Zombie Pirate Ninja Monkey

Defending the Horde

To tide us over the Christmas period, Edward Castranova posted a proclamation of damnatio memoriae upon those of us who play Horde characters in World of Warcraft, claiming - the provocative little tinker - that it is a morally loaded choice, which is revealing of the "personal integrity" of those who chose it.  As was no doubt intended, the comments poured in as they haven't done since Timothy Burke's Order 66 SWG post.

Anyhow, his arguments seem to amount to the following:

• Orcs, trolls and undead are traditionally evil.  Blizzard cannot change their meaning
• Orcs value warfare and power; humans (in-game) have children and charitable giving.
• His three-year-old son was afraid of his undead character and the Undercity.  He makes clear that this was purely on the basis of appearances and imagery.  No children were exposed to cannibalism in the making of this post.
• The MMO-uninitiated will tend to read into the avatar choices of public figures approval of the racially-defined activities of their avatars.

Re the last point, I agree.  Good point.  But that just means that people finding themselves in the quandary Castranova describes should "present" as nice Alliance types, and preferably not as naughty night-elf females.

Now, I am 100% behind Castranova when he talks about the reality and importance of ethical choices in the pursuit of research.  No positivist I!  It is refreshing - although not as uncommon as a decade ago - to find a professional academic brave enough to post on the possibility of objectively evil acts.  I think that he is quite right that moral choices can be made within a gamespace, whether that be in WoW or in Risk (both his own examples).

But I cannot help but think that Ted has chosen the wrong battlefield on which to fight.  In particular, I disagree with the idea that an author cannot divorce the moral framework in which his creations act from the traditional prejudices of others towards that group (I am deliberately not describing orcs or others as races in this case... that would be a cheap debating trick).  If Blizzard want to make Orcs into graphical shorthands for late dark-age anglosaxons, with the warrior-outlook of thegns, then that is their choice.  And the jarring effect of using the term orc, used almost as an explicit anthimeria, is a useful dramatic tool.  Without an author's ability to surprise us with unconventional representations, we would not have Drizzt Do'Urden, Worf, most vampires or a variety of other, equally horrible genre-fiction characters.  Tony Soprano: there's a better example.  Of course, it's a lazy tool, at times, and over-used.  You cannot watch a 1940s western or 1930s Tarzan movie without the "noble savage" character making an appearance.  But the fact is that authorial intent is king.  Damn you, Levi-Strauss!

As a geekish aside, I should also note that in the pen-and-paper D&D campaign I've run since the late 80's, orcs are no more evil than Visigoths or Suevi, and play much the same role.  And if any player wants to justify hacking whole villages of them to pieces because they were wicked little sprites in Tolkien, he'll be risking direct and immediate divine intervention.

Castranova charges that orcs value warfare and power; while humans have children and charitable giving.  We can ignore the fact that the Alliance's dwarves also value the former and lack the latter.  We can also ignore the fact that orcs, in fact, feature both offspring (in Orgrimmar's (presumably charitable) orphanage) and, in various missions, charitable acts.  Basically, what is suggested is that, in a dark-age (-ish) setting, having a group react to constant warfare and repeated invasion by elevating a warrior class to a position of honour and leadership is an evil act.  Looking at history, I see it rather as an inevitable and necessary survival trait.

As regards the cited evidence of Ted's kid being scared: I have my doubts as to the bearing this has on the case in point.  Wisdom may, indeed, spring forth from the mouths of babes and sucklings, but children find many things scary that are not in themselves evil.

Anyway, evil is not defined by the racial inevitabilities of culture and genetic predisposition.  The fact is that only thoughts and actions define the morality of the actor.  And there is absolutely no difference, frustratingly, between a tauren and an elf as regards their missions.  Nor between orcs and dwarves, or even the undead and humans.  The bulk of each involves killing vast numbers of the enemy, and if the undead smell a bit and sometimes eat their victims (post mortem) then that is not a moral decision: simply a matter of taste.