KodiaX987
09-25-2002, 04:42 PM
This has been bugging me ever since people began talking about duping on GC and bugs and whatnot. One side says cheaters suck and need to die in the most horrid consequences, and another side says that it's the company's fault if cheaters appear in the game.
So I went to my school's philosophy department - no kidding - and asked a few teachers about their take on this. They didn't state an opinion, but they gave me some clues and references of similar debates that have happened in the past. Here's a question one teacher told me about, and I think it relates well to the situation here:
At the olympic games, someone is killed during a javelin competition. Is it the fault of the javelin maker, the javelin thrower, or the man who was standing in the javelin's way?
I was told the question was discussed among two Greek philosophers for an entire day. I find this surprizingly believeable. If we can go on here for pages and pages at PSOW, imagine if we had to talk it out.
But anyways, let's cut right over to answering the question. I'll give out my opinions, and why I believe they fit.
The first aspect of the PSO world would be analogous to creating a new city, and having people live there - SimCity in a sort of way. What do you think came first? Was it the criminals, or the police? It has to be the criminals, because before they came, law was not needed. Without criminals, policemen have no use and thus do not exist. Therefore, agents of the law have been set up in response to people committing deeds that were at the time considered "bad" by a general code of ethics.
But now, an incident happens, in which a burglar enters a shop at night, steals some merchandise, and runs away. Are we to blame the thief for breaking the law, or are we to blame the shop's owner because he did not install an alarm system? This owner would say "I own a shop, where I store merchandise, and people come and buy the merchandise I have. They can buy as many as they want, and all I want in return is a few pieces of gold, proportional to the amount of merchandise bought. I ask the other inhabitants of this city to respect my enterprise and let my business flow smoothly by contributing to its good operations. If you change your mind on an article, place it back where you have put it, not in another aisle. If you believe a price I have set is erroneous, tell me about it and I will go and see if it was indeed a mistake. If I make a mistake counting how much you owe me, tell me at once, so that I may repair the mistake. It isn't much to ask, is it?" I would say he is right. As a businessman, he does have an amount of responsibility in setting up prices and services, but people who go to his shop also have a responsibility, in helping him if anything wrong happens. I believe it would be a morally right thing to do. A person goes through the trouble of offering me a service, and in appreciation I respect what he has set up.
Now that we have a skeleton for the current situation, let's bring that structure over to the world of Phantasy Star Online. Sega, as a company, has gone through the trouble of thinking up, creating, and coding a game to sell to the public. In addition, they also have set up a network of servers, lobbies and game systems to allow us to play online. Most - if not all - companies have a button or a contact number somewhere to report bugs. You find a bug, it is your responsibility to tell the game creators about it. Once this is done, it is up to the company to decide whether this bug is dangerous or not, and if they want to repair it.
This is where the cheaters come in, for various reasons. A person may cheat because he finds the game too hard. Although this would be allowed on a completely offline game (seeing as it does not hurt anyone except - possibly - you,) it is an unthinkable thing to do on an online game. The company sets the difficulty, and has full rights to do whatever they want with the game, for they created it. They could have made it so that one item could only be found on a 1 to 500 chance, and only on March 20, 2002. Unfair, you say? You may claim it, and tell your friends - and even the company - about it, but the company, and the company alone has the final word to the matter. They might decide to change the odds of finding said item, or they may not. Regardless of the decision, your only power lies into an opinion and a suggestion. You cannot just change the rules to your liking.
Another breed of cheaters do it to push the company to fix a bug in a game. They will claim that they'll just keep on cheating as long as there are mistakes in the program. Unfortunately, making a purely bugless game as complicated as a standard DC (or X-Box or GC) game is an utopia. If we follow the same line of thinking, that would mean that cheaters would thus cheat forever, on the excuse that the game isn't well done. But, this statement does not makes anyone free to do whatever he wants. You may not see any policeman nearby, but that still does not allow you to park in a no-parking space. Therefore, one hypothesis for the reason of this excuse is, to me, most likely because once again the cheater does not find the game to his liking, and thus wrongly sets out to modify the rules in his favor.
The whole cheating matter is a big thing online, because it can affect other users. Duplicated items formerly rare can thus be given to other players. PKing becomes possible, along with other things that, if they don't hurt the company and its idea of what the game is, hurt other players. To make yourself happy at the expense of another person or group of persons is something that I believe all of us would instantly classify as morally wrong.
Therefore, a lack of laws isn't the thing that gives birth to criminals. It isn't the bug that causes a cheat to be used. It is illogical. It is cheaters who create a program, and then attempt to find a way to use it. Offline games have no bug fixes. Not only because it's impossible, but also because cheating is not important. The only one who benefits/is hurt is you, and only you. But, once out in a community, some rules must be followed...
...Whether a policeman is watching you, or not.
So I went to my school's philosophy department - no kidding - and asked a few teachers about their take on this. They didn't state an opinion, but they gave me some clues and references of similar debates that have happened in the past. Here's a question one teacher told me about, and I think it relates well to the situation here:
At the olympic games, someone is killed during a javelin competition. Is it the fault of the javelin maker, the javelin thrower, or the man who was standing in the javelin's way?
I was told the question was discussed among two Greek philosophers for an entire day. I find this surprizingly believeable. If we can go on here for pages and pages at PSOW, imagine if we had to talk it out.
But anyways, let's cut right over to answering the question. I'll give out my opinions, and why I believe they fit.
The first aspect of the PSO world would be analogous to creating a new city, and having people live there - SimCity in a sort of way. What do you think came first? Was it the criminals, or the police? It has to be the criminals, because before they came, law was not needed. Without criminals, policemen have no use and thus do not exist. Therefore, agents of the law have been set up in response to people committing deeds that were at the time considered "bad" by a general code of ethics.
But now, an incident happens, in which a burglar enters a shop at night, steals some merchandise, and runs away. Are we to blame the thief for breaking the law, or are we to blame the shop's owner because he did not install an alarm system? This owner would say "I own a shop, where I store merchandise, and people come and buy the merchandise I have. They can buy as many as they want, and all I want in return is a few pieces of gold, proportional to the amount of merchandise bought. I ask the other inhabitants of this city to respect my enterprise and let my business flow smoothly by contributing to its good operations. If you change your mind on an article, place it back where you have put it, not in another aisle. If you believe a price I have set is erroneous, tell me about it and I will go and see if it was indeed a mistake. If I make a mistake counting how much you owe me, tell me at once, so that I may repair the mistake. It isn't much to ask, is it?" I would say he is right. As a businessman, he does have an amount of responsibility in setting up prices and services, but people who go to his shop also have a responsibility, in helping him if anything wrong happens. I believe it would be a morally right thing to do. A person goes through the trouble of offering me a service, and in appreciation I respect what he has set up.
Now that we have a skeleton for the current situation, let's bring that structure over to the world of Phantasy Star Online. Sega, as a company, has gone through the trouble of thinking up, creating, and coding a game to sell to the public. In addition, they also have set up a network of servers, lobbies and game systems to allow us to play online. Most - if not all - companies have a button or a contact number somewhere to report bugs. You find a bug, it is your responsibility to tell the game creators about it. Once this is done, it is up to the company to decide whether this bug is dangerous or not, and if they want to repair it.
This is where the cheaters come in, for various reasons. A person may cheat because he finds the game too hard. Although this would be allowed on a completely offline game (seeing as it does not hurt anyone except - possibly - you,) it is an unthinkable thing to do on an online game. The company sets the difficulty, and has full rights to do whatever they want with the game, for they created it. They could have made it so that one item could only be found on a 1 to 500 chance, and only on March 20, 2002. Unfair, you say? You may claim it, and tell your friends - and even the company - about it, but the company, and the company alone has the final word to the matter. They might decide to change the odds of finding said item, or they may not. Regardless of the decision, your only power lies into an opinion and a suggestion. You cannot just change the rules to your liking.
Another breed of cheaters do it to push the company to fix a bug in a game. They will claim that they'll just keep on cheating as long as there are mistakes in the program. Unfortunately, making a purely bugless game as complicated as a standard DC (or X-Box or GC) game is an utopia. If we follow the same line of thinking, that would mean that cheaters would thus cheat forever, on the excuse that the game isn't well done. But, this statement does not makes anyone free to do whatever he wants. You may not see any policeman nearby, but that still does not allow you to park in a no-parking space. Therefore, one hypothesis for the reason of this excuse is, to me, most likely because once again the cheater does not find the game to his liking, and thus wrongly sets out to modify the rules in his favor.
The whole cheating matter is a big thing online, because it can affect other users. Duplicated items formerly rare can thus be given to other players. PKing becomes possible, along with other things that, if they don't hurt the company and its idea of what the game is, hurt other players. To make yourself happy at the expense of another person or group of persons is something that I believe all of us would instantly classify as morally wrong.
Therefore, a lack of laws isn't the thing that gives birth to criminals. It isn't the bug that causes a cheat to be used. It is illogical. It is cheaters who create a program, and then attempt to find a way to use it. Offline games have no bug fixes. Not only because it's impossible, but also because cheating is not important. The only one who benefits/is hurt is you, and only you. But, once out in a community, some rules must be followed...
...Whether a policeman is watching you, or not.