Discussion about when monetary imbalances are acceptable

[keith.lamothe]

There are indeed some messed up priorities behind the phrase "sex and violence" as it is used in censorship/etc discussions.  The two subjects are so different it seems very odd that they would be lumped together.

All's fair in love and war, I suppose

[keith.lamothe]

Yeah I'm a bit confused.

In your first post you said the issue was when it was "simulated" violence (pistol blanks and CGI blood) vs. real immodesty.

Yet when both the violence and the "sex" are simulated, you still seem to have a problem with it.

In order to explain the distinction in terms of your own view I would need to know the answer (that you would give) to two questions:

What, exactly, is wrong when a man kills another in cold blood without cause? 
What, exactly, is wrong, when a married man fantasizes about a different woman?

Or do you even consider the second to be wrong at all?  If not, then I don't think I can unconfuse you here

[wyvern83]

The Christian Mentality on violent video games is highly amusing to me.

You're offended by a few curse words and an item named "Satanic", but you have no problem spending hours on end shedding the blood of enemy soldiers and killing heroes in gruesome and horrifying ways, only for them to resurrect and be killed again.  Or is that what makes it acceptable:  That they resurrect?  I guess I never understood the theology ;p

I think some games are overly violent and I don't play video games where I find the level of violence and blood is simply gratuitous/too "realistic" so I'll ignore your hyperbole and take it that you simply refer to the act of 'killing' something virtual at the basic level, which is as Keith pointed out is just that, a simulation, as opposed to something that is not simulated like using words. If you are making the point that virtual violence can be viewed as offensive or can be desensitizing than yes I agree with you but not all games are equally offensive in their presentation of virtual violence and its effects, and I of course vote with my money and time in this regard when it comes to what games I choose to play as any discerning customer should.

I personally don't use swear words so I find it distracting from the game experience when Dota 2 decides it will. I merely mentioned it as I find swearing to be unprofessional as well as offensive. You're of the opinion that Dota 2 is more professional than League of Legends, I'm simply pointing out where I think it could be more professional than it currently is. Please note I mentioned making it optional, which is a feature games with swearing occasionally have, not removing it entirely for everyone. There is nothing wrong with being accommodating and respectful to different preferences on this matter by giving options, after all if you don't want to use it you don't have to.

Also if a game has an option to reduce/eliminate gore I use it, but not all games have it and some games are so bad in my opinion that even with the option I wouldn't consider buying or playing it so it is something I think about.

Dota 2 doesn't have that much swearing in it, Keith, but it does have some. Some characters have a line or two, some more than a couple, that have at least one swear word in it but nothing as major as saying the f word. Some of those characters also swear more frequently than others depending on what the line is tied to, like a spell ability for example, and how many lines linked to said action the game has to pick from. The kill-streak announcer says h*** s*** when someone reaches the end of the list of the growing number of uninterrupted kills announcements, it may be 15 kills in a row but I'm not sure if the later portion of the list scales or not.

As for the item name, while it is indeed offensive to me, is simply another point where I feel Dota 2, as a creative project and product, could be more professional than it already is or could take itself more seriously on, which is another thing you feel Dota 2 has over LoL though perhaps meant in a different way. As an imaginative/creative minded person I find it disappointing that more effort wasn't put in to naming it and it strikes me as an unutilized opportunity to name it something more original or creative. I'm not asking you to share my view of it being offensive but do you at least see my point that a more creative name is certainly possible?

I guess my point is that if there is grind involved in becoming "competitive", then it's not really competitive.

Can you imagine a Chess Game where one play had been playing longer, so he had access to a several Queens in place of his pawns?  Can you imagine Starcraft if your units leveled up the longer you played?  Would anybody take these games seriously?  I certainly hope not.  Yet this is pretty much exactly what League of Legends asks its players to deal with.

That makes more sense. I've never liked that about League of Legends and it's ultimately the reason I lost interest in playing it. Player progression is something I prefer only in single player games/modes, some of the time, but I've never cared for it in multiplayer.

I respect Planetary Annihilation more because they're not fostering any illusions about it:  "Yeah, you're smashing planets into planets, who gives a sh*t if its perfectly balanced?"  At least they're not trying to be something that they're not.  To me the $1,000 reward tier was proof from the beginning that the game was never meant to be perfectly balanced (as if the game concept in itself isn't screaming that at you).  As I said earlier in the thread, I'm not sure what kind of wishful thinking would need to take place in order to miss that the people paying $1,000 were getting their own unique commanders.

Perhaps we aren't meant to take PA more seriously but isn't it still a shame that you can't or that the developers didn't? After all, money was spent and donated to make it, why not do a good/better job on it? It's always disappointing to see great or fun ideas thrown away by poor execution and that in a way PA will never be more than just a pet project that they decided to share with community support rather than the balanced game it could have been.

[keith.lamothe]

I don't think PA will be an unbalanced game, but I don't think it has to be balanced on the level of tournament-competition games.

Even if the balance does come out wonky, so long as modding support is half-decent there's folks out there who will make it balanced

[wyvern83]

I don't think PA will be an unbalanced game, but I don't think it has to be balanced on the level of tournament-competition games.

Even if the balance does come out wonky, so long as modding support is half-decent there's folks out there who will make it balanced

I don't think it has to be either but having all non-cosmetic options available to the player sounds like a balanced enough thing to do. I haven't been following PA so I don't know much about it so my comments were from a more general point of view.  However if the modding support is there I agree we can count on someone to work on it which would be the next best thing for people interested in a more finely balanced option.

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, given what the Balanced Annihilation mod did with Total Annihilation, I'm confident there will be a very well balanced version of PA at some point, unless PA somehow totally stinks (which would naturally render the point moot).

[Wingflier]

In order to explain the distinction in terms of your own view I would need to know the answer (that you would give) to two questions:

What, exactly, is wrong when a man kills another in cold blood without cause?
What, exactly, is wrong, when a married man fantasizes about a different woman?

Or do you even consider the second to be wrong at all?  If not, then I don't think I can unconfuse you here

To your first question:
"What, exactly, is wrong when a man kills another in cold blood without cause? "

I think the answer is fairly obvious and probably doesn't need to be explained.

To your second question:

"What, exactly, is wrong, when a married man fantasizes about a different woman?"

I find this question humorously ironic because there are so many inherent contradictions and stipulations that I'm not even sure how it applies to what we're talking about.

Are you implying that if a person is married, they shouldn't play video games with "sex" or "immodesty" (in the form of exposed females) in them, but if you're single, it's perfectly okay?  Does that mean as a single gamer, I'm not committing a "crime" by fantasizing about female characters with large breasts, but as a married man you are? 

Is there something inherently wrong in the act of sexual fantasy at all?  Isn't it completely natural to sexually fantasize as a male human being (the answer is yes according to modern Psychology)?  Outside of the Bible, I can't see your objections to these things.

Ultimately I think that's what this discussion boils down to.  In the Bible mass murder and genocide are fairly commonplace.  God himself genocides the entire world in flood (save a few people, and of course the animals...except the dinosaurs), so I think what we're supposed to get from that message is that killing is okay in some circumstances.  But sex outside of marriage is definitely wrong 100% of the time. 

I'm sure to ancient people these things made sense, but I don't see how they apply to a modern-day society.  Gratutious violence is a much more psychologically traumatic than seeing a woman naked.  In fact, seeing a woman naked is a beautiful thing.  It doesn't have to be sexual - we make it sexual by trying so hard to hide it and make it into a terrible thing when it's not.

As for the item name, while it is indeed offensive to me, is simply another point where I feel Dota 2, as a creative project and product, could be more professional than it already is or could take itself more seriously on, which is another thing you feel Dota 2 has over LoL though perhaps meant in a different way. As an imaginative/creative minded person I find it disappointing that more effort wasn't put in to naming it and it strikes me as an unutilized opportunity to name it something more original or creative. I'm not asking you to share my view of it being offensive but do you at least see my point that a more creative name is certainly possible?

Well I mean, is there a reason we shouldn't name fictional items after fictional characters?  I don't personally see the problem with it, any more than I see the problem with drawing a picture of Muhammad even though billions of Muslims may get offended at the drawing.  There comes a certain point where people will get offended over ANYTHING, and you have to stop being so polite because it's ridiculous.

Curse words I can kind of understand, because of the social stigmas of certain words.  Even though "f*ck" means the same thing as "sex", for some reason it's extremely offensive because someone a long time ago decided it was offensive.  My Psychology teacher was telling the class that the word "sh*t" was deemed offensive hundreds of years ago as a way to mock or ostracize a certain culture who used it, while the word "poop" was used by "the more civilized" culture, making it the modern-day acceptable term, even though they both mean the same thing.  I don't remember all the details, I'll have to ask him about it next time I see him.

The point is that once again, swear words seem like a really arbitrary thing to get offended over.  Words only have the power that we give them, so if everybody just woke up one day and said, "Hey, I'm going to stop letting the word 'n*gger' offend me", nobody would probably even use it anymore because it loses its shock value.  That's one of the most hilarious dichotomies of our society:  We create the content that offends us (whether that be sex or curses) by being so sensitive to it.  I think we all just need to grow up and stop acting like children.

What you said in your post is a good example:  To use swear words in order to give a character realism and personality (well it's realistic isn't it?  Many people swear in real life) is completely unprofessional.  But to send thousands of jobs overseas to enslave poor and innocent people is seen as "a good business decision".  Oh brother - if I ever own a company I'll take any accusations of unprofessionalism as a compliment.

I don't think PA will be an unbalanced game, but I don't think it has to be balanced on the level of tournament-competition games.

Even if the balance does come out wonky, so long as modding support is half-decent there's folks out there who will make it balanced

Completely agree with Keith here.

It doesn't have to be perfectly balanced as long as its reasonably balanced and a ton of fun.  People who want perfect balance can mod it however they want, at the potential cost of removing a lot of the enjoyment in the process.

[Volatar]

Outside of the Bible, I can't see your objections to these things.

Keith lives in The South. It's a safe bet that the Bible is a strong factor in these discussions.

[keith.lamothe]

"What, exactly, is wrong when a man kills another in cold blood without cause? "

I think the answer is fairly obvious and probably doesn't need to be explained.

It does if we want to understand where something that is in some way like murder (simulations of it, participating in simulations of it, etc) either is wrong in a similar way or is not.  You have to get into the details of what makes it wrong, to see if (or in what circumstance) those particulars are shared with the other thing.

Are you implying that if a person is married, they shouldn't play video games with "sex" or "immodesty" (in the form of exposed females) in them, but if you're single, it's perfectly okay?

No, I'm not implying that at all, I was trying to focus on an issue with less gray area rather than dealing with the potential tangent that a single man has no one to "cheat" on.

Anyway, you did eventually get around to answering that you didn't think it was wrong, so of course you wouldn't see a problem with a guy doing that kind of thing with a game.  I can only show you the real/simulated distinction in a meaningful way if you actually think the real thing is wrong

Outside of the Bible, I can't see your objections to these things.

Keith lives in The South. It's a safe bet that the Bible is a strong factor in these discussions.

I'm actually not trying to voice personal objections here (whatever their basis, nor would I wish to since it would probably reflect inaccurately on Arcen and Chris), but to point out how something being done in a game can be very different from the real thing in one case (because it really is just a simulation) and not very different from the real thing in another case (because the simulation is in fact a real act of the same nature).

[Wingflier]

Well no, I don't see the problem with sexually fantasizing about somebody.  We have hormones and urges as human beings for an Evolutionary purpose, it's all very simple.

To deny your sexual urges or fantasies would be deny part of what makes you human.  That doesn't mean that you should go out and cuddly hug  the first attractive woman you see, but good god, can't you at least express them in the confines of your own mind?  If your own mind is not a place of freedom and solitude, what freedom do you truly have?

There's a word for what happens when a male tries to repress his sexual urges his entire life, the word is Catholic Priests, and they end up molesting young children instead.  This IS NOT a healthy way of doing things. 

In other words, I think in trying to hide the female body, and only show it during times associated with sex (whether that be pornography or during sex itself) it's having the opposite effect of what we're intending.  If the naked female body was commonplace, you wouldn't get aroused every time you saw it would you?  Much like an artist who paints naked women for a living, it doesn't have to be a sexual thing all the time.  By repressing and stigmatizing it, you make it that way.

[keith.lamothe]

I wasn't asking you to justify why don't think it's wrong.  Or, indeed, why you think it's wrong to treat it as wrong, etc

Ah, but would it be wrong for someone to play one of those city-simulator games and cackle gleefully as he creates a dreadfully repressed society?

(I'm kidding)

[zespri]

On violence-in-games compared to swearing-in-games (or a number of other things), I agree that shedding rivers of blood in a game isn't something that should just be assumed to be ok, but it's important to remember one distinction when evaluating something in a game (or movie) : is it a simulation of the thing, or the thing itself?

In other words: in a movie, if a woman shoots someone else, the actress is simulating violence (assuming it's done with blank-rounds or CG or whatever).  If she takes all her clothes off in front of the camera, she is actually being immodest, even though it's "just a movie".  Whether a given person has a problem with that (or the violence) is beyond the scope of what I'll try to address here, but the two cases are fundamentally different on at least that one point.

Similarly, if the voice actor lets loose a string of profanity/obscenity/vulgarity (I'm not talking about Dota2 specifically, I don't know how much is used there), and it's not bleeped-out or whatever, then that's not purely a simulated action.  It is partly simulated in that it doesn't mean that the voice actor, personally, really thinks all those mean things about your mother.  But it's a different thing than the AI programmer indirectly slaughtering your character, because no real violence happens at all.

On whether the AI programmer indirectly slaughtering your character is ok, I offer no argument, having a conflict of interest

Now all we need to do is to wait for chemical_art to chime in questioning the relevance of this post to the thread title 

[eRe4s3r]

To be honest, if we go by thread title I was expecting a discussion about how the current economic system is completely bonkers and needs changing, because the price used in the market to stipulate value is complete nonsense, and is founded absolutely 0 actually relevant factors, like resources used, sustainability, recycling effort required for 100% recycle, transport costs, fair working etc..

Monetary imbalances because of a value system that is enforced on us by rich people are obviously always wrong.

But seeing the first post, I was quickly saddened by how an interesting topic like this is squandered by talk about nonsensical things in a game

Violence in video games, and with that I include naked people in video games, can never be wrong. If you are offended by computer rendered pixels, no matter what they are doing you have serious issues. The exception is if is done to incite crimes. Imo.

Naked women in film are called porn. A good movie can tell a story without 5 full frontal sex scenes. But Hollywood doesn't know that...

Also, not even the OP was relevant to the topic title, just FYI ;p

[Wingflier]

I wasn't asking you to justify why don't think it's wrong.  Or, indeed, why you think it's wrong to treat it as wrong, etc

Ah, but would it be wrong for someone to play one of those city-simulator games and cackle gleefully as he creates a dreadfully repressed society?

(I'm kidding)

Ah but I have no personal restrictions on what makes a video game wrong.  I'm in erekljadsfl;jkwtfever's camp, it's just pixels on the screen.  Despite tons of research and studies to find a connection, there has none been made between violent video games and actual violence.  By the same token, I highly doubt that you would find any connection between sexual video games and increased rates of sex.  In fact, you might find an inverse correlation because the person playing the game doesn't have a sex life ;p

[wyvern83]

Well I mean, is there a reason we shouldn't name fictional items after fictional characters? I don't personally see the problem with it, any more than I see the problem with drawing a picture of Muhammad even though billions of Muslims may get offended at the drawing.  There comes a certain point where people will get offended over ANYTHING, and you have to stop being so polite because it's ridiculous.

You don't see a problem with deliberately going out of your way to draw an antagonizing picture of Muhammad that incites widespread riots and contributes to the deaths of other people in said riots? If you know drawing a picture of Muhammad will incite riots in which people may be killed and do so anyway, are you not personally accountable for doing so? If you take an action that endangers the lives of other people and the action is only taken for your own amusement, are you not guilty of playing with the lives of others without care? Is such an action without consequence if it results in death or injury for someone else if not yourself? Wouldn't that be reason enough to be respectful of the religious views of the Muslim world even if you think being "so polite" is ridiculous? After all how hard or obtrusive or impinging on your rights is it to not draw pictures of Muhammad? Why do you even need to or would you want to if Muhammad is nothing more than a historical figure to you? You wouldn't.

Leaving your rather extreme example behind, I hesitated to use the word offended in my post as it is often construed to mean that someone is illogically and unnecessary beside themselves with fury over something, which I imagine is your primary view point on this word given your example. I am not any of those things, the issue of the item's name hardly consumes my being and every waking thought, I just personally don't care for it and that's all I mean by that, I'm just expressing a dissenting opinion about it.

And the answer to your question, when you get down to it, is respect. If you don't think respect is needed in today's world than I have no other answer for you and there wouldn't be anything else for me to add on the subject.

The point is that once again, swear words seem like a really arbitrary thing to get offended over.  Words only have the power that we give them,

What you said in your post is a good example:  To use swear words in order to give a character realism and personality (well it's realistic isn't it?  Many people swear in real life) is completely unprofessional.

You can try swearing in your next job interview if you feel like it but odds are I doubt you would. I don't really subscribe to the philosophy that everything is relative and that what you say or do has no consequence so I suppose it would appear arbitrary if you are of that persuasion. Is swearing by some characters realistic some of the time? Sure, but as the content creator you also don't have to.

To be honest, if we go by thread title I was expecting a discussion about how the current economic system is completely bonkers and needs changing, because the price used in the market to stipulate value is complete nonsense, and is founded absolutely 0 actually relevant factors, like resources used, sustainability, recycling effort required for 100% recycle, transport costs, fair working etc..

Monetary imbalances because of a value system that is enforced on us by rich people are obviously always wrong.

But seeing the first post, I was quickly saddened by how an interesting topic like this is squandered by talk about nonsensical things in a game

I was actually expecting something along those lines as well when I first checked this thread.