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Azarkon
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Posts posted by Azarkon
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Do games shape the way people think? If so, then we must recognize that games influence society and that people have a "right" to be concerned. If not, then we should stop talking about "serious" games because it's all just mindless entertainment that can't possibly affect us in any significant way.
Personally, I'm willing to entertain the former in order to prove the latter. If games can affect the way we think, then that makes the medium all the more powerful and therefore meaningful to develop in. If not, then we might as well stick to shallow crap in an effort to appeal to the lowest common denominator, since no one ever takes games seriously anyways.
Of course, just because games have an effect on society, doesn't mean we should endeavor to ban the unwholesome among them. Take books, for example - we know that they affect society in a deep and profound manner, but banning a book because we disagree with its contents is an act of censorship that most of us would consider wrong. The same should be true for games.
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That is true, but really then it comes down to a what-players-want issue and in that respect roshan has a point regarding Obsidian "caving in" to today's ease-of-play sensibilities.
But then again I've long since accepted the fact that CRPGs were more interactive books than tactical combat simulators. It'd be nice, though, if combat could be made meaningful beyond the motions you go through to reach the next plot point. Besides, as much as we might hate to admit it, the save anywhere, reload anytime paradigm could use some rethinking.
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One of the most basic things to consider is really the time it takes to backtrack to a safe location. In pen and paper, this can take as long as the DM needs to say, "Okay you go back to town." In a CRPG, your characters moving at 1/3rd speed actually have to cover all of that ground in real-time.
The DM can also say, "you attempt to backtrack, but runs into a HUGE dracoliche, which you left for dead but is, in fact, ALIVE (err, relatively speaking, anyway)!" (rolls dice) "You die."
It depends on the DM, in other words, how difficult the move is in a game. With CRPGs, a program (or more accurately, the devs who design the program) is the DM, and while the computer is not nearly as flexible as a human, it can still make many of the same decisions. The example you gave would be rendered moot, for instance, if the player could instant map travel from anywhere, presuming that he's not in a "dire" situation and has a clear path to the exit (all calculable variables). Might make for a rather short game, it's true, but then who really enjoys walking anyhow
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I saw the trailer from PoTC 3 and the anti-religion message does come out.
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I've read through the whole thread just now and have mixed feelings.
Firstly, rather like GD I'm familiar with actual cases of aggravated rape. Cases which I couldn't begin to describe without violating board guidelines. The perpetrators of these crimes go in my box marked 'surplus to requirements' and should be shuffled off quite quietly and with minimum fuss. I feel that way partly because I am repulsed by them, but also because I find the notion of devoting time and effort to their rehabilitation a farce when we don't look after folks who have a bad start in life but soldier on as best they can.
However, I draw a distinction between the fact that SOMEONE has committed the crime and the notion that the man in custody has committed the crime. The case quoted here illustrates quite well the often rather ropey evidence in rape cases. Hence I would be reluctant at present to send a man to death for rape. However, the solution in my opinion is to improve the scientific and forensic methods for proving rape has occurred. If that can be done I see no reason why the death penalty should not be employed.
I think in general there are some crimes where (to misquote PST) the question is not what right we have to kill the perpetrator, but what right we have to let them live. What right we have to receive the undeniable joy of clemency and mercy when it is not us who have suffered at their hands.
If anyone disagrees with this I will be interested to hear the rejoinder PROVIDED you have taken the trouble to - for example - acquaint yourself with the actions of Marc DuTroux et al.
Not a rejoinder, but a question: how do you feel about the death penalty for aggravated assault in general?
I ask because the basis for your argument relies on two factors: repulsiveness (a highly subjective and therefore suspicious motivation) and the wastefulness of rehabilitation. I won't say much about the former, but the latter can really be argued for any criminal act. Thieves, by your argument, should also be executed, if a certain degree of "repulsiveness" can be argued. Furthermore, the notion that society has not the right to mercy because we have not suffered at the criminal's hands seems to imply that the basis for mercy should depend on the victim. In other words, vengeance is the best form of justice - a notion I find quite chililng given how vengeful some people can be.
At any case, it's this "unsaid" criteria of severity that most interests me: most of us would agree that there are people in the world who, as best as we can tell, "deserves" death because of repeated violations, irredeemability, etc. But is the criteria we use objective or subjective, emotional or rational? Does it matter? That's what's hard for me to distinguish.
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It's a nice idea, but then you come up against the Gabe Newell conundrum, whereby the audience has no guaranteed viewing elements of the narrative. I'm not suggesting that "emergent depth" is a bad thing, just that it's a little more complex than just creating an extempore experience. More analogous to watching Whose Line is it Anyway versus Hamlet; it becomes a lot more difficult to ensure minimum standards.
Absolutely. It creates a different kind of experience and requires a different mindset from the audience, really, and I'm sure that even when emergent depth becomes a reality some games would opt to have more, and some games would opt to have less. Actually, RPGs constitute a genre where I estimate more utility (or a new sub-genre emerging entirely), since playthrough branching factor is such a big deal here from a production point of view. Non-linearity could then have its cake and eat it too.
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Centuries, even, but it seems a viable direction, and that's what's important.
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Emergent gameplay that's deep
Examples:
1. Complex, believable, and interesting NPC reactions that aren't scripted, but which arise from the interactions between the player and the NPC's AI. Non-scripted gives you emergent gameplay, and complexity/believability gives you depth.
Would require (at the minimum): natural language processing and generation, emotional modeling, machine learning, robustness (a very challenging problem for this sort of AI systems)
2. Embedded "game master" AI that procedurally generates content based on the world's physical laws and structures. Kind of like the roguelike dungeon generator, but much more sophisticated and capable of far greater complexity and adaptability (to player demands).
Would require (at the minimum): machine learning, procedural graphics generation, natural simulation, robustness
Etc.
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Realistic or, if you prefer, "immersive" AI is an interesting concept, and I think there are already people moving in that direction with a specific eye towards simulated environment applications. While the prognosis for AI in the next few years is, indeed, terrible, I don't think that this line of thought is hopeless unless synthetic biology takes over electronic gaming as the next paradigm for mass entertainment (think living toys). Assuming that doesn't happen, it seems inevitable that electronic gaming will have to turn to AI in order to tackle the big hurdle of emergent depth in environments and mobiles. Otherwise, we will quickly reach a limit in what can be done, as graphics technology is, as you say, heading towards a ceiling. I guess full body immersion is also an alternative path for advancement, and probably the more likely, but that is probably as far away as good AI in terms of actual application.
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Ah, but that way we'll run out of room on earth. The moon is, however, a fine place... Tanstaafl
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One last complication in this whole affair is the status of statutory rape. I have no idea whether, in people's minds, this should factor into the decision of whether a child rapist should be executed or not, but it's something to think about.
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Life experience has a way of getting to a person. I'm sure that if I lived in a crime-heavy area where innocents die each day to people who just don't care, I'd feel the same way: a murderer is not a person, just a disease to be eradicated. It's easy to feel this way - after all, we all want to protect ourselves, and those who threaten us and those around us, should be given no quarter whatsoever. It's the same at an individual level, as it is on a national level.
Unfortunately, it's not that simple. As people have pointed out, for every ancedote in favor of the DP, there is one not in favor, and when pro-DP people pull out the old "well I'm only in favor of DP if the evidence was absolutely clear, damning, and there was no doubt whatsoever" card, it usually means that they're thinking in an idealistic sense. The real world doesn't operate by idealism - while there are definitely irredeemable sickos out there for whom the only solution possible would be either death or life in prison without parole, most criminals fall somewhere in-between. Worse, while morality has certain absolutes, there are also gray areas for which precedents are dangerous. For example, China currently has the death penalty for fiscal corruption. Fiscal corruption can easily be argued, from Guard Dog's point of view, to be a plague upon society, and it's easy to come up with an anecdote for why corrupt politicians should be executed (ie if the money stolen could've saved lives). Yet, would we accept such a rationale in the West? Would you condemn people to death because they stole money from the government?
Would something like executing the top echelon of Enron for the suffering that they caused ever fly in the US? I don't know, but I suspect that the answer is no - there are limits to what Christian morality allows for fiscal corruption.
Finally, if no criminal can ever be redeemed, the answer would seem simple: off with their heads, or at least imprison them for life. But redemption, alas, is a deal breaker, and forces us to think about the question in broader terms than what would be best for society. That's when issues such as deterrence and payback take center stage.
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I've never had an easy time with crime and punishment concepts, and it's never been obvious to me what should be done in each situation, so I won't venture to pass judgment here. Instead, I'll state what I think are some key factors to the argument:
1. What purpose does punishment serve? How much of it is deterrence (ie: if child rape meant death, less pedos would try it; alternatively, if child rape meant life in prison with no parole, that particular criminal would never again harm children), how much of it is payback (ie: for the financial/emotional losses of the victims, or just because it's "justice"), and how much of it is rehabilitation (ie: for the purpose of correction)?
2. How do you gauge severity in crime? I mean, we consider rape and murder to be the ultimate capital crimes, but their effects on a person are very different. Rape victims are psychologically damaged (children even moreso); murder victims are dead. How does that even compare?
3. How should the law tread between vengeance and justice? This is really a rephrasing of #1, but it does bring into question the meaning of justice, which we'd like to think is equivalent to the law, but which often isn't, for many people (one extreme result of which is vigilantism). How does the concept of justice compare to the concept of crime and punishment? It seems obvious that justice doesn't care about deterrence and rehabilitation - it's only concerned about what is "wrong" and what constitutes the "right" amount of payback; so what does that say about how our crime and punishment system should be, if we hold justice to be its highest priority?
Answers to these three questions form, I think, the basis of a crime-and-punishment philosophy, and a good system of crime-and-punishment probably has answers to all three questions. The problem lies with being objective about it.
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So long as it has a decent storyline and goes further into the Xel'Naga/Protoss-Zerg hybrid plot threads, I'm there.
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* and there was much rejoicing *
What a terrible thing to say!
At any case, Madeleine has a better chance of being saved than the vast majority of kidnapped children. There are places in the world where events like these are everyday occurences, and where even the authorities wouldn't give a damn, much less news reporters. Alas.
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Not if the "person" in question was not considered a person at all.
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They've made movies about Jack the Ripper. They've made movies about the Zodiac killer. One day, if Cho isn't one-upped by someone else, they'd probably make something about him. All the ingredients are in place - signs of an abusive childhood, the resulting psychosis, deep depression, disturbing symbols in his writings, a martyr complex... You know, this whole event almost seems it came straight out of a horror movie, if not for the fact that 30+ people actually died.
Tragic, tragic event. Mad, mad world.
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That's certainly a good point. We can only argue from what we know, and what we know tends to be colored - significantly so - by the history of our environments. You certainly wouldn't expect a Chinese or Iranian to praise the practice of Western intervention, and it's perfectly reasonable that African intellectuals are very gung-ho about neo-colonialism.
Americans, though, have the luxury of being able to see it either way. The US has never really depended on anyone else for its survival, and its interventions have produced both good (ie WW2) and evil (ie Iran). With such a background, whether someone supports one or the other is thus more dependent on other factors, such as upbringing or partisan bias. Hmm, I suppose from this perspective internet debates are really more useful in revealing the backgrounds of the debaters, than they are in convincing anybody that they might be wrong
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Remember that post earlier where someone said the gunman was a 24-year old Chinese student? That came from an early "rumor" circulating around the net, and which was picked up by media sources as reliable as FOX News and the Chicago Sun Times. I think some of these sources even posted this guy's pictures online as that of the potential culprit, based on the fact that he was 1) Asian 2) in his 20's 3) a Virginia tech student and 4) apparently had photos where he poses with guns. He then received a multitude of death threats and phone calls from people who believed that he was the criminal in question - all because of the rumor. Read the blog - you'll get it.
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No mention on whether he was american or not, only that he was asian.
A bit of black comedy and proof that people & the media are too quick to point fingers when the perpetrator isn't white:
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Well, you might find it interesting then that reports claim Rumsfeld had been trying to end his reliance on the CIA by creating a new espionage branch within the Pentagon... And that the new Secretary of Defense was the Director of Central Intelligence within the CIA. Coincidence? Who knows.
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Sure, Rumsfeld is easy to blame, but most of his policies were right in line with the neocon philosophy of US hegemony. I wouldn't be surprised if Gates was cut from the same fabric.
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I do think that since an expansion was ok'd, one thing that could really help the community in general is to dramatically improve the user-friendliness of the toolset and to optimize the game. I realize that the NWN 2 toolset is alot more powerful, but power doesn't necessarily have to come at the cost of simplicity. Outdoors terrain being harder to build is one thing (though even that could be helped by including a terrain generator), but the sort of loops you have to go through in order to make items, NPCs, etc. should just be fixed, period.
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There's that. This wouldn't be the first time "protecting the homeland" has led to "invading someone else's land." Far from it.
Ultimately, I think it comes down to a question of competence. I find it difficult to assign the sort of moustache-twirling evil that one would have to do if they assumed a cunning, cognizant, and most importantly *successful* power behind recent events. The neocons are not, I believe, psychopaths - the thought that they deliberated all that had occured just to benefit their oil buddies and geopolitical goals is a bit of a stretch. More likely they, in their hubris, underestimated the resistance they'd face and the sheer chaos of Saddam's fall. They thought that the job could be done in a clean and relatively painless manner, with minimal casualties resulting from maximum "shock and awe." They probably expected some risks and surprises - always possibilities during war - but nothing that'd endanger their long-term goals.
After all, what could possibly stand against the peerless US war machine?
Unfortunately, arrogance has always been a key flaw of Americans. The neocons even moreso than the rest.
BAAAAN
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Besides, we all know that banning something only increases its cult appeal, and could end in more people playing the game than less