animal genocide in games

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Games like manhunt2 and carmageddon, well no need to explain those. I do not want to anyway.

My point whit this tread are the animals we are forced to kill when walking from town to questpoint. I mean the hundreds of wolfs, bears, guars, nix hounds, cliff racers(they deserve it), lions, tigers, white rabbits, nali, you name it. We are upset with the violence towards humans in games but the endangered species list rises. Where are the enviromentalists to complain about this. It is also a bad way to introduce animals to children. a wolf attacks, lives on roads and near town, ignores fluffy animals and works with the bandits and only atacks you. (a wolf cannot have such a bad listen check)

Six humanoids walk trough the forest. Three wear armor, clanking whit every step. One is not shutting up about balance, one is not shutting up whit complaining. a third wants to put the whole thing to the torch. The wolf is surely going to attack those weird beasts that do not smell like prey.

Maybe we can just make an animation of the letters xp on feet and take the quests go get it, the game levelscales anyway.

Now I am playing two worlds, a game large but not great. It has all the things like good grafics, an enormous amount of different ironwares etc etc but the place is littered with wolves and bears. And I mean so thick as the Morrowind cliffracers. remember those, they just got in line to be butchered. (Drat they forgot gameplay again.)

 

...what's wrong with Carmaggedon?

*twitch*

 

Merlanni,
what are you talking about? Genocide is according to Merriam Webster "the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group". Alternative definitions are "a massacre of a group of people", or "murder of entire ethnic group". The point I want to make is that genocide is per se and exclusively directed against _human beings_.

With mass meat production environmentalists have 'real' instances of 'mass slaughter' to address rather than dealing with virtual realities

With that distinction made, I don't really see a difference between killing scores of monsters or scores of animals in a computer game. In a fantasy setting especially I think it is sufficiently 'unreal' to not be confused with reality - for a correcting view on animals, for children and adults alike, watch "Dances with Wolfs", an entertaining antidote, easily administered.

 

I do not mind killing humans in games. ( Many do things....) It is the mindless wolves=monsters=kill them or Bears=monsters= just kill them.

Gamemakers place them so thick in the landscape that they have to form lines to attack mister charname. I engage in combat with thugs, and whole hordes of wolves spawn only attacking me. it is so stupid that everthing attacks outside the city borders. That gets to me. I am not a biologist, but I can understand that animals do not act like that.

As soon as people are getting mindlessly hurt in games activists man the barracades in hordes. Politicians are shouting whatever sounds good, but whit animals in games. Ohh just kill them. If the main character in manhunt2 works in a zoo and most sadisticly kills animals, it is ok.

It is not needed for the gameplay to let me kill 250 wolves and 15 bears in two days of gaming. I also killed a few humans. It s a sign of weakness. here and there a few wolves, ok, but on the road just outside of town. Come on.

And about manhunt and lees carmageddon. Gamemakers should know better. Provocation for cheap marketing and media exposure. But the line will be put back if the politicians get it their way until pong is considered dangerous.

 

Merlanni,
play NWN2. You get a chance to talk with winterwolves, not kill them, get XP and influence points with your party's druid.

Of course, killing wolves out of principle usually yields more XP, and furs on top

 

try postal, you can use a cat as a silencer. works good once or twice

 

I for one enjoy murdering animals in videogames, and I get a warm fuzzy feeling in my heart every time my character hacks that bear to kibble.

 

You remind of today's session of World of Warcraft, where the bulk of my quests involved killing wolves and cougars and giant ostrich-things.

My main thought about environmentalism in that game was, "God damn it, if a cougar and an ostrich-thing are both chasing after me, why can't they just turn on each other?"

So I don't think killing virtual animals is a big deal. At least, it's not anyway worse than killing virtual people. So long as people can distinguish from fantasy and reality, I don't see the problem in having aggressive wolves and cougars in oversized populations.

Heck, this just reminds of of a great D&D quote:

Player 1: "Crap, a pack of wolves on the horizon? Ready your weapons and spells!"

Player 2: "Don't worry. Wolves are never that aggressive toward humans, and anyhow they're probably more afraid of us than we are of them."

Player 1: "No, you don't understand. Those are D&D wolves. They're supposed to attack us because it's a random encounter."

 

Agree with all that Ragusa said...
I also want to say this; the most fun I've ever had killing animals was the slaughter of the poor little 'critters' in Warcraft 2... Combustion brought upon by multiple occurences of mouse clicking IS funny.

 

So, only the non-annoying animals should be protected from adventures?

You can make whatever parallel you like between killing animals in games and killing animals in real life. I'll take the chance that a good percentage of gamers realize they are playing a *game*.

 

There's nothing wrong with Carmageddon. If killing animals isn't your type, they can be turned off, at least the option was available in Carmageddon 2.

The animals I took the most pleasure slaughetering in Carmageddon 2 were humans.

 

Here's something to keep in mind; within the 'mindset' of the game, I would react to an animal based on its actions towards me; if merely threatening, I would avoid if possible; if skittish and evasive, I would also give a wide berth; but if it attacks me, I *WILL* defend my life, virtual as it is in this case.

One can argue till one becomes blue in the face that real-world wolves or bears would only attack if left no other choice, but it may well be that these virtual animals are parts of a *fictional* world that does NOT operate the same way as ours (else, why play there if it's exactly the same?) and will merely take the 'environmental defender' as their next batch of 'virtual wolf chow™'.

 

The animals blow up if clicked on to much in starcraft. Does that meen I killed them?

 

In NWN1 and 2 the animals where not such a problem. Now I am playing Two Wordls and boy have I killed many wolves. I cannot go left, right back or forward whitout meeting scores and scores of wolves. Jaheira would have said: "This is not balance." Pure cliffracer deja-vu.

My second point was: kill many humans and lots of peoples panic. Killing animals is considered normal.

 

More often than not the damn buggers are trying to tear my throat out! I'm just showing that the feeling is now mutual!

In the end I respond to them as I would any other group you direct violence towards in a video game. "They're just pixels."

 

I don't see how you could "kill" anything in a game. The puppy you see while playing some game may indeed be cute, but it still is just a piece of code (and textures and stuff, if we were to nitpick). You could shoot a million wolves, and there would be no pain (aside from the possible houl, which was a sound file).

As others have said, reality and gaming are different things.

 

In Fable you can also kick chickens instead of killing them.

When I play IWD2 I always kill the blind woman's cats in Targos (because it's fun) and in NWN I slaughter chickens, wolves and deer alike.

Who hasn't gone hunting for bears to get some quick XP in BG1? Come on...

Is it wrong to kill plants in videogames?

 

Oh yeah, I loved the chicken kicking.

edit: ooh, new gem