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Game About Killing Poachers Vies For Top Prize In Microsoft Student Tech Contest
theodp writes: GeekWire reports on a group of students from Nepal who will be competing for the $50K top prize in Microsoft's Imagine Cup student tech contest with a first-person shooter in which players track down and kill poachers. "Until and unless the player kills all the poachers," reads the description for Defend Your Territory, "he/she cannot progress to next level. To make the game more interesting, there will be lots of weapons and vehicles unlock." So, is this the inspiration Google needs to take their anti-poaching drone program to the next level?
I have. It's fun. He was there on his knees in his tattered clothes, all trembling and mumbling and pleading for his life "have mercy have mercy I have a family to feed, I can't find a job, they've all been taken by foreigners, they don't even make me flip burgers because they say I'm too old. I have two little kids! please!". Of course I didn't care: I shot him just under the throat, cut off the head, skinned the body and cut it to pieces for the forest animals, then had the head stuff and mounted. I had it delivered to his family so he could be near them forever. :)
There will be supply . Can't kill all the poachers . Kill the demand .
If 'politically correct' means not wanting to award a prize to a game encouraging vigilante, or state sponsored, murder of low level minor criminals then I suppose that's what you should call it, personally I prefer 'not being a dick'.
Just because poaching is a major issue doesn't mean that routinely killing poachers is the best answer. We don't encourage people to stalk and kill murderers, rapists etc.
We don't encourage people to stalk and kill murderers, rapists etc.
It would be better if you got to play as a lion/hyena/rhino. More original and less morally ambivalent.
We don't encourage people to stalk and kill murderers, rapists etc.
No, we don't.
That's still every Batman game.
We don't encourage people to stalk and kill murderers, rapists etc.
... Well, we make games about it. And movies. And books, and comic books, and we plaster the faces of our fictional vigilantes all over billboards and buses and soft drink cups and onto the toys that our children play with.
::wink:: But yeah, we encourage it.
I mean, we don't encourage it.
I was on a hike in the Virunga mountains, specifically right on the border between Rwanda and Congo. We were on a Mountain Gorilla trek, and after a few hours of hiking our guide pointed out, with the note, "don't be afraid" - a guy in green way up in a tree with an assault rifle.
They're basically campers.
I think it's important to point out that just because a work of fiction is about something does not mean it encourages it. Romeo and Juliet doesn't encourage suicide, SIlence of the Lambs doesn't encourage serial killing, etc..
Ideology: A tool used primarily to avoid the bother of thinking.
"If 'politically correct' means not wanting to award a prize to a game encouraging vigilante, or state sponsored, murder of low level minor criminals then I suppose that's what you should call it, personally I prefer 'not being a dick'. "
Why? We already hand out awards left, right, and centre to games that encourage this. How is an award for a game like Battlefield Hardline where encouraging the killing of low level drug dealers or small time smugglers any different? Do we treat it differently because it's an indie attempt?
But let's be clear, you imply poachers are minor criminals. That's a bit of a stretch. Poaching comes in all flavours, at one end there's the guy with a small rifle shooting a Pheasant one day outside hunting season in rural England because he got his dates muddled up but takes the pheasant home to eat. Then there's the guy trying to make a quick buck to pay off a debt and as a result ends up funding a Mexican drug cartel that takes and sells on the black market an endangered cactus he pulled out of it's habitat for a few thousand dollars. Then there's the Africans poaching endangered species without a care to sell them as food and inadvertently bringing the world Ebola and AIDS as a result. Then at the other end of the scale, there's the organised crime groups who destroy an entire herd of elephants, and kill all the circling vultures to boot, shooting a gamekeeper and local or two that catch them and using the proceeds of this poaching to help fund groups like IS and Boko Haram. All of these things are poaching. Not all of them can have the perpertrators listed simply as minor criminals - really the descriptions here range from accidental criminal, to desperate guy, to fucking idiot, to worst type of criminal going, and there are of course examples outside those I just gave.
"We don't encourage people to stalk and kill murderers, rapists etc."
Well that's not entirely true, I think those things are actually the key justifications for supporting vigilante groups, and acting directly as a state against groups like IS.
So here's the question, if we're willing to do it then, is it really such a stretch to also hunt down, or encourage the hunting down of those industrial scale poachers that are also involved in murder, rape, and the funding of groups like IS? If it in turn decreases finances for groups like IS and cripples them then is it not a viable alternative to just fruitlessly trying to bomb them directly?
My usual disclaimer applies- I'm not pretending I know the answer, because I don't have enough evidence to way the pros and cons, and even if I did it'd still be a wholly subjective choice at the end of the day depending on your personal values, but I don't think this is as simple an issue as being suggested. It would be reasonably possible for example to make the case that by hunting and killing poachers involved in criminal and terrorist funding we'd actually save a lot more civilian lives in the long run because poachers themselves take human lives both directly and indirectly, but again, whether killing even one bad person to save many innocent is acceptable is really a very personal choice and probably depends on how utilitarian your views are.
If 'politically correct' means not wanting to award a prize to a game encouraging vigilante, or state sponsored, murder of low level minor criminals then I suppose that's what you should call it, personally I prefer 'not being a dick'.
That a game depicts (and even glorifies) some kind of evil (or just "being a dick") behavior doesn't mean it "encourages" that behavior in the real world. We know the difference and we don't need you or anyone else to police content for us.
Just because poaching is a major issue doesn't mean that routinely killing poachers is the best answer. We don't encourage people to stalk and kill murderers, rapists etc.
Correct. But we of course do make shitloads of games where such behavior is depicted (and even glorified). Do you get it yet?
We don't encourage people to stalk and kill murderers, rapists etc.
It would be better if you got to play as a lion/hyena/rhino. More original and less morally ambivalent.
We don't encourage people to stalk and kill murderers, rapists etc.
No, we don't.
That's still every Batman game.
Batman/comic book industry generally had a no kill rule. That's a very weak example of a dark vigilante.
Wouldn't be much of a batarang if it just stuck in the dudes.
It took all of 5 seconds to load the page and read that:
The game is set in a futuristic world where decades of poaching has knocked Earth’s ecosystem off-kilter and left the planet a barren dessert. The last hope for restoration involves sending a cyborg back in time to hunt the poachers.
Your stopping poachers to save humanity.
And if you can use backstory to allow people kill thousands of demons, zombies, sentient robots, nazis and communists; why the hell are poachers any different? What makes the games you played so magically okay? Did you blow up Megaton in Fallout 3? Because then by your own logic you're now just encouraged nuclear terrorism.
Get off your damn high horses and realize it's not 1995, you're not Jack Thompson, and video games don't encourage people to kill people.
Well I think it is more of a stretch, because no society is even remotely considering dealing with the problem of bank executive, as abhorrent as their actions are, with violence.
But many society have decided that dealing with violent criminal gangs with violence is an acceptable move, thus, it is in fact far less of stretch to think that dealing with such gangs that engage in poaching in the same way is a plausible option.
I don't really understand your bracketed sentence, it seems contradictory - you seem to be suggesting violence is okay to protect Africans, but not the animals that live near by, and yes, protection of the animals that live near by does inherently protect Africans, that's kind of the point.
I have posted before some examples of why poaching in places like Africa isn't a human victimless crime, some examples of how poaching can lead to the death of Africans (and non-Africans) in the following ways:
- Directly, where poachers kill African wardens and locals who bump into the poachers
- Poachers often poison the carcasses of animals they've killed, they do this to kill the vultures that feed on the carcasses, this is because the circling vultures give away the position of poacher activities to the authorities. This has led to the deaths of locals in the following ways:
1) The poison has made it into the limited water supplies in the region
2) The lack of vultures due to their populations being decimated from this sort of practice has led to spread of disease from decaying carcasses- disease can then be spread and kill by eating, by seeping into water supplies, or spread by insects. Vultures job in nature is to dispose of said carcasses so this doesn't happen
3) Other creatures may come into contact with the poison and are themselves used as a food source by locals, leading to the locals also ingesting the poison and dying
- Poachers have been known to destroy entire herds of elephants, destroying entire local ecosystems in the process. Some fruit bearing trees requires elephants to reach and eat the seeds, and shit them out where they grow. The saplings and the trees themselves when they make it to adulthood provide food to locals and their livestock. Without the elephants to spread and germinate these plants these species have been dying out causing subsequent death by starvation in some villages. Elephants are but one example - all poaching to the point of extinction or near extinction cripples ecosystems, destroying them not just for the animals, but also the humans that depend on them.
- Poaching funds human death. It funds terrorism, organised crime gangs, and drug cartels. It helps these groups afford weapons and explosives, which they use to kill people.
- Poaching creates no go areas and has killed tourism in some parts of Africa, this has destroyed livelihoods and had the obvious negative effects on people's ability to survive in those areas.
Thus, I'm not really sure why you think protecting animals against poaching, and protecting Africans (though it's not just Africans that are victims of poaching - these direct and indirect killings from poaching happen elsewhere too, i.e. prominently in Asia) are two separate things, they're not, they're deeply intertwined. The animals and the people who live in Africa do not live isolated and unlinked lives, people are as much dependent on ecosystems as animals, and both are necessary for each other to survive in an environment.
But this is true anywhere, even in places like the UK where the natural ecosystem has been destroyed and replaced largely with invasive species. For example, non-native ticks to the UK for example have led to people contracting lyme disease. Their natural predators are typically creatures like Pheasants, and Turkeys, but as we cull pheasant populations and such on a large scale, ticks can spread unchallenged, which means the prevalance of lyme disease (and the cost financially and in terms of human health has grown):
It IS warranted, and it's exactly what many African countries do: they use military troops to protect these animals, and they shoot poachers on sight.
It's a good thing first-worlders aren't in charge of protecting these animals from well-financed poachers, because they'd all be extinct now.