Not really.
an objectionable or obnoxious person, or such persons collectively.
You cannot dehumanize that which is not human. NPC's are not human.
OP take a moment to be sure you can tell the difference. Consider all of the terrible things we do to NPC's, and then decide if name calling is the worst of it.
Nope, I actually served there. 1994. CC-130 aircrew.
"Thank you for clearing our system of these vermin!" is what the controlling faction representative said to me after I wiped out some rebels.
This is not OK. Yeah, "It's just a game" is what the response will be, but history says different. I have a personal connection to what happened in Rwanda, and here's a link to how the controlling faction there referred to its opponents: http://www.ppu.org.uk/genocide/g_rwanda4.html
Please just think about it.
So would you be cool with referring to NPCs using sexual, racial, or gender terms? I don't think you would be, and for good reasons, because of the pain those terms have caused over the centuries. "Vermin" has led to those same atrocities.
So would you be cool with referring to NPCs using sexual, racial, or gender terms? I don't think you would be, and for good reasons, because of the pain those terms have caused over the centuries. "Vermin" has led to those same atrocities.
Wars happen all the time, but war itself isn't illegal. The reasons for a war can be illegal (war crimes). A war of extermination where opponents are referred to as vermin is and has been found to be illegal. Full stop. So now in this game we have wars where the opponents are described as vermin, and people are OK with that. But in the game we'd never allow opponents to be described as, well, use your imaginations but let's say racially, sexually "different" than the prevalent culture.
It's just something I wonder about.
Is it worse to dehumanise people in order to justify treating them badly or to be fully aware that you're treating people badly but do it anyway?
Would you be cool with killing NPCs? Oh wait, you are. Seriously, your sense of "values" are beyond skewed and I strongly suggest that you need to uninstall ED and go play Candy Crush. Anything else is probably just too traumatizing.
Your entire premise is beyond idiotic - to compare a mass genocide of REAL PEOPLE to a load of pixels on screen.
Wars happen all the time, but war itself isn't illegal. The reasons for a war can be illegal (war crimes). A war of extermination where opponents are referred to as vermin is and has been found to be illegal. Full stop. So now in this game we have wars where the opponents are described as vermin, and people are OK with that. But in the game we'd never allow opponents to be described as, well, use your imaginations but let's say racially, sexually "different" than the prevalent culture.
It's just something I wonder about.
No, it's what leads to the mass genocide of real people. Normalizing terms like "vermin", even in a video game, leads to atrocities.