Interactivity scares people.

This story from Grimwell’s, detailing an ATITD Event in which women were treated as chattel, has caught the interest of virtually every wannabe talking head with even the tiniest interest in virtual worlds. So far, almost everyone is missing the point.

Only the obvious and superficial angles have been brought up (and beaten to death, I might add). The interesting debate is not about slavery, sexism or political correctness. Nor is it about historically accurate depictions. Nor is it really about free speech (it’s clear that Tepper has the right to make whatever game he wants to, and his fans have the right to complain about it if they want, and quit if they like). The real question is: why is the line of what is acceptable so different for interactive fiction than for other genres?

Consider: Glory is one of the finest Civil War movies ever made, largely due to what slavery brings to the conversation. Similarly, Heat is a great movie built around a gang of robbers who pull assault rifles out when the cops show up. How different is that, really, from Grand Theft Auto?

Andrew Tepper (the guy behind ATITD) said as much when he said in the SlashDot thread:

The best books, movies, television – can provoke a range of emotions. I like books that make me feel happy, enraged, triumphant, guilty, enlightened, sad. I want to have all of those emotions available in an MMO, and emotions occur in players, not characters.

But we’re not allowed to do that. Maybe it’s because we’re still percieved as a kid’s medium, but we still have to dumb things down. Everything has to be a cartoon. Note from the Grimlock article:

During the discussion, Tepper compared the game to The Archie Bunker Show, explaining that the game brings in difficult topics and players should accept it for its entertainment value.

As designers, we want to make stuff that inspires commentary, like All In The Family and Leaving Las Vegas, but right now we can only make Leave It to Beaver and Pretty Woman. I’d love to make a game that was based on true, mature sexual themes, as opposed to continue to pump out juvenile crap with an adolescent view on that suite of emotions.

Let’s consider again what Teppy was trying to do (from Slashdot).

Along comes a foreign trader, with shiny new goods, and an attitude that’s totaly offensive, totally out of line with the culture that has developed in our Ancient Egypt. Would you trade with him? Would you put aside your morals, if it meant you’d get an advantage that many people don’t have? In real-life, would you patronize a store that had a “no jews allowed” policy? What if they had *really* good prices? Would you do it and hope nobody saw? Maybe feel guilty?

Interestingly enough, Shadowbane has had racism, sexism and slavery from day one built in as part of the backstory. Elves discriminate against everyone, Amazons are an all-female nation that see men as inherently inferior, and minotaurs were the slave race of the elves, although at present, the minotaurs are in a state of uprising. No one in Shadowbane finds any of this particularly offensive. Indeed, it merits very little discussion at all. Is it because the ‘racism’ involves far-from-reality fantasy races? Is it simply because the Shadowbane audience is, to put it politely, pretty damn far from being politically correct? Or is it because we’ve set the expectations of being a little darker from day one?

I think a lot of it has to do with interactivity. In Shadowbane, this backstory isn’t terribly interactive. In ATITD, players were surprised by this sudden spat of interactibility, and were forced to respond without warning. Funny how a depiction of slavery in Glory elevates the film, but in this medium, we’re expected to believe that slavery cheapens ATITD. Similarly, those who abhor Grand Theft Auto thinks that the ability to shoot cops and hookers lessens that piece of art – but you never hear that about Heat.

Interactivity is a wonderful opportunity for players to learn about themselves, and to learn about the consequences of actions. In the case of Grand Theft Auto, a parent can learn a lot about his kid by watching how he plays the game – what choices does he make? Does he deliver pizzas or kill cops? It’s clear that Teppy was interested in making a similar discovery about the player base of ATITD:

[The NPC] would not trade with women, and made references to trading /for/ some of them as slaves. This did not go over well at all, and he was eventually hounded out of Sinai, by a small revolt led by Logicritus, after peddling one or two of his wares for some expensive items.

The neat part of interactivity is that it is a test – a test of how you deal with adverse conditions. In this case, the community responded with the exile of the offending member. It seems pretty clear that the community passed the test — and then missed the whole point by letting the test spill into the real world.