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?

Comments

Ever killed a poacher?

[Anonymous Coward]

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. :)

Re:Ever killed a poacher?

[cheetah_spottycat]

That sounds pretty much like Far Cry 4.

Re:Ever killed a poacher?

[Opportunist]

Funny. Have you noticed that you could replace "poacher" with "burglar" and it would just work out, too?

With maybe the difference that you wouldn't be modded insightful but flamebait, because it's A-OK to blow someone's guts out over your stereo rather than some rhino horns.

Re:Ever killed a poacher?

[Richard Kirk]

Oh yes. And cut off his dick too, and use it as an aphrodisiac for rhinoceroses.

Re:Ever killed a poacher?

[DarkOx]

it's A-OK to blow someone's guts out over your stereo rather than some rhino horns.

Burglary is a very specific crime. In most places. It usually requires breaking and entering a residence at night. The reason its more serious than theft or simple B&E is society has a strong interest in people feeling safe in their own homes. People are likely to be home at night so there is greater danger. Those are legal reasons.

The practical ones are:
The burglar may decide to hurt or kill you and your family so that he isn't reported and described to the police. As you are not the one committing the crime and did not create the situation I think you are well justified in removing the danger, without waiting around to see what he or she is going to do. Sorry I don't see any moral or ethical problem with a shoot first ask questions later approach to someone who has invaded your home.

Re:Ever killed a poacher?

[DarkOx]

I take you point but we there is a very real and tangible difference between someone taking a deer out of season in the north woods of Minnesota and hunting a Rhino, Elephant or endangered Cat. Its entirely possible the first was done by mistake, ignorance of the hunting season etc, or the person really is trying to put some food on the table. I the Rhino case I will extend this benefit of doubt to say an aboriginal hunter using his peoples traditional tools etc. It strains credibility on the other hand to suggest the guys cruising the savanna in Jeeps with high power rifles, scopes, bait, chainsaws to dismember the corpses don't know exactly what they are doing. Its also hard to imagine they don't have at least some other options, given the found the money to acquire the vehicles, chainsaws, fuel, expensive weapons etc.

I think at some point we may have to recalibrate or moral compass a little bit to point somewhere besides humans are always the most important. There are 8.5 Billion of us. Its hard to get more commodity than that. As individuals we are all important to someone, but possibly near worthless to the world as a whole and perhaps even a detriment. So what should the collective we do when faced with someone who is bent on destroying something rare and possibly irreplaceable. Should we allow them to deprive the rest of us now and forever on an entire species like the black rhino? These people don't fear prison they know they either won't be caught or corruption will soon have them out. I am not saying its a simple calculation; certainly condoning or even looking the other way with regard to vigilantism is a slippery slope and its easy to imaging that path leading to all kinds of horrors or abuses but blindly accepting a philosophy of human life is fundamentally and always more important may not be right either.

Re:Ever killed a poacher?

[drinkypoo]

I have. It's fun. He was there on his knees in his tattered clothes,

Have you seen pics of poachers? By definition they aren't poor; their equipment is worth more than most people around them make in a year. They're dressed, typically, better than average for people wandering around the places where one kills endangered animals.

Re:Ever killed a poacher?

[tompaulco]

The PETA loons are out tonight. I'd like to see how far you'd go into starvation before you do WHATEVER it takes to feed yourself.

Poachers aren't taking the job because they are starving. They have high powered weapons and expensive off road vehicles. They choose this profession because there is a huge amount of money in it, because, well it is illegal.
These people are the equivalent of of people in the U.S. who kill people for their sneakers.

As long as there is demand

[invictusvoyd]

There will be supply . Can't kill all the poachers . Kill the demand .

Re:No chance of winning

[N1AK]

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.

Re:No chance of winning

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:No chance of winning

[guises]

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.

I mean, we don't encourage it. ::wink:: But yeah, we encourage it.

Apparently...

[ckatko]

Nobody read TFA.

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.