Weird WoW article on Torture

[Cartollomew]

http://www.wired.com/gaming/virtualworl ... tiers_1215

Wired have some pretty strange shit from time to time, but this one takes the cake.

What's most amazing is that the guy admits to not having experienced the quest, and then goes on to discuss it for a page and a half.

My take?

WoW is a cartoon. People are capable of discerning the difference between cartoons and reality. Nobody playing WoW takes it particularly seriously.

Selten brings this up from time to time: Van Cleef's cause is arguably righteous, but the game gives you no choice but to viciously cut him down and bring back his head as proof.

Do we see a rash of beheadings and bounty huntings as a result?

No. People kill him because they get blues.

In this case, people torture the dude because they get XP. The somewhat ironic dialogue surrounding it is read by a few and skimmed by many, but ultimately forgotten.

The last thing we need is for the game to become needlessly preachy.

I'm told to go rescue five guys from a village swarming with undead. So I do that, leaving the other 20 guys behind to "die" (or just, you know, cower).
Nobody advocates acting like that in the real world. The game isn't going to make me more likely to do that in a "similar" situation.

Exterminating multiple "endangered" species for profit? I've done it. It's okay - they're imaginary and respawn in seconds.

Hell, look at the various abilities people have - Warlock's death coil causes a horror effect and rips life from people. Rogues use various degenerating poisons.
Don't even get me started on hunters and animal rights.

There is a limit to the extent you can use WoW as a medium for a social or political (or ethical) commentary, because it's still, at the bottom of it, a vehicle for grinding. That's pretty much it; elaborate, multiplayer, social tetris.

And while it's certainly (arguably) more story based now than it used to be, it's got nothing on the narratives of Bio/System shock, KOTOR 1&2, even bloody *Portal - because it's not been built as a delivery system for narrative.

And while we're on the topic of Bioshock, let's remember that Levine's vision for morality and consequence based gaming came, ultimately, to naught, for whatever reason you wish to subscribe (okay, it's the console gamer's fault. Fuck you, console gamers).

Choosing between black/white or good/bad does not pose any ethical queries. You don't ever feel like you need to slaughter the little sisters in order to survive. And choosing not to results in both immediate and long term rewards equal to those you'd have received from killing the little mutants.
Frankly, I felt worse about killing the Big Daddies, and I didn't really have much choice there.

Even games like KOTOR fail to accurately portray ethical quandaries - almost all your decisions come down to light/dark and at the end your decisions are weighed. If you have more light than dark, you're considered "good". To be fair, there's a sliding scale, which is a hellova lot more than that offered by Bioshock, but each decision still comes down to "good vs evil", rather than "I don't know vs I'm unsure with immediate and far reaching consequences (or maybe not, you don't know)".

The main reason such moral depth isn't found in games is that it's hard to write it into the damn things, and, honestly, the payoff isn't huge.

I stand by my position - people are generally capable of discerning between the real world and the imaginary ones we create. We can choose to make the imaginary ones full or partial reflections of the real one, but in the end these are simply models, like any other, that we can assess and weigh to decide how to alter reality.

*Portal is an interesting one. Was I the only person who spent quite some time fruitlessly trying to save my companion cube?

[Philondra]

I read the original post on the Tortue quest by Bartle when he first posted it (I make it a habit to read the guy's website frequently, as he posts some fascinating material there relatively frequently) and I completely agree with his main point, which wasn't really so much about "torture makes me feel bad" so much as 1.) WOW pulling a little bit of a bait-and-switch with the WOTLK quests in terms of a lot of the dubious things the game encourages our characters to do (torturing someone to get access to the Nexus; abducting wolvar children to "perserve the species") as compared to the "standard fare" for quests (kill the bad guys and get their loot) and 2.) Blizzard evidently didn't think that torture was a hot button issue for an American game, particularly at a time when American political policies re: the acceptibility of torture is a subject of world-wide debate.

We are desensitized enough to killing, and it is done in such a cartoon-like manner, that our society considers it acceptable to show stylized murder. The torture quest is ... a little more heavy than they stylzed wow murder, but that leads to an interesting question: Why is it acceptable to torture pixels in a T-rated video game, but not acceptable to implement a quest with the objective "rape 10 female humans"? After all, they are just pixels! Torture is just as much a dehumanizing, horrible act as rape and leaves similarly traumatic emotional and physical scars. Why is stylized torture OK but stylized rape not?

Here's an interesting discussion question: why is the first quest are acceptable in an mmo, and why does the second one give us pause?

* Capture 12 Wolvar pups and bring them to Moaki Harbor
* Capture 12 dark-skinned orphans from Shattrath and bring them to Skettis

It's because of our real world taboos against certain topics, particularly in light of certain world events. Of course those of us playing WOW know the different between games and real life; no one is making the arguments that we are that easily influenced. But given our sensibilities and hot-button issues as members of a society, there are certain topics that really shouldn't be broached. The torture thing is a case where Blizzard should have done a little bit of self-censorship and said "you know, maybe that's not totally appropriate". Of course, it's within their rights to do it, but I really wish that they hadn't.

[Dropdeadqt]

For many of us, we just don't care. A quest is a quest, it's not a moral quandary, just a "I hope this quest doesn't have 5 hours of boring Arthas lore speak that I have to listen to again if I fail". The ONLY quest I have ever paused on was the DK starting quest where you kill your sister (or possibly brother). I stood there for a sec not quite sure if I had a choice and I know given one, I would not have killed her but I realized after a moment of thought this wasn't fallout 3, I had no choice but to lop head and pick up mah epix. I think it's nice to quest with peoples morals under the knife, but for my first character, the morals/ramifications/whatever of my actions were never brought into account. Hell, I didn't read 98%+ of the quests, just accepted and used QH to show me the money.

Maybe on my next char I'll get more involved, but it's a game. If I wanted to have my morals tested, I'd become famous and do a TV show about it with a lie detector test and rake in more cash!!!

Overall, I give it 8.4/10.

P.S. The dialogues in some of the "torture" quests are just so awesome, and really, a game isn't going to challenge peoples morals, it's going to give them an outlet to go against their own grain. It's nice to be able to work against your own tendencies and see what happens when you do it. Fallout 3, for example, is a far more morally driven game than wow could ever be. I have yet to get the choice to annihilate Ironforge with a nuclear device... and I'd love to see the puntage from that, OH YEAH!!!

[Cartollomew]

There's a difference between what we can show and what we want to show.

WoW is, for example, terribly offensive to your average non-denominational American Protestant (insofar as there is such a thing), due to the glorification of magic and (probably) sexuality. Oddly, violence seems traditionally to be ranked lower on their lists of "things wrong with popular culture", but that's another story.

You can't please everyone all the time; there will be those out there who would find it perfectly acceptable to make light of rape. We live in a society in which we (ideally) defend the rights of people to write about and present scenarios distasteful to the majority; even if we don't agree with the content, we agree with the spirit.

We don't include stylised rape in our cartoonishness (in the mainstream anyway), but do include violence, a superset of rape. Why? Because violence is held to be more socially acceptable in entertainment than is rape; that doesn't preclude anyone from including either in their media.

Ratings are another, more complicated matter; that the ESRB or OFLC choose to rate something as "Teen" or "M" rather than "R" or "MA" is a far more gray (and just as interesting) topic than that of free speech.

Should we not broach a topic in popular media because it makes us uneasy? Perhaps the inclusion of clear torture in this recent game suggests that we as a society are indeed too complacent with the idea; in which case the game is a necessary litmus, a symptom rather than a cause.

[Dropdeadqt]

As for your question. It's probably easier to find 12 dark-skinned orphans than it is to find 12 Wolvar pups in one area (something to do with real life demographics I think). And I don't think the Orphanage Matrons will put up much of a fight when you storm in to steal your babies so you can collect your loots.

As for the bottom thing.

Sex = R18+ classification
Torture = ... nothing maybe?

Face fears IMO. More torture, raping, pillaging and violence please.

[Cartollomew]

Sex = R18+ classification
Torture = ... nothing maybe?

Face fears IMO. More torture, raping, pillaging and violence please.

Depends. I'm generally against the idea of any kind of censorship, but I appreciate that society values a ratings system.

If I were a parent, I wouldn't want my 5 year old playing Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, but I probably wouldn't have time to thoroughly research the content of the game.
I would rely on the MA 15+ rating to determine that it's not appropriate for my kid and get them Animal Crossing or whatever instead (plus my 5 year old will totally be able to pick up chicks with Animal Crossing).

So yes, it is worth wondering why our ratings agencies are content to classify WoW as a teen game when it contains torture, and is far less likely to be accompanied by parental supervision than a movie.

It's also worth classifying content that contains potentially objectionable material, in order to give people the choice (where ratings fall over is when they become censorship and refuse classification for something. Then we don't have a choice. Legally, at least).

Again, why aren't we rescuing Aboriginal children from their families and taking them to the nice warm Stormwind orphanage? Because it won't sell and will upset the customer base.
Why are we torturing people? Because Blizzard guessed (apparently correctly) that their sales wouldn't be adversely affected by its inclusion, and whoever handles quests and stories wanted to include it. They have a right (explicitly or implicitly depending on where you are) to do so, regardless of whether or not society finds torture to be abhorrent.

[Philondra]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that no one was arguing whether or not Blizzard should be *allowed* to include torture (or rape, I guess), bur rather that I don't see what benefit they saw in doing so. This expansion has the players/characters doing a lot more ... morally repugnant stuff than they had to previously. There was a pretty good conversation about this on EJ, actually, in which people speculate that it's all building up to a grand "you're not so different from the LK, you self-righteous heroes!" narrative when we actually have to go and kill Arthas. In which case, I will say, "Well played." But until then it just seems a pretty out of placequest that provides for no real benefit other than shock value.

The DK quest, at least, made sense in terms of what your character is (a slave of the Lich King, a terrible force of evil) and helps the player come to grasp with exactly who his/her character is.

For people like Alley, who just click through the dialog quest and want to get the purples, it doesn't matter if the quest was titled <Borean Tundra Quest 35c> with text <Insert Flavor text here> and a complete button. What exactly was the torture accomplishing in terms of the narrative? Not much.

With regards to the "rescuing Aboriginal Children" questline .... well, did you do the Children's day quest this year, where you have to take your adopted Draenei child on a whirlwind tour or Azeroth? Evidently people ate that shit up.

[Cartollomew]

What exactly was the torture accomplishing in terms of the narrative? Not much.

I found it passingly interesting; it illustrated that the Dalaran magi as an organisation forbid their members from taking part in torture, but that certain members of the organisation are prepared to excercise loopholes in order to "get the job done".

People are QQing because of the torture, but nobody seems to complain about the umpteen other occassions where our characters either knowingly or unknowingly participate in morally questionable or "ends-justify-the-means" actions (killing an enemy mage who is undercover for our own side, slaughtering maghar orcs out of revenge, killing countless animals for the hell of it, slaughtering cultists who beg you for help and mercy - the list goes on and on).

There is an awkwardness to the context of the WoW society - it is anachronistic in many ways, both forward and backward. On the one hand, their societies are typically "medieval", and on the other, there are concepts or social norms which are in advance of our own. It becomes difficult to know just how to take some of the events in WoW given the lack of contextual time or ethics.

However, to look at it as a superficial mirror to our own world's events, it becomes almost satirical (if not downright satirical); we are a world at war, and people do make split decisions to engage in morally dubious activities "for the greater good". Why should our entertainment mirror-world not reflect this event?
Would we expect torture to be a sacred, untouchable topic of any other satirical medium?

If anything, I thought they handled the torture reasonably well - the cartoonish and inconsequential nature of the task fits perfectly with the rest of the game.

With regards to the "rescuing Aboriginal Children" questline .... well, did you do the Children's day quest this year, where you have to take your adopted Draenei child on a whirlwind tour or Azeroth? Evidently people ate that shit up.

Taking an orphan for a tour is fundamentally different to taking them from their families "for their own good". We probably don't have any action groups up in arms against the rising tide of people taking a disadvantaged kid on a holiday.

EDIT:
As an aside, it might have been nice for them to offer the option not to torture, but still complete the questline. But then you create a precedent for doing that with all morally murky quests, and then people would get upset about where one draws the line on what qualifies for alternative quests and what doesn't, which imo, speaks louder about the writers than just leaving it as is.

[Philondra]

Sorry, Cart -- looks like I totally misread your original statement, in which case there is exactly the kind of quest you are talking about already in game.

"We have to abduct their children .... for their own good!" This actually struck me as a bit more ... o.O than the torture quest, especially because the walrus-men pretend to be all happy and disadvantaged.

EDIT: you may find this WOW forum link to be a humorous depiction of the event. I certainly did: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/threa ... 3390&sid=1

What's worse? This is a *daily* quest. Every day I hop on a red dragon, take ley line readings, kill blue drakes, then make a quick stop south to abduct my "quota" of 12 Wolvar pups. I collect my 5 gold (or 4g70s ... I can't remember), 500 kaluak rep, and am on my merry way. I find it disturbing, but I do it anyway because it's just a video game and I want that damned fishing pole. I really wish they hadn't put that kind of quest in, though, because it makes me vaguelyuncomfortable.

Your point about WOW being very awkward to place contextually is completely true, and I think that Blizzard purposely likes it that way -- it doesn't take its world super-seriously like LOTRO or even the world of EQ/EQ2, as is obvious by NPCs like "Natalie Tootiblare" or "Haris Pilton", achievements like "Bros before Ho Ho Hos", and quests like "Jormuttar is so Fat". In fact, I would say that WOW is very conscious of the fact that it is a game influenced by Western (specifically American) society, and we can't on the one hand say that it's not fair to attempt to give WOW some kind of real-world grounding when the very essence of the game is derived from modern popular culture (OK, The Facts of Life might not be so modern...)

[Cartollomew]

Ye gods and little fishes - that is pretty much exactly the Stolen Generation. (I haven't reached that quest yet, so I didn't know about it)

Also, this comment is awesome:

Elder Walrus: "Hi. I'm a walrus. We're the good guys. I promise."

Player: "Okay."

Walrus: "There are some guys we don't like. Their village is up on that hill."

Player: "Okay."

Walrus: "So I've got this sack right here."

Player: "I see."

Walrus: "What you are going to do is take this sack over to their village and fill it with their babies. As many babies as you can steal, just go ahead and stuff them in this sack."

Player: "Uh, what?"

Walrus: "Sack full of babies. Bring me a sack full of babies. Like, a dozen."

Player: "Are you sure you don't want me to just bring back their poop?"

Walrus: "By the way, the guys we don't like are dog guys, so the babies you're stuffing in a sack are also puppies."

Player: "Seriously?"

Walrus: "Yeah. Don't worry. We're totally not going to eat the babies. But if you want to come back tomorrow and swipe us another sackful, that would be awesome."

But yeh, wow. That's amazing.

I stand corrected; you pretty much can stick this stuff in the game and it won't affect sales.

I wonder if this is really just a more telling indication that most players either click through without thinking or are just plain unable to contextually link certain events in WoW with those in the real world.

And yes, that's on way more shaky ground than the torture thing.

At least with the murlocs, you were bringing their own young back to them (the concept of talking, thinking murlocs is one I find a little disturbing too - along with kobolds and gnolls, these obviously intelligent, but completely othered societies reflect a lot more about the questionable state of world affairs than most of us think).

Welp, keep pimping yourself out to the walrus guys, Phil - maybe in a few expacs time we'll be treated to a new Walrus chieftain apologising to the wolvar stolen generation

[Philondra]

What's even scarier is that it's evidently the third most completed quest according to blizzard's own numbers o.O