Here is a fun game. The link goes directly to the download, but I can assure you it isn’t porn or a virus of any sort. Just a fun little game that is worth playing.
rule 1 of teh internets: don’t just download some guy’s executable…even if it’s Xun.
Damn, I did the obvious, and now its too late. I’m guessing that inaction, being an action, was an action I should have taken…?
i shot the guy and lost, i don’t know how to reset it
oh damn, i get it now. that’s the point. awesome.
Situational morality - I keep telling you guys.
i don’t see how that’s relevant…
Arrgh - the game put you into a situation, and supplied you with tools relevant to a course of action - namely, a gun. It also supplied a victim.
And what did you do…? You shot the guy, just like I did.
That’s what I mean by situational morality. The situation supplied the morality - ie. here’s a gun, there’s a guy, ergo implicitly it’s ‘okay to shoot people’, and bang, you shot.
having a gun and there being a person to shoot doesn’t change morality…it just changes your available options. i have a penis, is it implicit that it’s okay to rape women? that’s what your logic seems to imply.
Then, knowing that, why did you shoot…?
implying that the ability to shoot was the reason i shot is incorrect: i also have the ability to rape tab, and i don’t do that.
i shot because i was hoping doing that would allow me to get further into the game.
I didn’t shoot him.
After I hit, “Esc,” (Knowing what decision the game wanted me to make) it told me that I had won. I re-started the game and shot him just because I wanted to see what the result would be.
Here’s something cool, if you Delete the game, but then download it again, it still knows you shot him.
ya
You see why I just linked the .exe. Had I sent you to the page it wouldn’t have been nearly so effective.
An even better game is lose/lose, but I wouldn’t subject an unknowing audience to that. What with it actually screwing up your life and all.
escapistmagazine.com/news/vi … Your-Files
I posted the full link because it is important. Seriously, don’t play that game.
But the execution game plays with your mind in the same way, albeit with less serious consequences. Worth pondering. Tab gets it.
The game is too difficult.
wow, it’s weird that anybody would even try playing that game. what if it deletes system32???
I was just thinking last night before I drifted off, what if there’s a third-world dictator somewhere with a jail overflowing with political prisoners. So he builds a basement room with a robotic arm equipped with a gun opposite a sturdy chair bolted to the floor. Then he gives his prisoners a choice. They can stay in jail and rot, or play a little game.
The ones who volunteer are led to the room, and tied firmly to the chair, their heads imobilsed. Then the arm is switched on. The arm connects via the net to the server where this game is stored. The next time someone downloads it the arm establishes a link to that person’s computer and slaves itself to the movements of the player’s mouse. When they click, it shoots.
If the player shoots the victim, the political prisoner gets shot by the arm; if the player hits escape without shooting the victim, then the lucky political prisoner goes free.
All perfectly doable I think.
The high scores are from people who create rigs to play it. For a long time, the top score was around 100 +/- a dozen-or-so points because a clean system doesn’t have that many files and after a while it will crash. Some dedicated people have created systems with a bunch of bulk nonsense files on it to eat up. Still, there is an asymptotic approach to some score (I’m sure someone out there can calculate that one) as the HS is still only around ~500. After a while, the computer shuts down. Kill enough “other” people and eventually you’ve killed “yourself” by passing a moral event horizon.
well, the moral event horizon, if there is one at all, is at 1…you know, not in terms of video games…
I love this stuff, how some situations lead you round by the nose, whatever morals you may say you had prior.
Here’s how it goes.
First of all, someone enters into a situation. Sometimes they make an investment of some kind, not always monetary, to do so. This investment leads that person to have expectations. These expectations incentify them to stay in that situation until they are fulfilled.
In other situations a contract perhaps obligates them to stay within that situation, or sometimes simply the fear of social ridicule is enough to hold someone in place. Sometimes refusal to act accordingly will invoke punishment.
An obvious course of action is supplied, or simply self-evident. Sometimes there are examples of that action present, either that or the act itself is already well represented in common culture. ie the subject knows what to do.
Either an authority figure is present, giving the subject permission to undertake the action in question explicitly, or permission is given implicitly, either by anonymity - no-one will discover what you may or may not do - or simply by the situational cues themselves “this is what is always done in this kind of situation”.
There is usually a feeling of entrapment, that this situation cannot be escaped, or at least escaped without the sacrifice of a reward - especially if the subject has been paid in advance - or of success - and if a contract is involved, that also binds the subject.
This feeling of entrapment is easily projected onto others. That it is they who are holding the subject there, rather than the subject themselves are failing to extricate themselves.
Sometimes there is a time-limit imposed, or sometimes it’s simply the limit in the attention span of the subject, before they become bored. Sometimes it is not a single act that is required, but many itterated acts, in the latter case, that acts are often incremental in nature, increasing slowly in severity.
Let’s apply this to the case in hand.
Investment:
(1) We are promised fun. Fun has value. It is a reward.
(2) In order to procure this fun, we invest a small amount of time downloading and installing the game. We also overcome a slight fear of our computers getting a virus, as we’re downloading from a previously unknown source.
Punishment, social ridicule, contractual obligations are absent.
(3) We play the game. Expecting (recognisable) fun. Because we came into this from the angle of ‘it’s a game, and games aren’t real’ - we are implicitly permitted to act outside of our normal moral restrictions. We are excused.
(4) We find a familliar situation on two levels. We seem to be in a first person shooter. Something we’ve all played before. We know what to do - shoot things. And it’s also a Firing squad scenario - the wall, the pole, the bound figure, the gun in your hands. Again we know what happens in these scenarios, the bad guy gets executed, the guy(s) with the guns do the shooting. We also know from previous knowledge that the guys who do the shooting are not punished for shooting. Another case of implicit permission. The bound figure is hooded. Dehumanized. The victim is blinded, and there is no other witness present - we are defacto anonymous.
(5) We find we are trapped, there seems no other action available to move events along. The (virtual) space is uncomfortable. Dark, cold colours, windswept, boring. Nothing to see. We are not having fun yet. Frustration sets in. This begins to eat away at whatever intitial aversion we may have had toward shooting the victim. There is also no other avenue of information available - no back story. No reasons not to shoot the guy.
(6) Tick tick tick. B-o-r-e-d.
(7) Blam. Goodbye guy. Why not ‘not blam’…? Because we are used to earning rewards through action. It’s intuitive. I do something, I get a reward. Just like a trained squirrel. Getting something for inaction, or a refusal to act, is not someting we come across very often in real life.
Game over.
Pav’s is the funniest response. This guy was so gung ho to make good on his investment that only ‘winning’ was not good enough for him, he had to go back and shoot the guy anyway.
Scary. I can imagine Pav in his car, stopping just short of the old lady who stepped out. Her profusely thanking him. Then as she moves off he runs her down just for the kicks and giggles.
[size=75](Sorry Pav. Couldn’t resist. I know you aren’t a merciless old-lady runner-over)[/size]