Mithridates VI wrote:Can we cut it out with the references to "jihad jeeps" and variations thereof, guise?
Thanks.
Mithridates, the answer to your question is YES, we can, and YES WE SHOULD.
Your thread is actually an evolution of ANOTHER thread I recently read, involving the interpretation of GENDER-insensitivity in the game. I tried to contribute gently to that thread, and I'll try to post gently in THIS thread, but please know that my actual feeling on this subject is NOT GENTLE AT ALL.
We can see from the mixture of post-responses to this thread, that we are persons who live in a very frank and very raw REAL world. We often want to unwind and escape from that real world by choosing a movie theatre, a nightclub, a private entertainment event, (a vid game!), etc. Yet for some reason so many of us gradually bring the harsh crap right with us into those places and start to ruin everyone's chance to unwind, when their original plan was to come to these events in order to ESCAPE the harsh stuff.
There's always a line between acceptable behavioral manners as "characters" in a fantasy/video game (even a socially-interfacing game like Dust), and acceptable behavioral manners we carry as "persons" in the REAL world. When the game has players boosting cars, running hookers, picking obscene character names, and levying racial crusades against other characters,...well, we'd have to argue a long time to condemn or defend what we're doing, so that line of "acceptable/unacceptable" in our game becomes very fuzzy.
But concepts like the two I just stated are socially too high-end and too off the hook for most of you to grasp. Don't feel hurt--I said MOST... Some players like Mithridates see the subject clear in their minds, for them it's right THERE--they get it in a heartbeat! But for the rest of us, well... even if you have a lifetime, you're never going to be capable of wrapping your heads around these concepts.
So there's THIS way to explain it, and it's more solid:
Reality is, this game is not a fantasy. The video game a private entertainment businessplace, like a pub, a theatre, a specialty nightclub,... we are not the Owner.
The Owner says in his business arena you're not allowed to bring any thing or start any crap that might turn off his customers. Because it's his place, HE can furnish whatever violent, racist, sexist content he wants in it.
But YOU CAN'T. He doesn't care about any justifications you may whip out about environment/upbringing/3rd-world-terrorism/global-greed/price-of-freedom, so just stop trying THAT door. If he doesn't want you dragging in even a hint of issues from whatever crumby life you may be living outside, because he thinks you'll interfere with him trying to deliver his quality to his customers,.. then, well,.. that's the rules.
That's the REAL.
CCP had us agree to rules about not choosing high-risk, inflammatory merc-names, and all the other usual gender/race/sexual misbehavior, in order to make some sort of comfort zone (yes, even in a wild freaky game). They could explain it as, "Because what messes with your comfort zone is also likely messing with CCP's liability and profitable reputation."
CCP also offered a box of tools to be used when a client sees some hurtful rule-breaking ( ...I'll be frank here: for some of the persons hoping for a solution, start using the tools; you just gonna have to have some guts and step into it.)
....This is sad camp that nobody likes reading, so I have to apologize for making it so long.
The tail end response is, YES the behavior should be cut out wherever it occurs, and should be reported whenever it doesn't stop.
Mithradates, the gaming environment has a portion of players who are right on target with you. We're just not very noisy, so it's almost like we're not around at all. But when the games are made, the developers make those games for 'us', not for the crap-bringers. I'm sure some quiet players will start looking into this issue with the devs.
...I wasn't even sure what you players were referring to with this new term "jihad-jeep"... now I've found out; I should have known it would be coming from some party-pooper level.
I used to theorize that this game was so wicked-different, that it has divorced many Classic FPS gamers who were just too inflexible. Now that Dust is starting to open that critical SOCIAL interface with EVE Online gamers, I see nothing wrong with making some examples to the rules and divorcing customer accounts due to players' failure to KEEP THEMSELVES REAL.