This one can die for a kick-off.
It's only occasionally that something so utterly shocking in terms of video games journalism ('hackery') comes across our (my) bows that we (me actually) stop playing
Juarez for a moment and look up.
Today brings such an example in the form of a Gamasutra opinion piece, rather a 'News Opinion' from Benj Edwards. The piece is entitled: “'Can Games Become 'Virtual Murder?'”
Of course, the answer is 'No' because no one actually ever dies virtually or otherwise. You start again. If you didn't there would be much complaint down at the shops.
“Oi! I just got killed in
World of LineagEve Online and now my PC won't let me play the game any more!”
“Apologies, but you should have read the packet... there's no restart.”
“Bugger. My family will take this to the Court of Thrision VIII and the judges of Gilgomusho!”
“Nice one... fancy
Mario Kart WiiiWii III HDDD Rebooted?”
According to Gama, however, we're in serious trouble... “The coming storm is inevitable: turn one way, and you'll see ever-more realistic portrayals of graphic, gratuitous human violence in games like
BioShock,
Grand Theft Auto 4, and
Fallout 3. Then turn the other and observe the exponential explosion of computing power and graphics rendering potential driven my (sic) Moore's law. Put two and two together, and you've got quite a mess brewing.”
No you don't. In this case, put two and two together and you've still got two. And, by the way, you've also got the exponential explosion of storage capacity, but I'll get to that later.
The piece then goes on via the usual arguments about desensitizing. For example, “With each act of (virtual) violence, a piece of us grows cold, calloused, and uncaring towards the well being of others. Repeat that, and we become slowly desensitized to pain and suffering.”
Can't say I did when I was rushing around the playground, armed with a twig, shooting Nazis in the face. Sure, they were nine year-old Nazis (or sometimes, I was) but we had the most realistic graphics (real life) and sound (“Pyaaaaow! Boom!!”) ever.
Obligatory Manhunt 2 image.
Once moved through the desensitizing argument – which would have several hundred movie and stage actors banged up in Arkham Asylum equivalents for the criminally insane – I hit:
“If, in this hypothetical future, we're capable of stripping away our empathy and compassion to murder a 99% realistic virtual human (and maybe even enjoy it), will we be psychologically any different from people who actually murder those of flesh and blood?”
Firstly, if we are capable of stripping away our empathy and compassion... we'd be psychopaths anyway. So, in a self-closing argument, we wouldn't be any different. That said, the apparatchiks for any dictator you'd like to name have done that throughout history. I don't believe that Genghis Khan's horde spent their spare time playing
Bioshock. The rub here lies in the 'if' premise.
Secondly, virtual people are not people. Hence the word 'virtual'.
Let me try a 'what if', "If we remove our ability to know when we've eaten too much and if we never lose our appetite and if we lose the ability to excrete surely we will actually explode when confronted by 1,300 gallons of porridge... on toast!'
Frankly, if we do this, then we definitely deserve to explode. Our stupidity condemns us. Not our games, no matter how realistic.
We are then steered through a customary confusion regarding “morals” and “ethics” (the latter concerns the codification of the former) before we hit the terrifying, awesome, hits-for-syllable crux:
“In 2040, the only difference between killing a virtual human and a real one might be whether you're linked to a computer when you do it. And the virtual humans you kill might very well be representations of real people in a massively multiplayer online world like Second Life, leading to all kinds of confusion between what's 'real' and not.”
Forget 'might'. One of the only differences between a virtual human and a real human will definitely be that one is virtual and one is real. (Another difference will be that the virtual human being is unlikely to steal your egg salad sandwich or call your choice in music 'poor'. If she does, then simply unplug it at his mains source for a while. That'll teach himherit a lesson and a half.)
Real humans?
(Also, the “virtual humans you kill might very well be representations of real people”... and? I'm going to go and slice up a poster of Che Guevara! That'll learn his representative self!).
See, my assumption is less scary and terrifying and likely to be used by a host of right-minded, right-thinking people who wish to bolster existing laws that we don't need.
I don't care about the virtual human beings! And I never will damn them! Here's why:
Back-ups.
Yeah... backing-up your data.
Graphics processors are getting better. CPUs are too. But so is storage. In 2040, any AI that I had in my possession (or even as a partner) would be backed up on a moment-by-moment basis. Probably not to hard disk, that's so 2031. More likely to some form of light-transported memory device.
It would be standard with the kit. Definitely. After all, you put all that effort in to creating a 'virtual human being', the chances are that you're going to put some effort in backing-up your work. This is actually less difficult than ensuring that your own child doesn't fall off the roof into the unfenced pool only to crawl out and be burned to death by the unprotected BBQ.
However, I live in a strange future in which storage keeps up with processor speed in terms of capacity and keeps down in terms of cost. A strange future in which I recall how 2,000+ years previously, with no video games, but large arenas in which people set slaves against animals we actually became less violent.
Weird, me.
Apparently, however, “As a result (of having no back-ups), governments might have no choice but to step in and define a legal ethical limit to virtual killing and simulated suffering, opening up a can of worms that will only be untangled through years of difficult deliberation and hand-wringing.”
A nightmare. But I'd agree with Benj here... given enough cod-philosophy, half-arsed 'what iffery' and general point-missing any government worth its mendacious little soul would spend time and money on gazing into this sort of grubby navel.
Read Benj Edwards' indubitably thought-provoking piece
here.
The opinion expressed in this article is that of the author and does not reflect those of SPOnG.com except when it does.
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