posted 05-31-99 10:21 PM ET            

As for SMAC - hovertanks, etc. attack other units - those units represent groups of soldiers, i.e. human beings. You can also attack non-military units, "nerve-staple" discontented citizens, use nerve gas, etc. etc.

Regardless of the movie you are shown (it could be a clip from "Bambi") "eradicating" a faction is the game equivalent of that frequent real world diversion commonly known as genocide.

SMAC is a game, people, and the events it depicts are extremely mild incomparison with say, most of Doom, Quake, Duke Nuk'em, etc., not to mention the disembowelment scene in Wing Commander 3. SMAC isn't SimCity3000, but on the spectrum of game violence and real world violence, it is very mild.

You COULD always choose not to "eradicate" that faction, but leave them with one city and prevent them fropm being a threat to your security. In fact the best scoring and most interesting forms of victory are NOT conquest, but transcendence, but no, you wanted to wipe 'em off the face of planet, didn't you? You chose to see the movie, when you chose to wipe that faction out of existence. What hypocrisy!

posted 06-01-99 05:40 AM ET            

I know that SMAC is a game and just a game and whatever violence I chose to use (mmmm nerve gas and nukes springs to mind)
happens only in the game.

dkl apparently you don't know the difference.

Do you let your children watch the news ?

REALITY CHECK please.

posted 06-02-99 08:32 PM ET            

It would appear to be our children who don't know the difference between what happens in a movie or a game, and the real world, wouldn't you agree? If not, that's ok, there are an awful lot of people in Colorado, Kentucky, and D.C. who will do it for you.

I don't mean to dismiss all the helpful advice about avoidance, but the upshot of it is that you can't turn a kid loose with this game to enjoy it like you could with Civ, and be reasonably sure he's not going to run into graphic violence. I really don't care who the "target audience" is, anymore than I would buy that as a defense for drugs or pornography.

It's one more jot of horror in an industry that already has way too much of it. It is completely unnecessary, contributes nothing to the story or the game. Civ didn't need this kind of crap, why does SMAC?

(sigh) At least it's not a rape scene, which would be equally "logical" and helpful to the plot. I suppose I should be grateful for that. I'm not.

posted 06-03-99 01:40 AM ET            

You can lay a huge amount of blame on the ratings obsessed slathering drones of the news media, who gave such lavish coverage to Columbine and the two sick shooters. In that tragically demented state of "everything sucks and I want to blow up the world" nihilism that a very small minority of kids and a few adults fall into, the attention given to the shooters is a kind of glorification. They can easily get the impression (correctly, with our "blood sells" media mentality) that by commiting a spectacularly heinous act, they will get a degree of recognition and attention that they would never otherwise get.

Games, even quake or doom types, don't take a normal, emotionally healthy individual and turn him or her into a raging sociopath. Emotionally healthy individuals have a variety of emotional and social and other restraints that generally keep us from committing homicide when we have a bad day.
Someone who is unstable or even severely whacked may find an outlet in that type of game, but there are many other stimuli and outlets that are far more satisfying to violence craving individuals. The "games caused the kid to go off the deep end" line of sh*t is, depending on the speaker, either:
a defense attorney's BS ploy, a la the Dan White "Twinkie Defense"; or, a parent's cop out for their own failure to have a clue and recognize signs of significant mental and/or emotional disturbance; or, the news media's desire to point the blame elsewhere; or politicians or others desire to avoid asking tougher, hard to answer questions about the total fabric of our society and how some kids and adults get so whacked.

"At least its not a rape scene" I'd laugh if it wasn't such a grossly overblown exageration. If you think that's on a par with a rape scene, you are truly clueless, and I hope you never have the misfortune of being personally exposed to real violence in your life. I don't think it's cool, or necessary, but equating that to a rape scene is about as accurate as equating simple assault to a homicide.

As far as the "plot" of the game - the movie only comes up because you, as the player, have made a deliberate choice as to course of action that has killed or captured and subjugated a band of your virtual fellow humans in the game world. That means that you have deliberately developed weapons, invaded their sovereign territory, and killed their game world soldiers and civilians. ITS A GAME - how you play is your choice, but you seem to want to be insulated from all reminders of that choice.

Do you think it's preferable to have a kid (or any other of us dysfunctional freaks who can't tell the difference between games and real life) to get a video of bambi, or maybe Tiny Tim with his ukelele singing "Tiptoe, through the Xenofungus?" Perhaps with a message saying "Congratulations, your genocidal approach to game play has ethnically cleansed planet of the whoevers?"

If you really want to commit game genocide, and have it styrofoam packaged like beef in the grocery store, do a full install of the game, so the movies are copied to your hard drive - or if you have a CD burner, you can make your own, sanitized, Politically Correct version, by finding the offending movie file, and taking one you like better and copying and renaming it.

posted 06-03-99 06:54 PM ET            

Way to go! You da man!

posted 06-06-99 01:50 AM ET            

Let's talk a bit about perceptions of reality. You seem convinced that 99.9 % of people have a really good grip on it. I don't think the percentage is anywhere near that high, I'd put it at around 60% at best.

Why do I think so? Well, a couple of things come to mind. One was a book by "Adam Smith" (his pseudonym), writing about economics in a book titled, "Supermoney". He discloses the results of a survey in which 4 out of 10 college-educated Americans, in the 1980's, didn't know that we import any oil. If that doesn't induce a gasp of dismay, you must not have lived through gas-rationing, "the moral equivalent of war", the whole energy crisis. Another is a hazily-remembered reminiscence by a series celebrity talking to a high-school audience, who found to his astonishment that most of them thought "Star Trek" was reality -- that there actually was a Captain Kirk and a Spock out there somewhere, doing what they saw on the screen.

So, while I'll ignore your impugning my intelligence, I won't give you any ground at all on this issue. It sounds like whining that nobody, including or especially Firaxis, has any responsibility for their own actions.

This is a position that our society is evolving to increasingly reject -- that the tobacco companies who have made fortunes selling their product, have no responsibility for the effects. That the purveyors of game and movie violence are innocent of the effects on society as a whole.

But this forum isn't for philosopy, it's for SMAC,so let's nail it down to SMAC. Now what we're talking about here is a specific two movies, male and female, being tortured after capture. We can deal with that without all these other issues clouding the matter.

First, it's a result of my actions, choices? No. I can make these same choices, take these same actions in Civ, without being subjected to this. When you have games like SMAC and CIV where the highest score is biased in favor of conquest, that is the best way to win the game. When you ACTUALLY go to war,one country against another, you are not compelled to torture the other side. Indeed, you do and should get prosecuted and executed for doing so. This argument falls apart under its own weight.

Second, let's talk about you thinking a rape scene is absurd. It's not. What we have here is a naked man/woman writing in a force-field being tortured and screaming. This is not that far from rape, not at all. But let's dig deeper into the scene. What does it contribute, exactly? How does it advance the game? If this were a movie, we'd slap an NC-17 rating on it and keep children out of the theater. If it were a book and we came across this, a copyeditor would cut it as completely gratuitous, adding nothing to the plot, there for nothing but the titillation.

But, it's a game. So we slap an NC-17 rating on it, ban sales on the internet by other than credit-card, and require CompUSA to card everyone who tries to buy it retail. You think not? It's going to come to that if this industry does not accept some responsibility for the product it's selling, and the graphic violence it puts out on the street.

I suspect you won't agree with that, but you'll simply be outvoted, mostly by those parents you want to blame. I am more than a little dismayed that Firaxis hasn't seen fit to comment on this thread, or to take some action about the issue. They'd do well to offer some substitute movies (instead of the silliness of saying, "well, turn off all the movies so you won't see this one!" and without the thickheadedness of not seeing that kids can simply turn the movies back ON), but what the hey?

posted 06-06-99 03:35 AM ET            

SMAC is not a kiddie game. I can gas whole nations, and use the Nazi's "Final Solution" on anything I don't like. I can drown cities in the sea, or drop nuclear weapons on a base and leave just a water filled crater. We make military units to send out and kill other units. No, if you are looking for a kinder, gentler game, go play SimCity 3000.

posted 06-06-99 06:31 AM ET            

Were the figures nude? I didn't notice or pay enough attention, but I sure didn't see anything anatomically correct. It's interesting that you talk about responsibility for actions, and use the tobacco companies and firaxis as objects, while ignoring my point about your own choice of actions in the game.

The tobacco company issue is ridiculous, and I'm a non-smoker with no love or respect for the industry. As a society, we are moving in a sick and irresponsible direction that it is someone else's fault for what we as individuals do. Smokers or their estates sue, when they have been warned and advised for decades about the severe medical risks, and they make a choice every time to run down to the store and plunk down their money 'cuz dey wan out of deir cigawettes. Awww, poor babies. "But we're addicted" as if that obviates individual choice. Millions of people quit, millions make no real effort to. It is a matter of will, choice, and personal responsibility.

As far as combat and war in the real world, what you've said clearly indicates to me that you are not a combat veteran, or at least not a line animal. My brother and I, my dad and three of my uncles are, from WWII, Korea, 'Nam and our more recent soirees in the bananalands and sandville. A lot of prisoners don't make it back to confinement. In the Gulf, we made a point of treating prisoners with a great deal of consideration, both to encourage their natural common sense not to fight us, and to not upset our Arab allies. In Grenada and Panama, there weren't enough to worry about.
Not so back in the real wars. There is not a single case in WWII or Korea of a court martial of an allied soldier for the death of a POW taken up on the line. A lot of prisoners never made it into captivity, so summary execution, and in some cases torture, without any punishment, has been well documented. War is a rough business.

Yes, it is a matter of your choices - whether you "are subjected to this" or not, you are choosing genocidal conquest. Have you ever Transcended in a TI game in SMAC?
I have, and that's my play goal. I'm even doing it now with the stinkin' Believers.

What's your high score in CivII? - I broke the score counter and the future techs counter and the max cities counter - broke it clean off the scale at Deity level, WITHOUT exterminating any other factions, though Elizabeth and Genghis tempted me.
The high score in these games is biased against conquest, not for it. Most players just don't have the patience or the interest, when they can blast their rivals to hell.

When you talk about "being subjected to this" - you want conquest and genocide, with Bambi munching in the background. Somewhat like Henry II's "Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?" Not as explicit as shedding blood in the cathedral in Canterbury, but the actions are the same.

As far as that movie being close to rape - why don't you ask a woman whose been raped how close it is? And again, you don't have to wipe out a rival faction, unless you want to. Historically, many, if not most major conquests prior to the renaissance period involved enslaving most of the captured population, and certainly involved the execution of captured enemy leaders - often after torture and public humiliation.

I think the reason Firaxis doesn't pay attention to this thread is that you have little support for your view, and there is an independent ratings board which reviewed this game and decided it was not on a level of violence anywhere near Doom, Quake or Redneck Rampage, et al.

There are people (I've heard them) who claim that Disney's The Little Mermaid should be rated X because you can see Ariel's belly button, and accornding to one nutbag from the Southern Baptist Convention, if you step frame it, there's one scene where a crustacean has a hard-on when Ariel swims by with said exposed belly-button. Of course, this scene with the alleged hard-on is a quarter of a second long, which is why it has to be step framed. Someone could explain to this idiot that every crustacean has a shell, and the shells have bumps all over, but like we both agree, some people just have too loose a grip on reality.

PS - none of the movies advance the game - they are so much window dressing.

posted 06-07-99 08:17 AM ET            

You still don't get the difference.

As for the tobacco case it just reminded me that people are suing the local authorities in New York for slipping on the paweway and these greedy pieces of **** are winning.
-I have no words for this insane behavior.

posted 06-07-99 12:50 PM ET            

That someone who already has a problem can be influenced by fictional violence I will not dispute. That there are some few people who can't distinguish between fantasy and reality I will not dispute. These people had a problem before coming into contact with the thing that most of us are perfectly capable of relegating to the category of 'just fiction', that most of us are perfectly capable of doing in make-believe but wouldn't even consider doing in reality.

That doesn't make it the fault of the producers of the fictional violence, unless your worldview says that /everything/ should conform to the lowest common denominator. It is true that as a country the US is certainly rapidly headed that direction -- I don't know if dkl is from the US but I'm guessing it's likely -- but that doesn't make it a good idea.

And if that /is/ your worldview, than go home right now and do the following: throw out every knife or other sharp object, and while you're at it, anything blunt that's vaguely weaponlike. Throw away every method of starting a fire. Take an axe to your TV and get rid of your VCR/DVD player. Give your computer to charity and your books to the closest public library. Flush any drugs in your house down the toilet, yes, aspirin included. If you have any, ahem, marital aids, toss them out, too. If you own a gun, sell it. And then never leave your house again. Because /everything/ is potentially dangerous, and blaming the people who make them -- instead of the individuals who misuse them and those who don't watch the people in their families and at their schools and jobs for signs that those people might be having some problems -- and restricting them isn't enough to keep it from being that way.

posted 06-15-99 03:54 AM ET            

I am sure of one thing, emotionally unstable people do not have access to a punishment sphere.

Just how many times did you view the thing? I just hit enter 3x, and it's gone. It was very boring the second time. I just skip it.

BTW, the Little Mermaid clip is on the ship when eric is about to marry octopussy. When the evil bride walks up to the pulpit in her wedding gown, the preacher pops a bone.

BBTW, When Simba drops down in the Lion King, the debri that billows up spells "sex". Guess we should ban lions at the Zoo, cause they make kids want to engage in beastality(sp?).

Blaming today's sickness on a video clip is absurd. It's a real injustice to those who could get help, but don't, because the "help" is looking in the wrong place.

Educated individuals like yourself could really help the situation, if you just get your mind out of a state of closed.

If you are so anti-violence, why did you buy this game in the first place? The box even states "CONQUER your enemies with a war machine that you design from over 32,000 possible types".
It also has the label "MILD ANIMATED VIOLENCE" which sounds like a very accurate description of any number of sceens.

Planet bust tens of thousands, but save the whales.

If I had a PS, I would volunteer cause it might cure my chronic back ache. Besides, A little bird once told me "you'd be supprized what you can live through" (another Disney atrocity?) /