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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.
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.
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Torture produces what you want to hear. Nothing else. More precisely, what the subject tortured thinks that you want to hear so, as you pointed out, you stop torturing it.
In short, it usually just "confirms" whatever assumption you had in the first place.
It is utterly useless for getting information because whatever the tortured subject tells you can either be true (if your assumption was correct) or false (if it wasn't and he is making up some story to make you think that he is giving you information to make you stop the torture). And if he's really dedicated, the chance to get a fabrication increases (because making up a story is not dependent on knowing the truth, only on his motivation to end the torture).
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
That's basically what it is. If the quest was to eat human babies (or orc babies on the other side) and there's gold, experience and prestige in it, people will do it. Not because they're not sensitive to the feelings of others, but because it's a friggin' game. I mean, we're already at slaughtering animals, people, undead, ghosts and giants, by the dozen, hundreds, thousands. Eating babies and shocking someone's nuts? We're already at virtual mass murder, who cares about the virtual rest?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I have a COMMUNCATIONS degree
oh the irony
It's virtually painless!
So what the US try to tell a potential enemy is that it's better for him to fight to death than face capture?
Dunno, am I the only one who thinks there's an inherent flaw in that logic?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
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.
Some people only understand the utilitarian aspect.
Some folks would gladly have the government torture a "goddamn terr'st" because they are not people. And of course these same folks are usually more than happy with the idea of suspending due process because they're "terr'sts".
This seems to come about due to a mix of racism, fear, faith in the government, a desire for some sort of revenge and a genuine lack of understanding of modern justice systems. What's more disturbing is that a lot of folk are willing to put up with a few innocent individuals being imprisoned, tortured and killed (in good faith, of course!) if it the government says it's doing it to keep them safe.
The worst aspect of this (for me) is that I occasionally hear these opinions espoused by my own mother. Then I feel compelled to remind her that since Dad married an Iranian woman, that wrongly accused suspect could be me next.
What do you think happens to the squares in complete rows, you insensitive clod? Oh, sure, they just 'disappear'. Murderer.