Poll: Video Gamings Most One Sided Arguments.

[conmag9]

Human Augmentation seemed a total no-brainer for me, but I'm an ardent futurist, so perhaps I'm biased. Still, Humanity Front's leader was the worst combination of self-righteous psychologist and creepy televangelist, and the VAST majority of the complaints against augmentation seemed born out of jealousy and willful ignorance. The idea that humanity is a trait that can somehow be reduced by machines boggles me.


The mage templar war wasn't quite so one sided for me. I'm still far and away on the side of the mages, but while Templar fears and prejudices are massively exaggerated (save in situations where they CAUSE them through fostering an attitude of "you're sin incarnate and we're totally ready to kill you on a suspicion. If we're feling merciful we'll just lobotomize you") and they're completely unwilling to listen to reason (not like they're being drugged by a paranoia inducing magical substance and put in charge of people they're not-so-subtly told by society to hate or anything), SOME of their worries have a kernal in truth. Personally I'd have them as a sort of police force hunting dangerous mages, and have mages trained so you don't end up with another Connor incident (only made possible by his mother's abject terror of the Circle, it should be noted). Basically treat them as any other person who owns a dangerous weapon: don't assume they're going to go on a ramapage and lock them up "just in case".

 

[CloudAtlas]

Let's say, and I hope you bear with my perhaps not-extremely-intuitive example here, the pilot of a plane full of passengers is steering his machine right into a Reaper drone. That's a pretty expensive drone, pretty "intelligent", and with a name too fitting to pass as example. You tell him a hundred times to change course, but he doesn't. Now your only options are to shoot down the drone, shoot down the plane, or do nothing and loose both. Would you shoot down the passenger plane, because it's the pilot fault and he is too stubborn to listen, even though the drone is just a machine, and even though the plane is full of passengers?

Except the game pretty clearly states that the geth will become self-aware if Legion uploads the code. That's pretty different from a manned drone. Also, you don't "lose both" if you do nothing. The geth win.

Yes, they gain awareness, but that doesn't magically answer the questions of what life is, whether this is life, and if it is, if synthetic life is as valuable as organic life.
I made this example since you seemed to assume that the Geth are, in fact, not life, or that it doesn't matter. If I misunderstood you here, my apologies.

Remember, it's not like every Quarian thought going to war with the Geth is a swell idea, but many of them will die nonetheless if you pick the Geth.
You're killing of innocents just because their leaders made bad decisions, just so you don't have to destroy some piece of machinery.

...which wouldn't happen if the quarians didn't outfit their civilian ships with weapons to try and gain an edge.

Many soldiers who die in the non-civilian ships might not have wanted the war either. Some admirals expressedly didn't.

The second question is not unimportant either. The Geth will have the Reaper code, and nobody knows what it exactly does. The reapers certainly didn't help the Geth out of altruism, and the Geth can't be sure that it affect them in some way.

All of which is negated at the end of the game. And apparently Legion knows what he's doing, as he can tell you the data will make them self-aware before uploading it.

I suppose the "correct" answer is peace, but considering the game frames this as one of the big morale choices it felt pretty one-sided when the game spends a couple of hours hammering how innocent the geth is before making you make it.

Legion believes he knows what he's doing, but he cannot be certain that somewhere in the reaper code there's something embedded that'll make the Geth turn or dysfunction or whatever. After all, reaper tech is much more advanced than Geth tech. And you can't be sure that Legion is telling the truth either. It's not like he has been always entirely truthful before, and he's obviously not impartial. You may have reason to trust him, but you can't be certain.

And what happens at the end of game is not relevant. Relevant is the information that is available to Shepard at the time you make the decision.

You think it was one-sided? That's one way to see it. Don't forget that the Geth were your enemy in Mass Effect 1, and you only learned during Mass Effect 3 that not all was as it seemed. I rather felt like the events were presented in this way so as to make you care enough about the Geth at all, so the decision whether to save them or the Quarians will become a difficult one.

 

[Phrozenflame500]

Yes, they gain awareness, but that doesn't magically answer the questions of what life is, whether this is life, and if it is, if synthetic life is as valuable as organic life.

Snipped out everything else as this is the main issue. I assumed that in the context of the game the Geth were as "alive" as the Quarians while you didn't. Assuming that a Geth life is worth as much as a Quarian life, I would say the decision is pretty one-sided. Assuming the Geth are just "machines" and it is a bit more complicated.

In the game world though, it seemed to me like it was going for self-awareness=life considering the whole EDI subplot, Legion's role, and the entirely of the ending, but I guess that's completely up for interpretation.

The Quarians are still dicks though.

 

[Abomination]

But it does affect you, even if only indirectly: A sick or disabled child means higher expenses for health care, for which you too have to pay in most western countries via taxes/health care contributions. And even if you don't, such a child is less likely to become successful, professionally, and end up as net payer into the tax system of your country. And everybody who is not a net payer costs you.

That depends on the nation it takes place in and you're throwing out an unspecified variable. Assume a nation where you have to bare the full brunt of the medical expenses yourself. There is no measureable way of me calculating just how much someone else smoking while pregant will affect me, it's a stop of water in a bucket that's poured into a river that feeds an ocean.

Many modern nations have the capabilities and the funds and did and still do intervene. They do so in Mali currently, they did so in Libya, in Kosovo, in former Yugoslavia, they could and should have done so in Rwanda and Sudan... and those are just the conflicts I can remember.
Sure, these interventions will have rarely been entirely selfless, but I'm not so cynical as to assume that humanitarian reasons didn't play a part.

Yet in most cases the efforts proved to be futile as in half a generation another warlord or dictator has risen and the entire process has started again. The capabilities and funds to actually restore order involve not just removing the current regieme but also building infrastructure and local government capable of ensuring human rights are upheld in those nations... and that will take at least two generations to be sure of.

Just going in to knock the head off the wanker in charge then leave doesn't solve the problem. It's just a costly enterprise where everyone loses in the long run.

Sorry, but that's not how moralilty works. There are arguments that are arguably wrong on any account, to be sure, and they are plentiful. But statements that you believe are wrong, to a larger or lesser degree, but that are totally right within a different morality system. Now you might say that system is wrong too - and you most likely will, after all you believe in a different one - but if you actually deal with moral philosophy, with the different popular morality systems (like utilitarism, communitarism, libertarianism, the writings of Kant or Rawls, some systems based on religion, and so on), you will still have to admit that the arguments your proponents may have some merit, even though you fundamentally agree with them.

If people knew more about moral philosophy, they would understand better why some moral questions that seem very clear to them are, in fact, not, or if they do, have a better understanding of why that is so.

If you're going to introduce different morality into a scenario there is no answer to anything involving politics. Someone always suffers from every decision made in a political sense. The "best case" scenario is what we should aim for taking into account the goals and desires of the parties in question.

When it comes to the Stormcloaks an the Imperials the "best case" scenario for BOTH parties is for the Stormcloaks to not try and start a fucking rebellion in an effort to undo the demands placed upon them by the Thalmor. It's not the Empire who is responsible for the situation - they did what they could to oppose it. The Thalmor is the enemy but the Stormcloaks are directing their ire towards the Empire, something they have always been happy to be a member of - and in fact is what they founded in the first place. By fighting the Empire they are now making sure they won't even be able to worship Talos in secret. They are weakening the only entity capable of restoring their religious rights all in an effort to restore their religious rights. What is best for both Skyrim - the people the Stormcloaks supposedly serve - and the Empire is for the Empire to win the war. By going to war in the first place though the Stormcloaks have delayed the coming of AND reduced the chance of them having their religious freedom returned.

The entire scenario is a no-brainer... not only are the Stormcloaks being stupid they're also being dicks about it. To say their opinion is valid just because they have an opinion isn't to encourage self-determination, it's to encourage stupidity and irrational thought processes. They are a harm to themselves AND others. The only rational and moral thing to do is put the rabid dog down.

 

[Vausch]

There's a very good reason DE:HR seems one sided.

And that's because it is.

For one, you're literally forced to be augmented and it has not one, not two, but zero side effects. This means that instead of a realistic debate it's instead a matter of the transhumanists automatically being on the side of the player and the naturalists being wrong.

I think the debate on transhuman augmentation is more about the ability to afford it and keep up with everybody else rather than being a bad thing to do in general. Extra Credits talked about this, like when the rich can afford any augmentation they wanted while poorer people have to settle for the older model that likely would be similar to what we have today with a slight more of a bent to it. And that's likely the result of an accident rather than just going in and saying "Hey, lop my arm off and replace it with one that can let me paint like Da Vinci".

Adam got his because he was injured on the site and judging by the sound if it they gave it to him to avoid him or his family suing rather than it being the right thing to do. Honestly I can't see a big corporation do that, haha. But that's just my interpretation, I only have seen the custcene and haven't played the game itself yet.

 

[Muspelheim]

Bad example, maybe. Warcraft is not the go-to place for meaningful questions, but I'll contribute none the less.

World of Warcraft's dual faction emphasis have bitten them in the bum a fair bit. Going "Who is evil? The Horde or the Alliance? Or are they just equally grey?" seems to have been the main idea. They're trying to subvert the usual fantasy arrangement, humans & friends being good, orcs and furries being bad, and that's a good idea, at least. And hell, back in vanilla times, it worked reasonably well. They were about equal in terms of good or evil actions and leaders.

Now, not so much. Ever since they "escalated" the faction war, the Horde has become the far more nasty faction, while the Alliance is the one with a modicum of restraint. It's interesting to watch, in a way. The lore and plot department certainly seem to favour the Horde ever so slightly, writing them victory after victory, with increasingly ruthless methods. While also still desperately trying to portray them as misunderstood heroes, the exotic complement to the Alliance's more traditional good and heroic image.

Going "Who is the least evil faction of the Horde and Alliance?" at this stage would be pointless, because the Alliance have nowhere near matched the Horde's dickishness quotas. The few boo-boos the Alliance have commited is almost quaint in comparison. It's interesting how morally superior they've inadvertently painted the Alliance over the last years.

(And I do find it rather cute when the more fanatical Horde fans tries to make it out as an even picture. It's very pretty to watch, in a way.)

Hmmm... how about choosing between the factions in Fallout: New Vegas?
I'm not sure if this counts, as it's not really an example where the majority of players favored one side over another. Rather, it's one where most of them AVOIDED a particular side over all other side.

I am talking about Caesar's Legion. I don't know any player who genuinely supports them, what with their slavery, misogyny, and conquering anyone that's not them. Practically speaking, it's also pretty hard to play as a Legion-supporting character, as the NCR controls a lot of the Mojave.

Indeed, their way of introducing themselves is by vaguely threatening you in a relatively innocent town they've just obliterated. For reasons. Alongside the other factions with reasonable goals, they just seem more like some sort of Minecraft griefer clan or something.

 

[TheMigrantSoldier]

I know that many players abhor the Legion in New Vegas. It's really hard not to, to be fair. They're a bunch of sexist cosplayers with their leader being a monstrous hypocrite. It feels as though Obsidian even discourages the Legion route. What's that Legion-sympathizers? Want to support your faction? Well, have fun doing so by killing off Legion-supporting tribes in Honest Hearts.

Bad example, maybe. Warcraft is not the go-to place for meaningful questions, but I'll contribute none the less.

World of Warcraft's dual faction emphasis have bitten them in the bum a fair bit. Going "Who is evil? The Horde or the Alliance? Or are they just equally grey?" seems to have been the main idea. They're trying to subvert the usual fantasy arrangement, humans & friends being good, orcs and furries being bad, and that's a good idea, at least. And hell, back in vanilla times, it worked reasonably well. They were about equal in terms of good or evil actions and leaders.

......

Pretty much. Blizzard tells the playerbase that the factions are relatively balanced as far as morality but fails to actually show. The Alliance's most villainous act in Cataclysm was embarrassingly white-washed in a novel in favor of the boring "lawful good overdrive". The Horde has been portrayed as stupidly aggressive and is supposed to be redeemed twice. The whole situation leaves fans of both factions frustrated.

 

[lacktheknack]

Well in Skyrim I always found the civil war ridiculously one sided.

The Stormcloaks were basically dipshits and political terrorists without a worthwhile cause. So I naturally sided with the empire and stamped them out in the name of the glorious Emperor.

And grats! You made your first thread.

This. The only items on "Reasons To Join The Stormcloaks" were:

1. The Imperials accidentally tried to kill me once.

2. F*** da police!

3. Religious freedom, I guess, but that's not exactly the Imperials' fault.

4. Seriously, f*** da police!

I never figured out why people would join the Stormcloaks.

OT: Probably the most one-sided argument in gaming I've ever encountered is "Is Mass Effect 3's ending any goodNO!"

 

[lacktheknack]

There's a very good reason DE:HR seems one sided.

And that's because it is.

For one, you're literally forced to be augmented and it has not one, not two, but zero side effects. This means that instead of a realistic debate it's instead a matter of the transhumanists automatically being on the side of the player and the naturalists being wrong.

This is a good point. If we use Geneforge as a reference instead, where the genetic alterations slowly turn you into a holier-than-thou megalomaniac and lock you out of the "best" endings, all of a sudden, it becomes a more interesting and fair debate.

 

[Abomination]

I actually find there to be a strange conflict of morality on the Horde and that's with the Undead.

I mean, they can't reproduce without killing anyone - but they're sentient. They have their own goals and ideals, those who are undead didn't ask to be undead but there they are. The Alliance demands they just do what is natural and "die"... but when you are undead that's just like asking a living person to die because they're an elf.

So they have to kill people to keep their numbers up so they're dangerous enough so that nobody else will try and wipe them out - because they're already considered monsters before they do anything wrong.

I find the Forsaken to actually be very tragic and they have my sympathies.

 

[EvilRoy]

The Empire vs. Stormcloak thing was a pretty rough decision for me, and in the end I couldn't actually come up with a satisfying reason.

The Stormcloaks may have been stupid and selfish, but they were also kind of right. Talos is a real deity, you get bonuses if you pray at his alters or wear his symbol. That's a pretty tough point to argue, although admittedly you would need to be one of the very few who can take out a village by accident during allergy season to actually notice the benefit. On the other hand, racist as fuck and willfully oppressing the foresworn who were kind of in skyrim first, though I think both sides may have done that. Best part: if I recall properly part of the foresworn hate has to do with their pagan-ish regligion which was also totally legit, so hypocrisy ho I guess.

The Empire were taking the needs of the many before the needs of the few, but did so with no regard for the lives or culture of Skyrim as they tried to keep control. I recall during the negotiations story quest where you had to get both leaders in the same room, and talking to the empire general. [Paraphrased], when I appealed on the grounds that fucking end of the world over here maybe lend a brother a hand, he replied that dragons ain't the empires problem and he was just there to keep talos out of the temples. So as long as the people salute the empire and its approved deities as they burn to death, everything's cool eh? Also, after thinking on the issue for a while I think it may be partially the fault of the empire that dragon-douche woke up.

So on one hand I have shortsighted, racist, hypocritical douchebags, and on the other hand I have shortsighted but in a different way, unfeeling, potentially the cause of the end times asshats. Tough call.

 

[Arrogancy]

These aren't really one-sided arguments. You're looking at two cases of extremist opinions, and saying that most people have moderate viewpoints. On every issue, that's the case. Most people are moderates who tend to drift toward the mean between both extremes in virtually every case. Claiming that "most people have moderate opinions when given a choice between extremes" is some kind of breaking revelation really isn't, I'm sorry to say.

 

[balladbird]

Indeed, their way of introducing themselves is by vaguely threatening you in a relatively innocent town they've just obliterated. For reasons. Alongside the other factions with reasonable goals, they just seem more like some sort of Minecraft griefer clan or something.

to give credit to the Legion, "relatively innocent" is being waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too nice to Nipton. the town was full of opportunistic rapist/murderers who really did deserve a healthy dose of karma. Granted, whether they enjoyed crucifixion or not is another case altogether.

Really, I could almost, almost make a case for the Legion having the argument that with their totalitarian rule there was absolute order, since the NPCs from Legion territory point out that there are no raiders to be found, merchants can travel from location to location without even needing to worry about hiring guards, because no sane bandit would risk the legion's wrath to mess with them.

Unfortunately, the game then bends over backwards to point out that the Legion will inevitably collapse, no matter what happens in the game, so yeah... really no silver lining to that dark cloud.

***



For my example, it's only tangential to gaming, since it's based in comics, but given all the hundreds of dollars I've spent on game tie-ins over the years, I feel justified to bring it up here.

I've always felt the mutant registration versus mutant civil rights debate in X-men to be extremely one sided. I get that the writers are trying to create a fantasy parallel to racism/homophobia, but the really big difference is that people don't have to worry about gays or black people blowing holes in their city with laser eyes.

Having everyone with a mutant power register seems like a fairly mild measure, too, given that, yeah... you kinda want to know what these people can do. Couple this with the fact that the pro-mutant argument seems to be "don't infringe on their rights, trust them to do the right thing with their powers!" and you have a hilariously one-sided dynamic.

Sorry X-men, but given the wonderful track record humans have with not abusing power when they have it, I gotta side with the senator on this one.

 

[Abomination]

I've always felt the mutant registration versus mutant civil rights debate in X-men to be extremely one sided. I get that the writers are trying to create a fantasy parallel to racism/homophobia, but the really big difference is that people don't have to worry about gays or black people blowing holes in their city with laser eyes.

Or do we?

Dun-dun dunnnnnn!

And I mean, have you seen what a house will look like after a gay couple has moved in? It's like the opposite of destruction. That must be a superpower.

 

[Xan Krieger]

Well in Skyrim I always found the civil war ridiculously one sided.

The Stormcloaks were basically dipshits and political terrorists without a worthwhile cause. So I naturally sided with the empire and stamped them out in the name of the glorious Emperor.

And grats! You made your first thread.

This. The only items on "Reasons To Join The Stormcloaks" were:

1. The Imperials accidentally tried to kill me once.

2. F*** da police!

3. Religious freedom, I guess, but that's not exactly the Imperials' fault.

4. Seriously, f*** da police!

I never figured out why people would join the Stormcloaks.

OT: Probably the most one-sided argument in gaming I've ever encountered is "Is Mass Effect 3's ending any goodNO!"

I joined them because there is no chance in hell an elf is gonna tell me what to do. I crush elves in every game involving them (except Dragon Age Origins because I need them) from W40K's eldar to the elder scrolls series. Yes I am racist against an entirely fictional race. Besides the dragonborn stopped a dragon that could destroy the world, I'm pretty sure that means he's tough enough to throw a pansy elf army off a cliff with his voice.

 

[CrazyCapnMorgan]

I crush elves in every game involving them (except Dragon Age Origins because I need them) from W40K's eldar to the elder scrolls series.

Sooooooo, I take it that it's a safe assumption you've never played a Zelda game before? Or, at least, never completed one?

 

[shintakie10]

Good points. Though I have heard people say that the Thalmor don't really have the power to take Skyrim quite yet. They bring up that Hammerfell already fought them off, and that the Thalmor themselves don't want the war to end.

That said, the Thalmor are the greater threat in this situation, even if they aren't SO dire.
And as they say; "Divide and conquer".

So, I'm on the Empires side. Besides, Ulfric is a jerk. ;p

Hammerfell is able to hold off the Thalmor, but Hammerfell isn't independent.

What if Hammerfell was independent? Could they still do it? What if they had to have a civil war to gain that independence? One could hardly say they'd be in a better position to fight the Thalmor. What's more, Skyrim itself is divided on the issue. This isn't just the entire province raising up, it's about one third the province rising up, another third of the province trying to put that rebellion down and another third just wishing the one rising up would stop it but not wanting to get its hands dirty.

The Stormcloak are dicks... they're also the worst kind of dicks: they're stupid dicks.

Hammerfell isn't independent, but they did hold off the Thalmor on their own.

If I remember my Elder Scrolls lore correctly the Thalmor invaded Hammerfell and Hammerfell asked Cyrodiil for aid. Instead of sendin aid the Empire pulled all its forces back and let the Redguards and Bretons take on the Thalmor on their own. The Thalmor took a ton of land in the process, but couldn't take all of it.

I'm not sure about the rest of the story there, whether the Empire finally got off their ass and helped or if the Thalmor pulled back and hit Cyrodiil instead. Alls I know is that Hammerfell, on their own, held off what basically amounted to the full might of the Thalmor for quite a long time.

The difference between this and Skyrim though? The Redguards and Bretons aren't racist douchebags so they were actually able to get everyone to help. If the Thalmor invade Skyrim you'd be hard pressed to find anyone that isn't a Nord willin to fight for a people that treated them like less than dirt.

 

[The White Hunter]

Well in Skyrim I always found the civil war ridiculously one sided.

The Stormcloaks were basically dipshits and political terrorists without a worthwhile cause. So I naturally sided with the empire and stamped them out in the name of the glorious Emperor.

The Empire lost its way though, what about all the innocent Nords being dragged off and tortured to death by the Thalmor and with the Empires consent? What about all the Jarls smooching up to Elenwen and taking Thalmor gold in order to turn a blind eye? Hammerfell also seized independence because of this, Skyrim deserves the same.

I agree, but the Stormcloaks didn't care about that, they just wanted to put Ulfric on the throne to have their god back. What do you think happens after that? The empire sits back? The Thalmor just shrug and abandon it?

 

[The White Hunter]

Well in Skyrim I always found the civil war ridiculously one sided.

The Stormcloaks were basically dipshits and political terrorists without a worthwhile cause. So I naturally sided with the empire and stamped them out in the name of the glorious Emperor.

And grats! You made your first thread.

This. The only items on "Reasons To Join The Stormcloaks" were:

1. The Imperials accidentally tried to kill me once.

2. F*** da police!

3. Religious freedom, I guess, but that's not exactly the Imperials' fault.

4. Seriously, f*** da police!

I never figured out why people would join the Stormcloaks.

OT: Probably the most one-sided argument in gaming I've ever encountered is "Is Mass Effect 3's ending any goodNO!"

One of my main issues with the Stormcloaks is Ulfric is a fucking dick. He was extremely rude to me when I offered to help him, despite having proven my worth in battle many times (saved the world from fucking dragons yo) and he still brushed me off and sent me to some shitty shipwreck to prove my worth.

Fuck that noise, I kicked over everything on his table, stole everything of value and fled to solitude after murdering his guards.

 

[CloudAtlas]

Yes, they gain awareness, but that doesn't magically answer the questions of what life is, whether this is life, and if it is, if synthetic life is as valuable as organic life.

Snipped out everything else as this is the main issue. I assumed that in the context of the game the Geth were as "alive" as the Quarians while you didn't. Assuming that a Geth life is worth as much as a Quarian life, I would say the decision is pretty one-sided. Assuming the Geth are just "machines" and it is a bit more complicated.

In the game world though, it seemed to me like it was going for self-awareness=life considering the whole EDI subplot, Legion's role, and the entirely of the ending, but I guess that's completely up for interpretation.

The Quarians are still dicks though.

Yes, if you assume that the Geth are indeed alive, and also that their synthetic life is as much worth as organic life, then it is pretty hard to morally justify killing saving the aggressors at the expense of the victims. You still have to consider though - if this argument is morally permissible for you at all, i.e. if ends do justify the means to some degree - whether the Geth or the Quarian contribution to the war effort is more worth, and more reliable.

It's probably also useful to think about whether it's a good thing for advancend synthetic "life" at all, given that a history of synthetics rising up and exterminating their creators is the very thing that motivates the Reapers, and is thus at the core of the whole plot. Not saying that it is morally right to commit genocide just because this as of yet anything but aggressive species might attempt the same at some time in the future, but still, something worth considering.