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Massively Speaking Podcast
Massively Speaking Episode 185: Bree-to-play
Latest episode: Tuesday, February 7th, 2012
Reader Comments (5)
Posted: May 28th 2009 7:22PM JohnnyMann420 said
I mean MMOs are fake, #1. If you are aware that you love being non violent while you are playing a violent videogame, then doesn't that prove that people are smart enough to know better therefore negating the necessity to extend pacifism in the MMOs they are currently playing? What? Are they worried they will like violence or do they just hate it? If they hate it then why are they playing?
The reasons I ask these questions isn't because I hate pacifism or anything moderately close to this. The real reason I ask is because I believe this some weird, fake fad that gamers have recently undergone where they try to level up their dude in WoW w/o killing anything and relying on delivery quests. To me it started as a challenge, then evolved into a profession for the need to not kill anything including pixels.
So here we are. People (who are likely pacifists) are becoming outspoken on avoiding killing things in a fricken videogame. Let alone creatures that don't even exists.... for what reason? Just to say, "I'm like soooo peaceful, I wont kill pixels"?
I'm telling you this has become a bragging right fest fad, rather than an actual want. Must like vegetarians in a 90's high school or Bisexuality among females in 90's colleges.. hehe. It's "cool" to be peaceful.
A person really like this (a real pacifist) would have already circumvented their need via something that already provides them with what they are looking for....there are plenty of MMOs out there that take a different approach and no killing is involved. Quite a few are free.
Anyways.
That's about all I have to say about that.
Posted: May 28th 2009 10:45PM (Unverified) said
Nobody's getting up in arms about killing in video games, and nobody wants to take your WoW away. But just think 3-dimensionally for a second and realize there might be more options to video games than kill or don't kill, and some people might want to play these games.
Oh, and don't say Free Realms doesn't have killing just because of the stars. It's the same thing.
If there is more to life than combat, why isn't there more to online video games than combat?
Posted: May 28th 2009 11:02PM Myria said
Because for the most part that "more to life" stuff is boring, games are one of those things we do to escape the drudgery of that day-to-day stuff. How many people want to play a driving to work MMO? A shopping for the week's groceries MMO? A cleaning the bathroom MMO? Or a sewing MMO? I mean, seriously, I like to sew, but exciting it ain't.
Games and contests are invariably at their base a form of combat for a reason. Chess is hardly pacifistic, nor is checkers, and five card stud is probably rivaled only by marriage when it comes to causing gunfights.
Competition is combat.
Our games are invariably competitive.
A game sans competition isn't a game.
That doesn't mean all games have to be about killing ten bears per level, but an MMO without combat would be like a game of chess without the ability to capture an opponent's pieces -- boring and pointless.
Posted: May 29th 2009 6:41AM Lethality said
No one is saying an MMO without combat... no one is saying a "drive to work MMO".
The entire point is that MMOs exist in open worlds,and there are HUNDREDS of options for different styles of gameplay to be satisfied there.
If someone wants to play ONLY as a crafter, so be it. ONLY as a merchant, so be it. ONLY as a diplomat, so be it.
MMO developers are doinga huge disservice to their players and the worlds they create by simply offering combat as "the game"
Posted: May 29th 2009 1:07PM (Unverified) said
I'm not saying we need sports MMOs, but they're clear examples of how you can have competition without combat. Hell, the article cites plenty of other evidence. Racing, mystery solving, puzzles, action platforming... stuff that happens to be in many video game genres, just suspiciously absent from MMOs.
If you think life is so mundane such that you need video games to fill some pent up violence quotient, that's your own issue. Go climb a mountain or something.