[MUD-Dev] Re: Family, was characters per account

[Paul Schwanz - Enterprise Services]

Daniel said:
> > I've been especially disappointed in the graphical MMORPGs.  Family?  They
> > don't even have NPC children.  Because, I'm supposing, someone somewhere
> > decided that it wasn't the least bit important.  Waste of disk space for
> > the art, waste of system resources to have them in-game.  It's not as if
> > anyone wants to pretend those are real towns with real people in
> > them anyway.
>

Raph replied: 
> Actually, in UO's case it was because a) we were concerned about the vast
> potential for nastiness (children-killing, pedophilia, etc), and b) we
> didn't actually finish the artwork. The former is worth discussing on the
> list, I think: the viability of children, and children-specific
> environments, particularly in comemrcial ventures.

Isn't this mixing apples and oranges?  I think Daniel was talking about children 
as _characters_ in the game and not children as _players_ of the game.  

Why is children-killing worse than player-killing, if both are really being 
played by an adult (or even if they are not)?  When one is role-playing evil, is 
there some RL effect that child-killing will have on them that player-killing 
other innocents will not?  In other words, if we are saying that child-killing 
in a game can somehow pervert the gamer, might we not need to rethink 
player-killing as well?  Should child-killing in a game offend us in a way that 
killing other innocents does not?

I don't know the answers to these questions, but I thought this might be 
interesting to explore.  I think the important thing is to have appropriate 
in-game consequences for those characters who practice evil of any sort, but I 
can see how giving any kind of opportunity for gamers to role-play a pedophile 
is very disturbing.  Of course, there really isn't much to prevent them from 
role-playing a pedophile in current MMORPGs, they just have no way of acting it 
out in public.  Administratively speaking, I would think that this type of 
behavior could be handled just like you currently handle lewd or offensive 
behavior on the part of gamers (such as attempting to act out a rape, etc.).

--Phinehas

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                Paul E. Schwanz, II      
                Email: paul.schwanz at east.sun.com
 
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