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I have a pretty good sense about how I feel about pretending to be someone's friend for 6 months so I can gain access to their house and subsequently steal ever
by robfitz 17y ago
I have a pretty good sense about how I feel about pretending to be someone's friend for 6 months so I can gain access to their house and subsequently steal everything they own. Playing out that scenario was useful to me. But I wouldn't want my [hypothetical] kid to make a friend with the eventual intent of stealing their toys and never talking to them again.
There are a huge variety of moral questions. If there's a safe real-world parallel, I agree that's probably a better lesson, but games can probably be designed to help fill in a bunch of gaps.
- rapind 17y agoI wouldn't want my kid doing either. I'm not so sure that the virtual scenario is any better than the real world one. You're still dealing with other people and in this example there's still a victim. An MMO is still a social environment where you interact with other people. Those interactions can play out pretty much the same way they do in real life. The only difference is the protection of anonymity... which in my opinion is actually a negative difference. It relaxes people sense of social responsibility. I won't be teaching my kids that it's OK to be a complete douchebag online simply because no one knows who you really are... and if I ever catch a kid of mine doing something like that, you can bet your ass there'll be some very real world consequences.