Slashdot Log In
Torture in Games
Posted by
Soulskill
on Tue Dec 16, 2008 01:32 AM
from the ok-torture's-bad-but-killing's-fine-right dept.
from the ok-torture's-bad-but-killing's-fine-right dept.
Recent comments from Richard Bartle, one of the developers for the first Multi-User Dungeon (MUD), stirred up discussion about whether virtual torture is acceptable as part of modern games. Bartle was referring to a quest in the latest World of Warcraft expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, in which players are instructed to extract information from an NPC. He drew criticism for his view from a variety of sources, but Wired is now running a piece provocatively titled, "Why We Need More Torture in Games." The author makes the case that the failure of most media to properly portray how horrible torture actually is (for example, on the TV show 24), and the increased focus on real-world topics like Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and waterboarding, could make games the perfect venue for demonstrating the "devastating repercussions" of torture.
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Spycraft: The Great Game (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
A relatively non-controversial company, Bethesda, has in fact released a game -- Oblivion -- that featured the player torturing an NPC for information [uesp.net].
(Un)fortunately, the torture isn't remotely realistic and consists of beating someone who never bleeds, with hands that never get sore. The NPC commits suicide afterwards too, but even that's a bit of a non-event.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Spoilers Ahoy.
One of the main mission sequences in Saint's Row 2 is a progression against a gang that starts out with slipping nuclear waste into the tattoo ink of a guy that pissed you off, and later progresses to 'rescuing' (then delivering the Emperor's Mercy) to one of your lieutenant's who's been chained to a truck and dragged around town, to kidnapping the guy's girlfriend, putting her in the trunk of a car, then sticking that car on a monster truck course that the guy is going through.
Some of it is p
Re:Spycraft: The Great Game (Score:4, Insightful)
The failure of most media to properly portray how horrible torture actually is (for example, on the TV show 24), and the increased focus on real-world topics like Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and waterboarding, could make games the perfect venue for demonstrating the "devastating repercussions" of torture.
Unfortunately the authors premise is wrong. There is certainly no evidence that the more graphic news scenes that came out of the Vietnam War influenced anybody to stop going to war or killing, and neither did the images out of Abu Ghraib prison seem to influence people (who think torture is acceptable) to change their minds.
As a person who was in the military before, there were instructors (who illegally) imposed their own (relatively mild) forms of torture on their recruits during war games when they captured people (actually these instructors consisted largely of Special Forces people who had a history of abusing their power). Even in this more controlled and sanctioned scenario the psychological trauma caused in many people will never compare to what anybody can merely see in a video game.
If you want realism then you have to experience it for yourself. I'd rather have something more akin to what police departments do, and that is actually have volunteer officers experience the effects of tasers and pepper spray for themselves, or in the military where they have soldiers take off their gas masks in a small room with tear gas. Other than that it's all fun and games.
As for the nut-jobs, they will always be around no matter what technology they may get their rocks off with. They need more help than just keeping them away from video games.
Parent
Does it always produce true responses? (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't play WoW or the MUD mentioned in the article, but I'm curious if the use of torture in these games does/would invariably produce honest factual information from the person/monster being tortured?
Torture has a somewhat speckled history when it comes to getting at what's actually really going on. Torture someone enough and they'll tell you whatever they think will get you to stop the torture, regardless of if it's true or not.
It'd be a bit more interesting I'd think if the torture sometimes works, and sometimes leads you off in directions that aren't at all productive(and might actually weaken you).
Re:Does it always produce true responses? (Score:5, Insightful)
Torture produces what you want to hear. Nothing else. More precisely, what the subject tortured thinks that you want to hear so, as you pointed out, you stop torturing it.
In short, it usually just "confirms" whatever assumption you had in the first place.
It is utterly useless for getting information because whatever the tortured subject tells you can either be true (if your assumption was correct) or false (if it wasn't and he is making up some story to make you think that he is giving you information to make you stop the torture). And if he's really dedicated, the chance to get a fabrication increases (because making up a story is not dependent on knowing the truth, only on his motivation to end the torture).
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
do you have any evidence to back these assumptions? I'm not talking about another talking head saying the same thing, but I mean evidence pointing to several instances where a prisoner gave details that were expected and they turned out to be false.
I Personally doubt these methods are as ineffective as everyone likes to portray them.
Google for "Nguyen Van Tai" CIA "Frank Snepp" (Score:3, Informative)
There is a documented case during the Vietnam war: Nguyen Van Tai was interrogated by the CIA and its allies.
Years of isolation, torture of both the subtle and not so subtle kind.
The guy managed to give false information for years, with occasional bits of truth that was not useful anymore by the time he gave it.
The CIA decided at the time he was proof torture was not useful. Not even a matter or ethics: it just doesn't work.
Just Google for "Nguyen Van Tai" CIA "Frank Snepp"
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I recall a random tv show, one of those things that reports weird cases.
I am going to badly m aul the details of it, but here is a somewhat summary:
The case was something like murder/rape of a young girl. I believe there were 4 friends who were tried for it. What happened was the police kept the kids in the questioning room for like 20+ hours non stop. At the end I think some of them signed confessions to the murder and admitted guilt.
Only, several days later, they found the real killer, had evidence, prett
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course you doubt it, because you want so bad for there to be some way in which our power allows us to get what we want.
My grandfather and his brother were captured by the Polish secret police in 1949. They had helped Eastern European refugees escape to the west from the Nazis during the war, but when those refugees returned to eastern Europe, Stalin suspected they were western spies. To find out who they were, and get evidence against them, my grandfather and his brother were held and tortured over a p
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Umm.... how about pretty much inquisition trial that included torture?
I don't think he's talking about torture to obtain a confession, but rather torture to obtain actionable information. I would imagine an interrogation could be set up so that the subject is asked questions with only concrete and verifiable answers. The subject could be threatened with even more torture for non-compliance or misinformation. It would then be in his best interest to tell the truth as soon as possible.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If he knows it. If he's in the unfortunate position to know nothing of interest for his torturer, he's basically dead (or worse) if he does not lie and try to find out what his torturer wants to hear.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Very true. If he doesn't know, he's pretty much screwed. I'm not saying that torture is the end-all-be-all of interrogation techniques, but the common misconception that torture is useless, is harmful to the debate. There are so many better arguments against torture.
Most individuals could think of a situation where they would make the decision to torture, even if the results may possibly be false. The strongest arguments against torture do not deny that fact. They rest on the dangers of legitimizing and ins
Re:Does it always produce true responses? (Score:5, Insightful)
Some people only understand the utilitarian aspect.
Some folks would gladly have the government torture a "goddamn terr'st" because they are not people. And of course these same folks are usually more than happy with the idea of suspending due process because they're "terr'sts".
This seems to come about due to a mix of racism, fear, faith in the government, a desire for some sort of revenge and a genuine lack of understanding of modern justice systems. What's more disturbing is that a lot of folk are willing to put up with a few innocent individuals being imprisoned, tortured and killed (in good faith, of course!) if it the government says it's doing it to keep them safe.
The worst aspect of this (for me) is that I occasionally hear these opinions espoused by my own mother. Then I feel compelled to remind her that since Dad married an Iranian woman, that wrongly accused suspect could be me next.
Parent
Re:Does it always produce true responses? (Score:4, Insightful)
What people fail to see is that a system like this can easily be abused against them, too, just like the inquisition was. What if, say, the government decides that the 2nd has to fall and whoever wants to keep his guns is a bloody terr'ist because only them would want to keep weapons. The whole constitution (the old piece of paper that is here to defend you, not against the terrorists, but against a much bigger threat: An overreaching government) becomes very toothless when it gets an unspoken amendment reading "only valid if government doesn't give you a label that makes all these things void".
Because that is what the civil rights amendments are about: Limiting the governments power over you. The government must not silence you, they must not take away your guns, they must not put soldiers in your homes, they must not simply pick you up and haul you away, they must not browbeat you into confessing and so on. If they can strip these rights from you at will, the whole constitution becomes pointless, because they will of course only apply those labels to those that disagree with them, which in turn means that these amendments become void for all. You HAVE to conform with the government doctrine or your rights are gone. What kind of rights are those, then, if they cease to exist when you need them?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Such as the names of your fellow witches ?
That would require that you have some way of obtaining the answers independent of torture, which makes the torture pointless.
I suppose you could try to set up a scenario where you'd "train" the victim to tell the truth wi
Re:Does it always produce true responses? (Score:4, Insightful)
Now you have people complaining about terrorists. You need to find out where these terrorists are. You torture innocent people until they confess that they are terrorists, and tell you where their secret base is. How many people in Gitmo are innocent? How many have been released after spending a year or more there?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Does it always produce true responses? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's basically what it is. If the quest was to eat human babies (or orc babies on the other side) and there's gold, experience and prestige in it, people will do it. Not because they're not sensitive to the feelings of others, but because it's a friggin' game. I mean, we're already at slaughtering animals, people, undead, ghosts and giants, by the dozen, hundreds, thousands. Eating babies and shocking someone's nuts? We're already at virtual mass murder, who cares about the virtual rest?
Parent
Also (Score:5, Insightful)
In the WoW universe, little is permanent. Death is a minor inconvenience, not something that is forever. If a player dies, they spawn as a spirit at a nearby graveyard and walk back to their body and resurrect. NPCs (computer controlled characters) simply respawn in the same spot after a certain amount of time.
If the real world worked like that, well we'd probably have a rather different value system. If killing someone meant they had to walk back for a couple minutes and caused them no permanent harm at all, I imagine it wouldn't be such a big deal.
The rules of a game world are vastly different than our own so even if you want to ignore the fact that this is just entertainment, you can't try and apply the same morals to it.
Parent
Re:Also (Score:4, Informative)
> In the WoW universe, little is permanent. ... NPCs (computer controlled characters) simply respawn in the same spot after a certain amount of time.
Not so true anymore. With Blizzard's "phasing" technology, there are some really world changing quests now (in the world you see, not what other players see). For example, in my version of Undercity, Varimathras is gone for good (I killed him).
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Any game that would be at all realistic would be a game that nobody would want to play.
Spending 80 dollars for a game where you got killed and then could never revive yourself certainly wouldn't be much fun.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Strictly speaking, is it possible to slaughter undead and ghosts?
In defense of 24 (but not torture) (Score:3, Interesting)
From the article...
It's quite possible Blizzard has a much larger, slow-moving point to make about torture.
So, I would argue, might the TV show 24. Look how often the torture on that show doesn't work out as planned.
Re:In defense of 24 (but not torture) (Score:4, Interesting)
Seems to work just about all the time -- unless it's Jack being tortured. And the creators of the show exhibit no such agenda.
See this Slate article [slate.com], for example:
Amnd teh New Yorker [newyorker.com]:
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
They tortured the son of the Sec Def, but didn't get the info they were looking for. They either tortured, or were about to (I disremember) the Sec Def's daughter, but since she didn't have the info they wanted, that wouldn't have done any good either. They tortured the CTU-running woman of Arabic or Persian descent, but since she didn't have the info they wanted, that didn't do any good either.
In other words, the vibe I get from the show is that torture doesn't work out nearly as often as its cheerleader
Re:In defense of 24 (but not torture) (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
I like Bartle (Score:4, Interesting)
After reading Designing Virtual Worlds I happened to log onto his MUD2 [mud.co.uk] server and look around. Ahh.. memories. And so many missing features! The MUD descendants truly were fertile lands of innovation. Anyway, after about 10 minutes of wandering around in MUD2 I got sufficiently bored and tried to kill something. Bartle kindly informed me that I was a guest and guests should act more polite than that. If I wanted to create an account I could do some killing, but only in the appropriate area, etc, etc. All very British and proper. Of course, the next command I just had to try was 'rape'. Bartle hates that command, so the result was predictably hilarious. I was immediately disconnected and my IP address was banned. Beautiful.
Does anyone need to learn that torture hurts? (Score:4, Insightful)
I mean, let's be sensible here. Torture. In other words, making someone feel pain (physical, emotional, pick your poison) to get something from him.
Anyone here that does NOT know that this is something you don't really want to be subjected to? Well? I see no hands, so either people know or people know about it enough that they don't want to hear the logical followup to that question.
If we get desensitized to torture, to people being hurt and mutilated for fun and profit, I think something's wrong with the shows that picture it as something "mildly unpleasant" instead of what it is: Physically and even more so emotionally crippling. When we do the same in games, what does it change?
I mean, besides games having a weaker lobby and getting the thinkofthechildren crowd up in arms about people playing torture.
Is there a difference between watching torture on TV and executing it yourself in a game? In both cases you watch a character do it. In one case, you get to see it because you issue a command. In the other case you do because you don't issue one, i.e. don't change the channel. Where is the huge difference?
Re:Does anyone need to learn that torture hurts? (Score:5, Insightful)
So what the US try to tell a potential enemy is that it's better for him to fight to death than face capture?
Dunno, am I the only one who thinks there's an inherent flaw in that logic?
Parent
Because its not part of the game play (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Because its not part of the game play (Score:4, Funny)
Not to mention the whining. Imagine that you could decide and somewhere in the future it turns out that the item you could have gotten if you ate the baby had a bonus of +1240 instead of the measly +1230 that you got because you brought him a teddy bear. Not to mention that getting that teddy bear took much, much longer than just eating the little screamer.
What? No, nobody will discuss whether eating the baby would be wrong or bad, why're you asking?
Parent
Has anybody mentioned the Milgram Expriment yet? (Score:3, Interesting)
A lot depends on how it's done of course. The point would be to learn something and not just reinforcement attitudes and habits.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Milgram_Experiment [wikipedia.org]
Torture in games? (Score:5, Funny)
It's virtually painless!
False positive and double blind negatives... (Score:3, Interesting)
You keep basing it off what the victim says. It's un-reliable, etc...
Torture can be useful to get what ISN'T said. What you already know the victim knows...but you'd like to fill in gaps or corroborate gaps in other theories.
In the medical field, the "pertinent negative" information....what the patient ISN'T saying is often more important than what he or she IS.
A better argument is that we can win wars without it. It is beneath us. It is wasteful and can lose your Hearts and Minds battle.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
But that's not why we condemn it:
Torture is less effective than other means (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Torture was an important part of (Score:5, Informative)
the Dungeon Keeper games. You built torture chambers in your dungeon so you could attract Dark Mistresses who helped torture your creatures to make them work harder, or your enemies creatures to make them reveal information, join your side or die and return as ghosts. Your own Dark Mistresses actually liked you more after you personally tortured them. The related torture animations and sounds were pretty cool, especially for back then. This was back before Bullfrog was acquired by EA, and Peter Molyneux was closer to delivering his promises.
Does anyone remember MGS??? (Score:3, Interesting)
Effectiveness (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Asheron's Call already had this quest... (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah, don't forget the entire PREMISE of Knights of the Old Republic (and sequel) were predicated on how you decided to act in-game. In order to go dark side (evil), you had to do some pretty rotten things.
We play games the same reason that bear cubs play-fight, just like every other animal in the world, we teach ourselves through playing. I have a COMMUNCATIONS degree and I figured this out... you'd think the PhD's could put it together without making such a big deal of it.
J
Parent
Re:Asheron's Call already had this quest... (Score:5, Funny)
I have a COMMUNCATIONS degree
oh the irony
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You can be evil, and still do 'good' things to achieve evil ends, but in that game, you are evil by doing stupid things like randomly kill people all the time, or pick fights for no apparent reason or benefit.
The evil in KOTOR was pretty stupid most of the time, an
Re:Asheron's Call already had this quest... (Score:4, Informative)
That's Neutral. It has several subtypes.
Neutral: The one you specified. Somebody who doesn't specifically care much about these things. Most normal people go here, who don't spend a whole lot of time thinking about whether they're being completely moral or whether they follow the law exactly.
Amoral: Animals. No understanding of moral issues.
True Neutral: Dedication to Neutrality as a concept. Mostly applied to Druids. In my understanding a Druid's point of view is that things must persist. The kobolds must not exterminate the humans, nor the humans the kobolds. The druid will actively try to maintain balance between forces.
D&D Evil:
Lawful: Think lawyer type trying to screw people out of their money by using every legal resource to their advantage. This kind of person would argue that "Law == Morality", and that since it's legal for them to screw somebody out of all their money, there's nothing wrong with it.
Neutral: Selfish. No honor or tradition. Driven by self-interest. Will adhere to law or ignore it, whichever brings the greatest advantage.
Chaotic: What most games assume "evil" to be. Pointlessly sadistic, kills random people, backstabs associates even when against their own self-interest, because you see, they're EVIL and can't get along with anybody for any length of time. In the real world these would be insane.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Either morality is relevant in a game context or it isn't - if it is, then we should be disapproving of _anything_ in the game which is immoral (and in most cases that's anything that's actually illegal - killing 'bad guys' just because t
Re:Asheron's Call already had this quest... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
You can also use car dealership commercials. After about eighty hours of nonstop back-to-back car dealership commercials, the subject begins to lose mental control. That's when you send in the whining children...