ethics
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That sinking sensation
There are a few quests I've done so far that have really made me squirm. I play Horde, and you just know that most things the Forsaken are wrapped up in are going to be kind of dodgy. A lot of our early questing in Northrend concerns the Apothecary Society's attempts to find a Scourge-specific plague (...right), and that doesn't end particularly well. I can sort of accept that, because the quest series skates a thin moral line between plausible deniability on the character's part as to the apothecaries' true intentions, and what actually ends up happening. But there's one quest in particular that has nothing to do with the apothecaries that really gave me pause. It's actually one that has an Alliance equivalent as well, although it ends somewhat differently there.If you're not that far into Dragonblight quests and don't want to be spoiled, I'm putting it behind the cut.
Building a better MMOusetrap: Morality schmorality, where's me sword?!
Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men (and women ... and children)? Certainly most MMO players, or to be even more general most people who go on the internet know at least what they expect other people to act like. Certainly they would act like normal people right? Upstanding citizens, keeping the peace, helping old ladies across the street, buying girl guide cookies. But then if you have those fine folks, you certainly would have to have their counterparts, the criminals and scum-bags of the virtual worlds, preying on the innocent and weak. A sort of symbiosis has to exist even online, else you would either have complete anarchy, or pure utopia (and that sort of thing could never happen in a video game, eh Jack?) and neither of those situations truly juxtapose reality, they simply.And that's what MMO's are supposed to do in some sense or another if I'm to believe what all the articles, thesis's, and marketing materials say. Even in the trailer for the upcoming MMO documentary Second Skin they say things along those lines. So you have to balance the good with the bad to have a virtualisation with reality, but then something is amiss, because it's certainly damned hard to be a bad guy online. Oh sure you can gank people in PvP, or use MPK tactics to train monsters on to groups, but those sorts of things make more of a dickwad than they do a truly evil person.Something I hear flying around a lot these days, mostly in conjunction with RIchard Garriott's sci-fi MMO Tabula Rasa, is the idea of morality. But can there really be moral choices in an online world, where just about everything a character does is pre-destined, set on rails, and left to run its course on its own time table?
Dealing with real-life tragedy in an online world
Recently, the guild All Good Things on Kargath lost one of their longtime players. Feelan, one of their guild's holy priests, passed away from cancer in early December -- shortly after he was finally able to meet his online friends. Now the guildmates are wondering what they can do to remember their friend in-game. Kesryth suggests that Blizzard add Feelan's character to one of the floating islands in Nagrand, where he can stand and watch the sunset in his favorite zone. As unlikely as that sounds, Blizzard has done almost exactly the same thing before. The NPC Caylee Dak, on the Aldor Rise, memorializes a member of the guild "Boulderfist Heroes" who died of cancer. Caylee wears the exact same gear that she had when Dak (the player behind the avatar) passed away. Her faithful pet stands by her side. Caylee is even the ending point of a quest for Alliance players to deliver her a poem about death. Players have made their own memorials to lost friends. An Alliance guild walked a dead guildmate's character (played by his wife) to one of the towers in Hillsbrad, where he enjoyed to PvP. A score of Chinese gamers held a hilltop service for a girl who died from ... uh, apparently playing too much WoW. Blizzard memorialized one of its own at the Shrine of the Fallen Warrior in the Barrens. And, of course, there's the infamous funeral-crashing of Serenity Now on Illidan. It's tough to figure out how to deal with death on the internet. On one hand, people can form deep attachments in community games such as WoW. But on the other hand, there's a strong contingent of idiots on the forums posting stuff like "lol wut did he drop?" whenever someone on a server dies. What do you think is the appropriate way to handle the death of a fellow player?
UK secondary school tests RFID embedded uniforms
Hungerhill School, a secondary school in Doncaster, South Yorkshire is running a trial that involves tagging the uniforms of pupils with RFID tags. The tags pull up data including academic performance, the child's current location, and can even deny access to certain restricted areas -- behind the bike shed, perhaps? The trial has raised the usual questions of privacy and human rights, although since the trial is voluntary and provides convenience by auto-registering pupils, the current iteration of the trial isn't a particularly great violation. Call us when kids get tags from birth, then we'll take to the streets: but probably only because ours missed out. We'll take our tongue out of our cheek now.[Via Picture Phoning]
Is Blizzard exploiting WoW players?
Is Blizzard doing something unethical by producing and selling World of Warcraft? Rather than just the ol' "MMO games are too addictive" angle, an article in Australia's The Age (seriously, it's always the Aussies) has a new twist: game companies like Blizzard are actually "exploiting" their own players by implementing a reward system that keeps people playing.In a sense, um... yeah. Game companies have gotten the art of rewarding down to a science-- every great videogame out there lately is really terrific at balancing the challenge of playing with a suitable reward, whether that be an amazing headshot (along with sound and graphics, usually), epic loot, or just a shiny bit of treasure. That's why we play these things.So are you being exploited for your money when you hear about Zul'Aman and decide to keep paying monthly to stick around and pay it? No more than when the grocery stores exploit you for profit when you buy food, or when Starbucks exploits you for a tall when you want it. You decide when and where to spend your time and money, and if you'd rather not be "exploited" by Blizzard, you have the right to quit.Obviously, I don't think what Blizzard's doing is unethical. They're doing their best to make an involving and addictive game. And the reason they're doing that is because that's exactly what we want. Fortunately, as Terra Nova points out, The Age has included a hot nelf pic, so their piece isn't a complete waste of time.[ via Terra Nova ]
You got your RP in my PvP! You got your PvP in my RP!
Tipster Shewa sends in this interesting forum discussion from an RP-PvP server (Defias Brotherhood - EU) about what, exactly, is in bounds on such a server. Is it griefing to attack an RP function? Or is it okay as long as you're in character as, say, a malevolent Alliance warrior who hates all blood elves and attacks them whenever he can, even when they're peacefully congregated for (as a possible example) a picnic in the woods?I tend to be more in line with poster Rumbalt in this page of the thread, when he says Perhaps I expect to (sic) much of people, when stuff like this happens I have no trouble weaving unexpected stuff like this into a storyline, an a mass of the shadow being attacked by a violent and dangerous Horde guild. Back when I played on RP servers, I didn't wait for other people to roleplay, I played and let the chips fall where they may. Other posters point out that, since you can't communicate with the other side anyway, it's effectively impossible to know if they're attacking you in or out of character and so you should just always assume they're in character and ignore stuff like forum posts and message boards that would ruin the RP illusion anyway... since you're already missing one gloriously amethyst eye anyway. (I kid, but it's a good comic strip and deserves to be linked.)I suppose I fall on the side of the 'it doesn't matter what they intend by attacking, you're on an RP-PvP server, role play your PvP response and just move on'. But it's an interesting debate. What are your thoughts?
Best Buy sued over shady intranet site
Tsk, tsk. Looks like Best Buy will indeed be paying up for the misdeeds involving that dodgy intranet we saw a few months back. Connecticut's attorney general announced a lawsuit against the big box retailer and accused it of "deceiving customers with in-store computer kiosks and overcharging them." Attorney General Richard Blumenthal was quoted as saying that the store "gave consumers the worst deal with a bait-and-switch-plus scheme luring consumers into stores with promised online discounts, only to charge higher in-store prices." The suit seeks "refunds for consumers, civil penalties, court costs, a ban on the practice, and other remedies," and while Best Buy spokespersons are vigorously denying the allegations, Connecticut's consumer protection commissioner even said that there was "certainly an element of deception here." Reportedly, the in-store kiosks were somehow an "alternate way to get information about products," but when that information ends up costing your customers more than they should be paying, we doubt the judge will look kindly upon it.
Japan drafts their own version of robot ethics
While it did our carbon-based souls some good to see Europe and S.Korea drafting ethical robot legislation, we couldn't help but notice that Japan -- the true robotic superpower -- was mysteriously absent from the discussion table. No more! Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry has drafted what has been called a "hugely complex set of proposals" to keep the robots from turning us all into a matrix of clean-shaven electrical batteries. The 60-pages of "civil service jargon" are said to go far beyond Asimov's original three laws of robotics. Under Japan's plan, all robots would be required to report back to a central database any and all injuries they cause to the people they are meant to be helping or protecting. The draft is currently open to public comment with a final set of principles set to be unveiled as early as May. Fine, but shouldn't we have a unified set of principles governing all robots, regardless of their country of manufacture?[Via Impress]
Computers to make the call on your life or death dilemma?
If there's one thing we're a tad skeptical of, it's a piece of silicon making a decision that will ultimately decide whether we live or perish, but bioethicist David Wendler of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, suggests that the unbiased computer may actually be a more reasonable decision maker than your frantic family members. For those forward-thinkers out there who've already completed your advance directive, you have no worries should you become incapacitated, but for those who will end up relying on relatives to make treatment decisions for you, check these statistics. In a recent study of 16 scenarios where the patient lost the ability to make their own call, surrogates only matched their wishes "68-percent of the time," pushing the researcher to devise a formula to hopefully remove the second guessing and eventually "predict patient's wishes to an accuracy of 90-percent." Of course, critics argue that a machine can't make ethical / unethical decisions, but regardless of waiting around to see if this miracle solution actually reads your braindead mind, we'd recommend penning your future wishes right about now to avoid such quandaries.
S.Korean robots to get ethics... and a gun
In the end, when the robots rise, it won't be a cool slathering of mud spread across your thermally trackable meat sack which saves you; it'll be a manifesto. Europe's version is expected next month, now our tech overlords in South Korea are working on their version of the "Robot Ethics Charter." The document will govern the manufacturing and use of robots and include ethical standards which will be programmed into their binary souls. Good thing too what with the plan to put a domestic robot in every S.Korean home by 2020. Like the Euro charter, S.Korea's guidelines are expected to reflect the three laws of robotics proposed in 1942 by Isaac Asimov. The first, and most important law states that "A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm." Hmmm, so we guess they'll be dismantling the armed robotic sentries coming to guard their northern borders, eh? Of course, all of this is pointless until the one, true robotic superpower -- Japan -- comes on board. Hey Ban Ki-moon, you listening? This could be your UN legacy.
The RB2000 gymnastbot: next step to real robot olympics?
If robots are going to take over the earth, they're obviously going to want to be active about it, even if it's only so they can stop us humans from pulling the plug. Taking a very tiny step towards such a fit robotic uprising is the RB2000, a 12-inch tall programmable gymnasticbot from JR Robotics in collaboration with Vstone. The RB2000's most innovative feature is that it's capable of performing complex swinging maneuvers on a crossbar, as the little fella does pull-ups and 360 degree swings with quite some competance. Seeing as this model is physically stuck on the bar (the bar slots in between openings in the robot's arms) we're not quite worried about robots hidden in the rafters just yet, but as always, we wouldn't say no to a quick update of that handy robot ethics guide. Death by swinging robot kick just ain't humanity's style, y'know?[Via Primidi]
Sony tries baseball, bribery
Lacking anything positve to report, the Sony public relations squad took a bunch of press types to the ballgame for the the purpose of winning a few media hearts and minds. Tony and Ryan from VGMDaily recount how they were fattened with peanuts and Cracker Jacks while playing PS2 games on a Jumbo-tron screen at the Toronto SkyDome -- presumably in hopes they would forget to mention Sony's failures the next day. Having seen the effects of corporate bribery up close at E3, I can confirm that it is a useful technique for inspiring junket journalism, provided the perks are right. But Blue Jays tickets? We're talking massive PR damage here. Next time, try Yankees tix. Or at the very least, Red Vines.
