• 10Aug 06

  Moral issues over spore?

       Even though I doubt anyone will read this I felt it was my duty as a fellow human being to throw my 2 cents worth into the penny jar.  At the moment there are some moral issues being debated over the game Spore.  The main issue I noticed was about the theory of evolution and how in Spore players will take an active roll in helping to make this happen.  The religious "fanatics" as I like to refer to them as, are debating that this isn't what we should be teaching gamers.  In my opinion I see absolutely no harm in this for a few main reasons.

  1. The species in which gamers would be evolving aren't mean to be humans. Will Wright and Spore aren't attempting to convert their gamers over to avid believers of the evolution theory.  As one poster on the comments string (which I am denied the privilege of posting on), Trevynator, made this statement

  "I'm not bothered with the concept of evolution in a game, because games are not meant to exactly copy the reality of our world. If the theory of evolution bothers someone, what about killing people in games, or simply completely unrealistic physics or events that couldn't exist normally? Not playing a game based on the fact that it ignores reality is a ludicrous as the theory at question itself- macro evolution."

       I whole-heartedly agree with this statement. If Will Wright is doing the world such a wrong here then what about all of the other games? ie. the GTA legacy, The Godfather, Mafia, Quake, Half-Life. The list could go on forever, but my main point here is that it isn't whats in the game that truly makes a difference, but how different people perceive what the experience within the game. I love all of the games above to death (no pun intended) and I for one have no problem playing them because I know where my morals and values lie. And now, after many revisions and pressing of the backspace key, I take you to my next point.

  2. This really doesn't quite tie in with the subject but I felt I would add this in. I read a book recently which goes by the title of "Guns Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond" which attempts to answer the ever popular question of "why did some societies grow to have all the technology and all of the diseases while others painstakingly remained hunter-gatherers and were eventually either killed by the more technologically inclined societies or pushed from their lands?" which details it quite well through the 440 some pages. Interestingly enough, the book devotes about 10 paragraphs to the subject of what they call "Kleptocratic Societies". these are statements directly from the book

  "What should an elite do to gain popular support while still maintaining a more comfortable lifestyle than commoners? Kleptocrats throughout the ages have resorted to a mixture of four solutions:

  1. Disarm the populace and arm the elite...2. Make the masses happy by redistributing much of the tribute received, in popular ways...

  3 Use the monopoly of force to promote happiness, by maintaining public order and curbing violence...

  And the one that made the most impact on me...

  4.The remaining way for kleptocrats to gain public support is to construct an ideology or religion justifying kleptocracy. Bands and tribes already had supernatural beliefs, just as do modern established religions. But the supernatural beliefs of bands and tribes did not serve to justify central authority, justify transfer of wealth, or maintain peace between unrelated individuals. When supernatural beliefs gained those functions and became institutionalized, they were thereby transformed into what we term a religion...Besides justifying the transfer of wealth to kleptocrats, institutionalized religion brings two other important benefits to centralized societies. First, shared ideology or religion helps to solve the problem of how unrelated individuals are to live together without killing each other -- by providing them with a bond not based on kinship. Second, it gives the people a motive, other than genetic self-interest, for sacrificing their lives on behalf of others. At the cost of a few society members who die in battle as soldiers, the whole society becomes much more effective at conquering other societies or resisting attacks."

      Now, for the people that have stuck with me this far (if any) should realize the logic in these statements. Personally, I believe that I am here for a purpose, but not necessarily one of a deity who constructed the universe in seven days and created man in his image or any other god for that matter. I believe my purpose is to help mankind in some way, to bridge gaps or to help humans benefit from their surroundings. My purpose is clear to me, meaning my morals and values and integrity are not jeopardized when I play games such as the above stated and especially not with Spore.

        I hope that For those of you who read this entire post (once again, if any) have had the chance to rethink your negative interpretations about the game Spore and think of it as just that, a game. Spore is being developed to push the boundaries of gaming and to provide entertainment, not to create arguments between religious believers and scientific followers.

  • Posted Aug 10, 2006 11:01 pm GMT
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