As I see it, those choices to “murder or not” are trivializing murder, but it can be OK to trivialize crimes/immoral actions in fiction.
The question is: when is it OK to trivialize crimes/immoral actions? That’s a complex question, but there are some reasonable questions you can ask yourself:
Will trivializing the action influence people into thinking it’s OK? (Do a lot of people already think it’s OK?)
Do you have good reason to think trivializing the action will be especially hurtful to real-life victims of similar actions?
Are the victims especially vulnerable?
These are the same kinds of criteria we’d use to discuss jokes which we tell specifically to trivialize. This is part of why race jokes and rape jokes can be especially bad.
Reasonable people can disagree about individual cases, and that’s part of why I think in a democratic society we have to make it legal to tell pretty much whatever jokes you want, write whatever stories you want.
But I think we can all agree that there are legal jokes that are unethical to tell; similarly, trivializing choices can be unethical. (And we’re certainly not going to publish any material that we believe to be unethical to publish.)
I’d like to ask for examples of what you guys consider morally grey choices in stories. I’ve seen some people ask for morally grey choices, but not many stories that actually contain them. Do you know any games that pulled it off well?
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There are a few reasons why rape is considered more disturbing than murder, even though I sometimes think it’s hypocritical.
Chivalry. Rape mainly affects women. If you asked a random person, they’d probably not even know that men too can be raped. For women, rape is an attack against their entire gender. For men, it may evoke the instinct to protect the victim. This might be hypocritical, but I believe it’s just the way people think.
Rape is explicitly sadistic. The MC can kill in war or to protect someone, so the MC can have good intentions or have no choice but to kill. But rape is more like torture, so it’s nearly impossible to come up with a motive that isn’t just the MC’s sadistic pleasure. Also because it’s a sexual act, it might make you think that the writer got off on writing the scene (especially if it’s written like p*rn instead of horror), which is quite a gross thought.
Society overall reacts more strongly to depictions of sexual acts than violence. Rape is the most horrible sexual act, so it makes sense that nobody wants to read about it.
I think it can be written, but if the story’s supposed to taken seriously, it should be written like a violence scene would be written, and not like a love scene. There should be realistic consequences. The MC would probably have to be a psychopath.
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This. Aliens, robots etc are such obvious symbols of xenophobia, the last acceptable targets of genocide. Even people making high tech movies still have the primitive tribal mentality that all strangers must be dangerous and that it’s fun to kill them. Aliens and robots don’t have civilians, children etc, so they can be massacred without a second thought. They often have ugly or inhuman faces and they all look the same, so nobody feels bad for them. They often attack without any reasonable motivation. If the robots attack because they’ve been enslaved by humans, the solution is always to destroy all robots, instead of maybe stop enslaving them. The dehumanization bores me to tears.
I didn’t like the movie The Arrival a lot, but the best part was when all the governments assumed that the peaceful aliens came to invade the Earth, because “obviously” strange foreign beings must be warmongerers. The actual hostile beings were the humans.
As far as Nazis are concerned, a lot of people assume that every German was a carbon copy of Hitler. It’s easy to generalize and dehumanize the enemy. However most Germans obeyed the regime out of fear or indifference, and they were forced to go to war instead of volunteering. That’s how it’s always been.
Doesn’t that quote lose a lot of meaning given who it’s coming from? I mean he did provoke a few wars to reunify Germany…
Few questions: If you knew he didn’t know, why didn’t you tell him about it? I mean what you did to him was sexual assault, from the way you typed it at least. And, it was role play, how did he get into a situation where you could do that? Hanlon’s razor seems to be in play for him from the way you described it.
We are fortunate to have a forum where we can discuss a lot of varied topics. However, some topics require a certain amount of sensitivity that not everyone can muster. Please remember to be polite. If you are unable to do so, please excuse yourself from the discussion. If someone has excused themselves, do not continue to try to engage them.
Dont get me wrong I’m not trying to glorify him at all. I’m a socialist and he hated people like us so I would have reasons to hate him too but despite this the man did encourage peace between the superpowers and anti-colonialism in a time where both were not popular with the people.
He is a conservative poopbread but at least he became a semi-pacifist conservative poopbread following the unification wars and thats already more than we could expect from 19th century world leaders.
I actually draw a line at rape, for a variety of reasons, including the fact that while mainstream Western society more or less universally agrees that mass-murder is bad, it still has serious issues when it comes to dealing with the crime of rape itself and how its survivors should be treated. Not only is it an act which I feel impossible to justify without sounding (and personally feeling) too much like a real-life rape apologist, but it’s also a subject which I feel manifestly unqualified to write about having a) never been sexually assaulted before, and b) having never been in any danger of being sexually assaulted before.
In this case, I’d say a “responsibility to” doesn’t necessarily correlate to a guaranteed ability. There is no writer skilled enough to make every reader interpret their work the way they want it interpreted, but that goes for anything that gets presented in a public sphere. Still, even if such a thing isn’t guaranteed, it doesn’t mean that I don’t consider it my duty as a student of history, a student of war, an artist, and as a decent human being to do my damndest.
He did, but the series of relatively short, sharp wars he fought was designed to create a unified German state which would never again end up a battleground for other European powers, as it did in the Thirty Years’ War. Bismarck wasn’t so much saying that war is bad, as he was saying that declaring war is something which cannot be done lightly. It probably helped that resulting international system did guarantee peace up until the point where Wilhelm II actively took a sledgehammer to it.
I am still processing everything in this post; I do feel the need to speak on why I consider a choice to rape something a game designer should not offer up.
The definition of murder: An intentional act of deliberate killing of another human. is something that has been established for hundreds of years. This definition can be agreed upon by people in all the markets your game will reach. There are excuses that are accepted for murder such as self-defense which legally allow murder and there are circumstances where murder is seen as acceptable such as war.
The definition of rape is not commonly accepted in all the markets your game reaches. In some jurisdictions (for example) only a biological woman may be raped and a transgender woman has no protection from the identical act a biological woman would have. Even a post-surgery transitioned transgendered woman may not be protected in some jurisdictions.
In addition to this, what each of us understand as “consent” is different, again based on culture, legal system and tradition. There are also changing norms within each society you may reach. What was considered “the victim’s fault” in one jurisdiction may no longer be considered such in another. (the way a woman dresses is an example).
Due to this fact, when it comes to game design, if you desire to positively reach your audience in multiple markets, it is best to not even consider including this as a “choice” to be presented to the gamer/player/reader.
This does not mean you can’t deal with rape as a subject in your game - there are current titles published by this company that show rape scenes (or at least questionable scenes that can be interpreted as such) but they all (to my knowledge never allow the MC to chose such a path.
This is why I draw a red-line in development here. You can make a choice as weighty and non-trivial as you can but because the very definition of rape is in question in your markets, you can’t logically and with certainty design a choice with the intended consequences and results that you are aiming for.
As I said, I am still processing everything but I felt that I should get this out now before passions and emotions try to flood the responses given.
You had a reply for me, so I’m not sure if you wanted an answer of some sort, but here you go:
Sure, if the creator wants to put rape, torture and genocide as a choice then they should by all means go for it. Their reasons for doing so don’t really matter. The reader can either enjoy it, ignore it, get offended by it, analyze it or have mixed feelings about it all.
It’s really as simple as that as far as I’m concerned.
Nothing is off limits and if you want to make something that basically goes “lol genocide” well you can go ahead and do that. You probably won’t be popular by the mainstream, but if you’re fine with that, then do it if that’s what you really need to do.
As far as creator responsibility is concerned, well as I already said before you can create something as benign as possible and people still get the wrong lesson out of it. (Assuming there was one to begin with)
Obviously most here believe that the creator has some “duty” to create something that makes the world a “less worse place.”
I don’t agree of course, mainly because everyone has a different idea of what a “better world” looks like. I’m pretty sure for example Stormfront would have a vastly different idea of a “better world”.
So I see no reason to create for the views of others and will stick with my own vision. If someone reads it and finds affinity with it, okay. If they didn’t that’s fine too.
But, if you do want to know where I would personally draw the line, I’d draw it at pedophilia. There is just no way in hell I could make any sort of story where you’re playing as a child molester and that’s your whole goal. I’d make a story where you play as a Nazi death camp guard before that.
Now I might put it in a story to make the pedophile a loser that gets punished or as someone that’s that’s just really despicable, but that of course is a little different than what you were talking about.
Speaking of rape and murder they normal married with siege of cities. It almost expected up until modern in developed nations. You can look at Berlin when the Red Army came or the Bush wars how both case they where used as tools to demoralize the population. Even recently in the Bosnian genocide/Yugoslavian Civil War, Or one the worst the rape of Nanjing. How does siege turn entire army of men into monsters. Because you can ask any of those young Japanese man before they left that they would never fathom doing that. Maybe if someone has the writing ability they can show how war can dehumanize us all. For that subject to be taboo is not allowing us to see darkness that exist in heart of humanity.
Even at the time that this was happening, it was not considered “acceptable”. Even earlier, it was not acceptable. It may have been “considered acceptable” when Constantinople fell but even then, there were large populations that thought otherwise.
What I’m about to say is merely my opinion and one I’m well aware of some people are not going to like due to the nature of the topic at hand. If you’re easily triggered or sensitive, please feel free to ignore this reply altogether.
[spoiler]I’m of the mindset that authors and videogame developers should be given the freedom to use whatever topics they want into their work, no matter how sensitive or morally wrong they may be, provided it comes with proper labeling and content rating. If we go around censoring everything just because someone finds it offensive or displeasing to the eye then we may as well wrap the entire planet and everything in it in red tape (or is it back?). Censoring is not the way to go - warning people beforehand so they can avoid that which they don’t like or want, is.
Keep in mind that books and videogames are the escapism of millions of people, both for the costumers as well as for the authors. If indulging in dark fiction provides to be a valuable outlet for them, or simply because they enjoy that sort of content, I’d say more power to them. At least when they’re reading or playing videogames they’re not harming anyone in real life. Whether or not that reflects their psyche however is an entirely different can of worms. That’s just my 2cents on the issue.[/spoiler]
Officially, the Red Army ordered that rapists be shot on sight.
Of course, they didn’t exactly enforce that order, but the fact that the order was issued in the first place showed that mass rape wasn’t considered “acceptable” to the general population.
The concept of bloodied, angry, and possibly-grieving soldiers who’ve just fought through the butchery of an avoidable battle (the laws and customs of war allowed a city one last chance to surrender before a besieging force tries to take it by storm) which the defenders only forced them to fight through pure spite is one that does warrant examination, and it’s one that I’ve examined. Yet there are aspects of it which I’d only want to be able to touch upon peripherally, because it’s one thing to describe the mindset of a soldier during a sack, but it’s another to try to put the reader in that mindset, while still keeping both author and reader’s grasp of their own human decency.
I am trust me. From being in the military I tell they train for you to get your blood hot but they install discipline in you ever step away so you do not past that line. Just learn about the American Civil war alone right now. It baffles me how they got anything done at all. The only thing that kept them in together when they were rushing in a Napoleon. Is that regiment there in a person next them was there close friend there brother there neighbor you connot afford to become coward in front of them even if it suicide.
So the army is of the 17th and 16th and 15th would have even harder time trying instill disciplined there Men so do not ravaged the city. @Cataphrak portrayed that extremely difficult task quite well.
Indeed - the famous picture of the Red Army soldiers raising the flag over the Reichstag’s entry had to be photo-edited because one soldier had several wrist watches showing he was a looter … at first it went out untouched but when people saw the evidence of a war crime … well we know the story.
Making the right choice only matters when you actually have a choice. In a story, if I’m stopped by a guard and my two choices are to charm him or sneak by him then I shouldn’t be praised for handling the situation non-violently. I had two “good” choices so there was never a chance that I could do a bad thing.
If I have to choose between stopping a genocide because it is wrong or stopping a genocide because it works against my side’s interests then I shouldn’t get any praise for that choice, either. Sure, characters in the game can say what a good job I did but as a player I know I didn’t make the right choice. I had no choice. I don’t feel the satisfaction that I’d normally get for doing the right thing.
In order to make my choice to do good things meaningful there must be a real option to do bad things. Think of it in terms of romance: if there is only one romance option then what satisfaction do I get for romancing them? It was either them or no one. But if I had options to romance a dozen people then I know that the person I picked mattered (because I chose them over the others).
So I think there ought to be an option to choose the bad thing. If only to give meaning to the good choice.
However, now that we’ve got two choices, we can’t make the bad choice boring and stupid and unfun. Imagine two doors: the good door leads to a continuation of the story and the bad door has a dragon behind it that instantly kills you without warning. The bad choice door isn’t very fun. It’s bad writing, too. And by short-changing the bad choices we are implicitly encouraging the good choices. This is only slightly better than having no bad choices at all.
The bad choices need to be fun, too. Err, well, as satisfying as the good choices, at least. A reader making all the good choices should realize that the story would have continued, there would have been more plot, more romances, more rewards, even if they had chosen to do bad things. Knowing all that and still making the good choice makes the good choice more meaningful.
Also, bad choices should lead to interesting and detailed stories so the reader who makes bad choices don’t feel cheated. Sometimes people want to turn on Grand Theft Auto and blow up as many cars and people as possible. Why not have a similar choice in your interactive story? Sure, the good choices are to avoid murder but why not provide a path where a player can indulge their darker sides? They could have made the right choices—the choice is there for them to make—but they picked evil.
A story should have good choices, choices not to murder, not to commit genocide, not to rape. And making those good choices should continue the story along that path. Making those good choices will feel righteous and satisfying, too, knowing that you could have made other choices. You denied yourself the sick pleasures of the bad choices and can justifiably feel good about yourself. The story didn’t make you good; you are good.
The bad choices need to be there, not necessarily for you to choose yourself, but to give you something not to choose.
This, of course, is the opposite of:
[quote=“dfabulich, post:18, topic:23481, full:true”]
when an author constructs a choice, the act of doing that does inherently represent the options as comparable. Thus, if you give the player a choice “to genocide or not to genocide?” it trivializes genocide.[/quote]
As genocide is a hard thing for me to imagine doing, let’s use a magical love potion as an example. A story could provide the option of buying this love potion, giving it to your crush, and having him fall madly in love with you. In other words, you roofie and rape the guy. You don’t have to do this. You could instead, I dunno, get pissed off and break all the potions in the potion shop or organize a movement to ban all love potions.
Is the story trivializing rape when it provides an entire plot to stop rape, when it shows the horrible consequences of magical potion rape, just because you as the reader specifically chose to ignore all that and buy the potion anyway?
The two choices, rape your crush or don’t, are comparable in the sense that neither will end the story. But the aftermath of those choices will be extremely different. The entire plot could change based upon this one choice. The exact opposite of trivial.
So, yeah, I don’t think any choices should be off limits. Well, within reason. There is no need to include rape and genocide in a story about anthropomorphic airplanes, ice cream factories, and kitten pool parties. But if an author wants to write about some heavy stuff then we should let her, especially if she wants to tackle concepts like “good and evil” or “right and wrong.”
I agree with most of your post (though I’m still conflicted). However, [quote=“Bernadette, post:75, topic:23481”]
The two choices, rape your crush or don’t, are comparable in the sense that neither will end the story. But the aftermath of those choices will be extremely different. The entire plot could change based upon this one choice. The exact opposite of trivial.
[/quote]
I think the point @dfabulich and others are making is that just the act of putting something like genocide or rape in a game is trivialising, no matter what.
Yes, specifically putting in the choice to do those things or not makes both options comparable and thereby trivializes the action. “Putting genocide in a game” (e.g. fighting against a genocidal NPC) is not necessarily trivializing.
I’m not sure what you (and others in this thread) mean that (almost) no choices should be “off limits.” I think you might be saying that we can’t/shouldn’t identify entire kinds of choices which are never morally acceptable, while agreeing that there are some particular choices which are morally unacceptable.
I think the same argument applies to choices as jokes. I don’t think any jokes should be illegal, but it can be immoral to tell a joke if it hurts vulnerable people in real life, or encourages others to do so. Choices in games can trivialize just like jokes; they can be immoral under similar circumstances.
IMO, it is possible to tell an acceptable rape joke, but the circumstances for it are so rare, and the skill required is so high, that I’d tell people “just don’t tell rape jokes at all.”
I’d say the same thing about rape choices. You can do it; they’re legal, and must remain legal. But just don’t.
Maybe we’ve got differing ideas on what trivializing means? I’ve been running under the impression that we mean “making these things seem less important than they really are” by putting them in the story.
I can get on board with thinking that if we put something in our stories we inherently trivialize it. A fictional event isn’t nearly as important as a real experienced event. But we’d have to apply it across the board. Putting genocide in a story trivializes it, sure, but putting romance in a story trivializes that, too. Nothing we write can be as important as what we live.
But you’re not saying everything is trivialized by being put in a story. Just certain things (like genocide). And I don’t know why.
[quote=“dfabulich, post:77, topic:23481, full:true”]
I’m not sure what you […] mean that […] no choices should be “off limits.” I think you might be saying that we can’t/shouldn’t identify entire kinds of choices which are never morally acceptable, while agreeing that there are some particular choices which are morally unacceptable.[/quote]
Yeah. Almost. We should not limit entire kinds of choices based upon what we think is morally unacceptable. I mean, no one here thinks rape, murder, and genocide are good things. They are morally repugnant and evil. Unacceptable in the real world. But I’m not convinced that they’re bad to have as options in interactive fiction. And just asserting that they’re bad isn’t a convincing argument.
I mean, I’m convincable! I’m not married to the idea that evil choices should always be an option. I just need a bit more to get me to change my mind, is all.
You and this guy seem to almost be on the same page, then:
[quote=“EndMaster, post:68, topic:23481, full:true”]
Nothing is off limits and if you want to make something that basically goes “lol genocide” well you can go ahead and do that. You probably won’t be popular by the mainstream, but if you’re fine with that, then do it if that’s what you really need to do.[/quote]
@dfabulich bascially says “there are no rules but don’t be a dick about it.” @EndMaster says “there are no rules so do what you want. You might get called a dick, though.”
@dfabulich
Question relating to genocide, didn’t we have the option to kill a tribe of Indians in Tin Star?
If that isn’t related, what defines genocide? Or am I not remembering Tin Star correctly? What made it ok?[quote=“Bernadette, post:79, topic:23481”] @dfabulich bascially says “there are no rules but don’t be a dick about it.” @EndMaster says “there are no rules so do what you want. You might get called a dick, though.”
[/quote]
I definitely subscribe to @EndMaster’s point
