunteer at soup kitchens and work in their local churches... they probably do a lot more good (and proportionally give much more) than some upper-crust aristrocrat who throws a few thousand bucks at the problem and forgets about it. Social position doesn't necessarily have anything to do with being a sociopath... and I think sociopaths in online games deserve the same banishment they get in society.
For instance, in addition to revoking accounts, I'd support some kind of game "jail" arrangement, or even something more appropriate to the period (in a fantasy-themed game, throw them in the stocks in the center of town and let the people abuse them... that might teach 'em).
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
The better real-world equivalent of insisting you're "Thorpe the Ranger" isn't walking around town at random with a penguin, it's more like walking around a raised platform claiming to be the King of Denmark while others on the same platform pretend to be Polonius, Ophelia, Hamlet, etc. Nobody watching this spectacle should find any of those actions odd. Role-playing is very, very old. The only difference is the medium.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
And give me a break. Living, breathing people do not disconnect, get their connections reset by peer or time-out in the middle of a conversation. ( Sadly, sometimes... )
You obviosuly have never talked to someone with a bad case of pagelepsy. When the pager goes off, you can see the attention drain from thier eyes as they consult thier small plastic master.
Technology is bringing all of the features of the virtual world to the real, the virtual world is just a bit ahead of our own in terms of feelings related to technology. Timeouts via pager are one example. Real life PK? Why that would be identity theft in my mind.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Most people when they see that cringe but let me defend myself. First off if you don't know this game read the whole post before you pass judgement.
... elite you were not beating these mobs. So most of the EQ community watched the news of the other guilds who could and awed at the most incredible items ever put out by Sony.
Fact of life/fake reality: The masses will never have access to the elite items in the game because they either don't have the ability to kill the mobs to get the items. They must either obtain it through "hand me downs" or buy it.
I made this possible for ANYONE in the game to get elite level loot. To give you an idea most people in everquest never see more than 20,000pp at one time in their bank account. Through luck and the situation I was in and the character class I was I could obtain almost anything people wanted in Planes of Power.
First, off all loot I obtained and sold was MINE and obtained solo without any assistance. I'm not one of the infamous earthbow sellers (if you don't know you don't need to know.
EQ has never been known to make the best decisions when changing how characters work and when releasing new expansions. Luclin... was a pathetic excuse... I'm not goign there. The first good decision was Planes of Power. The elite guilds needed a challenge and the rest of the game was nothing now.
99% of the Everquest world was alienated by their decision to please the elite guilds. There were around 20 zones or areas if you will. You could access 3 right off but had to beat certain mobs and get "flagged" to continue on. http://everquest.station.sony.com/power/ for more details.
Like I was saying, this basically alienated 99% of the people who play from continuing on. Unless you were highly organized and
A few items to mention are quest clothing/armor which would make your old armor look like a tin foil suit. Also bloodmetal earrings. This one was one of the most incredible items that ANYONE could wear. However, 99% of EQ had no access to it. Being an enchanter I can charm mobs and as it turns out I could charm a certain mob that could obliterate the rest of it's kin by simply giving it another weapon, hasting it by 70% and slowing the one it's attacking down. 1/5 dropped the gem needed for this earring. The rest of the pieces were trivial to obtain and so I started making these earrings.
Low and behold I was pumping them out like crazy to my guild. Then one of the people I knew in game offered me 70,000pp for one of these earrings. Since I'd been using my own materials and time to obtain and make these I was like sure. So bam, 70,000pp. Then i thought... geez... I always wanted a horse so I sold another and had 140,000pp. Mind you this is like making $100,000 in 2 days in the EQ world. I bought my horse and continued to collect the gems. I started to give half to my guild and sell the other half and sometimes I'd watch the auction channel and I'd see an old friend or someone I've heard of who was having a really bad time trying to make money to get something they want and I'd just give them an earring. I lost count of how many I gave away. Think of it. I was the only one the the EQ world who really knew about it and I was giving them away.
I mean, they weren't giving me anything to give the guild items. I didn't have to do it at all so I kept a few and soon amased over 1million plat in less than a week. About this time the need for "dummy" accounts came into play. That is, mage accounts that we can place all over the EQ world and use them to Summon us past a lot of wasted time. The problem was noone wanted to pay for these. I happened to know someone who bought platinum and sent my guild leader to him and thus it began. It's how we paid for 14 mage accounts that basically let us fly by any other guild that was trying to get mobs that dropped elite loot. It was fun, though bullish, but that's part of the EQ world. You MUST be like that or be walked over. Even the GM's wouldn't so anything. But typically if
Yes. Hang out with a bunch of drama majors at your local college and you'll see much weirder things than carrying yellow penguins.
From the inside of this group, it sure looks okay. I mean, from the inside it appears that everyone is doing it. However, if an outsider takes a look at this sort of behaviour ( 101 people walking around with yellow penguins while said penguins beat eachother up and shock eachother with tazers ) they'd get worried and sooner or later, all 101 of us would end up in the local funny farm.
Actually, what you've described is nowhere near as bizarre as the actions of some Society for Creative Anachronism groups. Nobody thinks twice about an SCA meeting and they mostly hit each other with rattan sticks and speak in Olde English.
Now apply this to a bunch of people who ARE their respective RP characters. From the inside it looks perfectly normal; Everyone else is doing it so it's probably okay, right? From an outside perspective, it's still scary as hell to see people going that far for something as simple as a game.
What you're missing is that it's all about context. Walking around in public trying to get non role players to interacts with your role playing is bizarre. Walking around a group of role players (real or virtual) and role playing with them isn't even unusual. You might think that some people overreact when something bad happens to their fictional character, but that's because the fictional character means nothing to you. Example: If one spent months tranferring all one's old Dr. Who episodes from video tape to MPEG captures, but then lost them when the drive crashed, one would likely be quite distressed. To an observer who doesn't care about Dr. Who and thinks also that videotape is an adequate medium, your reaction is totally bizarre. To him, you were wasting your time on a pointless project anyway, so why should you care so much when you lose evrything? Point is, you can't objectively measure the value of someone else's entertainment.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Personally I look at the PK's as interfering with my playing "the game"
I read an excellent quote on this subject (unfortunately I don't know who said it), it went something like 'There should be a coop button [opposite of the player hostile button]. If the PKs can force me into their game, I should be able to force them into mine.'
In the future, I'm going to invent a MMORPG where the world is a completely pale white background and all you do is sit in chairs and talk. You can't own anything, buy anything, hurt anybody, or offend anyone. The game box won't depict any blood, violence, sex, or other unacceptable behavior. It will also be a pale white color.
This game will ship on time, be under budget, work flawlessly the first time, and be programmed by american programmers. No one will hack it, because it will be such a small and boring program. Joe Lieberman and Phil Mushnik will applaud it for being a wholesome game the entire family can play. Parent advocacy groups will applaud the constructive nature of the game. Academics will appreciate the fact of the game will finally promote an open dialog among participants. Game magazines will praise it for being playable on older hardware.
I think we can learn a simple lesson from our MMORPGs. Any society which bans all forms of hate speech, offensive material, prevents all thought-crime, and sterilizes everything is a world most of us wouldn't want to participate in.
The real world is nothing more than a long line of evolutionary computation, in an attempt to find the most optimum way of life. Did you think a couple game programmers were going to improve on it?
You're right, but the players can easily get together to stop the rotten ones from pursing their ends.
:)
To borrow from Locke, in a State of Nature everyone has equal liberty and there is a great deal of insecurity. You enter into socities to escape the evils of the State of Nature. This is basic political theory, but is equally applicable to a virtual world. Simply start a government. When people get out of hand you call out the posse and destroy them and take everything they have, possibly putting them in jail or enslaving them as well.
Now, of course, game engines may have to get a little more sophisticated to pull this off, but really I think it would make the games much more exciting. I can not imagine doing this in everquest quite yet. The code is not sophisticated enough...
We have virtual worlds. The next step is virtual government I suppose.
-Craig.
so the mmporg police force will accomplish nothing as to the griefer it means nothing. permanent ban for life is the only option if a company doesnt want to loose players that just want to have fun
That's not true. If the game flags thiefs somehow then the police force could jail them, even if they were offline. Their equipment could be confiscated and yeah they player would still be rotten, but their high level character that was oppressing everyone would be defunct and they would have to start over.... not such a great prospect I suppose for someone who invested a lot of time into a character. Of course sentence times could vary from a day or two to months to life.
-Craig.
It's quite possible for a group of people to control access to rare and unique resources that can only be found in the PvP zones, and then turn those resources into very real income on EBay. I wonder if virtual murders in a game can make you a racketeer in the eyes if the law? It would be odd to hear about the FBI raiding someone's house because of their actions in a game, but they've done stranger stuff in the past.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
You probably mean Yohoho Puzzle Pirates. Very different to the usual MM game, although it has its own version of grind despite not having levels as such. It is 2D isometric, written in Java (Linux and Mac friendly), and has a free trial (X free sessions, X is 10 or 15 or so, I believe). I'm not an employee or anything; if you do try it out then please do realize that (in general) it caters to a more mature audience. Although sword fighting tournaments are most popular, there are also fashion and poetry contests.
All it means is that players are now allowed to do what they do anyways: trade online goods for physical goods. The fact of the matter is that the universe is still solely the property of the company that created it. They are literally gods in it and can at any time make any change they like. They could, if they wanted, simply unmake the universe by shutting down the servers. Then all the digital bits you "own" do you no good since there's no universe in which to use them.
That's what people seem to misunderstand about MMORPGs. They are services. You agree to pay the company a monthly fee an abide by some rules, they agree to let you use their servers to play a game. However, the servers and the game that runs on it belongs to them. They can allow you to do what they wish, such as sell your virtual goods, but they can make changes to how that works at any time. A less severe example than discontiniing the service would simple be altering the game balance.
So let's say you work really hard to get a really rare item. You hang on to it, as it is appreciating in real value. However the game company meanwhile is evaluating the balance, and decided these items are simply too powerful, and so they change the stats on all of these items in the world, including yours. All of a sudden, your item isn't worth much. Or maybe, they just remove it from the game entirely.
So no matter how nice they are about letting you auction your stuff in game, ultimately, they own it all. If they decide to discontinue service or make changes, sorry, that's just how it goes.
You should have posted this without the AC. I'd have some respect for you then. As it is you're just another asshole without the balls to fess up to being one. In this case the way you post reflects the way you like to play online obviously. You insult people behind your AC here, you screw with them trying to play the game there. Same reason for both, no accountability.
Nothing to see here, move along.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
1. EA's Attitude lately with statements like:
EA owns your gold, your swords, your characters - they are all just digital bits. If your entertainment is to destroy other peoples' entertainment, you're going to be tossed."
is just trash. I really can't stand them or anything I've bought from them recently. I'm not buying anything made by them this year. Not that they will care...
One thing I never understood about PvP vs Non-PvPers, why don't the non-PvP or social type people ever team up? It's like, most grief players are so anti-social they only have a few friends online, and most of the social type people run around in these huge cliques. Instead of securing a town or two and just PKing anyone that causes trouble they just whine to the GM's.
I don't understand the point of most MMO's nowadays anyway, the reason I would play a MMO is to get away from the real world. Who wants to play a MMO with a bunch of rules on how you have to act, and what you can and can't say. Shouldn't a game be about freedom?