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.