MMOGs and Crime
I guess the recent news about "Baby Grace" (see http://www.pbnation.com/showthread.php?p=41926890 and countless other articles) really was just another instigator in stirring the ever-popular topic of MMOG and really bad behaviour.
Hey, looking at this blog, you can easily blame me to be biased when it comes to crimes committed by people who play MMOGs. The truth is that I'm rather sick of all the forth and back between gamers, media and non-gamers.
Well, guess what? You're all wrong. I don't think that whether someone is on or offline committing a crime should have any bearing... it's actually more distracting talking about something that happens when you have sheep bleeping in one corner "MMO made XYZ kill ABC!" with the other sheep bleeping in the other corner "MMO doesn't kill people, people kill people!"
Why isn't ANYONE coming out and saying the only solution to this is prevention, and that in order to prevent, researchers and social scientists and law makers HAVE TO look at the behaviour and thinking of those perps. And if their life tends to be spent mostly online, well, that means that anyone should have access to all those files so this can be properly investigated, analysed AND communicated to the greater public. Virtual online worlds are perfect places to collect information, since (unlike real life), all activity, types statements and even audio can and is recorded.
As important, if there are specific behaviour patterns online can be tied to subsequent violence / misdemeanour, the same level of alerts, communications, access to authorities and support should be available online than in real life.
Just because someone lives most of their life online doesn't mean that they should be protected by the game before something bad happens in real life. Just saying.
1 Comments:
Oh man, this raises sooo many different really pertinent points.
I think what I'd say right off the bat, is that we just don't have the level of understanding in these worlds that we'd need. the sheep that you're talking about - some of them are the researchers! People who look at game violence and game addiction often come to the picture with firm beliefs about what causes violence, addiction, or what have you - and combined with the almost ubiquitous distain for gaming among those people...
What I'm saying is that a lot of these problems are top down, and they do need to be centered - rather than either fundamentally pro or anti game.
For now, I think that a huge onus is on the journalists. Some of them are going into these issues and collecting the right facts, and keeping a practicality and balance. Others just aren't.
// long story short - we need to understand these problems before we can even enter this privacy question - which is an enormous and embattled question all its own.
Nov 28, 2007, 11:42:00 AM
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