9 ms·

Video game execution watched by 325K players

83 points by cpeterso 12y ago

Steko 12y ago
Millions are familiar with the less dramatic but more entertaining Lyte Smites from LoL where kids questioning their bans on the forums and professing innocence are confronted with their in game chatlogs by Riot's lead social designer Lyte (Jeff Lin).
- UnoriginalGuy 12y ago
  That sounds entertaining. Can you link to some examples?
  - Steko 12y ago
    http://forums.na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=4713390 http://forums.na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=... http://forums.na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=4911009&page=2 http://forums.na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=...
comrh 12y ago
> There are of course moral questions surrounding the use of humiliation and “execution” as a form of public punishment within virtual environments. Is there?
- simplicio 12y ago
  I think there's an obvious practical concern, in that having 325k people watch your execution would probably be seen as an end in itself to whatever the MMORPG version of internet trolls is. So as a deterrent to cheating, this seems like it might be counter-productive. But its pretty funny, and as a PR stunt for Guild Wars, it certainly works as intended.
- Hytosys 12y ago
  Are there not moral questions surrounding humiliation in any other form?
  - nvnvnv 12y ago
    As someone who doesn't play many video games, it seems crazy to me that anyone would find this humiliating.
- A_COMPUTER 12y ago
  Exploring that would have been a more interesting topic for an article, but that would have been hard and would have deprived the author of the ability to assert it as self-evidently true.
- atmosx 12y ago
  Of course. As time goes by and online games become omni-present, along with the profits, social responsibility increases too. I would expect the developer to patch the server/software instead of killing the character for all to see. If the player is a 14 year old Italian, living in Napoli for instance (where the mob is stronger then the state) he just learned about a code of conduct that might stuck there throughout his lifespan leading to some seriously fucked up situations (because real world crime repercussions are different). Some people are seriously hooked up in online gaming. Some of them are kids for Christ's sake. What this company did here is plainly ridiculous. You don't respond to bullies with bullying if you don't want to promote violence. If you respond violently (by humiliating your opponent) you are effectively promoting violence and unethical behaviour, although indirectly. Closing the account and making a statement would be more than enough. What I see here, is just an 'ego' hurt... But the developer's and/or security-whatever-officer's ego should be feeling more for the 'problem' than the 'messenger'...
  - carrotleads 12y ago
    >> You don't respond to bullies with bullying if you don't want to promote violence. err... its a game where violence is the norm right.. or am I mistaken?
  - anigbrowl 12y ago
    If you're playing a game like Guild Wars it's probably because you are already entertained by fantasy violence and skulduggery. I actually think this is a healthy thing, insofar as it shows the character getting punished within the context of the game mechanics. Just blocking the account or whatever is arguably rather like the way we treat people with prison - sending them away to a place where we don't have to look at the consequences. If videogames do inform attitudes and behavior - and I find that thesis questionable - than doing the punishment out of sight arguably teaches people that the appropriate response to social problems is to make the offending parties disappear.
    - atmosx 12y ago
      I don't think that having your account taken over by the admin is in the context of game mechanics.
- pmontra 12y ago
  Yes. Punishment by death is not a option in many countries of the world so you should think twice before doing it in a game. However fighting and killing people is not an accepted behavior nearly anywhere so by this reasoning nobody should play those games, but we do and we realize the difference between playing and reality. That's what makes that question interesting. I did feel that execution to be different from in play killings, but exactly why? Only because years and years of training myself to think they are different? Don't know yet.
  - taytus 12y ago
    "Punishment by death is not a option in many countries of the world" It's a videogame. Geez!
    - coldtea 12y ago
      How about a videogame where kids compete in murdering their (in-game) parents while they are sleeping with kitchen knifes? Will you be totally OK with letting yours (and other) 6-12 year old kids play that? Would you sleep feeling totally safe at nights? We're talking about "sexist" games conditioning kids that women do this and men do that, etc. How about a game conditioning kids from a young age that executions are OK, something lots of societies frown upon?
      - Pizzalover 12y ago
        What about if you stop speculating and making stuff up?
      - nvnvnv 12y ago
        I guess what seems strange to me is that this particular incident is drawing so much ire, when we already have hugely popular games like GTA and Call of Duty (and I'm sure many more that I'm unaware of) that feature murder as a central element of the game play. I don't contest that video games can have an effect on people and especially children, but this just seems so tame in comparison to what else is already out there.
- bvanslyke 12y ago
  Yes, and that is why I've forwarded this video to Human Rights Watch.
  - steve19 12y ago
    I lost my HOME to some greedy capitalist who bought up our entire street and forced me to sell. She then built hotels only the rich could afford. I ended up bankrupt. Please write to Human Rights Watch about my situation* * It happened during a game of Monopoly.
- venomsnake 12y ago
  There aren't. Some pixels were punished, some pixels died. Unless the person is his avatar ... but in that case there is a big hell awaiting me for playing so much GTA ...
  - unfamiliar 12y ago
    The avatar is something he spent time on and valued. He was cheating in order to take things that others had spent time on and valued. So killing his avatar as a response to these "crimes" is equivalent to taking someones property or money as punishment for theft. I'd hope you'd agree there are moral questions about what constitutes a just and proportional response.
    - hueving 12y ago
      Same thing happens when an account is banned. The work that went into that account is lost.
- coldtea 12y ago
  Would a game with black slaves in a present day setting be OK? With white owners reffering to them as n..., et al? It might raise some moral questions, right? Well, in the same way slavery has been abolished in the US (well, after taking like another 100+ years for Jim Crow laws and seggregation to end in their official form), and such things leave a bad taste in people, other countries have also abolished the death penalty, and see capital punishment in a similar light...
  - zaroth 12y ago
    So this is the standard question of whether some speech can be worse than other speech, which is of course true, raising the question, should we legally distinguish them, which of course, we do. I think a game may incorporate any otherwise illegal or immoral acts without itself raising any moral questions, to the extent that we don't see the actions in the game paralleling actions the player would otherwise commit IRL. Mass murder in a video game isn't seen as soothing the yearning of millions of otherwise mass murders, so there's very little moral angst. Of course it may cross some gray line which makes it hate speech and illegal to sell in certain jurisdictions, but otherwise you are free to not buy it, or organize a boycott of it, and to a great extent this is already happening and perhaps even to some extent actually reducing the commercial market for such games. To the extent that indie or non-profit games integrate objectionable material, policing the game is no different than policing what I write in my own journal. We do certainly regulate the sale and in extraordinary circumstances even the possession of such material.
  - comrh 12y ago
    There is slavery in the Warcraft lore, the humans enslaved the Orcs. Surely such a specific example as yours would raise serious questions, but what about the Orcs?
    - coldtea 12y ago
      Well, it's always about the specifics too. After all executions are also in tons of movies and books (and perhaps games), that doesn't mean it's the same everywhere.
- huac 12y ago
  The (philosophical) question is one of affect. MMORPG's in particular are designed to create a strong sense of attachment between avatar and player - how else will they convince you to keep playing? While it may not seem important to an outsider, to a player, the 'expensive armor' and general appearance of a character creates a sense of attachment known only to its controlling player. As such, a traumatic break of this bond can have a corresponding psychological effect on the player. So yes - humiliating, executing, public shaming of a player can have significant effects on player and as such, we should consider the moral implications.
minimaxir 12y ago
> This week, a player named DarkSide was caught using a cheat program to teleport into buildings, kill powerful characters and make off with all the loot. To those familiar with Guild Wars 2, that's not remotely how Guild Wars 2 works. The hacks occurred in the World vs. World area, which is one of the designated PvP areas of the games. The hacks only bypassed player stronghold defenses via teleport, he didn't "make off with all the loot." More info: https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/game/wuv/Blacktide-Thief-Hacker-Strikes-again-part-10/ https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/game/wuv/Blacktide-Thi... Note that "public executions" were also a tradition in Guild Wars 1, where the game's "god of death" killed those caught selling gold: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9B6bZSpQHxU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9B6bZSpQHxU
jmount 12y ago
http://www.juliandibbell.com/texts/bungle_vv.html http://www.juliandibbell.com/texts/bungle_vv.html
sidcool 12y ago
I don't see anything earth shattering here. Am I missing something? I thought that always happened in Guild Wars 2. And the title makes it sound like 325k people assembled online to witness the event.
- IkmoIkmo 12y ago
  Wholly uninteresting. And it's not really unique to GW2, of course. Banning after players are caught cheating happens every day in online games. I guess the difference is normally players are simply banned and maybe a forum post lets everyone know if the player was famous, instead of an admin logging in, removing gear, suiciding and then deleting the character and then banning the account which is 100% for dramatic effect. I guess this was congenial for the 'journalist' who likes to use dramatic effect in his titles himself.
- PopeOfNope 12y ago
  Welcome to journalism. Making a mountain out of a molehill since Citizen Kane ;)
djhworld 12y ago
If a normal player jumped off that bridge, would they also die too?
- icebraining 12y ago
  I can't tell you about that particular bridge, but you can die from falling¹. That said, I don't think it would have had any penalty, the character would just be reborn somewhere else. ¹ https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:Fall_Damage.jpg https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:Fall_Damage.jpg
sergiotapia 12y ago
>There are of course moral questions surrounding the use of humiliation and “execution” as a form of public punishment within virtual environments. Despite this – or perhaps because of it – the video of DarkSide’s demise has already been viewed by over 300,000 people, hungry for a peculiar display of gaming justice. Really? I think if I were to ask anybody I know this question they would straight up laugh in my face.
perfTerm 12y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if this would make players want to cheat more. "Hey hey! Look at my character! 300,000 people watched him!". I don't really think making the ethics of an in game execution a big deal is really the right tact though. Aren't there better things to do?
matxip 12y ago
There are a lot of people in this thread who are taking about the morality of killing a character while not understanding how death is framed in the game. Things that happen when you die: You need to WP (way point). It costs a negligible amount for most player and is instantaneous (sans load times). In towns, like in this case, it's free. They cover all maps, and are normal two minutes or so walk apart from each other. In the videos, the character would literally have been alive and where he was in less than a second at no cost. If you're in combat when you die, you're armor will slowly break (after numerous deaths one piece eventually will). This is free to fix and not a difficult NPC to find. Aside, falling to your death when not in combat will not cause this effect. Another point to bring up is that players are falling to their death nonstop everywhere. The game has hidden areas, "jumping puzzles" and generally encourages players to make risky jumps just for the fun of it. Seeing a player fall and die, even in the middle of a town, would go fully unnoticed unless maybe by a few who might resurrect the player on a whim. Finally, I didn't see anything of real in game value on that account and the player only had one other low level character. I'm guessing they purchased it during the resent 75% off sale with the sole intent of hacking. Further, it was probably an alt account that the person was expecting to get banned eventually. In other words, the videos doesn't really show in game value being destroyed or lasting damage being done as punitive cruelty. Rather, it's a just a funny twist on the normally mundane task of banning. This scares no reasonable player and, rather, actually is reassuring to know they're dealing with hackers.

83 points by cpeterso 12y ago

Steko 12y ago

Millions are familiar with the less dramatic but more entertaining Lyte Smites from LoL where kids questioning their bans on the forums and professing innocence are confronted with their in game chatlogs by Riot's lead social designer Lyte (Jeff Lin).

UnoriginalGuy 12y ago
That sounds entertaining. Can you link to some examples?
- Steko 12y ago
  http://forums.na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=4713390 http://forums.na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=... http://forums.na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=4911009&page=2 http://forums.na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=...

comrh 12y ago

> There are of course moral questions surrounding the use of humiliation and “execution” as a form of public punishment within virtual environments. Is there?

simplicio 12y ago
I think there's an obvious practical concern, in that having 325k people watch your execution would probably be seen as an end in itself to whatever the MMORPG version of internet trolls is. So as a deterrent to cheating, this seems like it might be counter-productive. But its pretty funny, and as a PR stunt for Guild Wars, it certainly works as intended.
Hytosys 12y ago
Are there not moral questions surrounding humiliation in any other form?
- nvnvnv 12y ago
  As someone who doesn't play many video games, it seems crazy to me that anyone would find this humiliating.
A_COMPUTER 12y ago
Exploring that would have been a more interesting topic for an article, but that would have been hard and would have deprived the author of the ability to assert it as self-evidently true.
atmosx 12y ago
Of course. As time goes by and online games become omni-present, along with the profits, social responsibility increases too. I would expect the developer to patch the server/software instead of killing the character for all to see. If the player is a 14 year old Italian, living in Napoli for instance (where the mob is stronger then the state) he just learned about a code of conduct that might stuck there throughout his lifespan leading to some seriously fucked up situations (because real world crime repercussions are different). Some people are seriously hooked up in online gaming. Some of them are kids for Christ's sake. What this company did here is plainly ridiculous. You don't respond to bullies with bullying if you don't want to promote violence. If you respond violently (by humiliating your opponent) you are effectively promoting violence and unethical behaviour, although indirectly. Closing the account and making a statement would be more than enough. What I see here, is just an 'ego' hurt... But the developer's and/or security-whatever-officer's ego should be feeling more for the 'problem' than the 'messenger'...
- carrotleads 12y ago
  >> You don't respond to bullies with bullying if you don't want to promote violence. err... its a game where violence is the norm right.. or am I mistaken?
- anigbrowl 12y ago
  If you're playing a game like Guild Wars it's probably because you are already entertained by fantasy violence and skulduggery. I actually think this is a healthy thing, insofar as it shows the character getting punished within the context of the game mechanics. Just blocking the account or whatever is arguably rather like the way we treat people with prison - sending them away to a place where we don't have to look at the consequences. If videogames do inform attitudes and behavior - and I find that thesis questionable - than doing the punishment out of sight arguably teaches people that the appropriate response to social problems is to make the offending parties disappear.
  - atmosx 12y ago
    I don't think that having your account taken over by the admin is in the context of game mechanics.
pmontra 12y ago
Yes. Punishment by death is not a option in many countries of the world so you should think twice before doing it in a game. However fighting and killing people is not an accepted behavior nearly anywhere so by this reasoning nobody should play those games, but we do and we realize the difference between playing and reality. That's what makes that question interesting. I did feel that execution to be different from in play killings, but exactly why? Only because years and years of training myself to think they are different? Don't know yet.
- taytus 12y ago
  "Punishment by death is not a option in many countries of the world" It's a videogame. Geez!
  - coldtea 12y ago
    How about a videogame where kids compete in murdering their (in-game) parents while they are sleeping with kitchen knifes? Will you be totally OK with letting yours (and other) 6-12 year old kids play that? Would you sleep feeling totally safe at nights? We're talking about "sexist" games conditioning kids that women do this and men do that, etc. How about a game conditioning kids from a young age that executions are OK, something lots of societies frown upon?
    - Pizzalover 12y ago
      What about if you stop speculating and making stuff up?
    - nvnvnv 12y ago
      I guess what seems strange to me is that this particular incident is drawing so much ire, when we already have hugely popular games like GTA and Call of Duty (and I'm sure many more that I'm unaware of) that feature murder as a central element of the game play. I don't contest that video games can have an effect on people and especially children, but this just seems so tame in comparison to what else is already out there.
bvanslyke 12y ago
Yes, and that is why I've forwarded this video to Human Rights Watch.
- steve19 12y ago
  I lost my HOME to some greedy capitalist who bought up our entire street and forced me to sell. She then built hotels only the rich could afford. I ended up bankrupt. Please write to Human Rights Watch about my situation* * It happened during a game of Monopoly.
venomsnake 12y ago
There aren't. Some pixels were punished, some pixels died. Unless the person is his avatar ... but in that case there is a big hell awaiting me for playing so much GTA ...
- unfamiliar 12y ago
  The avatar is something he spent time on and valued. He was cheating in order to take things that others had spent time on and valued. So killing his avatar as a response to these "crimes" is equivalent to taking someones property or money as punishment for theft. I'd hope you'd agree there are moral questions about what constitutes a just and proportional response.
  - hueving 12y ago
    Same thing happens when an account is banned. The work that went into that account is lost.
coldtea 12y ago
Would a game with black slaves in a present day setting be OK? With white owners reffering to them as n..., et al? It might raise some moral questions, right? Well, in the same way slavery has been abolished in the US (well, after taking like another 100+ years for Jim Crow laws and seggregation to end in their official form), and such things leave a bad taste in people, other countries have also abolished the death penalty, and see capital punishment in a similar light...
- zaroth 12y ago
  So this is the standard question of whether some speech can be worse than other speech, which is of course true, raising the question, should we legally distinguish them, which of course, we do. I think a game may incorporate any otherwise illegal or immoral acts without itself raising any moral questions, to the extent that we don't see the actions in the game paralleling actions the player would otherwise commit IRL. Mass murder in a video game isn't seen as soothing the yearning of millions of otherwise mass murders, so there's very little moral angst. Of course it may cross some gray line which makes it hate speech and illegal to sell in certain jurisdictions, but otherwise you are free to not buy it, or organize a boycott of it, and to a great extent this is already happening and perhaps even to some extent actually reducing the commercial market for such games. To the extent that indie or non-profit games integrate objectionable material, policing the game is no different than policing what I write in my own journal. We do certainly regulate the sale and in extraordinary circumstances even the possession of such material.
- comrh 12y ago
  There is slavery in the Warcraft lore, the humans enslaved the Orcs. Surely such a specific example as yours would raise serious questions, but what about the Orcs?
  - coldtea 12y ago
    Well, it's always about the specifics too. After all executions are also in tons of movies and books (and perhaps games), that doesn't mean it's the same everywhere.
huac 12y ago
The (philosophical) question is one of affect. MMORPG's in particular are designed to create a strong sense of attachment between avatar and player - how else will they convince you to keep playing? While it may not seem important to an outsider, to a player, the 'expensive armor' and general appearance of a character creates a sense of attachment known only to its controlling player. As such, a traumatic break of this bond can have a corresponding psychological effect on the player. So yes - humiliating, executing, public shaming of a player can have significant effects on player and as such, we should consider the moral implications.

minimaxir 12y ago

> This week, a player named DarkSide was caught using a cheat program to teleport into buildings, kill powerful characters and make off with all the loot. To those familiar with Guild Wars 2, that's not remotely how Guild Wars 2 works. The hacks occurred in the World vs. World area, which is one of the designated PvP areas of the games. The hacks only bypassed player stronghold defenses via teleport, he didn't "make off with all the loot." More info: https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/game/wuv/Blacktide-Thief-Hacker-Strikes-again-part-10/ https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/game/wuv/Blacktide-Thi... Note that "public executions" were also a tradition in Guild Wars 1, where the game's "god of death" killed those caught selling gold: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9B6bZSpQHxU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9B6bZSpQHxU

jmount 12y ago

http://www.juliandibbell.com/texts/bungle_vv.html http://www.juliandibbell.com/texts/bungle_vv.html

sidcool 12y ago

I don't see anything earth shattering here. Am I missing something? I thought that always happened in Guild Wars 2. And the title makes it sound like 325k people assembled online to witness the event.

IkmoIkmo 12y ago
Wholly uninteresting. And it's not really unique to GW2, of course. Banning after players are caught cheating happens every day in online games. I guess the difference is normally players are simply banned and maybe a forum post lets everyone know if the player was famous, instead of an admin logging in, removing gear, suiciding and then deleting the character and then banning the account which is 100% for dramatic effect. I guess this was congenial for the 'journalist' who likes to use dramatic effect in his titles himself.
PopeOfNope 12y ago
Welcome to journalism. Making a mountain out of a molehill since Citizen Kane ;)

djhworld 12y ago

If a normal player jumped off that bridge, would they also die too?

icebraining 12y ago
I can't tell you about that particular bridge, but you can die from falling¹. That said, I don't think it would have had any penalty, the character would just be reborn somewhere else. ¹ https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:Fall_Damage.jpg https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:Fall_Damage.jpg

sergiotapia 12y ago

>There are of course moral questions surrounding the use of humiliation and “execution” as a form of public punishment within virtual environments. Despite this – or perhaps because of it – the video of DarkSide’s demise has already been viewed by over 300,000 people, hungry for a peculiar display of gaming justice. Really? I think if I were to ask anybody I know this question they would straight up laugh in my face.

perfTerm 12y ago

I wouldn't be surprised if this would make players want to cheat more. "Hey hey! Look at my character! 300,000 people watched him!". I don't really think making the ethics of an in game execution a big deal is really the right tact though. Aren't there better things to do?

matxip 12y ago

There are a lot of people in this thread who are taking about the morality of killing a character while not understanding how death is framed in the game. Things that happen when you die: You need to WP (way point). It costs a negligible amount for most player and is instantaneous (sans load times). In towns, like in this case, it's free. They cover all maps, and are normal two minutes or so walk apart from each other. In the videos, the character would literally have been alive and where he was in less than a second at no cost. If you're in combat when you die, you're armor will slowly break (after numerous deaths one piece eventually will). This is free to fix and not a difficult NPC to find. Aside, falling to your death when not in combat will not cause this effect. Another point to bring up is that players are falling to their death nonstop everywhere. The game has hidden areas, "jumping puzzles" and generally encourages players to make risky jumps just for the fun of it. Seeing a player fall and die, even in the middle of a town, would go fully unnoticed unless maybe by a few who might resurrect the player on a whim. Finally, I didn't see anything of real in game value on that account and the player only had one other low level character. I'm guessing they purchased it during the resent 75% off sale with the sole intent of hacking. Further, it was probably an alt account that the person was expecting to get banned eventually. In other words, the videos doesn't really show in game value being destroyed or lasting damage being done as punitive cruelty. Rather, it's a just a funny twist on the normally mundane task of banning. This scares no reasonable player and, rather, actually is reassuring to know they're dealing with hackers.