In the Day-z thread I was asked about what I think of these survival games. They scare the bless'ed poo out of me.
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Apparently that isn't what is done in the newer breed of "survivalism" gaming. In DayZ and Rust, teamwork is a thing of the past. It's libertarianism at it's sharpest, and it's an absolute nightmare. Yeah, "It's just a game" but I think it really says something about you if you handcuff a man to a pipe and feed him drain cleaner.
I have long held the belief that equating video game violence with real world violence is a fallacy, but I really do think this is the libertarian endgame. Beating people to death over a can of beans.
And that is what scares me.
Firstly, I want to say that you could have hijacked the DayZ thread 8ullfrog since your post is pertinent to an issue I raised there but I thank you for your consideration.
Secondly, that sort of over the top cruelty in a game disturbs me greatly. It says a lot about a particular kind of behavior which seems to be spreading in RL and leaking insidiously into the game world. We're becoming like rats in a barrel. (Not to be speaking ill of rats.) Do you recall the news--years ago--about online rape in some of the virtual sex games (I don't know what they're called--the digital sex sites). And saying it's "only a game" is like excusing a child who tortures the family pet by saying they will grow out of it; I'm sure that sooner or later these sociopathic personalities will find the virtual experience unsatisfying and their malfunctions will spill over into RL.
Which brings up the comments I've read on the game fora (in this case, the DayZ fora). In response to similar complaints there about "certain behaviors" in game, I've read some posters who said that all is fair in a survivor game--that in an apocalypse people do what they need to do to live. That surviving means making unethical moral choices even at the cost of one's humanity. This is an extremely lame excuse. This means that
the enemy has already won. This is the point in programs like
The Walking Dead. Randomly killing newbs for sport... since these players have nothing to loot, or chaining them to some pipes, etc, is pathological behavior pure and simple and puts the
troll back into trolling. This sort of thing also helps the folks who claim that the violence in computer or console games will create violent people. Perhaps, being what humans are capable of being at their worst, it's regrettable to have any violence in game-play but most game violence is contextual and, yes, an effective way of winning a particular game. It is not conducive towards dehumanization, in my opinion. In an MMO like Arma or DayZ the level of violence, preying, and cruelty is brought
into the game by some unhinged person and played out in lieu of acting that way in RL. The DayZ fora had a post which said that stalking such a person (who'd murdered an earlier avatar of theirs) and paying them back in kind was acceptable. There was no talk of finding and tormenting the player--just exacting payback by killing them. I tend to agree with the poster who made that point; reducing such a player back to newb level is the best way to send the message that such behavior will not be tolerated. It's a shame they cannot be removed entirely from the game world and, perhaps, when the MMO gets further developed, the GM's will have the power/capability to deny "so-and-so" from joining any server. That would be the sweetest revenge of all.
Oh, I want to add one more comment--about Arma specifically--I heard that the game is so realistic and so tough that some players never even got out of boot camp. You must be at a pretty high level, 8ully, to manage destroying tanks. I salute you, Sir.
