Moral Obligations and MMOs

How dare you cloud the issue with facts!

Do me a favor then mate, read my comments in the thread starting with my comment to the OP about the lack of connection between video games and morals.

Some here appear to be are mad because I call paying real money for a chance to get some of the items in the SP gambling, because it is. In all truth that appears to be their problem not mine.

I have said it was gambling because when you pay real life money for a chance at something its gambling. I think the problem you and others are having is adding anything other than the technical sterile definition of my statement of fact. You keep bringing in the word argument when it does not apply since regardless of your attempt to minimize, you admit it is gambling and that is the very simple statement of fact I have already made.

And that's comparable to these packs, IMO. I get goodies out of them. I don't know what goodies until I open them, but they're goodies all the same. Just as I don't know what flavor gumball I get out of the gumball machine. It's still gum.

Colloquially, most people would probably call buying packs for a chance to get some random prize gambling. However, while the super packs meet that criteria colloquially, they do not meet the legal definition of gambling in any jurisdiction in the United States that I'm aware of.


As to my moral obligations to the devs and the other players of the game, the way I see this game is that contrary to the implication sometimes drawn from the phrase "in real life" I consider this game to be *in* real life. Every collection of pixels comprising a player character is being piloted by a real person. How I treat that avatar determines how I treat that person. I don't need special morals for that: I already knew how to treat people before I started playing this game, and seven years of playing this and other MMOs has yet to require me to modify any of those morals or add special modifiers to them.

The devs are professionals working for a company that produces a product I use. I already knew how to treat such people before I started playing City of Heroes. They are also professionals working in a subset of the information systems realm, albeit a highly specialized part of it. I also know how to treat such people specifically. I haven't really needed to rewrite the handbook on how to treat them either.

The fact that the company the devs work for is Paragon Studios instead of Apple Computer or Google or Microsoft, and the fact that the product is City of Heroes instead of fill in the blank here, has almost no relevance to how I treat my fellow players and how I treat the devs. And as to my commitment to the game where it comes to testing, suggesting, commenting, and contributing, that is solely a question of my desire and my ability to contribute to a game I personally like. I don't feel a moral obligation to the game in that sense beyond that.

As a "known" player, and as someone in a rather unique position in many ways I feel some obligation to be as helpful as possible, but I don't think I would consider that a "moral" obligation.

I will never pay real money for super packs (I haven't yet spent any real money on points - all of my purchases have been with my stipend), but I will end up getting some. Would you call that gambling, too? Since you seem to be really stuck on the 'real money' part of it.

Originally Posted by Dispari I don't know why Dink thinks she's not as sexy as Jay was. In 5 posts she's already upstaged his entire career.

Frankly, this is all that was done.

This is an area in which I never comment on and stayed away from since I had no position regarding this kind of thing.

This is exactly where the comparison starts to fail. And the trading card game comparison too.

Gumballs might be gumballs and trading cards are trading cards, but 'goodies' certainly aren't all 'goodies'.

Costume parts =/= merits =/= enhancements =/= totally superfluous and uninteresting (to me) consumeables of all varieties.

I don't care about any of the above except the costume bits. I REALLY hate that in order to get those costume parts I need to buy and sift through piles of worthless crap in order to get them. So I won't. So now I'm annoyed that I can't get those costume parts.

I HATE this sort of stuff IRL too. If I want something I just want to be able to go out and buy it. I really don't want to go jump through hoops or various annoying marketing schemes just to get something I want. Companies that make a habit out of this sort of crap lose me as a costumer.

Let's try to respect mod13 and just say its a chance the same chance. I do recognize some ppl have a variety of positions about how they would use the SP paying or not etc..., but that was never my issue since that is a personal choice. Also just to be clear, I am not stuck on real money, that just happens to be part of how it is technically defined.

And I'm only interested in the orange gumballs and really hate the green apple ones. Sorry, the comparison still stands. Just because you don't like some of the "prizes" doesn't mean the gumball comparison doesn't work.

My post, since deleted, was not intended to imply that anything illegal was going on with super packs. In fact, I am 100% sure that there are no legal problems with them. I apologize for the lack of clarity.

And the colloquial sense is something that I don't think is specific enough for me to have a moral position on. If you ask me if I have a moral stance on being presented with the option to pay money for one or more prizes selected by random chance, I would say participating in such an offering or offering it to other people in and of itself connotes no moral question worthy of special recognition.

In general, I have ethical issues with deliberate deception with intent to defraud, but my definition of such is neither vague nor expansive, and no element of City of Heroes currently qualifies as such for me.

Apropros typo of the year.

Me either. That's why I asked the OP why he was asking about morals and video games as I did not see the connection.

I believe the OP was asking, in a colloquial fashion, to what degree do people feel an obligation to sacrifice some of their entertainment for the betterment of the game. And in that respect, the question is an edge variant of the tragedy of the commons scenario.

I can say this much: I don't feel *obligated* to do things like test the game, but I sometimes feel *compelled* to do so.

Again? I think you gave me that award sometime last year too ...

At least you still got the option to go to a candy shop and buy all the gumballs of the color you like.

This. Bottom line folks just want to be able to go to the store and outright buy the costume pieces they want without getting stuck with buying any other useless crap (their words not mine).

For the ones stuck in the super packs, they can't. And they find that annoying.

They don't want a chance at their item, they don't want to gamble with real life cash that they may or may not get the item, they just want to be able to plop down money to outright buy it.

don't see what's confusing to understand here.

I could seriously go on an ethics tangent and point out that these types of answered, but some refuse to give up their delusions... but I'll just keep it short and simple...

Companies make money by making their clients happy. The Happier they are the more likely they are to buy and/or continue buying from a company. When companies cease making someone happy they start losing customers because they try other companies' products that may make them happy...

What you think of Brand loyalty is a twisted version of itself... Loyalty occurs because the product is good and makes one happy so there is no point to look elsewhere for the same or similar product. This has been twisted and now people look at it as even if the company is giving you crap to use to clean something you should stick with them even if you can see the other company's product is better.

I think a few things got kind of mixed up in people's heads. Some people have confused the basic concepts outlined in your post with the OP's question concerning moral obligations and morality in general.

They are separate issues and were presented separately, so there really should be no confusion.

You know how long it's been since I've seen an actual candy shop? :-/

There's one here around the corner.

Congrats. But, not counting places like the Godiva store that only sells chocolate, I haven't seen one myself between 4 fair sized cities in over a decade. :-/ Shame, too. Seems they're the only place to buy fruit flavored hard candies that aren't Jolly Ranchers anymore.