Gamers violate Human Right Laws

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It noted that, even though most players would never become real world combatants, the games could influence what people believe war is like and how soldiers conduct themselves in the real world.

Yeah, because I learnt how real scientists conduct themselves by playing Half Life. I learnt how real archeologists conduct themselves by playing Tomb Raider. And I learnt how real private investigators conduct themselves by playing Sam and Max Hit the Road...

Then I wonder why people play games, since the "real world" must be exiciting enough already...

Yes this is stupid.

"Do characters in games violate human rights laws?"
"Do characters in books violate human rights laws?"
"Do characters in films violate human rights laws?"
"Do characters on TV violate human rights laws?"
"Do characters in music lyrics violate human rights laws?"

Do any of these questions matter? It's fiction!

It will always be easier to speak bullshit (specially if you're a lawyer) than to make a cutting-edge game. Really. Having so much injustice in this fucking world that IS REAL I by no means can stand that a group of bored grandmas invent such a load of crap like this.

It makes me think of them when I play Postal2.

First of all there is a difference between "Games violate human rights laws" and "Gamers violate human rights laws".

You can take a list of laws, and a list of games, and check and see if those games allow the player to break those laws. So what? Its not a very clever thing to do. Im not surprised that games break laws. Games are supposed to be a change from real life. To draw any conclusions from this obvious fact is pretty stupid. Whats next? Coming up with a list of books in which the characters violate human rights laws? Seriously, get a better hobby.

Technically Minesweeper violates human rights laws because you would never send an untrained civilian into a minefield to check for mines by making educated guesses and then taking a step.

I think the key point they were trying to raise was in this quote:

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It noted that, even though most players would never become real world combatants, the games could influence what people believe war is like and how soldiers conduct themselves in the real world. It said games were sending an "erroneous" message that conflicts were waged without limits or that anything was acceptable in counter-terrorism operations. "This is especially problematic in view of today's reality," said the study. In particular, it said, few games it studied reflected the fact that those who "violate international humanitarian law end up as war criminals, not as winners".

In other words, it's raising the question as to whether overexposure to fictional stories where violation of human rights is seen as neutral or even heroic will make people apathetic or even encouraging to violations in real life.

At the moment, all this study does is act as a talking point for whether it could be a problem. To get a better understanding of this, they'd need to actually test gamers for their opinions, such as handing a few study groups a questionnaire and gauging their tolerance to human rights violations.

I'm not sure their argument is without merit. While I think people are generally able to tell fantasy from reality, I suspect that some of the meta aspects of the fantasy creeps into people's perception of how the world acts, like how people might expect hospitals to act like a medical show, or courts to act like a law show. I'd like to hope people don't take hints on human rights violations from action stories in media, but when some people seem to genuinely hold up Jack Bauer from 24 as a model for how the government should act, you've got to wonder...

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The group chose games, rather than films, because of their interactivity. "Thus," said the report, "the line between the virtual and real experience becomes blurred and the game becomes a simulation of real-life situations on the battlefield."

Firstly, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley

Secondly, there's no academic consensus supporting the notion that video games or other interactive media "blur" the line between virtual and real experience. Last I checked, academia was close to binning that premise entirely.

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It noted that, even though most players would never become real world combatants, the games could influence what people believe war is like and how soldiers conduct themselves in the real world. It said games were sending an "erroneous" message that conflicts were waged without limits or that anything was acceptable in counter-terrorism operations. "This is especially problematic in view of today's reality," said the study. In particular, it said, few games it studied reflected the fact that those who "violate international humanitarian law end up as war criminals, not as winners".

Considering the nature of warfare conducted in the major conflicts of the 20th century (and to an extent the 21st thus far), this seems like a grossly naive interpretation of the typical realities of war. They wouldn't dare try to project such idealist expectations on cynical artworks in visual arts and literature, why can't games portray extensive atrocity?

Those researches claim that games should be created with respect to the IHL to make them more realistic:

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[...] incorporating the essential rules of IHL and IHRL into their games which may, in turn, render them more varied, realistic and entertaining.

(Page 4)

However I wonder why games are less realistic, when they portray war crimes. After all, they do happen in reality as well.

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Another scene portrays soldiers executing civilians. [...] Even though it is seemingly not the player who is committing the violation, it would be recommendable to avoid putting these kinds of scenes in video games as they could mislead players in terms of what is allowed to be done.

(Page 38)

I really don't like the idea of not showing/mentioning crimes in games/media. Of course it depends on the context and the method this is delivered to the player, but after all, a lot of games are similar to our reality and thus incorporate certain aspects of our reality in their world to seem more realistic.

Maybe it's personal preference, but I want to play games that make me think about morality rather than games that dictate certain rules and immediately throw me into prison when I don't play by them.

*Edit*
After reading through half the paper, I had the strange feeling that the people who wrote this would not have a problem with those mentioned scenes in games if there were no rules against them. I don't think that this was their intention, but always backing up their claim with nothing else but rules from several international treaties just made me feel sick.

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Original post by SiS-Shadowman *Edit* After reading through half the paper, I had the strange feeling that the people who wrote this would not have a problem with those mentioned scenes in games if there were no rules against them. I don't think that this was their intention, but always backing up their claim with nothing else but rules from several international treaties just made me feel sick.

In some ways that flavour is unavoidable. When you are publishing research such as this, you have to be very careful not to taint your theory/findings with other issues, so it is essential that they not bring the general issue of 'violence in video games' into the discussion.

This makes me want to make a game called "Murder Cop", and intensely realistic game about a cop that dispenses justice... by feeding criminals into a wood chipper.

Hmm, maybe some sort of lampshading of humanitarian law breaches, such as diplomatic consequences, or even less tangible impacts like emotional tension between characters, darker tone et al, should be incorporated and would be sufficient.

Then again, didn't Goldeneye set a humanitarian precedent with "Minimise scientist casualties"? I didn't know developers had taken to abandoning that objective.

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Original post by Fenrisulvur Then again, didn't Goldeneye set a humanitarian precedent with "Minimise scientist casualties"? I didn't know developers had taken to abandoning that objective.

Recent Bond games have instant mission failure for civilian casualties. However, that is more a franchise thing than a general FPS-development thing.

The original Dark Forces games determined light/dark side of the player entirely based on their propensity for killing unarmed droids and civilians. While later additions to the series have refined this a bit, the dark-side ending usually requires the player to kill an unarmed opponent in cold blood.

I guess my point here is that video games are supposed to let us experience things that we can't experience in real life. Acting evil is one of those things, and I don't see that depriving us of that virtual experience benefits anyone. If anything, the reaction to MW2's "No Russian" level seems to show that many people are genuinely disturbed/sickened by the experience, and thus it is a disincentive to perform similar acts in real life...

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Original post by Fenrisulvur Then again, didn't Goldeneye set a humanitarian precedent with "Minimise scientist casualties"? I didn't know developers had taken to abandoning that objective.

Modern Warfare 2 will instant fail a level of you kill a non-combatant, which I only discovered because I saw movement, popped someone in the head and got failed out for the killing; and this was in a situtation where those shooting you and those fleeing in terror look much the same.

Something funny just came into my mind.
One should join a counter-strike hostage-taking match (I don't remember the prefix) and simply tell all terrorists at the beginning of each round that they lost because they violated the geneva conventions. I really wonder what they would do...

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Original post by AndreTheGiant Technically Minesweeper violates human rights laws because you would never send an untrained civilian into a minefield to check for mines by making educated guesses and then taking a step.

awesome :) i love minesweeper, and how have that scary picture in my head of doing that in real life that way .. :)

Sigh, what a lot of jumping to idiotic rebuttals this thread has brought. Now I am not supporting their findings but if it's that stupid you'd think people would come up with a slightly better defense...

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Yeah, because I learnt how real scientists conduct themselves by playing Half Life. I learnt how real archeologists conduct themselves by playing Tomb Raider. And I learnt how real private investigators conduct themselves by playing Sam and Max Hit the Road...

Why do games have to be absolutely realistic for the claims to make sense? That's a stupid argument, because then as games get more realistic your argument is weakened. Many games are just silly, but equally many do attempt to simulate reality and that's only going to get more accurate.

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Then I wonder why people play games, since the "real world" must be exciting enough already...

Most people can't be professional sportsmen, and don't want to risk their own lives being in the army. Flight simulators are very close to reality and yet people play them, rather than buying their own airplane.

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Yes this is stupid. "Do characters in games violate human rights laws?" "Do characters in books violate human rights laws?" "Do characters in films violate human rights laws?" "Do characters on TV violate human rights laws?" "Do characters in music lyrics violate human rights laws?" Do any of these questions matter? It's fiction!

All those media are non-interactive. You're experiencing a scripted, fictional narrative. You're not engaging in an interactive virtual world making decisions.
Games will still be fiction when we have (for argument say we will get there) full VR. But a rape simulator will still be wrong. Games are not like other media.

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It will always be easier to speak bullshit (specially if you're a lawyer) than to make a cutting-edge game. Really. Having so much injustice in this fucking world that IS REAL I by no means can stand that a group of bored grandmas invent such a load of crap like this.

Way to apply reasoned thought. I'm pretty sure it's harder to become a top lawyer than to teach yourself C++.

I'll stop now, before I give in to the temptation to insult people rather than critique their arguments.

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Original post by d000hg Sigh, what a lot of jumping to idiotic rebuttals this thread has brought. Now I am not supporting their findings but if it's that stupid you'd think people would come up with a slightly better defense...

It's plain easy.
Just look at the quotation from page 38 I gave earlier. They simply state that "these kinds of scenes [...] could mislead players in terms of what is allowed to be done". However they fail to backup this important point, which in my opinion is their only argument as to why game developers should take those laws into consideration when creating games. They are clever enough to say could, because one cannot deny that statement.
The sky could turn green tomorrow: Try to deny that.

The study itself seems pointless to me, but it's their non-backuped conclusion that just pisses me off...

Isn't Far Cry 2 about genetically mutated monsters? But anyway, as opposed to implying that people/gamers don't know the difference between fantasy and reality, shouldn't we be reenforcing the fact that games, like books and movies, are fantasy. Temporary fantasy whose sole purpose, just like books and movies, is to entertain.

I don't understand why people purposefully blur lines that are inherently distinct.

Add mentioned by others, it shows that people can be quite disturbed by killing innocents in a videogame. I remember when I played Mass Effect and I good choose between releasing the alien queen or kill her, I felt honestly guilty like hell after I flooded her chamber with acid and killed her.

And that was a creature did not resemble a human being. I don't think most humans are capable of murdering a bunch of people in cold blood, even when they're virtual and fictional, without feeling some form of guilt or disturbance.

Actually, I think it's a rather valuable as a study into our culture. The way we as civilians percieve and fantasize about war versus the reality. If anyone making a game wanted to get something more 'real' then they should be aware of these rules needing to be applied somehow in the games. I do think that using this study to condemn games for their content is unreasonable. But as a sort of check to see where our current fantasies fits in relation to reality can maybe tell us something about ourselves.