What a brilliant idea!
Here's an interview with a World of Warcraft pacifist. He's trying to level up his characters without killing anything.
Q. Tell us about the concept behind Reinisch, your first pacifist character.
A. I started him from a roleplaying point of view, based very loosely on a real German priest, Franz Reinisch, who refused to serve in Hitler's army and was executed. My undead priest's back story is basically the same, and he still refuses to kill.
He even keeps his two pacifist characters equipped with fishing rods, so that if they accidentally hit something it won't do much (or any?) damage. And he doesn't seem to join groups that are killing things, either.
OK, so it's probably not all that much fun to play WoW without killing anything, at least for the conventionally minded gamer. But I have to admit the idea had (briefly) crossed my mind too. I started getting interested in WoW around the same time I got interested in Quakerism. The irony was not lost on me.
I recall reading an article where someone pointed out that many video games are designed so that your main (or only!) interaction with the world is a violent one. Particularly in first-person shooters, where your chief control and point of view is basically just a floating gun, mowing down your enemies. Ever since I read that I've been thinking about it, and the way video game design dictates your options. Now, video games are not going to automatically turn you into a bloodthirsty monster in real life,* but I believe they do have an effect on the way you think. Thank goodness for people like Rand Miller, and the WoW pacifist, who deviate from the norm and get people thinking about what we do for fun.
PS: A quick Google didn't reveal much about the historical priest, but this article on another martyred conscientious-objector-priest mentions in passing that Reinisch was an Austrian.
*Some people do seem to go completely insane. The Ufa Russian murder case sounds like the Stanford prison experiment or "When I Was Ming the Merciless." There are others, such as the infamous Chinese incident.
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7 comments:
Japan, science-fiction, and now Quakerism?!? Man, I think we gotta meet up! I have recently been telling my wife that the only "religion" that makes sense for me is Quakerism. We're like brothers from different mothers!
Hey, send me your mailing address. I've got a CD for you...
It's on its way. And the evil robots - taken care of....
An indie game designer recently decried World of Warcraft as "unethical".
"Once, my 70 mage was in Southshore, and someone was asking directions to Ghostlands in zone chat. I told him how to go through EPL. Then I clicked on him, and he was something like a level 12 Draenei hunter. I asked him why he wanted to go there, and it turns out he wanted a red cat for a pet -- so I escorted him through EPL, and he only died a couple of times getting there."
ROFL!
I actually caught a fish the other day called a 10 pound mud-skipper and it's only purpose is to be held in your off-hand. Their is also a nice beer stein that does the same only it has bonuses. These items gave me the idea that it would be interesting to have a guild chef. A lot of players don't pursue the secondary profession of cooking, but there are a lot of great bonuses from doing so. WoW is definitely a game that's more fun when it's played at a nice pace and fully experienced and it's fun to explore a lot of the "non-violent" aspects of the game like cooking and fishing.
I agree, Mraf. There are all sorts of fun details when one starts poking around. I enjoy the professions - my main character, a Night Elf hunter, has skinning and leatherworking, as well as cooking, fishing and first aid.
It would be pretty funny to have a character that mostly just cooked, but who, when forced to fight, walked around hitting enemies with a fish and a beer stein.
I've never played this game before but that's an interesting thing that gamer is trying to do.
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