Don’t these women have cakes they should be baking?
While I understand the reasoning behind your thoughts, Charybdis, I have to disagree with the idea that “because it would be real in the gameworld” means unappealing ideas should be implemented in a game.
Most people in any world lead boring lives where they have little real power to change things in their world. Yet I can’t see popularity for a MMORPG where 99% of all players get the character of a poor peon who’s life consists of farming and hoping he has enough food every year to pay the local Lord’s taxman.
“While I understand the reasoning behind your thoughts, Charybdis, I have to disagree with the idea that “because it would be real in the gameworld” means unappealing ideas should be implemented in a game.”
That’s not what I said. Were it a game like ToonTown or Camelot, I’d agree with you - it would have been out of the place and the developers would have been rightfully turned to charcoal. If you have people going around acting like assholes against the rules, then it’s perfectly reasonable to take action against them.
That’s not however the ATITD way. This game makes it quite clear that you can be an asshole if you want, but you’ll have to face the consequences if you are. Malaki was an asshole. Malaki faced the consequences, and the quest to repair the damage goes right back to the game’s core challenge.
Is the game saying that women are inferior beings? No. This one, entirely fictional guy is, and he’s clearly marked down as being in the wrong. There’d be a problem if the whole gameworld revolved around his beliefs, but it doesn’t - he’s from another culture, and a crook to boot. He’s quite clearly not representing the developers’ beliefs, but a challenge that the playerbase is meant to overcome. The continuation of that quest simply confirms the fact - as well as helping to unite the country in pursuit of the common good. This is what’s important - not a couple of sexist barbs that would be utterly ignored had they appeared on TV, in a movie, or even in a single-player RPG game.
“Most people in any world lead boring lives where they have little real power to change things in their world. Yet I can’t see popularity for a MMORPG where 99% of all players get the character of a poor peon who’s life consists of farming and hoping he has enough food every year to pay the local Lord’s taxman.”
This is missing the point. In Everquest, the players’ only real recourse would be to suck it up and ignore him. In Neocron, you could shoot the guy, sure, but he’d be back in two seconds.
ATITD however is a game intended for adults, and one that offers the scope to actually do something about the problem - passing a law, or taking advantage or trying to educate the foreigner or many other things. It’s the only one where you CAN make a difference, and thus not only the ideal place to experiment with this sort of situation, one that was created with this kind of thing specifically in mind. It’s not for nothing that the developers created tests like having to find players to trust with your posessions, or the ability for demagogues to have their laws enforced across the world.
Also, I’d argue that 99% of MMORPG fans DO get the character of a poor peon whose life consists of farming and hoping he has enough experience points to keep playing with his friends.
Isn’t this from the same genius community that’ll pass a law forcing someone to give back some junk, but not actually outlaw theft? Clearly, these people are civic masterminds with a keen grasp of the game.
Ironically, it’s not an insult to tell these cows to go back to baking cakes. That’s probably all that’s left without “events” like this. GRRL POWER!
They are of course free to do whatever the hell they want. but if they want women to pay and play, they clearly can’t do that. They need to get a clue. They can go all the down the path of “reality” into making the women be prostitutes, pay extra for the ‘privilege’ of playing, etc etc, but most women won’t pay to play that game, imagine that. And believe or not, many men won’t pay to play that game either.
What idiots. Hope they get what they deserve.
Lorini
(Advance caveat. I don’t play or follow the game, so I’ve had to surmise some of the details.)
When I started reading this, I thought, “Yes, it was a cool idea, but sexism was probably the wrong thing.” But this begs the question of exactly what super-offensive trait is the right one to give such a character. The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that the answer is “none” - that there is no trait that will not cause people to become crybabies and bitch and moan and leave the game.
It seems very much as if, whatever its weaknesses, ATITD is practically the only real MMO role-playing game out there. If the players can’t disconnect themselves from their own characters enough to understand that the developers are not their characters, then they really shouldn’t be playing.
People can say things like
and
But that seems to be missing the point, because the population at large isn’t forced to do any of those things. This isn’t an abstract discussion about whether or not developers have the effective ability to dictate draconian terms of play to their players, because it doesn’t seem that the developers did do that.
Even the originally cited article misses the point. The author discusses the situation as though the players had no control over the situation, and yet it seems that this asshole trader was run out of two territories by a mob of players, has now been forced to go into hiding, and has a bounty on his head for theft. And now everyone in the player community will be out looking for his head - unless they want to be evil, in which case they’ll trade with him and hope nobody finds out.
That’s roleplaying.
That’s the impression I’m getting too. It also falls in line with why there’s so little crossover between American tastes and the Asian MMO craze where, in general, one’s virtual “life” is a lot harder and a lot less “happy”.
I’m sure it’ll have financial repercussions for ATITD, but I’m pretty happy to see this. Not because all women are inferior, but because it actually worked. It incensed people and they responded in kind protecting people they felt were their friends and compatriots.
Of course, I’m sure that gets lost for the poor little waifs who had their sensibilities offended. But I just can’t summon up mock outrage on their behalf; not because they deserved it, but because way too many people need to grow a bit thicker skin and realize that random people’s impressions of them aren’t inherently valid simply because they exist, especially in a fictional game world.
I wish there was an online transcript of the “debate” that went on after the fact. I’m sure it would be enlightening on all counts.
[/quote]
This was one thing I hated about the ATITD forums, back when I played (start of game 1). The admins would just kind of “decide” that a topic had had enough discussion and lock it. WTF? Seems to me anyone who doesn’t want to read it doesn’t have to click on it. Furthermore, who the hell are you to arbitrate when an idea or proposition has been discussed enough?
I haven’t seen the 16 page thread concerning sexism and it may have gotten pretty bad, so it may have been reasonable to lock it. But the way they were locking even civil game-related threads back then (keeping in mind the ATITD forums are not run by the game devs but a fan group) infuriated me.
Laws, in ATITD, are proposed, voted on, and passed by the players. Pharoah (Teppy) only overrules them if there is a technical limitation or if it really goes against the design of the game. Otherwise, players vote it, he puts it in. Period. So even when there were some incredibly inane bullshit laws, yeah he’d add them. It was good that the devs were consistant, but the community did pass some real stupid shit.
I would have enjoyed the game more (and maybe stayed longer) if the community was more intelligent about their legal structures. There were a few of us at the beginning trying to get some basic kind of Hammurabi style “foundational” law in place. It didn’t go anywhere because there weren’t enough of us, by far. Most everyone else was only interested in passing “laws” which were really penalties for one-time offenses: “a law to make X give back the shit he took” and “a law to change this characters name from Douchebag to Flower because it offends us”. There was never a real basic level of "thou shalt not"s (as it were) to really get things going.
I don’t know how much character detail avatars have in ATITD, but one possibility would be to discriminate on the basis of a physical feature, like blond hair. That’s pretty close to the famous blue-eyed/brown-eyed demonstrations done in schools to demonstrate the effects of prejudice for kids. It may have allowed exploration of stereotypes without offending such a large portion of the player base.
I think this idea has a lot of potential, but folks really need to know what they are getting into when they sign up for the game. This is MMO meets 70s encounter group; it wouldn’t be my cup of tea, but I could see some people getting into it. Although the ATITD developers feel they did an adequate job documenting there would be elements that would offend people, the uproar over this suggests they should have done more. Plus, there are always going to be a few people who are overconfident of their ability to handle controversy…what they really mean is they like controversial stuff that doesn’t touch their personal belief systems.
From Jaime, the dense tart who started that topic on the ATitD forums:
I told him that I was married but there is no slavery where I come from. He went on about his 8 wives (talk about fantasizing) and how they’re too interested in baubles to trade. Then he moved on to the next male in line.
Emphasis is mine. Should tell you everything you need to know about the issue and person threatening to quit with her guildmates.
Interesting idea. Stupid business decision when you’re the only MMORPG with a significant female subscriber base.
Erm, what?
Erm, what?[/quote]
I think his point is that the person who started the discussion has a terminal inability to distinguish between reality and the role-playing of an ancient egyptian citizen, as demonstrated by the “(talk about fantasizing)” bit. It’s not exactly as if harems are uncommon in middle-eastern countries today, much less in a time appropriate for the setting of ATitD. So the inference is the person taking all this offense is a first-class bubblehead for not being able to draw the distinction between the player, and the character the player was playing.
Heh. This has made me more interested in the game than anything I’ve seen so far. Sounds like the game is actually mentally challenging and something other than just mindless button pressing is really required.
I feel sorry for all those dudes with female avatars.
I think his point is that the person who started the discussion has a terminal inability to distinguish between reality and the role-playing of an ancient egyptian citizen, as demonstrated by the “(talk about fantasizing)” bit.
You’re reading this into three words?
This isn’t remotely what the story is about. In any shape or form.
Someone with actual knowledge of the history can correct me, but wasn’t ancient Egypt rather enlightened when it came to women as independent beings compared to most middle eastern countries.
Weren’t they considered the administrator of a house, and enjoyed considerably autonomy in legal and economic situations?
I think most people tend to think of all countries in the middle east as being islamic cliches, so it’d be wonderful if someone versed in the history could let us know about the realism of such behavior.
I think most people tend to think of all countries in the middle east as being islamic cliches, so it’d be wonderful if someone versed in the history could let us know about the realism of such behavior.
All countries in the Middle East ARE Islamic cliches, if by cliches you mean horrific societies in which over half of the population is brutally oppressed. The only exception really is Turkey. Egypt would be considered one of the more progressive countries in the Middle East, and the women there still won’t speak to men on the street and homosexuals are executed in alleys. Anyway, it’s irrelevant to a discussion of Ancient Egypt, which predates Islam by thousands of years.