[OT] The Art of Winning Games

[Narratio]

I don't think that there is such a thing as "good" or "evil". It's just points of view. Hitler didn't think that slaughting multi millions was a bad thing, he thought he was doing a service to the Arayan race. From his point of vew he was "good". Genghis Khan took his lads for a stroll across Europe for perfectly good reasons in his opinion. The people being raped, looted and killed would have called him evil, he didn't think so, neither did his supporters.

Also, the concepts of "good" and "evil" change with time. Slavery these days is considered a moral outrage (EVIL) by the western media and intelligentisia (not neccesarily the mass of people though). But it was a fine idea to the Aztecs, Inca, most west African kingdoms through the 1900's, Roman Empire, various Chinese dynasties and modern day arab governments. All of whom think it's neccesary. Cannibalism is held to be evil by our western cultures, the cannibal cultures think there is a reason for it though, otherwise they wouldn't do it. For them it's not evil, it's a religious experience and thus "good".

So "Good" and "Evil" appear to be viewpoints with no set values positive or negative except those of the people involved. It appears to become worse with the pasing of time. Individual "W" who, during their life was a loved / respected / disliked / hated person (as everyone else) becomes, over time, an icon for something or other "good" (Washington and truth). Then they get revisited and they change into things to be reviled (Washington and slavery), which again changes to be something else (Washington and his illegitimate children perhaps?).

So, no good, no evil, just viewpoints up close and personal or 1,000 years later in a "standardised" school text book.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

my other opinion is that people who argue that there isn't good or evil need to be hit on the head with a hammer. but that would be evil.

[Fyron]

Moral relativism only goes so far...

[Puke]

Originally posted by Narratio:
Cannibalism is held to be evil by our western cultures, the cannibal cultures think there is a reason for it though, otherwise they wouldn't do it. For them it's not evil, it's a religious experience and thus "good".

im behind you 110%, but i just thought i would offer some edification on canibalism for everyone. it was predominantly found on island cultures in the pacific, prior to the New Zeland natives (forgot what they were called) conquering most of them and baning canibalism.

when you are on a very small scrap of land, with limited resources, and you lack contraceptive technology, you are going to quickly have population problems. New Zeland had enough land and resources to develop an agrarian culture, and keep their population down throug warfare. most other islanders could never develop that far, because they lacked the land and resources to do so.

they had two options to save themselves from overpopulation and the resulting famine: infanticide, or canibalism. it was one of the two, and various island cultures went either way. religious ideas about it cropped up after the fact, in order to maintain it as a sociological institution.

oh yeah, except for the Aztecs. they had plenty of land and resources. those guys were just sick ****s.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

there's another option for population control: self-control.

i'm still a virgin. it wasn't that hard. it just takes a lot of self-control. my opinion is, your self-control should at least match that of your worse vice. perferably, it should be half again as strong. mine matches my anger, but barely when it peaks.

and on a side note, there's the possibility that with our technology, our supply of food can actually rise faster than our population. asteriod farming, among other things.

and P, just because someone beleive's something doesn't make it right or wrong. i see no reason to respect a beleif just because someone beleives it. i do respect the right of other people to choose what they beleive, but if someone chooses to murder random passerby, if i have a gun, i'm going to choose to shoot the murderer. that's called discrimination - used right, a good thing, no matter what the media says.

[ December 11, 2003, 07:39: Message edited by: narf poit chez BOOM ]

[Starhawk]

Well my opinion on games is this I play to win and often times I am "evil" when I play because I will slaughter thousands or millions or billions in strategy games, I have scored over 11,000 kills with Delta Force Land Warrior (have had it for 6 years) and done it all without the least bit of remorse or hesitation yet I would never seek to kill another person unless they threatened the life of a person I loved or myself and even then I would most likely try and just disable them instead of kill them.

Okay if your first and only impression of me was playing a wargame against me you'd think I was evil and sadistic because I do brutal things to win games such as the wholesale slaughter of entire cities (Civ2) or leaving no survivors from an enemy army (Medieval Total War) or destroying whole planets (SEIV) for the sake of WINNING! (P.S. brutal game tactics I don't actually pull out a crobar and hit my apponent).

In SEIV I blow entire enemy colonies and even homeworlds to peices (mainly because I don't have the full game and can't get troops in time to make it worth it) without remorse killing millions if not billions of the enemy in a single shot. Even though it's a game I've heard people complain that this makes me a brutal person (not directly me but people who play games like that) which is utter BS because in real life I am extremely compassionate and can barely stand to see an animal suffer much less a fellow human being and would probobly do anything I could to prevent another person from being hurt or killed.

Same goes for FPS games I will without a doubt kill a team mate or two to save my own arse....especially if it is a CTF game and they are in my way and keeping me from scoring for the team. But on the other hand I have played "operation shield" for other players who have the flag and will readily let my character die for the greater good of the team. Yeah it pisses people off when I throw a hand grenade to clear out a bunker that has six enemy troops and two friendlies that are pinned down but my whole opinion is you had no hope to begin with and at least I got the bad guys too right and I'd expect them to do the same to me in order to win the game?

I hear people say that by basic nature humans are killers far too often and quite frankly it is a stereotype as most humans can't even stand the site of a corpse in RL (I've seen a few in my short time on earth and almost threw up even though they were in a medical school type environment). I mean humans are not naturally KILLERS we are naturally competitors which leads to a brutal form of game called war. The AVERAGEindividual is not a killer and would never think of killing another human being.

I am a Christian so I have the inharent beleif that God made no evil when he made the universe, however he gave his creation a choice to be evil or good, and sadly many things choose the side of evil and thus MANKIND is neither evil nor good as a species but it comes down to the individual person to choose what they will be.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

i once made a list in my head of all the crimes i'd approximitly be guily of if the games were real. from genocide(strategy games), to petty theft(adventure games).