Pursuing the Libido's Dark Side

[PfcHammer]

Pursuing the Libido's Dark Side
By Daniel Terdiman
Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,63997,00.html
02:00 AM Jun. 28, 2004 PT

Lord Foucault is an admitted rapist. He does it on impulse -- for the thrill of it and for the feeling of control he has over his female victims.

But he's not attacking women in real life. Instead, Lord Foucault is a character in Sociolotron, an online virtual world that gives players a platform where they can act out a wide range of fantasies.

"My character ... does it for a few reasons," said Lord Foucault. "He does it for power, and it is motivated by opportunity. If he sees a girl that interests him and he can have sex with them, he does."

Sociolotron, currently in beta, is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game. The game offers fare such as battling monsters, questing and other fantasies familiar to players of games like EverQuest and Ultima Online. But Sociolotron differs by providing a way to indulge in sexual taboos like rape and bondage with consequences like sexually transmitted diseases and even pregnancy. And it is quite explicit in informing would-be players about what they may experience in-world.

[tlcandie]

1. Hmmm .. WoW! Dunno what to say here ....errrr

I have played many online mmrpg games...UO, EQ, DAoC, CoH and a few in between.

What I always enjoyed was the social part and learning new characters and worlds.

What I hated was the overt sexual stuff and grief playing. UO seemed to be the worst regarding these two things. As each new game came out it seemed a tad better; however, the designers always seem to make the female characters more like Pbs (Playboy bunnies) than real life. DAoC wasn't as bad regarding this as EQ and CoH. Many times you make the funky (troll/ogre) characters to get away from any incidences in game or you create a male character.

This is disturbing to me and I'm not quite sure why because I am not about making things go underground by outlawing them. I do know that many children are interested in their parents' online games and watch thoroughly entranced, so that could be a problem.

I dunno...really interested to hear some feedback from others which might help me better form an opinion here!

:shrug:

[NashVegas]

3. Sexism in Gaming

I'm not an OGer anymore, but in multiplay I often went with male characters at start-up time, and only after I was comfortable with a group would I come out of the keyboard.

[Xithras]

2. Oh great!

Not only do I need to worry about some guy whipping out his +9 Vorpal Sword of Unbelievable Butt Kicking and going crazy on my a**, I actually have to worry about him going crazy on my a** afterwards.

Ya gotta wonder what the programmers were smooking when they thought up this "feature".... (It probably started off like "Hey man, you know what would be a REALLY cool feature? Rape!") :shrug:

I doubt this one will get my money.

[NashVegas]

4. Possibly Influenced by the Valar Project

The Book of Erotic Roleplay came out last year, and it was made to deal with this aspect of RPG which previously had no written rules or ethics. Since the project showed it was meeting a demand, it's possible/probably the makers of the above game saw a market niche, as well.

For the most part, for RPGers, I suspect the only real trouble will be among those with anger management problems, same as it is offline.

[cprise]

5. Take away the government part of it

And you get Libertariantron. Rape without the consequences.

Or is that 'Liber-topia'? Like strip-mining and deforestation without any legal repercussions.