Because the thread I posted yesterday was closed and removed due to flaming, I asked if I could restart the discussion, for which permission was granted conditional on my adherence to the rules. So I'm giving this another try. I would like to thank the moderators and community managers for their understanding.
This is an argument against having active slave trading available as a player activity in space simulation massively multiplayer online (SSMMO) games. I’ve already had this conversation online a few times, so I’ve also already seen some of the arguments made in support of it. I’ve also had a lot of advice about steps I should take to change my attitude about the issue. I’m going to address most of those arguments throughout. It is focused primarily on providing feedback for Star Citizen and Elite: Dangerous, because these are games I own and want to enjoy.
To any moderators reading this: if you think that this thread is too controversial as content for your forum, or that it will devolve into a flame war, I ask that you please just lock it or temp ban the offenders (especially if it’s me), but let the discussion play out. If it’s in the game, it should be allowed to be discussed. If people are universally unable to have a civil exchange on the topic, maybe reconsider its value as game content?
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First, there are some things that I take as a given, you might not agree, but I’m establishing them as givens for the purposes of the discussion, because I think that they are true, and so the rest of the argument is contingent on those beliefs. If you can’t accept the givens, we just plain disagree, and there’s no point in discussing them or the subsequent positions derived therein. I acknowledge your disagreement.
- People play video games for many different reasons, including escape, excitement, competition, and free exploration. https://gamequitters.com/15-reasons-people-play-video-games/ The value proposition that SSMMOs bring to the table for gamers cover many of those bases, and the core value that those games bring in order to deliver that experience to the player is that you are the owner and leader of a spaceship who can engage in exploration, trading and economies, political conflict, and combat. That is basically the overarching mission statement for games like this: to deliver consumer enjoyment by providing that immersive experience, so that the player’s gaming needs are met.
- Slavery is a global evil that is independent of national politics, and the open trade of human beings is globally banned where these games are available in the market. There are nations with active policies that promote something that approaches what we historically think of as slavery, such as state-sponsored labor, so it’s still a problem, but it’s not trading people as commodities. It’s not a political party issue, either. In the US (where I reside), I doubt you’d find any elected official from any party who openly supported slavery as policy.
- Video games have the potential to change a person’s behavior. I’m not saying every single person, and I’m not saying that you, the reader, are susceptible, but there is a lot of scientific research to support this. The American Psychological Association performed a meta-analysis of studies, and came to the conclusion that there is a conclusive link between violent video games and aggressive behavior: APA review confirms link between playing violent video games and aggression
- Slavery is a socially charged topic in the United States that is directly linked to forms of racism that still exist today. There is a lot of literature on this, this is just a sample.
On a personal note for that last one, I live in the Southern United States, and I have personally spent time with people in parts of my state who still continue to use the N-word, and who have pontificated about slavery being “the good old days”. This horrifies me every time I’m exposed to it. So some of this is coming from that.
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Taking these givens, I think that slavery,
as a player-driven activity (meaning the player can buy and sell human beings as cargo), is harmful, distasteful, and unnecessary, and here is why.
1. It’s “too soon” for some people in the United States. There have been historical examples of video games being altered to deal with the sensitivity of recent events. For example:
- The Last of Us changed their “Outbreak Day” commemoration due to COVID-19, out of sensitivity for victims of the virus. https://www.kitguru.net/gaming/mustafa-mahmoud/the-last-of-us-outbreak-day-renamed-due-to-covid-19/
- Multiple games had content altered after 9/11 to respect and accommodate the victims and sensitivities of people affected by the attacks (beyond just removing the Twin Towers from content to reflect reality), including GTA3, MGS2, Shinobi, C&C:RA2, Propeller Arena (which was cancelled outright), SimCity, ChronX, Ace Combat 4, and Metal Wolf Chaos. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_entertainment_affected_by_the_September_11_attacks#Video_games
Some games have had their distribution limited due to their content, or experienced a public outcry:
- A game called Super Columbine Massacre RPG! allowed the player to play as one of the shooters in the Columbine events of 1999 in Littleton, Colorado, where two students went through their high school, killed 13 students, and then committed suicide. The game was submitted for consideration in the Slamdance festival, but was removed from consideration due to controversy and offensive content. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Columbine_Massacre_RPG!
- There is a handheld game developed by a Chinese company called Laden Vs. USA, where you get to play as a submarine pilot shooting at fighter jets (weird, I know). The packaging had pictures of the destruction of the Twin Towers. This game was banned in limited US markets, driven by secondary supplier choice, not policy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laden_VS_USA
- There is a Japanese game called Lay, wherein the player assumes the identity of a male who stalks and s a mother and two daughters, which features graphical sexual content of the acts of . This game is banned in multiple countries. Other games like it have been developed since that add additional features and better graphics, also banned. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lay
- There is a game on Steam called Slaves of Rome where the player assumes the role of a Roman slave trader, wherein slaves are purchased, sexually and physically tortured into submission, and then sent out to fulfill various quest objectives or sold for profit. This game is not available in some countries due to content. https://store.steampowered.com/agecheck/app/1380070/
So what is the point of all of that? It shows that, in order to accommodate consumers, video game content can be changed due to issues that could be personally painful to a minority of the potential playing base. It also shows that to not do this could potentially put the game at risk for market exclusion.
I’m not arguing that games should be banned or censored. If anything, I’m very much in support of free speech and open markets. However, if you examine the differences between the games that were banned and the games that were altered, those that were altered were done due to the socially charged nature of the content, contextualized within the fundamental player experience that the game intended to provide.
For example, Shinobi’s edits had to do with a scene wherein the protagonist leapt out of a skyscraper and used his sword to limit the speed of his fall by sticking it in the wall until he arrived safely on the ground, at which point the skyscraper fell down. It seems kind of silly, honestly, since that would likely not happen in real life, and it certainly had nothing to do with 9/11. However, the developers recognized the sensitivity of the visual of a skyscraper being destroyed, so they changed the scene. Why? Because it was “too soon”, and the scene was not necessary to the core experience of the game, which was to play as a ninja who engages in combat to defeat nefarious antagonists who intend to destroy the world. Whether or not the destruction of a skyscraper is involved is not necessary to achieve that core purpose.
Given that we in the United States still live with racism and racial tension that is derived from the historical slave trade, and despite that it’s been over a hundred years since slavery was banned in the United States and we still deal with the derivative social effects to the point that they are a near-daily source of painful controversy, I think that producing a game that allows the player to buy and sell human beings as cargo falls under the “too soon” criteria. As we still today live with racism and a host of social challenges that derive from the American slave trade that result in real world violence and death, it’s distasteful and offensive to include it as a role-playing option in a game, particularly one whose core experience is not slave trading, but to experience what it is like to own and fly a spaceship. Because being able to pretend to sell humans as cargo is in the game, it represents a source of pain for people who are still dealing with the aftermath of the US slave trade given that it is the root of contemporary racism, which is a current, raw, and socially charged topic with no end in sight.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-ta...-still-affects-black-people-in-the-u-s-today/
2. The way that slave trading is implemented in space simulation MMOs removes all ethical considerations from its mechanics, which could potentially drive a lack of player sensitivity to the topic. Looking to the example of slave trading in EVE Online and Elite: Dangerous, the act of trading slaves in those games is essentially a choice to make where human cargo is mixed in with a number of other available commodities for trade. To actually do it has game consequences, but it still reduces the concept to a pure risk/reward decision, and does not consider the ethical ramifications or provide an experience that allows the player to experience the relative gravitas of their decisions. As such, it reinforces the idea, consciously or unconsciously, that it’s not a bad thing in and of itself, it’s merely a choice driven by economic calculus. This is bad for two reasons:
- Taking into consideration the previously established link between violent content video games and aggressive behavior exhibited in its players, it has the potential to reinforce the idea that slavery is merely an economic choice. Because the true consequences of slave trading are not depicted in the form of the resultant human suffering, empathy for that human suffering is removed from the equation. If you consider that repetitive acts of violence in video games can increase aggression, it is possible that repetitive acts of slave trading can desensitize players to the ethical considerations of the practice, or reduce human empathy in general. Is there any scientific support for this? No, but because other cognitive links exist, it is reasonable to speculate that there are other linkages between behavior in video games having a direct effect on other kinds of cognitive function. On the up side, if this trend of space games trading slaves continues, we could be able to study any effects that might manifest.
- It is known that slave trading in games can attract a player who wants to use it as a platform to offend other players, or make light of slave trade (I will not provide sources for this due to name-and-shame rules, but if you peruse Reddit on the topic, or look for carrier names on Inara who trade in slave commodities, you will see what I mean). This undermines any respect for the topic and its long lasting negative societal effects, either turning slavery into joke fodder for certain players, or as a useful source of offense to troll other players. Why add to the pile.
3. Slave trading as a player activity in SSMMOs enables people who actually believe in the trade of human cargo to live out their fantasies in game unchallenged. Calling back to the motivations of game players, racists in the United States who believe that slavery never should have ended have the ability to use the slave trading mechanic to live out their fantasies in a science fiction setting without being confronted with the ethical implications and true human costs of the practice, which I believe to be an experience that is inappropriate for SSMMOs to provide, in much the same way that I believe that
Lay or
Slaves of Rome provide an experience that is fundamentally distasteful, and to which I am ethically opposed.
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Okay. Those are my core arguments against the activity. Note that I am not opposing the depiction of slave trading within SSMMOs, merely the ability of the player to participate in it. Some players I have interacted with on this topic enjoy the experience of role playing as an escaped slave who hunts down slave traders as part of their gaming experience. I don’t have a problem with that. I have a problem with slave trade as a player activity given its implementation.
Now, I’m going to address some arguments and counterpoints that have been made to me that are seemingly meant to undermine this position, which do not actually have anything to do with my core position, but are apparently ubiquitous due to the frequency with which they are summoned. Because I'm going to get these responses anyway, I'll address them.
1. It’s not real life, it’s a game. Yes, I am well aware of that. As established, there are a number of motivations that people have for gaming in the first place. Many of those fall under the category of “enjoyment”. If I want to play the game to enjoy the core experience provided by its design, and one aspect of that experience is distasteful and offensive in the extreme, that ruins my enjoyment of the entire game. I could choose not to purchase it. Since I purchased some of these games without the prior understanding that slave trading would be a player activity, my remedy is to either ask for a refund (which is at best uncertain), or post on consumer feedback boards in an attempt to provide feedback to the developer about my negative experience in the hopes that some alteration will be made to correct my dissatisfaction. In short: I’m not complaining about real life, I’m complaining about my dissatisfaction with the game.
Underlying that advice is also the assumption that because the game is not real, it’s not doing any harm. I disagree with that, for the aforementioned reasons. Games provide experiences to players and tell stories that can influence them and their thinking. They can have addictive qualities, change behavioral norms, or enable negative social behavior in certain people. They are a driver of enjoyment, but can also influence negatively. What happens in the game is not real, but what happens to you and how you think as a result of the game
is real. You might not be affected, you might be affected and not know it, or you might just know and acknowledge that you are. A common example is rage quitting. The game did that to you, in real life. But it can also have more subtle effects. For example, many of the people who I interacted with prior to this restatement have defended in-game slavery because of a game, ironically literally using many of the same arguments to support keeping slavery in the game that the Confederacy used to justify its retention prior to the Civil War, such as “it would be too hard to change”, “everyone will get angry if they change it”, and “we’ve done it like this for so long why should we change now?” That the irony was lost on them is something I blame on the game. It created a cognitive blind spot.
2. How do you resolve being okay with murder and drug dealing in a game, which also cause human suffering, but not being okay with trading slaves? I’ve been gaming and watching media for a long time. I’m desensitized to the kinds of “cartoon violence” depicted in many video games, to the point where I enjoy it. In the same way that I don’t actively think about all of the possible innocents that lived on the Death Star when Luke and Han blew it up, I don’t think about the family life of a space pirate when I kill them to get a bounty. I usually play “white hat” characters in video games. I understand that SSMMOs are meant to be dystopian in nature, and to allow players to explore the darker side of humanity through their gaming experiences. Some people want to be the bad guy. The murder of an innocent player or NPC by a “black hat” player is not something I’m concerned about, because it’s just the bad guy version of me killing the pirate. I get that, because I’m desensitized to it, and I know it’s just a game. I still think it’s messed up though. All games are just games, but that does not mean that people can’t find them offensive or even harmful. Whatever cognitive harm that has been done to me as regards violence in video games has already happened, so it’s not an issue for me. Would I let my teenage kids play SSMMOs (or any other game) as a black hat? No. I would not.
Furthermore, the issue of killing another person, whether innocent, guilty of crime, or in the context of war, is not something that is as socially charged as slavery, or apparently as controversial. There are laws against murder across the globe, with various flavors, and it’s something that has existed since the dawn of recorded human kind given the historical record. War has rules of engagement, and it’s accepted that death is a consequence. There are norms that exist and are universally agreed to within the game’s intended audience. A pacifist and conscientious objector might not choose to play these games, and complain that there is any combat at all. But combat is a core part of the games design, inseparable from the intended experience.
With respect to drug dealing, yes, I acknowledge that it clearly causes human suffering and is a driver of secondary crimes. The consequences of drug dealing in SSMMOs tends more towards what would represent a more realistic risk/reward calculation, and the consequent suffering is secondary, because to use a drug in the first place is a choice, unless you have been forced to use drugs by a third party in order to force addiction upon you. We have drug dealers around the world as well, so it is something we still live with today, and is a part of our shared experience.
For someone whose family member recently died of a drug overdose, or who died due to drug violence, I imagine that a game that allowed players to trade in drugs as a career choice without any depiction of the true costs inclusive of human suffering could be extremely offensive. I’d support them, and I would also acknowledge that the presence of trading illegal drugs in a game is not necessary to enjoy my experience. In other words, I don’t care if it’s in or out, but some of my arguments might apply to that situation and I’m being blind to that. However, that is not my fight, it’s another topic entirely, and I am focused on the issue of slave trading, due to a national pain that exists today.
Someone also mentioned genocide to me, and to my knowledge, there is no genocidal component to any participatory gameplay in the games I’m examining, wherein a player is single-handedly given the option to kill an entire race. It’s not applicable.
3. It’s not slavery, it’s indentured servitude. This is an argument specific to games that provide an experience wherein the lore includes a power/faction/organization emulating the Roman Empire, and uses the Roman slavery model to provide part of the futuristic dystopian feel of the game. Some of the people who have made this argument to me said things like this:
- It’s their choice.
- It’s actually a respected position with protected rights.
- They actually want to pay off their debt as a matter of honor, which we should support.
Okay, great, but I still have two issues with that: they are still called slaves, and even if they weren’t, they are still transported human cargo that are treated as if they were slaves, which means my prior arguments still apply. They are cargo. I also think that this position takes as a given that the player is well informed of the background fictional lore of a game’s universe and all of its nuances. I am not that kind of player for every game I play, although I did do some lore research in support of articulating my position on this topic. Given that players have a number of possible motivations to play games and might ignore the lore and just jump in, those nuances and distinctions might not always come out in the gameplay.
4. Slavery provides a more realistic vision of a dark and dystopian future universe which is important for personal enjoyment. I agree that it gives a dark and dystopian feel to an imagined universe. However, it’s not truly necessary, and it is definitely not necessary to include it as a player activity – it can be in the background. A dark and dystopian feel is not completely undermined by a player not being able to play as a slave trader.
Just because something is realistic and is inspired by terrible things in history or in speculative literature, it does not mean that it’s a necessary part of any game. For example, I’m a big fan of Iain Banks’ Culture series. In one of his novels, he describes a quick service medical procedure where one can easily remove parts of their bodies and reattach them elsewhere on their bodies, or on other bodies. In one such scene, a background character has used this technology to graft multiple penises on different parts of his body and displayed them prominently at a fancy space party. Pretty dark and dystopian, and possibly also funny as satire to a certain kind of person, but I would not argue that my science fiction game immersion is going to be ruined unless I can get multiple grafts available as avatar cosmetics.
The point of that is that “dark and dystopian”, “player slave trading”, and “enjoyable” are not co-dependent. If they are to you, then you don’t specifically want a space game with dystopian elements, you specifically want a futuristic dystopian slave trading game.
5. Just go play another game. I don’t feel like I should have to share this story, but it was so prevalent in responses to my opinions that I’m choosing to address it. If I was aware that games I have been supporting were going to be inclusive of a slave trading mechanic, I would not have supported them in the first place. I recall playing Elite and Wing Commander as a kid (on an Apple 2e, and later, a Mac), and thinking that it was weird when I saw slaves show up as a commodity in the trading lists. “Why would that even be in the game?” thought my young self. Needless to say, I chose not to trade slaves when given the opportunity.
When new versions of these games appeared on Kickstarter, I eagerly backed them once I became aware of them. My assumption was that, despite any historical lore, surely in today’s enlightened social environment, the developers would not mess around with what I thought was a fully charged third rail. I figured that they’d explain it away through writing, or they’d consign slavery to evil antagonists that remained outside of player activity. A poor assumption, it turns out. Naïve.
I fully admit that I didn’t pay attention to the development of these games. So many communications and updates come out that it’s not possible for me to keep track and internalize all of it. I supported the games, but I wanted to wait until the experience was ready to meet my expectations. I have a job, I have a family where I’m raising two kids and caring for adult parents, and I play other games. I am not an active participant, although I had a few times installed early access versions just to see how it was going, but then would uninstall them, since I wanted to wait for completion before investing my time. I wanted to experience it when it was done and the developer was ready to show it off as a finished product.
In the case of E
. I backed the game and installed it once a few years ago. The flight controls were crazy to me and really difficult, and I knew it was going to take practice and probably new controllers. I uninstalled it again, and let it sit for some time while I worked through a number of other games, until two months ago when I became aware that Odyssey was announced, and then my teenage son expressed some interest in playing as well.
With some of the additional features added since my initial misadventures, I found the game more accessible. So I played it, doing trading and exploration for quite a while. I loved it. I eventually came across a trader that had slaves. My reaction was, “seriously?” I just ignored it and kept playing the way I wanted to, until I decided that I wanted to say something about it, because it was slowly continuing to bother me.
I posted about my dissatisfaction with the implementation of slavery in E
on these forums, and was met with considerable opposition, some of which was predictable, but some of which surprised me and I listened to.
I did all that because I agree with you, I probably should go play another game. But I also want to play these games, I just want to play them without the presence of a participatory slave trade. There is no other comprehensive and immersive space experience that appeals to my nostalgia and does not have player-based slave trading in it. In the case of E
, I have clearly and obviously played long enough to derive an experience from the game that matched my investment, so I have zero right to ask for money back because I don’t want to support a game that I believe to be offensive and socially destructive. That ship has sailed.
Yet, I am a paying consumer and early believer in E
. I have the delegated right, and am encouraged, to provide consumer feedback to their producers provided that I meet the terms and conditions applicable to that feedback. If a refund is uncertain or not available as a remedy, I am using all available channels to provide consumer feedback, in the hope that it actually gets listened to and considered by the developers, for which there is a historical record of success in other situations analogous to this one in organizations that are clearly consumer focused and aware of issues in the realm of consumer empathy. You might question the realism of that, or you might say that it’s pointless. Perhaps you are right, but I choose to hope differently.
6. Why don’t you go do something IRL about slavery and leave us alone? Again, this should not be necessary to address, but it was also a prevalent criticism despite it’s logical fallaciousness. I try to use my time and money to do things in my life to help people and reduce suffering, once the bills are paid. Also consider that I have limited resources, and regret to inform you that I am unable to single-handedly end slavery on Earth. I can, however, try to use feedback to influence decisions such that slavery is not reduced to an acceptable fantasy game activity for personal entertainment and reinforcing the idea that it's something to be done for fun. That objective is low hanging fruit compared to trying to stop real international sex trafficking or state-sponsored labor.
7. /Liberal/Snowflake/SJW/Etc. Get bent.
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I don’t have anything else to say on this topic
at all. I think I’ve comprehensively explained my position and addressed the thematic arguments with which I was challenged when I brought this topic up prior to today.
I’m posting it in the hope that people who feel like I do will actually speak up and say something. I’m also hoping that the developers read it and that someone within those organizations will address it with honesty and openness, and maybe explain why I am wrong. I truly want to hear their rationale.
I don’t have any illusions that supporters of my position will likely be anything more than few in number, and that this will largely be cast as troll bait, manipulation, etc, all of which will be used to undermine the argument without honest consideration of any of its merits. It will likely be ignored by anyone with the ability to change it. But at least I tried my best to articulate what I see as a problem, because through my life, I have not directly challenged people when they openly reminiscence about the good old days of the slave trade. I’ve kept my mouth shut to avoid conflict. I’ve also played games that had disturbing or offensive elements and did not bother provide my feedback. Today, I am speaking out, because I think it’s wrong, and I’d like it to change because it’s ruining my enjoyment of games that I would otherwise love to play and get immersed in.
If you read an inherent judgement of you as a person in my words, that is not my intent, although my recent experience in discussing this topic has made me realize that I am judgmental on this topic. I’m trying not to be. Today, I’m only trying to explain how I feel and think, without telling you how to feel and think.
If you read this far, thank you for your time. I’m now stepping back from this for a bit, because honestly, I really just wanted to be heard and see if anyone felt like me, but I’m also done explaining it. I'm not going to reply to this thread, because I don't want to fall into a trap where it gets outright deleted again.
I had proposed a solution in the thread yesterday that was specific to Elite: Dangerous that I thought would help address some of the concerns I have about the game, and tried to ideate something that preserved community desires and provided an engaging storyline, while still mitigating what I see as a problem. Since it's deleted, I'm not going to bother restating it, as Frontier can retrieve it if they are truly interested. I'm sure some of you saw it, some of you seemed to think it was a neat idea with some alterations here or there. But honestly, I don't know if I'm going to keep playing or not because when I logged in last night to kill pirates, all I could think about was this, and how the community responded. It depressed me. Many of you seem like pretty nice people, though, and certainly witty. Maybe after a cool down, I'll be able to deal with it. But this is not about me, this is about the idea, and making me happy is not the point - that's merely the currency I'm using as a single consumer and early supporter to state my case. The point is to do the right thing.
![[PS4] Lorenzo Waringos](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/234/234580.jpg?1612617334){kind=avatar}
