A Riot

By way of an Oct 20 Grimwell Online post, "When Does an Online Game Go Too Far", comes an article from the "mmorpc" group at Yahoo Groups by Tammy O'Sullivan. The following incident was described:

...On Saturday, October 16, 2004, A Tale in the Desert, owned and operated by Andrew Tepper (also known as Teppy and Pharaoh, in-game) of eGenesis, sponsored and condoned a game-wide event that introduced sexual discrimination, upsetting a large portion of female players. The event was known throughout the game as "The Trader Malaki" ...As the event continued, female characters were continually treated to defamatory slurs and sexual discrimination, inciting a riot within the game...

There are a number of important issues embroiled here - including how socially edgy (vs. neutral) should our virtual worlds be, and whether those sharp edges should be mutable against player social norms and player actions. Should "official" world actions (e.g. GM orchestrated ones) be evaluated differently than player ones when it comes to measurement against real world norms? When should real world sensibilities pre-empt in-world, fictional assumptions?

Posed here are hard Terra Novan questions. On the one hand very real people were offended. On the other, I would hate to see all our worlds become antiseptic places without experimentation and distinct points-of-view.

Comments

[theresa]

I found some details of the event storyline at the ATITD wiki: http://wiki.atitd.net/tale2/TheTraderMalaki which clears up some of my gameworld-related concerns.

From the article quote posted above, it sounded like the discrimination was wide-spread, and player based. According to the wiki description (which, granted, may or may not be complete), it was one character refusing to trade with women, or desiring to trade for women as slaves.

I'm all for pushing the boundaries and using MMOs as a sort of ethical experiment chamber. From the description of the event on the wiki, I think it sounds completely reasonable from a designer standpoint trying to maintain a world, and as a player in that world.

Regarding the questions posed, I think what needs to be remembered is that "official" world actions are governed by real-world causality - in other words, in our wonderfully litigious country, the GM, the designer, the game company can be sued for 'official' actions deemed discriminatory. There's a fine line to tread between introducing a bigoted event character to an Ancient Egypt without sexual discrimination, and introducing sexual discrimination to your game world.

Events like this are fine - sexual discrimination, from what I can tell, was not introduced into everyday life. It won't affect most players and their advancement through the world.

For me, the distinction is clear: if it makes sense as far as the history and design the game world goes, then it's not an issue. If the designers have suddenly decided this arbitrarily and implemented a slipshod event to cloak the change, then it becomes a real world issue.

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad]

Discrimination of female, male or neuter characters ought to be perfectly OK! Since when did fictional characters get legal protection beyond copyrights?

I really hope that will never happen...

(I'm all against having GMs in the world, but that is because they are never seen as being "just" in-character. Players will always see a vital aspect of them as OOC constructs.)

[Oliver]

I managed to miss this event. I'd agree with theresa's comments though. It seems like people were taking offense to something directed at there avatar, meaning they were taking the situation personally when there was no intent of that. Sex of the avatar is rarely used as a factor in mmorpg's. It happens that in ATITD most avatars seem to be the same sex as the customer playing them, and ATITD isn't normally any different; this event character was an exception, and somewhat appropriate to the context.

If people want to take the situation personally, that is there problem (and I think it's probably something those individuals need to deal with; it's really not a healthy thing, IMO). But honestly this doesn't seem as bad as the grimwell article makes it out to be...

Maybe the women of the desert should propose a law banning the trader malaki from setting foot there again...

[greglas]

The ellipses left out a point, which may be significant depending on how you view these things:

The event was known throughout the game as "The Trader Malaki" in which a character named Malaki traveled throughout Egypt trading rare goods. Players lined up,waiting a great deal of time, to trade with Malaki but when a female character's turn to trade came, she was greeted with comments such as "Who is your master?", refusing to trade good with her stating that he did not trade with "slaves."

So, in theory, it did stop advancement for those female-presenting characters insofar as it wasted their time and prevented them from obtaining the rare goods. The wiki adds context, though -- it makes it pretty clear that Malaki is framed as a bad guy in the eyes of Egypt and the traded goods were contraband that needs to be returned.

"...a woman named Ashari, who stated that Malaki was a thief and a scoundrel. This latter came as no surprise, but what did was the fact that he had evidently stolen items from the royal family, including the Soul Jars, items which are said to bring good luck."

[greglas]

Found a couple player threads for those interested:

http://www.atitd.net/forum/showthread.php?t=5362

http://www.atitd.net/forum/showthread.php?t=5425

erika2 starts off the second with the interesting question: "[T]here has been no public outcry about the fact that female avatars can weave canvas and linen faster than men... Why isn't there a public outcry about this?"

[bruce rogers]

Teppy rules!

[ren]

I have not read all the forum post of logs of the event as yet, so I might be jumping in a bit quick here, but here goes,,,

One way to see ATITD is as a game about creating a cohesive society. From the very start of it the mentor system creates bonds between players. In the first telling chaos was symbolised by the character of The Stranger. The developers introduced events and technologies that could potentially be disruptive. An example of this was clear cutting were you could accumulate a lot of resources in a very short amount of time, but deplete an area of those resources for a long time – soon after this technology was discovered there were clear cutting ‘incidents’ which caused the player base to have long and complex discussions about how laws should be past (some of which might have been put into code) to regulate the use of the technology.

This is classic ATITD, all is sweetness and light, then suddenly a disruptive element is introduced, society may crumble or come together, this is kind of the point.

The game is also set in Ancient Egypt (news flash: they kind of did have the odd slave back then). Thus, to me, the introduction of a character that comes from a culture where women are seen as second class citizens, seems, in the role play context of the game, to be a fascinating game element.

Will the Egyptians ban all members of this society from Egypt even if this means that they will never access key technologies?

Also, consider this. You cannot kill anything in ATITD (actually at the end of the First Telling, if you tried really hard you could kill your self). So what we have is that, when seen out of the context of the game, a character is being sexist. In many MMOs characters kill each other!

[Pharoah]

As an Ancient-Egyptian-American, I'm appalled by the coments from ren.

[kathgar]

Women no longer have a lower end timer on looms. There is also the issue of slavery that was touched on in some of the forum threads (Re: Jaime)

[James]

Let's not forget this is just a game. It is not some grand social experiment. It is a service that people pay for and when you type something out it is being read by a *person*, not an Avatar. If someone is playing the game and paying for it they have no responsibility to treat is as anything but a game. In college, you were payed to be experimented on. I think they have every right to expect a certain level of protection from this kind of insulting behaviour.

Would calling someone on another team a racial slur in the middle of a baseball game be okay? If it was just to get a reaction and not meant with ill will?

The "social experiment" of slavery and sexism has already been performed and it didn't go well. There is enough racism/sexism on the net without it being officially sanctioned by people who are taking your money...

[Susan B Anthony]

Number of female Egyptian pharoahs > number of female American presidents

[Childish name-calling removed by moderator - Edward Castronova]

[voodooc]

I think the 'racial slur' analogy falls down at a couple points.

First, the character's behavior isn't quite a 'racial slur'; it would be more accurate to call it discrimination. Pedantic, I know, sorry, but lets make sure we're talking about what actually happened.

That aside, you could still forge ahead with a better analogy: preventing someone from playing basketball because of their race.

A better analogy, but it still misses a critical point, I think.

Discriminating based on race in a basketball game has to do with their intrinsic characteristics. That's sort of what makes it 'racism', and bad, as far as I understand it. It's got nothing to do with the game.

In ATITD, your avatar's gender is a player choice. It's a game trait, not an intrinsic characteristic of the player. In the basketball analogy, it is not equivalent to the player's race (or gender, for that matter). It's closer to the player's choice in shoes, or their haircut.

Similarly, in ATITD you pick your avatar's height. If Malakai was choosing not to trade with anyone under 6' tall, would people be screaming about "height discrimination"?

No, they wouldn't. And, from what I know of Teppy (the game's designer), that's why he chose avatar gender as the discriminatory factor.

ATITD is *is" as much "social experiment" as it is "game". The focus of the game is a giant group-based challenge, and most of the individual challenges have to do with building trust with other players. This sort of drama is totally appropriate for this game.

- vc
former citizen of egypt

[ren]

If there are facts about the incident that I don’t know about e.g. ‘Malaki’ being personally insulting to people as opposed to a character acting in a role and interacting with other characters, then I would probably support those that think this was inappropriate – I’ve criticised ATITD before about stepping outside the Magic Circle.

But if this was in the context that I gave then this fall into the category of what the limits of appropriate game play are (see also the current discussion on the Serious games list concerning the “Nanjing controversy” http://listserver.dmill.com/lyris.pl?visit=seriousgames&id=256960424), and for me a character that comes from a culture that does not respect women (to the degree that they are mere chattels) interacting with Ancient Egypt does not seem out of bounds as Egypt has to work out how it deals with this.

[Matt Mihaly]

------------------
Nathan wrote:

When should real world sensibilities pre-empt in-world, fictional assumptions?

I see these as hard Terra Novan questions. On the one hand very real people were offended.

------------------
Oh, those poor children. They were OFFENDED. My god, it's as bad as if gypsies broke into their houses one night and stole their children isn't it? We as a society must work to ensure that nobody is ever offended by anything!

Just think, maybe if we're REALLY GOOD, all game developers will start making inoffensive games that look like this: http://www.vzwdevelopers.com/aims/public/BrewContentGuidelines.jsp

I can't wait to beat up some more strippers in GTA: San Andreas or shoot me some innocent civilians, personally. In the meantime, I think I'll go snort some gleam and murder some characters in Achaea (feels like a vivisection kind of day!) to tide me over. Then perhaps I'll defile the dead bodies and stake out the corpses for public viewing.

I'll tell you when real world sensibilities should triumph: When the freaking designers/operaters decide they will triumph, and that's potentially vastly different for every game out there. If I want to make child rape a part of my world, I damn well will and the only thing anyone is going to do about it is stop playing in my world.

---------------------
James wrote:
Would calling someone on another team a racial slur in the middle of a baseball game be okay? If it was just to get a reaction and not meant with ill will?

---------------------
Yes, yes it would be ok. It's called "freedom of speech." There's no "freedom from ever being offended" as far as I'm aware. If you didn't like it, you could complain to the stadium management. Maybe they'll kick the guy out. That's probably their perogative. If not, tough.

---------------------
James wrote:
The "social experiment" of slavery and sexism has already been performed and it didn't go well. There is enough racism/sexism on the net without it being officially sanctioned by people who are taking your money...

---------------------
Hey, the social experiment of mass murder has certainly been tried many times and didn't go well, except from the point of view of those who approved of the mass murderers' actions. Doesn't stop 95% of MUDs (graphical or text) from implementing mass murder as the core game mechanic.

--matt

[EmmanuelGoldstein]

A) It's a game
B) Said 'trader' I.G. came from a land where women were treated as slaves
C) The game is set in a time when women were treated as slaves
D) It's A FRICKEN GAME
E) It was protraying a VERY COMMON STEREOTYPE from the world IN THAT TIME PERIOD.

Stop trying to whitewash history, it happened, they were protrayeing like it happened during those times, dont like it, dont play.

[Tribisha]

In my opinion, having been on the server the day it occurred, the event was much like any other event with the obvious twist of something sour. Not everything can be sweet all the time and it was the reactions that the designer wanted to get. Rather than wanting to start a riot, he was looking to see if people would support each other and work together to trade, or whether people would take advantage of the fact that the trader was only trading with men.

Once the event had turned really sour due to the public outcry, there was a system wide announcement to confirm what the rest of us already knew, that there would be another event somewhere down the line that would focus on women and exclude men. It was an event to challenge the society of the game and see what they would do about it, simple as that.

I'm not saying people shouldn't get offended, they ahve every right to be offended but the challenge is to focus that energy and do something with it that is positive rather than taking the negative and breeding more negative from it.

If you haven't seen the game or read anything about it except for this article, may be you should see what it's about before jumping to conclusions and assumptions. http://www.atitd.com/ is the main site and http://www.atitd.net/ is the site with all the forums. You can even chat on IRC at irc.sorcery.net in the #atitd channel.

Instead of whinging in real life, shouldn't they be using the dynamic structure of the game to pass laws which abolish discrimination against sexe ?

This seems way to silly for me ; Should i complain the next time my dwarven warrior doesn't get the same great deal than my Elfen warrior in Everquest ?

There is enough blatant racism going around in real life ; they should focus on that if they are so offended...

[Paul "Phinehas" Schwanz]

James> Let's not forget this is just a game.

Well, it isn't "just" a game, or there wouldn't be such an outcry. However, who exactly is it that is forgetting that ATITD is a game? As Ren pointed out (rather un-idiotically IMHO) which is worse: Character sexism or character murder?

Novels routinely explore various social issues without being charged with "social experimentation," so why is this story element in ATITD different? And again, why is DAoC, in which characters can actually kill other characters, much less controversial? Isn't there enough killing in the Real World "without it being officially sanctioned by people who are taking your money...?" Why the double standard?

Also, in what manner is having a Antagonist do something in either a novel or an online world the same thing as officially sanctioning anything?

Mind you, I'm not saying that this ATITD story-line shouldn't be more controversial than DAoC's killings (or Darth Vader's destruction of Alderaan), I'm just really curious to explore why it so obviously is.

--Paul

[Darkonc]

First of all, Most female avatars are also female players. This is part of what pissed off a lot of females. Although Malakai was in 'theory' only discriminatory against female avatars, the effect was discrimination against female players.

In any case, in a society like the egypt of AITD, I don't think that it's at all unreasonable to expect that people would get upset and attempt to take action against someone doing what Malakai did. In the real world, he'd have gotten the snot beaten out of him by somebody. Given that he appears to have been a 'game creature', I think that the 'riot' was probably the next best thing. (if you'll excuse the phrasing).

NB: Haven't read the more detailed history

[Dee Lacey]

This is silly. There's arguments galore and they're all devolving into semantics.

Basically: No, it should not be illegal to make games that have sexism in them. That would be way past a reasonable restriction on freedom of speech. It should also not be illegal to make a game with any other component that you would not want in real life.

Should it therefore be legal to advertise and charge money for your game and then put such items in it sprung on unsuspecting customers? I think it should not be criminal but perhaps it should allow for civil complaints about fraud and false advertising and maybe even intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Should game developers do it? If they think it'll sell, or they want to do so for other reasons than making money (and are not publicly owned), then sure, they should give it a try.

Did ATITD give adequate warning to its users that this sort of game experience was part of the package? I don't know, and I doubt I'll make the effort to investigate this.

Should players be able to write editorials and post on message boards about how they hate this Malaki trader event or similar events, complain in game, "riot" in game or otherwise express their annoyance? Yes, not letting them do that would be way past a reasonable restriction on freedom of speech.

Should people who think the complainers are whining be able to say so? Yes again. Should people who think the complainers-about-whiners are idiotic be able to say so? Yes again. Etc ad infinitum. That's what freedom of speech is centrally about - you can yell all you want but so can everyone who disagrees with you.

Is anyone doing the above (complaining about the game event, complaining about the complainers, etc) committing any form of censorship? No. They are exercising their freedom of speech. Are they idiots? That's a matter of opinion, not fact, and I really don't think any of them are idiots for my own opinion, I think they just happen to disagree strongly about what is within the bounds of polite and proper behavior in various circumstances, and in many cases also disagree about what is fun for them in a game.

Would I enjoy a game that contained this sort of event with implicit sexism by a GM controlled character? No, I would not. The particular sort of behavior described as occurring in the "Malaki" event, is a sort of behavior that can (especially if I encounter it on an empty stomach, for some reason) make me feel severely nauseous, often accompanied by rage, or sometimes uncontrollable crying if I am in private. It goes beyond feeling "offended." Playing a game while sick to my stomach and furiously angry, isn't any fun. I take a bio break and play something else for a while.

I have had acquaintances that feel similarly when exposed to things I find mildly amusing, such as bulky males in pink speedos and berets dancing to boomboxes. To each their own triggers.

The most recent time this feeling of excessive illness/rage happened to me was about a year ago, when a player in a freeform rp game I am in wrote a story that happened to contain some actions about his character mistreating and murdering another. I asked the GM to ask all players whose stories included that sort of thing to put a warning in the subject line. She said it was up to them if they wanted to or not. I haven't read a post by that player since, but I still am in the game.

However, I am aware that the reason for my excessive reaction has to do with my own psychology, traumas in my past, etc. It is not intrinsic to the content that triggers it. This is important that everyone become aware that their revulsion at certain things is not license for them to outlaw those actions. If you are ill at the thought of what people of the same sex would do in private if married, you may wish to make such marriages illegal. Your reaction does not however justify that. Nor does my reaction justify prohibitions against any game including things that would make me vomit.

It does, however, easily justify me deciding not to purchase that game. And with a game that contains no combat, which might be thought to have natural appeal to women, it's an odd choice to do something that would antagonize possible women customers. It's perfectly legitimate for the creators to make it, though.

[Obnoxious Idiot]

I've always been amazed at the Rampant Stupidity of Others(tm) in this day and age. These people that got offended at an offensive NPC in ATITD need to grow up, get a clue, and look at the modern and primitive worlds. Wake up you fools and realize that for the most of human history, or should I say "'man history" here just to piss off the fools, in the Arabic/African/Medd area women were considered property or trade goods. Most everyone who wasn't royalty-attached or somehow related to whatever religious edifice fawned over was also considered property or trade goods. In the 'modern' Middle East, Asia, South America, Central America, and even Europe that there are still populations/groups/tribes/states/nations that consider anyone not in possession of "a pair" to be property or trade goods, or anyone not of their family/tribe to be sub-human. And did you know that in their culture that this is considered normal? The United States of America is not the only nation in the world, folks. Get a clue, get away from your computers, go outside, look at the sun, and for goodness sakes, travel to foreign lands so you can see just how screwed up your world view is.

I have better things to do then listen to easily offended people whine about how offended they are about a fictional character in a fictional representation of Ancient Egypt treating female characters appropriately for his culture at the time.

[Matt Mihaly]

Darkonc wrote:
In any case, in a society like the egypt of AITD, I don't think that it's at all unreasonable to expect that people would get upset and attempt to take action against someone doing what Malakai did. In the real world, he'd have gotten the snot beaten out of him by somebody.

Really? He would have? How odd and how contrary to my experience. I wonder if you've ever been to the area of the world that A Tale in the Desert is set in?

--matt

[Mike Rozak]

What happens when a riot begins in a virtual world and then breaks out into the real one?

What happens when a real-world war seeps into a virtual world? Or vice versa?

[Chris]

Maybe I'm not up on my archeology, but I don't think we really know what the life of the average commoner, male or female, was like back in the day of the Pharaohs.

"We are, of course, limited to the available documentation which only indirectly touches the bulk of the population, the peasant-farmers at the bottom of the economic scale. There are ample written records to show how the economy functioned at the level of the royal family, the wealthier strata of officialdom, and the temple hierarchies." [1]

However what we do know precludes merchants from treating all women as slaves.

"Women were frequently identified by their husband and his occupation but still had considerable theoretical autonomy in legal and economic situations." [1]

"Egypt treated its women better than any of the other major civilizations of the ancient world ... regarded as totally equal to men as far as the law was concerned. They could own property, borrow money, sign contracts, initiate divorce, appear in court as a witness, etc. Of course, they were also equally subject to whatever responsibilities normally accompanied those rights." [2]

[1] http://www.stoa.org/diotima/essays/wardlect.shtml

[2] http://www.umich.edu/~kelseydb/Exhibits/WomenandGender/intro.html

[3] http://www.womenintheancientworld.com/women_in_ancient_egypt.htm

I've never played ATITD but it certainly doesn't seem to be stratified *enough* to be like ancient Egypt. Isn't it run democratically or something? Heh. If you're going to use the "we're just being authentic" line you should at least be so...

[eM]

Want to know the most imteresting thing?

When the populace discovered the NPCs views on women, what did they do?

I'll tell you:

They insulted back,
They spammed said Npcs chats,
They object spammed (re: kept giving them hyper-common objects, like sand. When given an opbject a popup usually appears to say you received said object. Obviously hundreds of people giving = hundreds of popups)

And, perhaps stupidest of all,
They Spammed GMcalls, which are reserved to report technical glitches, not whine about a player bieng mean.

What they didn't do:
Ignore him,
go through proper channels to get him banned from egypt.

And then, they had the audacity to complain about it. perhaps if they'd bothered to deal with it properly rather than like a bunch of spoiled brats then things would have ended better.

[Paul "Phinehas" Schwanz]

Dee Lacey> The most recent time this feeling of excessive illness/rage happened to me was about a year ago, when a player in a freeform rp game I am in wrote a story that happened to contain some actions about his character mistreating and murdering another.

I remember feeling rage/helplessness when the Kilrathi leader killed my love interest in Wing Commander III. Later, there is a mission where you have an opportunity to battle that same Kilrathi, but are given strict orders not to do so, but to get back to the carrier. If you go after the Kilrathi, you lose the game. I still went after him. Over and over again, trying to figure out how to kill him quickly and still make it back to the carrier.

To this day, that game is one of my favorites because it actually made me care. I really wanted revenge and was emotionally involved in the story.

Obviously, that experience was very different from how many experienced "Malaki," and I'm very curious about the differences.

Is it because Malaki was being played by an actual person, so it was easier to connect him with a GM instead of seeing him as a character in a story? Is it because of the interactive and social nature of online gaming? Perhaps the more controlled environment of a single-player game or a novel feels safer? Online worlds feel more like a public gathering place and less like a story or a game?

Is there anything that Teppy could have done differently to help players have an emotional reaction more like my own in WC3? A reaction that could be seen as entertaining and compelling, though not particularly "fun" as a singular game element? Or is it impossible in an MMORPG to implement such content in a manner that doesn't offend a lot of people? (I hope the latter is not true, since that would seem to make MMORPGs much less interesting as a tool for exploring the human condition.)

--Paul

[Nathan Combs]

...They were OFFENDED...

Or is it impossible in an MMORPG to implement such content in a manner that doesn't offend a lot of people?

This is a difficult topic precisely because there are so many cross-cutting issues in play here. It strikes me though, that the question of whether or not players should have been *offended* misses the larger possiblity: how can one frame a provocative fiction in their worlds without offending people? This is a different question than whether or not people should be offended given some assumptions about design (e.g. status quo).

Perhaps one challenge for MMORPGs has to do with the tenuousness of the immersive experience (ref. number of previous TN discussions) over single player games.

[greglas]

Just FYI: More discussion on Slashdot. (479 comments at the moment.)

[blah]

Just goes to show, if you add this kind of element to you game you can get Slashdotted :) $$$$

[Dee Lacey]

Paul wrote:
"I remember feeling rage/helplessness when...
To this day, that game is one of my favorites because it actually made me care. I really wanted revenge and was emotionally involved in the story."

I had a similar experience to what you describe about Wing Commander. It was in a D&D game I played about 14 years ago. I became very attached to an npc and when he was killed (by an arrow shot from my own bow, gone awry) I was devastated - in character - and crying for real, quiet tears without sobs. The other players were terribly worried about me. But I was *enjoying* it. The feeling of being wrapped up in the game, so involved I could feel the character's emotions.

I don't believe it's the same feeling at all, as the "offended" rage/nausea thing I was describing in my previous post.

And the difference is so simple - it's a matter of expectation, I believe. If you have consented to have your feelings wrapped up that way - you enjoy it. If you haven't - you feel an injury.

In a game - there is an implicit contract between the GM(s) and the player(s). If something is emotionally wrenching and within this contract, it makes the game memorable. If it is emotionally wrenching and outside the contract, it destroys the game.

I read a lot of interesting discussion about this "game contract" concept in rec.games.frp.advocacy over the years. It might still be around in google newsgroups.

Of course another possibility is that you just find something fun that others don't. Can't rule that out. :)

the self described obnoxiousIdiot wrote:
"for the most of human history, or should I say "'man history" here just to piss off the fools, in the Arabic/African/Medd area women were considered property or trade goods."

Er, excuse me, but perhaps you're missing something obvious here, person whose name I don't wish to use because I don't wish to be insulting.

It is *because* of this history that it is so stressful and un-fun to many people to encounter this in pretend-land.

It is real history, really happened to many people, and left scars behind. Those scars haven't healed. Such evil, tolerated as fun, is sickening. And I consider it evil to turn human beings into trade goods. Whether they are black, Jewish, female, or otherwise demarked doesn't make it any less evil. Or for that matter, any more evil. But the fact that it really happened to those groups (and others), makes us more sensitive about it in a lot of cases.

If there was a lot of historical periods and a huge swath of the world where people like you were enslaved, habitually and acceptedly, you might find it more disturbing than if you were a sort of person who would be much less likely to have your human rights violated in that way. Which seems pretty darn rational to me :)

In fact people tend to be *less* offended when treated in a way that is not historically a way they or those like them have been abused. As another poster pointed out, you would not have such emotional reactions if they had been discriminating against the tall.

[Jesus]

It's called roleplaying. If you're not willing to role play maybe you should play the game. Having your character enraged inside the game is valid tho.

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad]

Jesus, GMs are never roleplaying. They might try, but it isn't their roleplay the players are excited about and it isn't their roleplay efforts they are judged by. Developers should know this. The event as described was as kitch and clueless as anything you see in MMOs.

If you had spent your life taking shit for being a black female, and found the virtual world to be a place where you can be judged for who you are, wouldn't you be offended if you felt that the official capacities of the game brought all those bad feelings into the freedom you had gained in this virtual setting? Sexism and being called a slave might be a bit over the top, perhaps? I think it is a bit too easy for white-young-men to judge how players with a different life story are supposed to react.

Regarding leaving the game. If people who didn't roleplay should leave RPGs, then all MMOs would go down in an instant...

Good roleplay involves turning things upside down and creating drama, but in a way which keeps thing IC and not brings it all out to OOC. As an official roleplaying effort it was highly clueless. No doubt about it. Of course, the roleplaying effort was probably not the goal here... And I say that as a dedicated roleplayer who has managed to hurt real people with my roleplay. It happens and you regret it.

[Matt Mihaly]

Ola wrote:
Jesus, GMs are never roleplaying. They might try, but it isn't their roleplay the players are excited about and it isn't their roleplay efforts they are judged by. Developers should know this. The event as described was as kitch and clueless as anything you see in MMOs.

Nonsense. It is simply flat-out untrue to say GMS are never roleplaying (ours are instantiated as in-role Gods), and it's similarly untrue to say that players are not excited by their roleplay. Perhaps that's true in some games. Ok, it IS true in some games. It is certainly not true in all MMOs.
--matt

[Bob Hancock]

It's a fascinating read to take in the vast spectrum of comments in this thread.

The thing that really sends my mind spinning is trying to quantify why a reaction like this happened in response to a virtual reality of ancient Egypt but such a reaction does not seem to happen in the same way in response to similar scenarios as portrayed in written literature or the visual dramatic arts where the "viewer" is passive.

The conclusion I've tenatively come to is that people more personally involve themselves in "virtual realities" than when reading literature or watching movies. I think the implications of this for sociology are profound.

This incident makes it appear obvious that virtual realities have the ability to reveal values deeply held by their participants. This could suggest the corollary that a carefully crafted virtual reality might also have the ability to subtly shape or influence the values of the participants.

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad]

Matt, your response was expected :-). Let me put it this way "players would have been excited in a different way if they had not known that they were GMs". I am not saying that GMs are bad roleplayers, I am saying that players see the OOC link to the official capacities behind the game. It is therefore inconvieble that their actions will be experienced as "just in-character" by your typical player. Disagree, if you wish.

[Matt Mihaly]

Ola wrote:
Matt, your response was expected :-). Let me put it this way "players would have been excited in a different way if they had not known that they were GMs". I am not saying that GMs are bad roleplayers, I am saying that players see the OOC link to the official capacities behind the game. It is therefore inconvieble that their actions will be experienced as "just in-character" by your typical player. Disagree, if you wish.

Yes, that's true. They do see the OOC link. Of course, similarly, they see the OOC link between -every- character and the player behind it, but that doesn't seem to prevent them from being immersed.

--matt

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad]

It's not at all the same. I'm suprised you think so.

[Chek Yang]

Do GMs role-play?

A while ago when it was a big deal to hit level 20 in EverQuest, the GMs made it a point to personally visit each player who hit that mark, and in an IMO very well role-played ceremony, bestow upon that player his chosen last name. The GM even took the time to ask the user - in very RP manner - questions on his readiness to be recognised, and the surrounding players would often get into the spirit of things too. They certainly seemed excited about the occasion.

Certainly these occasions didn't happen anymore once a large number of players starting getting to level 20, but I still remember this type of incident very well because I was the recipient from one such event when my main avatar hit level 20 too.

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad]

Check, I am not at all arguing whether GMs are capable of roleplaying or whether it is enjoyable. I am arguing that they are interpreted differently. GMs are never just a character. They are always GMs, and that's an aspect that is difficult to ignore. To put it simple. Basically, your example, if anything, shows my point.

[anonymous]

Excuse me but.. sexual discrimination in a game is not ok, but killing your comrades is? Geeee. Some people do have some serious issues...

[John Edwards]

Back in that period, they didn't have Soul Jars, either. Or magic. How "period" do we want to get?

[Hellinar]

I don’t think racism or sexism is appropriate in games. But I do think racist or sexist characters can be appropriate in stories or plays. Using racist slurs against an opposing player on the football field is inappropriate. Roleplaying an ogre that makes racist remarks about elves in fine in my book.

From that point of view, the big problem with the Malakai event was that it was not placed clearly in a story context. So some players took the remarks as OOC and got offended. Also, in my experience, good roleplayers when playing an evil character keep enough OOC channels open to ensure that the other players are not being offended. The GM in question didn’t do this. The event intention was I think “evil character challenges Egypt to deal with an obnoxious visitor”. Instead, for some Players, it got framed as “GM abuses Players”. If you read the detail discussion, you may notice that the event bypassed the official event team. And the Event Team leader resigned over that issue. I think if the event had been properly handled it would have not offended people.

Nathan> When should real world sensibilities pre-empt in-world, fictional assumptions?

By my reading, whoever wrote the Grimwell account took the event as entirely OOC. Which isn’t too surprising, as the developer in my view hasn’t done that good a job of establishing the in-world, fictional assumptions. In my experience, there is a roleplaying community in ATiTD, but there is a big chunk of the player base has no experience of it. Hence they take such an event as abuse by a GM rather than conflict between characters.

[Andrew Tepper]

Technically, Malaki wasn't a GM, though he was played by someone who's other character is. So, Malaki had no special powers or protections. The event might have been more interesting after we had at least one Demi-Pharaoh though, since historically Demi-Pharaohs have been elected by pledging never to use the power of Exile: They would have to then decide whether to break their election promise, or force Egypt to endure Malaki's behavior.

[John Prevost]

I have to say that I jumped to support the event staff and eGenesis when I heard about this event. (It might be worth noting that my character is female, but I am male in real life.)

It brought up a lot of interesting things--although I was disappointed to learn on the forums that those organizing the event did not think this "quirk" of the character was going to be a big deal.

The thing that really gets me, from the interesting-bits-about-society direction, is what the poster above mentioned about how the character was treated. In general, people in ATITD's Egypt are quite good at cooperating with each other. Things aren't super smooth (I've been involved in my share of stupid politics, for example), but for the most part people treat it as one individual or group having issues with another individual or group.

In this case, though, it was different. If a player character had been doing this, people would have been upset, and worked to find a way to ban the character. (In ATITD, *player*s can only be banned for a couple of rule violations--muling with an unpaid trial account, for example. When a character is banned, the player is free to create a new character and continue--although they need to pay for a new account, they don't get "time left" from their banned account, which makes a good hedge against repetitive thoughtless griefing.) They may even have taken the uncouth actions described above to chase the player away. But I don't think they would have gone so far.

In essence, even though it was unintended, the event really *did* simulate (in a very fast and tense sort of way) a person from another culture with repugnant features coming and trying to make waves. And a not insignificant number of the players around took the time-tested avenue of stoning the character and running him out of town.

Indeed, not sweetness and light at all.

I do think that those involved are to blame for not realizing that this was going to be a big deal. I chimed in on the side of "this *must* have been planned, because nobody could be stupid enough to not realize there would be a bad reaction--even if they didn't expect it to be *this* bad." I was completely dumbfounded when I learned that the character's misogyny was considered a minor part of the event.

But we should expect a certain amount of moving and shaking like this when we play ATITD. Because while it *is* a game and not just a social experiment, it is also really a game and social experiment in one. The whole point of the game (long term) is to see if all of the players can work together well enough to complete major major projects in a restricted timeframe to "win".

It's true that games are about having fun--but for some of us, the fact that the game is intentionally designed with serious social problems (pollution, for example) which must be worked through by the players is a very very important part of that fun. If there were never any reasons for conflict between players--whether it be politics over conflicting goals, competition for rare resources, or whatever--the game would not be nearly as attractive to me. And I say that even though I mostly try to steer clear of the controversy and just do science to understand the physics of the world better. :)

P.S. Teppy: I had understood that event characters were also protected from the Demi-Pharaoh ban power. Is this not the case?

[Bruce]

I think we need to seperate this into two parts.

Firstly, can a GM run an event wherein the parties in-game insult characters in-game based on gender, race, and so on? I think so, particularly if it is done specifically to provoke social change. There's no harm done beyond some ruffled feathers, so it's perfectly fine. However, any big business has to tread carefully when doing this, because too big a flap can cost them customers, even if it is "okay" to do such an event.

Secondly, and to me this is the more key point, is is it okay for such an event to give an in-game advantage to one group over the other? This is far trickier. Games do this all the time with class and race-based quests, so that's not new, but on the other hand everyone usually gets their own equivalent quest/item, so it's not unfair discrimination. In this case, though, one sex was completely excluded from accessing the "phat loot" and the other was allowed -- that seems to step over a line. Why? I think partially because RL concerns obvious bleed into it... people for the most part can't choose their RL sex (or gender, depending on what definition you use), yet in a VR game you can. A quest where only, say, Wizards got benefits and no other class would not be viewed with the same sort of outrage, although players would still complain, especially if the imbalance persisted over time.

If the game had a systematic series of encounters/quests and some were restricted to men and other to women, then the players would be much more acclimated to this type of gameplay. But this event is unique, and not within the realm of player expectations. Even if there were a corresponding female event next month where males were excluded, the rarity of such events would still cause controversy because they would stand out so much.

Bruce

[Richard Bartle]

This basically boils down to "if you don't like it, you can leave".

The players who objected to the sexism were doing so for the same reason that the "rape in cyberspace" people objected to MrBungle's actions: it brought shocking reality into the virtual.

Virtual worlds feature much worse things than sexism, but these are advertised up-front. A virtual world with sexism designed-in would (or should) be no more controversial than one with murder designed-in. People who don't like sexism don't have to play.

The problem comes when these things aren't advertised up-front. Reality impinges on virtual worlds all the time, but sometimes it comes in such a large dose that it shocks some or all players out of the virtual and into the real. This is what happened here, for whatever reason. For those affected, it ceases to be a "game"; for everyone else, the magic circle holds and the attack from reality is beaten off.

As always when the real impacts the virtual (we see this with commodification etc. too), the players affected can do one of 4 things:
1) Grit their teeth and suffer in silence.
2) Leave.
3) Threaten to leave, in an attempt to get the virtual world changed so it better suits them.
4) Call in the real-world police.

We're seeing a lot of 3) at the moment. I don't think 2) will happen much (although it may mean people who were thinking of signing up to ATITD decide not to in the light of this). 1) is invisible.

I'm generally against 4), because there is always a legitimate reason that some virtual world or other might want to represent anything at all. However, I believe that it would be in the best interests of VW designers if they were to clear certain controversial things in advance.

Example 1: a virtual world in which players took on the role of POWs trying to escape from a World War 2 camp would have to have all-male characters because otherwise it would just be too distant from history. This isn't all that controversial.

Example 2: a virtual world depicts a far future feminist dystopia where all men are kept drugged as docile servants by dominant amazons. This may be off-putting to many men, but if it's OK as a movie then it's probably OK as a game.

Example 3: a virtual world set in the age of piracy occasionally depicts slavery. They had slaves in those days, so it's historically accurate. Most pirate games don't depict slavery, though, and if someone who had been playing for a month suddenly found their character had captured a ship full of half-dead slaves then it might be a very unpleasant shock for them. The developers could (and perhaps should) be open to a lawsuit on the subject. If they'd warned that it could happen in advance, though, they could (and certainly should) be protected from such lawsuits.

Example 4: a virtual world for teaching psychologists about paedophilia allows adult avatars to perform sex acts with child avatars. This is something that should be allowed, but it would be really dumb of the developers not to go to a judge and get some kind of legal OK first.

Example 5: a bunch of terrorists create a virtual world for the purpose of recruiting and training members of their organisation. They say it's just a game, and claim freedom of speech laws protect them anyway. Sorry, terrorist dudes, you're going to jail anyway.

OK, so coming back to the ATITD incident, what do we have? We have an ill-judged insertion of sexism into a virtual world in which sexism does make sense, but which previously had avoided it. We have some promise of a balancing sexism incident planned for the future (create those female avatars now, people!) but no evidence that this is true. We have a design decision that affects characters being interpreted as affecting players. We haven't yet had big-name academics with no concept of the issues pontificating on them as if they actually played these games, but I dare say that's something we can look forward to...

My verdict: Teppy was within his rights to do this. The players were within their rights to complain. Teppy gets to decide whether to listen to the players. The players get to decide whether to quit or not based on this. There isn't enough real-world effect to justify legal action, but that doesn't mean that for another virtual world at another time there wouldn't be.

Richard

[dave]

I don't play ATITD, but I play several other MMO's. In my opinion, it's not that big of a deal for this sort of thing to occur, in the context of a story element.

Why? Well, for one, it's a simulation of an ancient culture. It's a little different than our current one. Secondly, a character's gender in game has no bearing on their real-life gender or bearing. In short, people are being overly sensitive.

[Jeff Cole]

Richard:

Example 5: a bunch of terrorists create a virtual world for the purpose of recruiting and training members of their organisation. They say it's just a game, and claim freedom of speech laws protect them anyway. Sorry, terrorist dudes, you're going to jail anyway.

Why does the law not protect them? Games aren't speech? Is it unprotected speech or are we back to a 'clear and present danger' test for free speech rights?

And, after all, there's no causal relationship between games and violence. Is there?

Wouldn't an operational Example 5 be a really good place to collect intelligence? Like what might be a target?

Jeff Cole

[MadDwarf]

What would happen if, in this game, an Amazon Warrior arrived in town, and would only trade with female avatars, refereing to men as "filth" and being shocked that they held any power?

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad]

Andrew Tepper> Technically, Malaki wasn't a GM, though he was played by someone who's other character is. So, Malaki had no special powers or protections.

Doesn't matter. If players perceive it as an official event then the main characters represent the "face of the company". Then it becomes the company's responsibility to keep the event IC. Roleplaying is about taking the opportunities of the situation and make the most out of it. This requires more than planning, it requires skills in improvising. (And if it goes wrong, OOC explanations)

Players are like students. A lecturer cannot blame the students for not being interested in the topic. It is the lecturer's responsibility to motivate the students and make them interested in the topic.