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.
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.
December 9, 2008 at 1:10 pm
I read Bartle’s comments on the comments on his original post. I wonder how he feels about the racial overtones of the game. He says that most of the killing is “justifiable” either in terms of sustenance or self defense. But is it really? Take the gnoll quests in the Red Ridge Mountains. The blacksmith asks the player to kill gnolls because they are freaking out his horses. Or the Trog Quests in Loch Modan — there’s never any evidence that the trogs are coming out of their little valley to bother the dwarven encampment there. In both cases, the player is asked to participate in what could be considered genocide of another race/species/group of sentinent beings under premises that, IRL, would never pass muster.
There’s plenty of quests to settle nasty personal agendas as well. My favorite is the low level request to kill a neighbor’s livestock — Princess the pig and her Porcine Entourage — because they rooted through someone’s garden. Or the spiteful quest to for warlocks to gain a voidwalker where the warlock trainer sends the player to kill his ex-lover and get a necklace back.
Of course a video game filled with fantasy violence isn’t real life–otherwise I would be taking my gryphon to work in the mornings. But I’m not clear what kind of “moral option” Bartlett (and it appears you as well) are arguing for. Are any of the quests absolutely necessary? What qualifies as a “necessary” quest? And what qualifies as a “moral option” when confronted with a “necessary” quest?