Encumbrance, perceived temp and other issues


themole4

Recommended Posts

Burning Bridges is correct that this topic does not belong into TLD, because it will take a certain innocent fun aspect of the game away, and substitute it with the things that Burning Bridges has mentioned and with a gritty serious approach that offers less fun but more dark feelings for the audience. After reading his post this became clear to me.

But for the love of philosopical debate i wil answer a part of a post:

IF the comparison to organ donations stands, then killing someone for their meat would be like killing someone to forcibly explant their organs. Utterly monstrous. (But would that be really worse than killing them for their food rations, or for their gear? I don't think so, I think it's more a matter of ancestral and, so-to-speak, internally "hardwired" irrational taboos than fully informed moral choices.)

No there is no difference, because the result for the victim is the same: death. And since we do not talk here about self-defence it is obvious that this would be intentional killing someone for the sake of own survival.

Survival through killing of other humans and and killing a human in self-defence are not the same things, in my opinion.

Do you talk about the magnificent Elite space-sim, which had one of the best programing concerning the graphics (1984) and use of available disk and ram space based on formulas to generate planetary systems?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yes, that Elite. You could do pretty wicked things, if you wanted to, but that freedom was just a small part of an astonishingly vast universe of possibilities.

And I was not continuing to push the idea of cannibalism. I was just reasoning that many videogames (let's take a recent one, Fallout 3: you could decide to be a saint or to do horrible, horrible things) let you do much worse things. A lot of games let you wage war, which is the worst idea a human can have, but nobody seems to care. Some topics, instead, tend to trigger a violent emotional response, which isn't, in my honestly humble opinion, proportionate with the ethical significance of the fact. Nuking billions of people, mowing down hundreds of soldiers with machine guns, killing to steal, exploiting the weak: meh, well, whatever. Eating the flesh of a deceased human to survive in extreme situations: AAAARGH! YOU SHOULDN'T EVEN BRING IT UP!

I agree, from what other users said: it doesn't belong in this game because too much people would be disturbed or disgusted by it.

But I think that I should have the freedom to discuss the matter and to speak my mind about the fact that I find the vehemence of this aversion uncoherent with the general acceptance of many other moral conducts that abound even in mainstream videogames.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So we agree. The important thing (for me at least) is that this is something we use for entertainment and some things from the real world are really uncomfortable. Also what would be gained from gameplay persepective? I think nothing that isn't already there. The morale question? Sure, but that is a lose-lose proposition. You either starve or lose your faith that humans are sacred. In the end you would get desensitized to eating from human bodies, and that is revolting. Under real, extreme conditions? Different topic, and not for me to judge. Rationality lives in a sphere of its own, it has no right or wrong. Everyone will have to make their decisions alone and get the consequences. That means some people will kill to survive, others die so that others can survive etc.

P.s. If you're interested in the topic, there is the account of the Miracle in the Andes (which you know), but also another event: The Donner Party. A trek to California that had to survive a Winter under very similar conditions to the game, and eventually there was cannibalism. It's not a pleasant story though, there was extreme lack of sympathy and cooperation between the people, and even the real hero, who set out alone to save his family and nearly succeeded, turned out to be a tragic one.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thank you for pointing that out, but I think I've already read about The Donner expedition (therey were pioneers, weren't they? I'll check it again to make sure I remember correctly).

If I may say one more word about the Uruguayan survivors, I really believe that they didn't do anything wrong, in the end. What they did was a suffered decision, and it was very hard for them (as some of the survivors recounted on more than one tv interview), and that made them stay human. They didn't kill anyone, thought hard about what they were doing, and finally they just barely made it out of that hell. More, saving your own life isn't just a selfish act, is something you owe to your loved ones.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.