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Alex Jones

I lead teams at the intersection of strategy and design. Autodidact. Polymath. Barbecue acolyte. I start fires (the good kind).

video games

Dickwolves, Free Speech & Inclusiveness

The dirty little secret that they never realized is that free speech and making people feel welcome are both perfectly noble ideals that are in conflict with one another and if you choose to side with the former in every possible circumstance, even if it means antagonizing rape victims, even if it means alienating women, even if it means going against your own stated goals, then you’re not a martyr for free speech. You’re just an asshole.

“faceless007on the NeoGAF message boards

And that cuts to the heart of the “Dickwolf” situation. I’ve read Penny Arcade for a couple of years now, and have enjoyed it for the most part. I’ve praised the creators of that strip for PAX, the conference that they’ve built, specifically because it was so inclusive and so different from the norms of video game and tech industry behavior. Sadly now, I can support neither in good conscience. There is no room in my world for a view that rape jokes are acceptable. Sure, you have the right to say it, and if you have a platform, you can use it to make those jokes. But I’m sure as hell not going to applaud you for it.

Frankly, the horror that rape jokes play upon is magnified when they come from a source that women thought was not only safe, but a beacon of light in a community that is all too often dark and harsh. Mike Krahulik should have been better than this. We all should be better than this.

Thanks to my friend David for pointing out the post quoted above.

Game-Related Ends

“moral choices” in video games are, to me, more about cost vs. benefit than right vs. wrong. Because my real-world morality may not map to the world depicted in the game, and because “being evil” is a legitimate and common play strategy, I need to know how the decisions I make serve game-related ends.

Andrew Dupont – Alpha Protocol

Well said. In any story-based game, my first character typically follows a pragmatic course, though I tend to lean towards “light” or “good” decisions. Once I complete an especially good game, with a well-developed story, I will start anew to experience the game with an “evil” or “bad” character. This allows me to experience the story from a different angle, see how intertwined decisions and branch and appreciate a beautifully crafted world.

Games are a separate universe, with different consequences, which occassionaly often require that we make decisions and follow paths that we might not in our physical world. We as humans map our morality onto that universe, following our own codes and at times breaking them in ways both subtle and profound. It is both freeing and thought-provoking.

Well for me at least.

Thanks to Andrew for including that aside in his review of Alpha Protocol – it got my mind moving this morning, which likely wasn’t his intent when he wrote it. On a side note, I don’t think I’ll both with the game now that I’ve read his breakdown.