Saturday, February 04, 2006

I just posted this on Mathew's Blog

Apparently people are getting warnings in WOW for trying to start Gay Guilds and have same sex marriages. Matthew (getmeoutofthis.net) has a couple of links to articles about it on his blog.

It's difficult for me to get indigent about this kind of stuff because:
1. I'm a Catholic, straight white male that's an American citizen and not a minor, I'm about as unopressed as a person can get.
2. It's a fucking video game.

Anyway I posted this as a comment to one of Matthew's posts talking about the issue.

"I'm sort of torn on this whole issue.
Part of me sympathizes with Blizzard's position to cover their ass. But who are they covering it from? Who are they protecting by enforcing this policy? Newbs?
I also think that people who get married in video games are retarded. Their plight of not being able to fake marry their fake people in a fake world does little to stir any pity. Why can't they just play the fucking game.
Then again, it's not just a game it's sort of a social club. So if people want to socialize with like minded people while they enjoy a common interest why stop them. WOW's player base is fairly diverse. So just because all the people are playing WOW doesn't mean they have common interests. Guilds allow one to have a group of people to play with that caters to their particular play style.
We should also consider the other offensive material that Blizzard doesn't censor. Namely the bludgeoning/hacking/burning/etc of charcters NPC and PC to death that occurs constantly in the game. Why is it that violence is so tolerated whereas homosexuality and what have you is so offensive?
Well I would say because violence is a fairly natural occurrence. Violence, like it or not is part of human/animal nature. It is easy for people to accept violence. They see it all the time. People feel violent impulses. People see violence as a very real part of life.
Gay/Lesbian/Bi/Trans is not, however a fairly natural occurence, not that these things don't occur naturally, but they are not a part of everyone's nature. Some people see homosexuality, bisexuality, transexuality as abberant. Since the majority of the human population is heterosexual, they probably see other methods gender/sexual orientation as foriegn/unnatural. Other orientations aren't real to them therefore, they find it difficult to accept/emphasize with them.
Now I would imagine that this sort of mentality will change as our generation gets older and our parents's generation starts dying off, as we tend to be more accepting of these sort of things than our preceding generations but until then, you can always turn off general chat.
Anyway the point is Blizzard is totally in the wrong here, but since it's their game, they can do whatever the hell they want. I mean, did you read the license agreement? Yeah. Neither did I. It could've said anything. But WOW is still a great game and people who have more active social life's in MMO's then in real life are tards (Unless they live in a lighthouse or something then it's ok)."

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Okay, quick things.
1) Yes, getting married in game is retarded. Totally agree. But still, it's pretty stupid to allow one and not the other.
2) Um... I agree with most of how you put things. When you sit down to do it you have a way with words.
3) People have actually read the stupid license agreement over this, you know. The part of it they're citing to warn and potentially ban these people is the part about sexual harrassment. It's also, you know, interesting that it has this whole part about how everyone should show common courtesy and respect everyone's beliefs, differences, etc, etc. Then again, I myself HAVEN'T read it all, just comments I've read, so take it at face value.
Yeah, I don't write as good of stuff as you when it comes to this sort of thing. Time to golf! (albatross18.com, bitches!)