[llamavore]

I'm not used to RP and therefore I find it less tedious to just respond to some of that thread, here. This isn't really about Penkala but that seemed the easiest reference.

First in response to a point Vilian was making;

Morality is relative to scale. Killing an ant is not equivocal to killing a species of ant, or a colony of ants, or another life form that is greater on a scale of complexity as well as mass, such as a person. While tech raiding an unaligned nation may be 'wrong' it cannot be equivalent to raiding many aligned or unaligned nations. And, if you raid a whole alliance, as opposed to raiding the same amount of random unaligneds, you're attacking their community and corporate identity, not just their resources and individual efforts. In life there are plenty of small evils that we allow that we would not allow in greater amounts. Although the difference doesn't render the lesser event to be completely innocent, there is a difference, and it's completely plausible to be less tolerant of something on a larger scale.

Note: I'm not attentive to what's going on with Athens and penkala's previous OWF activities. the above is not my stance on his stance, nor is it targeting any recent event. I am not aware of all the details of 'what went down' and while I <3 my alliance-mates including penkala, I'm not addressing whether his views mesh with his actions. So, flame him somewhere else, please.

Now, to continue; this being a game, the -actual, real- morality of the game is simply to have fun without breaking the admin's rules. people may abstain from simulated violence to preserve their fun via stats and pixels, or to have fun via pretending it is not a game (RP) and that simulated violence is actually wrong. This is different from the morality of making agreements and being honest about keeping them, which even in the context of a game, is a gradient of real morality. Unfortunately some people who pretend that simulated violence (and 'stealing') is wrong, also fail to distinguish this simulated morality from actual morality of honesty and integrity in agreements in-game. These people then mistakenly expect people to take seriously their false morality that they may not even realize they are role-playing, as if this weren't a game, or as if everyone were obligated to play the game to the depth of simulation that they do.

To say people shouldn't fight for the simple sake of competition, in this game, is like saying people in an FPS shouldn't shoot eachother. This is a construct built for competition, for the sake of exercises of power without moral consequence. There's more to it than base competition, but, since it is entertainment, no designed capability within it is inherently immoral (including things like raiding, PZI, etc) unless the admin makes a rule regarding it, removing it from the design. Part of the fun is cooperation and exploring moral and social decision-making; it's fun to consider how to build a society within CN and whether that society feels that raiding or PZI is wrong or to what degree or in what circumstance, etc. But, that exploration of such, is a morality that we create, and is a morality for the fun of posturing morally (like the one supposing simulated violence is wrong). In the process of creating our society on Bob and deciding what our constructed morals, our agreements, will be, we have to respect that these are not actual morals except between the people who agree to them. Lying is bad, breaking admin rules is bad; killing pixels is not bad (unless you said you wouldn't, then it's part of a lie). Because this is a game, it's foolish to consider anyone automatically obligated to play your way. Their only obligation is play the way they have agreed to, which they agree to the admin's rules when they enter the game, and they may further agree to rules by entering alliances and interalliance relationships, but outside of these there is no morality in the game except to do what is fun for the individual. I guess then the ultimate question for many of us is how we will build a society here that is flexible enough and strong enough to allow the most possible enjoyment for the most possible people, including those to whom that question will not occur. Any imbalanced approach to this inherent diversity of sense of fun and playing style will automatically generate pressure and instability within the system it exists, so it's beneficial for anyone wanting to play the game optimally to take fully into account the OOC psychology that goes into creating IC players on Bob. The alliance/sociocosm that plays well with both IC and OOC contingencies and motivations in mind, will outlast the ones that ignore the dynamics created by OOC truths. the fakeness of the game, the need to distinguish pixel morality from actual morality, and where social morality constructed of our agreements fits with the two; these are present consciously or subconsciously in our minds. Everyone knows it's a game and their behavior will take that into account one way or another. The fact that it's a game and its separation from reality will effect how people play in various ways and these dynamics must be reflected in the power structures, policies, and m.o.'s. While the game simulates the colonization of a physical planet Bob, we are actually colonizing and competing for survival in cyberspace.

In any case, given that psychology, it's also true that while OOC threats from IC simulated violence is an overreaction, IC simulated violence for OOC threats is an underreaction. The idea that nuking someone's pixels in a game in response to them threatening your actual life is an overreaction is simply inane and I'm disturbed to conceive people playing this game can come to that conclusion. Threatening is against admin's rules, and against the law, and is just dumb. Nuking someone in a computer game, on the other hand, is allowed, and designed, and fun. Now, if someone is in an alliance and has therefore agreed not to in some form, then it's wrong in a way but still less wrong than a threat, even if the threat was not credible. I'm not saying this applies to the Penkalagate situation.

If the collective or majority society of Bob decides it wants to take X policy on tech raiding or nukes or what have you, then they have every right to enforce or protect it to the full extent of admin's rules. But, simultaneously, everyone who did not agree to it, or whose conditions of agreement were violated, have every right to resist to the same extent. Some people will break their own rules and what they've agreed to, and do something actually wrong, in a way, but that's part of the story of the game.

edit: I typed "more simply," and then proceeded to say it in a more complicated way.

edit2: for grammar elitists.

This post has been edited by llamavore: 20 November 2009 - 10:10 AM

[ThePainkiller]

The best part was all of it

[Kryievla]

Quote

this being a game, the -actual, real- morality of the game is simply to have fun without breaking the admin's rules. people may abstain from simulated violence to preserve their fun via stats and pixels, or to have fun via pretending it is not a game (RP) and that simulated violence is actually wrong. This is different from the morality of making agreements and being honest about keeping them, which even in the context of a game, is a gradient of real morality.

Quote

lying is bad, breaking admin rules is bad; killing pixels is not bad (unless you said you wouldn't, then it's part of a lie). because this is a game, it's foolish to consider anyone automatically obligated to play your way. their only obligation is play the way they have agreed to, which they agree to the admin's rules when they enter the game, and they may further agree to rules by entering alliances and interalliance relationships, but outside of these there is no morality in the game except to do what is fun for the individual.

I think we're on the same page. I like it

[wickedj]

Quote

if the collective or majority society of Bob decides it wants to take X policy on tech raiding or nukes or what have you, then they have every right to enforce or protect it to the full extent of admin's rules. but simultaneously, everyone who did not agree to it, or who's conditions of agreement were violated, have every right to resist to the same extent. and some people will break their own rules and what they've agreed to, and do something actually wrong in a way, but that's part of the story of the game.

Not long before Karma war, maybe a month or two, there was an attempt to put together some sort of Cybernations Bill of Rights (Moo was involved and hes really the only name i remember) but more on point this subject came up not long ago when NSO tried to recruit from the neutrals

[Tromp]

Kryievla, on Nov 20 2009, 09:17 AM, said:

I think we're on the same page. I like it

Morality is used by opportunists in our RP world.
And there are a lot of them. Morality will always be there, in some way or another.

Up to us all to "do something about it". Which, in my opinion, is playing the game differently from now. I hope people will soon realize the way this world now works can't go on forever.

[Tequila Mockingbird]

llamavore, on Nov 19 2009, 08:31 PM, said:

morality is relative to scale. killing an ant is not equivocal to killing a species of ant, or a colony of ants, or another lifeform that is greater on a scale of complexity as well as mass, such as a person.

To that ants friends and family he was probably just as important as the colony itself.

[Elyat]

I couldn't read most of it because you seem to have forgotten how to punctuate and capitalise and I stomach enough horrible writing in a day as-is, but I think I get the gist of it. I'm really amused actually. You have to resort to the OOC "it's just a game I can do whatever I want" to counter someone's IC arguments of morality; to me that is itself a concession of defeat at the hands of the others' argument.

You are correct on an OOC level though. People can do whatever they want here: including band together and say "no" to certain people acting as aggressive thugs toward other nations.

[Jack Diorno]

I don't think anyone mistakes real morality for CN morality, it's just a propaganda tool that is regularly used for various reasons.
For example, NPO was beaten in the leadup to the karma war due to the 'immorality' of using EZI on players, keeping alliances under viceroy for extended periods of time, and other assorted acts that were never argued against until it was in the sanctioned and prominent alliance's best interest to do so. To further on this, alliances such as MHA, TOP and other continuum alliances used the 'immorality' of NPO attacking OV during peace discussions as a reason to distance themselves from the NPO when the inevitable war was about to erupt.
Morality in CN is merely a propaganda tool.

[Elyat]

Jack Diorno, on Nov 20 2009, 05:15 AM, said:

I don't think anyone mistakes real morality for CN morality, it's just a propaganda tool that is regularly used for various reasons.
For example, NPO was beaten in the leadup to the karma war due to the 'immorality' of using EZI on players, keeping alliances under viceroy for extended periods of time, and other assorted acts that were never argued against until it was in the sanctioned and prominent alliance's best interest to do so. To further on this, alliances such as MHA, TOP and other continuum alliances used the 'immorality' of NPO attacking OV during peace discussions as a reason to distance themselves from the NPO when the inevitable war was about to erupt.
Morality in CN is merely a propaganda tool.

Eh, in some ways. Practices like those you listed are detrimental to the health of the game's community, though, and at the OOC level that is where I draw the line on morality.

[Dontasemebro]

Tequila Mockingbird, on Nov 20 2009, 04:09 AM, said:

To that ants friends and family he was probably just as important as the colony itself.

But not to the rest of the world, they see it in a utilitarian way. Same way that 40 people is worse than one person, and people all across the planet react to OOC problems with IC curbstompage.

And the entire colony is technically one family usually isn't it? So you'd rather have your brother die than your entire family including your brother.

[Crimius]

i likes. good show

This post has been edited by Crimius: 20 November 2009 - 07:39 AM

[Bob Janova]

Since you posted this in an OOC area: Playing a moralist is also part of the game. It would be a really crappy game if everyone just declared war on people for lulz when they felt like it – if you don't believe me, sign up to one of the many similar games which are effectively pure war games. (Or TE for that matter, which is fun as a release from the slower pace of CN:SE but which would be terrible without the community ties SE provides.) A diversity of IC opinion is what makes the politics and thus the gameplay interesting.

Quote

if the collective or majority society of Bob decides it wants to take X policy on tech raiding or nukes or what have you, then they have every right to enforce or protect it to the full extent of admin's rules. but simultaneously, everyone who did not agree to it, or who's conditions of agreement were violated, have every right to resist to the same extent. and some people will break their own rules and what they've agreed to, and do something actually wrong in a way, but that's part of the story of the game.

Right. This is what's going on. So what is the complaint in this thread about? People play the game in different ways, it creates IC tension and that makes things interesting.

[Generalissimo]

While morality is subjective, in-game governments acting in-character might have moral stances not dissimilar to a real world government
– this is a political simulator after all.

The original poster was correct in stating that action carried within the rules of CyberNations cannot be immoral.
In regards to the CyberNations morality movement, it was a reactionary group – with justifications based in moral theory.
Some people don’t like being oppressed and the NPO made the mistake of rule through fear, and many people really don’t like that.
It had nothing to with morality, but the self-interest of not being oppressed.

This post has been edited by Generalissimo: 20 November 2009 - 08:24 AM

[Joe Kremlin]

If it's just a game then what's wrong with "false" morality? We shouldn't just say "Hey it's not real people I'm killing, let's just do whatever we want!". I think that would be much worse for the game than imposing a set of beliefs or morals on a pretend world. Just because we're not all acting like we're knights in some fantasy world doesn't mean we can't RP someone with our RL morals or act in a way different from RL (isn't that the whole point of a game like CN?). I guess what I'm trying to say is that the ability to act as the "moral police" is as much of a part of CN as the ability to tech raid and you can't make either side stop except through in game actions like war and diplomacy.

My biggest problem with the Athens thing wasn't that they attacked other people, it was that they tried to sell it to the rest of CN as a tech raid when most would classify it as a war. I personally didn't care much beyond that. Also people are still able to fight without 40 man tech raids so being against that isn't like telling others not to shoot in an FPS.

This post has been edited by Joe Kremlin: 20 November 2009 - 09:20 AM

[ChimpMasterFlash]

Tl;dr, lost me somewhere about the ants since I regularly spread a very toxic chemical on my yard in hope of murdering generation of ants and various other critters.

Morality is relative to what ever you want it to be. In fact it doesn't exist with out a set of established character principles which are subject to to meet your own needs.

Scholars argue morality by boiling it down to life or death. With our limited knowledge on the subject outside of the supernatural, the argument in essence is a waste of time.

You will have to excuse me while I cut the baby eagle nest out of my river birch then taking pleasure on watching my dog maul the eagle chick. Some cute kitty cat that keeps leaving land mines in my yard will discover the scrumptious piece of tuna I left laced arsenic. Tsk, if only the little tike had a collar I could save that cats life and dump a smelly one on his owners doorstep.

This post has been edited by ChimpMasterFlash: 20 November 2009 - 09:25 AM

[Schattenmann]

Everyone wishes they were as witty as Doitzel or me, so the Penkala-response thread was inevitable whether he'd done the raid/nuke two days after his thread or two months. Someone thought they were going to be clevar and funny. There is no comparison between Penkala's raid and Athens'/FoB's war. The premise of the second thread was retarded and that's exactly why I didn't read past the pirst post. There's enough seriously entertaining unintentional retards in interesting threads without reading uninteresting retarded threads. Hee-haw, yuck it up, people with brains got the difference before the thread got a first post.

As for your incorrect points about morality, they are all relative. I believe it's wrong on an OOC level to seriously effect someone else's OOC enjoyment of playing the game (not their in-game situation, though the two are related) to the point that it's no longer fun and they just quit. Some people are babies and will quit or go nuts at the drop of a hat, sure, but we all know where the line is just about at. ChairmanHal's post of 20 rules of an RPG cover this better than any essay on the matter that I've read.
The argument that this is just a game and people should get over it is the defense of the rapscallion who has no OOC morals or IC morals--his entertainment is paramount to the dozens of people whom he gamewrecks.

This post has been edited by Schattenmann: 20 November 2009 - 09:27 AM

[eyriq]

llamavore said:

morality is relative to scale.

Great point. Your example backs this up nicely.

llamavore said:

the -actual, real- morality of the game is simply to have fun without breaking the admin's rules.

100% true, and I'm glad you added in the following;

llamavore said:

the morality of making agreements and being honest about keeping them, which even in the context of a game, is a gradient of real morality.

These above two points could certainly be universally considered as the normative morality of CN, something that every reasonable person could agree too.

It is along the following that the games politics seem to form;

llamavore said:

people may abstain from simulated violence to preserve their fun via stats and pixels, or to have fun via pretending it is not a game (RP) and that simulated violence is actually wrong.

A great post. You've done a good job in justifying the "it's just a game" culture in CN, at least to the point of clarifying the nature of "false morality". Saying it is false morality though may be a tad harsh, it is more a RP morality and mostly very fitting considering the dynamics of the world we play in.

[ChimpMasterFlash]

eyriq, on Nov 20 2009, 09:54 AM, said:

Great point. Your example backs this up nicely.



100% true, and I'm glad you added in the following;


These above two points could certainly be universally considered as the normative morality of CN, something that every reasonable person could agree too.

It is along the following that the games politics seem to form;



A great post. You've done a good job in justifying the "it's just a game" culture in CN, at least to the point of clarifying the nature of "false morality". Saying it is false morality though may be a tad harsh, it is more a RP morality and mostly very fitting considering the dynamics of the world we play in.

That was easier to digest. TY for the ADD version. I'm serious.

[White Chocolate]

Role-playing a moralist, especially in a world where the norm (at least the vocal part) still seems to be the "might makes right" crowd, IS fun

In terms of a "war game," with all due respect to the creators, CN is not high on my list IF that was everything to this game, I'd have lasted maybe 2-3 months at most. (i.e. TE is about the right length of time) On the other hand, adding the PM system to the game changes everything. It gives players the opportunity to communicate, which we do The outside interactions (individual alliance forums, IRC, ect.) only add to that. Now there is a social aspect that gives the game experience depth. The fact that there are real people who make their own decisions based on their own belief system (be it close to their real life morals or not) brings a political and social aspect to the game that I enjoy. That's why I'm still around after a year and a half.

The entire war for resources (tech raid) debate is political. The difference between declaring a war for resources on one nation or on 20 nations who are part of a 40 nation alliance is a political difference that one may or may not believe is important. One is allowed and the other isn't (or not) because of CN politics, which not only can change but will - it's the nature of politics. The same is true regarding the use of nukes and also the argument about whether or not there is something wrong with an undeclared war against an alliance that doesn't have other formally declared allies. There is NOTHING in the game rules that says one either has to be in an alliance or not and there is NOTHING that says alliances have to declare what, if any, relationship they have to other individuals or other alliances. In other words, even the arguments about making and keeping treaties (and how moral or not such actions are) are, IMO, political. They may be more accepted by the general population than not, but they are political.

So, all is well, we all "get" that it's a game. Some of us like one area of the game over the other and so on. Lords and Ladies of Digiterra - Game On!

This post has been edited by White Chocolate: 20 November 2009 - 10:34 AM

[James Dahl]

While I don't raid myself, it's not only because attacking people with whom you have no prior argument is a bit silly.

Penkala raiding someone was not the issue, it was the fact that he used excessive force, broke our alliance Raid Rules, as well as breaking the conventions of good behavior to which everyone is held. Penkala was provoked into doing so (it's not hard to provoke the ire of Penkala) but that merely creates extenuating circumstances to something that is still largely viewed as a horrific breach of raid etiquette.

While one can claim that the circumstances, while not excusing the behavior, do at least explain it, it's still not really "ok", and Penkala is still on Raid-probation. I <3 my alliance mates as much as anybody, but that doesn't mean I can't see it when they do something wrong