Moral concern for torture in World of Warcraft expansion

Richard Bartle, the father of multiplayer online gaming, had his alarm bells go off when playing the quest The Art of Persuasion in the new World of Warcraft Expansion. The quest requires that the player torture a non-player character in order to get information. The game text reads as follows:

Librarian Normantis on Amber Ledge wants you to use the [Neural Needler] on the Imprisoned Beryl Sorcerer until he reveals the location of Lady Evanor.

and

It is fortunate you’re here, <race>.

You see, the Kirin Tor code of conduct frowns upon our taking certain ‘extreme’ measures – even in desperate times such as these.

You, however, as an outsider, are not bound by such restrictions and could take any steps necessary in the retrieval of information.

Do what you must. We need to know where Lady Evanor is being held at once!

I’ll just busy myself organizing these shelves here. Oh, and here, perhaps you’ll find this old thing useful….

So, the quest asks the player to participate in extraordinary rendition, the act of performing torture on behalf of a people who regard such torture as illegal. The player is rewarded for doing so and never given another choice. Bartle highlights the quest’s lack of moral option:

Without some reward for saying no, this is a fiction-breaking quest of major proportions. I don’t mind having torture in an MMO — it’s the kind of thing a designer can use to give interesting choices that say things to the players. However, I do mind its being placed there casually as a run-of-the-mill quest with no regard for the fact that it would ring alarm bells: this means either that the designer can’t see anything wrong with it, or that they’re actually in favour of it and are forcing it on the player base to make a point. Neither case is satisfactory.

1. Bartle’s original post.
2. Summary of reactions to his post and his responses.

News came via BoingBoing, which has its own interesting comments. Cory Doctorow adds:

I don’t think that these posts are really responsive to the points that Richard raises, namely:

1. If “it’s just a game” then why not add rape quests and child mutilation quests too?

2. Not having a “torturer” class in the game means that it’s possible to play for years without encountering it or deciding whether it’s the kind of thing you want in your play. Adding torture to a game that never had it is noteworthy and, for some players, shocking.

I’ll admit that I find it hard to complain about simulated torture in the context of a game filled with simulated fantasy violence. At the same time, our culture typically finds simulated violence in our media only a mild moral problem. Films, television and music provide those images all the time, so we are not shocked to find it in an online game. Extraordinary rendition and torture, on the other hand, are controversial questions that we are more sensitive too. So, it’s not surprising that we find players being shocked at the quest’s requirements.

So how might this quest, undertaken by WoW’s over ten million players, shape our own views of torture? The TV show 24 and the recent James Bond films both portray torture as a necessary and effective route to obtain important information. Now we can join one more support to cultural support for torture. With hope our next presidential administration will set a tone against torture and again open up the moral question of its acceptability.

Alan Turing, the Church, and the UN call to decriminalize homosexuality

This post follows-up on the June 25 post’s recognition of Alan Turing’s birthday. Turing is rightly considered the father of computer science and by many standards is a British national hero for his work during World War II. He also was a homosexual and a victim of Britain’s criminalization of his orientation. Read the post above and his Wikipedia entry for his full biography.

France is leading the European Union’s move to put forward a UN call to decriminalize homosexuality universally. Earlier this month, the UN called upon India specifically to decriminalize and the EU would rightly like this call to become universal.

This effort has been long in the works. Groups like IDAHO developed a petition in 2006 and other local groups have offered support. The Vatican seems to confuse decriminalization with legalization of same-sex unions. Many conservative Anglicans have been unwilling to speak up for decriminalization, especially as their de facto leader Archbishop Peter Akinola supports the Nigerian anti-sodomy laws. Mainstream Canadian bishops spoke out against Nigeria’s laws in 2006.

The UN call to India to decriminalize would make room for HIV treatment services. From the article above, India’s anti-sodomy laws were instituted during the British Raj, making them broadly the same laws that lead to the death of Alan Turing.

For the sake of computer science, homosexuality needs to be decriminalized. The laws that killed Alan Turing and would lock up Tom Jennings send the clear signal that the world wants not brilliant people to revolutionize our science and technology. Following decriminalization, technology powerhouses like China, Brazil and perhaps India can only benefit and we benefit by extension.

To keep homosexuality criminalized is self-destructive.

Digital Youth Research

For the past three years, University of California-Irvine has carried out the Digital Youth Research project to uncover the changes brought on by technology. Always-on, internetworked devices are ubiquitous, far more so than even ten years ago. What’s happening to youth who grow up so enmeshed? “The research shows that today’s youth may be coming of age and struggling for autonomy and identity amid new worlds for communication, friendship, play, and self-expression.”

From the two-page summary:

Some youth “geek out” and dive into a topic or talent. Contrary to popular images, geeking out is highly social and engaged, although usually not driven primarily by local friendships. Youth turn instead to specialized knowledge groups of both teens and adults from around the country or world, with the goal of improving their craft and gaining reputation among expert peers. While adults participate, they are not automatically the resident experts by virtue of their age. Geeking out in many respects erases the traditional markers of status and authority.

This paragraph is a neat summary of ESR’s Portrait of J. Random Hacker. Could it be that the Internet is making mainstream the characteristics geeks and hackers have shared for decades? Or is popular culture catching up to forerunning hackers?

Thus far I’ve only read the two-page summary but am seriously intrigued to read it all. The idea of geeking erasing “traditional markers of status and authority” is especially fascinating and well-rooted in the Biblical tradition:

Then I said, ‘Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.’ ⁷But the Lord said to me, ‘Do not say, “I am only a boy”; for you shall go to all to whom I send you, and you shall speak whatever I command you. ⁸Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you, says the Lord.’

⁹Then the Lord put out his hand and touched my mouth; and the Lord said to me, ‘Now I have put my words in your mouth. ¹⁰See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.’ (Jeremiah 1:6-10)

Here’s more, from the project site:

1. The summary white paper
2. The full report
3. The press material, including video

Zondervan purchases BibleGateway.com

According to Christianity Today, Zondervan has acquired Bible Gateway and Gospel.com. Apparently their owner, Gospel Communications has been running its internet department in the red for several years. From the article:

Why has Zondervan acquired BibleGateway and Gospel.com?

We have a vision that if we create a lot of synergy across all Christian content providers, we can have more impact on the Internet. As part of this vision, we felt we had to have the best Bible reference in the world. BibleGateway has a very publisher-independent solution and is the most widely-used Bible reference site in the world, so we thought it would be a great starting point to build something even more spectacular for online access to Christian biblical content.

…

Will expanded digital offerings run the risk of cannibalizing your existing print audience?

Google and MySpace are big senders to the site. Our belief is that if somebody gets interested in the Bible digitally, they will go and want their own copy. So we do think it will trigger additional Bible sales. What we’ve found with Christian books in general is that the highest purchasers of digital content are your highest purchasers of print.

Zondervan seems committed to creating a useful Bible-study website and not just a vehicle to push their NIV Bible. Since Bible Gateway is a sister site to MySpace, it’s interesting to read their take on social networks.

As an aside, Zondervan is an imprint of HarperCollins which is in turn owned by media conglomerate News Corporation. By extension, News Corp. now owns websites as diverse as Bible Gateway and MySpace and publishes everything from the NIV Bible to the New York Post.

Link.