Because Mork is a literal Redditor, he let me know that the ARC Raiders community has split itself into two subreddits over some basic questions about the intention of the game. We're putting together a summit of course, on a summit, because it seems like that would be a cool place for one. We'll let you know how it goes.
My doom is to understand what everyone actually means, and so of course the conversation makes perfect sense and is somewhat intractable. It's a more elaborate version of the discussions that used to gather around the Noob Tube. It's a "no-skill" weapon that's also incredibly effective, so you're both encouraged to use it because of its efficacy but then discouraged from its use by social sanction. At least, they wanted me to be discouraged. Maybe if you're awesome at COD or whatever you can forgo the Foe-Hammer, called Glamdring by the elves, but I don't have the luxury of "ethics."
The breakdown here is that, yes - hunting other players is optional. That is absolutely the case. It is also the case that the game offers profound rewards for it and is, in fact, designed around the addictive tension that even the potential of such encounters generates. So then, we go back: denying rewards for these rewards is fundamentally a test of your humanity, one they are apparently determined to fail, and they seem oddly proud of their failure. Now, let's go the other way: how am I being called a bad person for playing the game they literally made?
It's like, how can a plant be evil, man? God invented weed.
Gabe and I have discussed it a lot, and ultimately what we came to is that hunting human beings is something we aren't capable of, and it might be interesting to address such players with a comprehensive psychological battery. It's not literal hunting, though; it's both real, and not real. They aren't literal villains, like, I dunno… Pol Pot. But they are playing a villain's role when they stalk and rob other players. Objectively. It's okay to play a role on a stage, and that's what ARC Raiders is.
(CW)TB out.
