Slashdot Mirror
Torture in Games
Recent comments from Richard Bartle, one of the developers for the first Multi-User Dungeon (MUD), stirred up discussion about whether virtual torture is acceptable as part of modern games. Bartle was referring to a quest in the latest World of Warcraft expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, in which players are instructed to extract information from an NPC. He drew criticism for his view from a variety of sources, but Wired is now running a piece provocatively titled, "Why We Need More Torture in Games." The author makes the case that the failure of most media to properly portray how horrible torture actually is (for example, on the TV show 24), and the increased focus on real-world topics like Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and waterboarding, could make games the perfect venue for demonstrating the "devastating repercussions" of torture.
Back in like 2002 or 2003. Nuhmidira's Bestowment which required you to choose between killing good ol Nuhmie or letting her live, your choice determined what kind of imbuement your item got.
The object is to get what you want from the victim. Tools such as the La Susana and the Iron Maiden make it much more interesting.
An old live-action video game from the mid '90s titled Spycraft: The Great Game had a torture sequence. You had to interrogate someone and had control over how much voltage to use. It was quite easy to inadvertently kill her - and I will say that the first time I hit a switch and saw an actor screaming in pain actually was very jarring. Even knowing damn well it was an actor in a video game.
www.zombieapocalypse.tv
I don't play WoW or the MUD mentioned in the article, but I'm curious if the use of torture in these games does/would invariably produce honest factual information from the person/monster being tortured?
Torture has a somewhat speckled history when it comes to getting at what's actually really going on. Torture someone enough and they'll tell you whatever they think will get you to stop the torture, regardless of if it's true or not.
It'd be a bit more interesting I'd think if the torture sometimes works, and sometimes leads you off in directions that aren't at all productive(and might actually weaken you).
How about making games that don't suck.
From the article...
It's quite possible Blizzard has a much larger, slow-moving point to make about torture.
So, I would argue, might the TV show 24. Look how often the torture on that show doesn't work out as planned.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
After reading Designing Virtual Worlds I happened to log onto his MUD2 server and look around. Ahh.. memories. And so many missing features! The MUD descendants truly were fertile lands of innovation. Anyway, after about 10 minutes of wandering around in MUD2 I got sufficiently bored and tried to kill something. Bartle kindly informed me that I was a guest and guests should act more polite than that. If I wanted to create an account I could do some killing, but only in the appropriate area, etc, etc. All very British and proper. Of course, the next command I just had to try was 'rape'. Bartle hates that command, so the result was predictably hilarious. I was immediately disconnected and my IP address was banned. Beautiful.
How we know is more important than what we know.
How about tying someone up and tickling em with a feather?
I mean, let's be sensible here. Torture. In other words, making someone feel pain (physical, emotional, pick your poison) to get something from him.
Anyone here that does NOT know that this is something you don't really want to be subjected to? Well? I see no hands, so either people know or people know about it enough that they don't want to hear the logical followup to that question.
If we get desensitized to torture, to people being hurt and mutilated for fun and profit, I think something's wrong with the shows that picture it as something "mildly unpleasant" instead of what it is: Physically and even more so emotionally crippling. When we do the same in games, what does it change?
I mean, besides games having a weaker lobby and getting the thinkofthechildren crowd up in arms about people playing torture.
Is there a difference between watching torture on TV and executing it yourself in a game? In both cases you watch a character do it. In one case, you get to see it because you issue a command. In the other case you do because you don't issue one, i.e. don't change the channel. Where is the huge difference?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
My impression of WoW is that it is a fairly shallow game in terms of narrative with the quests. Most of these quests are simple grinding with very little aspect to rewards or consequences to the players actions. If the idea is to incoporate consequences or rewards to such things as torture, part of the gaming mechanism would've to be changed such that something valuable to a WoW player would be affected. I don't think WoW has ever presented the concept of good or bad in the gameplay, either faction can do pretty much whatever they want regardless. WoW isn't designed to disucss morality in terms of gameplay.
As usual, it's a matter of degree. It's kinky if you use a feather for sexual pleasure. It's pervy if you use the whole chicken.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
While somewhat more trap-based than torture based, Tecmo's Deception mostly fits what you describe.
The ______ Agenda
A lot depends on how it's done of course. The point would be to learn something and not just reinforcement attitudes and habits.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Milgram_Experiment
In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they're different. (Yogi Berra & A. Einstein)
in soviet russia the games torture you
How can you disagree with torture if you can accept war and the inevitable human (civilian and military) losses that occur? Here's a good article about torture: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sam-harris/in-defense-of-torture_b_8993.html
It's virtually painless!
In the WoW universe, little is permanent. Death is a minor inconvenience, not something that is forever. If a player dies, they spawn as a spirit at a nearby graveyard and walk back to their body and resurrect. NPCs (computer controlled characters) simply respawn in the same spot after a certain amount of time.
If the real world worked like that, well we'd probably have a rather different value system. If killing someone meant they had to walk back for a couple minutes and caused them no permanent harm at all, I imagine it wouldn't be such a big deal.
The rules of a game world are vastly different than our own so even if you want to ignore the fact that this is just entertainment, you can't try and apply the same morals to it.
If you want to know what real torture is in WoW, play a warlock in PvP at 80. It is just mind boggling that the devs in charge of class balance haven't been handed their pink slips. However, like the spoof Clichequest (www.thenoobcomic.com), the devs have their favorite classes, the rest are fluff or free HK, and that is how the game will be.
One of the best parts of Shivering Isles was walking around town and interrogating citizens with the help of the royal torturer and his shock spell. There's another part where you, dungeon master-like, subject treasure hunters to various obstacles that either kill them or drive them mad.
Good times. :-)
How realistic are they going to make the torture?
Will the NPC say, do or admit to *anything* to make it stop?
Will the information obtained be inaccurate?
Will the player eventually find out that the character he's spent 4 game hours torturing, was actually the wrong guy all along?
Something which has bothered me about games, particularly those in the realistic war genre (aka every WWII game made in the last 10 years... thanks Saving Private Ryan), is that the enemy always fights absolutely to the death. Even in games where enemies slow down after a few hits, they'll still hold onto their weapon and try to kill you as they crawl along the floor. If they're going for realism, then these guys should drop their weapon after a hit to leg, put their hands up, and you then lose points for killing them.
I remember playing Wolfenstein 3D back in 1992, back then cages hung from the ceiling with skeletons (remains) from the people that obviously died in there. Blood and gore everywhere, all over 128x128 pixel.
You keep basing it off what the victim says. It's un-reliable, etc...
Torture can be useful to get what ISN'T said. What you already know the victim knows...but you'd like to fill in gaps or corroborate gaps in other theories.
In the medical field, the "pertinent negative" information....what the patient ISN'T saying is often more important than what he or she IS.
A better argument is that we can win wars without it. It is beneath us. It is wasteful and can lose your Hearts and Minds battle.
THL phish sticks
That "whole world in your hands" song is a textbook study; I'm sure Sony will update the next version of Home to include the necessary virtual waterboard and beatings so we can enjoy it as its composer intended.
Matthew @ Bytemark Hosting
There is a documented case during the Vietnam war: Nguyen Van Tai was interrogated by the CIA and its allies.
Years of isolation, torture of both the subtle and not so subtle kind.
The guy managed to give false information for years, with occasional bits of truth that was not useful anymore by the time he gave it.
The CIA decided at the time he was proof torture was not useful. Not even a matter or ethics: it just doesn't work.
Just Google for "Nguyen Van Tai" CIA "Frank Snepp"
If a game contains torture, and you only get to watch from the sideline, i believe it would just pushed the boundaries for what we think is ok. But if your character is being tortured, and leaves you in a vulnerable state, it might cause you to better understand the severity of it. However avoiding it all together might be best. Just a thought...
And for a fatal blow to end the torture, choose either The Mother In Law, or the PMSing, Nagging Wife
the Dungeon Keeper games. You built torture chambers in your dungeon so you could attract Dark Mistresses who helped torture your creatures to make them work harder, or your enemies creatures to make them reveal information, join your side or die and return as ghosts. Your own Dark Mistresses actually liked you more after you personally tortured them. The related torture animations and sounds were pretty cool, especially for back then. This was back before Bullfrog was acquired by EA, and Peter Molyneux was closer to delivering his promises.
When I think of games and torture I almost always think of WoW. Sheer torture to sit through that snore fest of a game. Yeah, that is grade A prime troll bait.
SHIRE!!!
BAGGINS!!!
hang your head in shame, "nerds", that no one has posted this yet
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
And everyone is screaming torture...
this is the quest in question. While there's a similar one in the death knight starting zone, the NPC's there are armed, and are not strapped to a chair begging you to stop.
If you look at the response column the player base was squeamish enough to create forum threads in objection. As someone who browses the forum on occasion, the first couple weeks after the wrath of the lich king launch saw an explosion of similar threads.
I think it would be better to have you torture the npc in question multiple times, being sent on quests related to the false information extracted 3 or more times before they give up and have you investigate in other ways.
Given blizzard's record of making changes either schizophrenically or far too slowly, it could be a while before they make any changes, if at all.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
They were just antagonizing me up I had to kill 15 extra mobs for the last random drop for a quest item. I think a little torture of an npc is more than fair.
Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon. -- Susan Ertz
I just get a kick out of the part in the article were he states bliz is ok with breaking the geneva convention. News flash that bit of pixels isnt a person. If you think its really a person then stop playing games. Stop attributing real world things to ingame pixels. Is it humane to torture a NPC in a game that is just software? Nope its not even close to humane cause its not a friggin human. Get so pissed at people doing this crap. Cry more when its actual living beings being tortured and then I will agree with you.
We can't claim that Jack Thompson is an idiot when he claims that FPSs cause kids to become shooters and then wring our hands about torture in games.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Yes it is unfair in games especially when being spawn camped and instantly getting blown to pieces over and over and over each time I spawn, its torture!
Oh, you're talking about a different kind of torture.
This space is not for rent.
The author makes the case that the failure of most media to properly portray how horrible torture actually is (for example, on the TV show 24), and the increased focus on real-world topics like Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and waterboarding, could make games the perfect venue for demonstrating the "devastating repercussions" of torture.
Yep, just like everyone who's ever played a FPS knows exactly how terrible the horrors of war are.
And I've played enough Tetris in my life to know exactly what it's like to be a bricklayer.
"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something" - Plato
Just ask this guy. (But what does he know, he only got results like info on Zarqawi's location, not revenge.)
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
The author makes the case that the failure of most media to properly portray how horrible torture actually is ...
The old Hong Kong movies 1980s rather accurately, brutally portray electrical torture in the movies (i.e. fully uncensored).
Here in Asia, we use 240V 50Hz household mains. Like everyone else, we do touch electricity by accident, occasionally.
I think Asians do have an idea of what electrical torture is.
I wonder how far they will go in the upcoming 24 pinball game and how much will have to taken out when the game is set to adult mode moderate and / or family vs full.
One day I really need to get into computer RPGs. I play console RPS and almost every bit of dialog that I recall is hitting the talk to button while aimed at the NPC. The NPC just says the same thing over and over and. Sometimes they'll ask if you want them to repeat the entire thing again.
This makes it sound like conversational dialog was actually a part of current games. I'm going to leave "torture" out of it at the moment. Do you have any idea how much information a cop/interrogator can get from just asking questions? If anything, we'd need more cop/policing games where the good guys are forced to capture/question people and very rarely actually shoot anyone. Heck, you could have an entire game based on being an average cop and getting called out to the average call and having to follow general policing guidelines to do anything.
Actually, I'd tend to think that torture could be useful, but 99% of the time you'd be better of with the standard questioning routine. The few times that I could see it come in useful is that very small part of the population that could beat standard questioning. Obvious thing about that though is that sure super James Bond or some Mafia boss might be able to beat it, but if you have a cop game 99% of the "bad guys" in the game are just regular people and the police are just trying to find out WTH happened. You torture in that cause is not needed. Heck, if you had a James Bond game and he needed to get info within 5 minutes or kill the guard anyways and go on, that might be an acceptable time for torture. Spies are the only ones that torture would be a decent tool for, and they'd be more trained to resist it rather than use it.
I think questioning games where you have to find out info with fairly legal questions will be huge if we ever figure it out.
Maybe video games can do for torture what they did for car-jacking? No one would dare try THAT now.
I'm one of a handful of WoW players that focuses on the roleplay aspects of the game. I interact with other players in-character and write original fan fiction using my characters and the Warcraft universe. ( Minor spoilers for "Wrath of the Lich King's" Borean Tundra and Dragonblight zones follow ) In one quest, my character was asked to capture an enemy sorcerer and bring him back to the questgiver. On my return, I was directed to torture the NPC by clicking on an item I was given. At that moment I had an in-character choice to make: is this the sort of thing my character would actually do? I had the opportunity to walk away. The cost of doing so would have been the reward for completing that particular quest as well as any rewards from later quests in that chain. In the end, I chose for my character to go through with what was asked. Each time I used the item, the NPC reacted in pain. The first time his response was defiant, the second time his response was bargaining, the third time his response was pleading. He was given the information he wanted, the information was accurate, and it led to the rescue of a captured prisoner. In a later quest, my character was instructed to kill another enemy wizard. In this instance, one of the items dropped by the enemy was a bundle of letters, identifying her as the daughter of an important NPC and revealing that she was a covert agent infiltrating and sabotaging the enemy organization. In essence, by following instructions given by a "good guy," my character helped out the "bad guys." I'm not that far into the content of "Wrath," but I'm struck so far by the gray areas in which the opposing sides work. As a player, I would love for there to be consequences to my character having chosen to do both those quests. Of course I can work that into my writing as a roleplayer, but it would be fantastic for there to be in-game ramifications as well.
Given the way people react to a multitude of other games I'd say not only would more torture in games not be effective but it would be counter-productive. Not that I expect people to go out and start torturing people, but merely that they'll end up even more desensitized than they already are. Take a look at the sort of crap kids are producing nowadays, inspired by games and other popular media, on sites like Newgrounds. And by this guy's rationale all those violent horror movies out there should have already produced the desired effect.
Violent games already provoke a reaction in people, it's just that it provokes the kind of reaction gamers don't want. Look at the attention ultra-violent games already get. People get upset and gamers end up offended, like it's no big deal. One common suggestion I see is that the critics should try these games first before passing judgment. The problem is that again, gamers have gotten so desensitized to the violence that it's no big deal to them. But put the average person in front of one of these games and they'll be completely and utterly shocked and likely agree with the calls for banning the game.
I suppose some will argue that movies are just as violent. And some are, but most people don't go into movies for the violence. And more importantly, watching a movie is a passive activity, where in a game the player is making the decision to kill, maim or torture someone. It's all fake, but that's an important distinction nonetheless.
And there's another thing I notice time and again in both movies and games as opposed to real life. In real life there's constant criticism of military action. The US is being the aggressor, for example. There's no justifiable reason for way, there's no threat to the nation, etc. Games and movies will depict the same exact scenario, however, and depict belligerence as justified and usually depicted with an aura of coolness. As long as you're a badass, it's okay to obliterate any suspected threat. And that's not even touching on games which depict actual crime.
So what is the media ultimately doing? They're glorifying all this. If people were serious about depicting the horrors of violence, for example, they'd produce a game from the perspective of the victims. And it wouldn't be a stupid revenge game either because then you're just back at square one justifying the violence.
I, for one, think there's already too much excessive violence in games. It's at a point where reviewers even criticize a game for not being graphic enough. I'm not suggesting these types of games should be censored. But I do have a problem when people think that graphic violence and/or sex are somehow essential to a mature game. Like games can't convey other mature themes and concepts.
Ultimately, I think this just reflects the lack of maturity in many games. That some guy is calling for more depictions of graphic torture and hiding behind the argument of it somehow conveying some profound meaning is ridiculous. It sounds to me like his need for violence hasn't been fully sated yet. Of course, developers are just going to keep pumping out what the market is demanding, so I doubt this is going to change any time soon, if it ever does.
Metal Gear Solid - it had an actual torture section of the game that actually changes the ending. If you give-in to the torture, you get to save your girlfriend, Merryl. If you don't, you keep the secrets - but Merryl is killed (and, though the game doesn't show it, it is implied that she'll be raped first.) Disturbing, now that I think back on it.
Why can't all fpga/microcontroller manufacturers just release free optimizing compilers???
A friend of mine is a religious education teacher at a secondary school. He asked the kids which of them had played video games that graphically depict killing and murder, and whether this was acceptable. Predictably, most had played them, and none thought there was anything wrong with this - "it's just a game".
So he suggested a hypothetical game called Rape The Kid - you play a psycho that has to find children and rape them, for points - would they play this, after all, "it's only a game"? They were all horrified.
How far do you personally want to go and still call this entertainment? At the risk of sounding like some moralising religious nutter myself, where do you want your brain to be at?
Not that anybody here will care, but the original article is mistaken when they state that you need to torture the captive in order to gain access to the Nexus quests. The torture quest can be quite easily be skipped. The author is either lying to make a point or simply mistaken, but either way, their complaint about not being given a chance to walk away is invalid. Walking away is as easy as abandoning the quest and literally walking away from it. It's not as if the rewards from the quest are even that great. Of course, just as in real life, when you step up to do the right thing, you'll get minimal acknowledgment and dozens of less-principled underlings will step up to do the job that you refused to do. That's life. Unlike real life, you won't lose your job or have any long-term consequences for refusing to do things you don't want to do.
The whole 'torture doesn't work' argument is valid, but only if you use the process being described. Relying on a single person's confession is bad practice. It's comparable to performing one test in an experiment and using that as your findings. One would think you would have multiple interrogations and be able sort out the differences and inconsistencies to piece together pretty accurate intel. Like other have said though, the 'accuracy' of torture shouldn't be the deciding factor. If that's where we are as a society, then maybe it's too late.
In Guildwars Nightfall they had to change a NPCs name because people were offended by torture. That's why a Corsair Prisoner in the training area became a Sunspear Volunteer. The Corsairs are your enemies, while Sunspears are your friends obviously. http://guildwars.wikia.com/wiki/Sunspear_Volunteer http://guildwars.wikia.com/wiki/Corsair_Prisoner
Very informative and exactly the kind of evidence the OP was asking for.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I can understand why having games show torture and demonstrate their consequences would be a good thing in theory, but seriously, games are for most part total crap when it comes to handling serious topics and most of them would be better of when they would move their settings into fantasy land then into real historical war scenarios, since they really only distort reality into a fun wack-a-nazi/iraq/guy-with-differnt-skin-color game instead of giving you an impression what was really going on. I seriously doubt that torture would be any different.
Now that of course doesn't mean that a game couldn't handle torture seriously, I just have zero hope that it would ever happen in a commercial game and the freeware ones will likely suffer a lack of budget to get things realistic enough to be engaging.
There aren't any titles with country music?
Throw in a few Vern Fonk car insurance commercials and you might not need the full eighty hours.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
"Loading"
Atleast that was a pretty evil guy you tortured.
What about the daily quest where hungry walrus men ask you to collect innocent puppies, killing their mothers while doing so. It is pretty obvious what those hungry walrus men are going to do with the puppies. They must really like puppy meat considering that it is a daily quest.
And people do that quest repeatedly just so they can get their hands on an epic fishing pole and a penguin pet.
I have started to view violent movies, as a possible way to keep a peoples sympathy for human suffering at a low point.
Elements of torture (Battlestar Gallactica)and explicit death threats (Star Wars Clone Wars cartoon), might imo also be a way to have peoples inclination for sincere emotional or analytic involvement for such atrocities, at a low point.
With torture as an element in a game, I am not sure what to think about it. I guess you are simply either, with, a gamedesigners choice of gameplay offering means by torture, or you are against it.
If the option is to go "with" the choices utilizing torture, then what the thell is the point in the first place? For sake of entertainment? For sake of realism? Or just another way of dulling the sensibilities of a human being?
I think Lost has had some pretty good depictions of torture. Sometimes it gets results, sometimes you torture the wrong guy, and even if you get the right guy they can still lie through their teeth no matter what you do.