Excellent post. You were far more rigorous (and obviously have some solid background in sociology and the like) than I would be. Your explanation of why torture in games is wrong for your unconscious mental processes is superb.

In addressing the WoW torture issue from inside the game (and thus extrapolating to real life), I think the issue is much simpler than people are making it out to be–why is it wrong to torture but not wrong to kill? The answer is war–to take the Borean Tundra quest, for example, the Blue Dragonflight is literally trying to exterminate all mortal magic-users. Lethal force is necessary in self-defense.

But from a the most basic, oversimplified, pragmatic point of view, torture is unacceptable because it doesn’t give good intelligence. This apart from the other obvious facts that it is cruel, damages the psyche of the torturer, and results in the other side doing it as well. Not only is it horrifying for everyone involved, it doesn’t even work at its stated goal. Thus I found the DK quest nearly as disturbing as the BT quest.

Not to mention that the “intelligence” you gather in the BT quest could have been easily gotten by looking out the freakin’ window, as the target is literally 200 yards away on a giant floating platform.

Funny though, because when I read through the other comments again, I realized that my story is based upon a situation which Richard describes as the American cliché of torture (racist white cops abusing black people). I think I have to improve things a bit

Btw, I wrote a long comment about torture which ranged from Hammurabi to the BDSM community. But it disappeared when I pushed the submit button. Don’t know if I ever can rewrite that. Sniff.

Torture is a different beast. The purpose of torture is to create enormous amounts of pain …

You’re assuming that a line between torture and murder can be easily drawn.

Is there a real difference between beating someone to death in a backalley brawl and “torturing” someone to death in a backalley? At what point does torture enter the picture?

The U.N. Convention Against Torture defines “torture” as any act that causes pain or suffering that is in some way authorized by government. (Legally sanctioned and other acts that cause pain or suffering actually do not fall under the definition if such acts are not in some way authorized by government.)

The U.S. Code describes torture as the causing of prolonged pain or suffering, which implies that there is a time factor involved. Are we talking… 5 minutes of pain or suffering? 10? Days? Weeks? How much time has to pass in order for abuse of, or violence against, an individual to become torture? As we’ve noted before, torture can be performed for any reason. The extraction of information is not a component of the activity. So, where do we draw the line?

In role-playing games, killing mobs (regardless of their appearance) almost always involves causing prolonged pain or suffering. How many hit points does Kefka have again? Is beating him over the head with a spiked club repeatedly until he dies not torture? In Goldeneye (N64), there are golden guns that cause instant death, so resulting frags would probably not involve torture as there’s no prolonged pain or suffering. On the other hand, torture doesn’t just involve physical pain or suffering. The U.S. Code explicitly defines “severe mental pain or suffering” to include threats of death or pain or suffering and threats that will cause the death or pain or suffering of another. Are there not such threats in a deathmatch?

The question becomes, “What the heck is torture?” If we buy the U.N. Convention Against Torture’s definition, then we have to require that the act that causes pain or suffering also be authorized by government. Using that definition, there are a lot of acts committed by individuals against other individuals that cannot be considered torture, and therefore whether such acts are morally justifiable as torture is irrelevant because such acts would not be torture by definition.

If we follow a more generalized treatment of torture as any act that causes prolonged physical or mental pain or suffering, then we have to ask what’s not torture. If we determine that torture is effectively defined as “I know torture when I see it,” then we’ve left torture open to interpretation and any argument for or against carries only subjective weight.

How do we define torture in a way that makes sense for the purpose of designing games? Or is torture simply a loaded word altogether? Should we instead simply make gratuitous (i.e., extraneous) violence the focus of discussion? We’d still need to define how much violence is too much, bringing us back to hit points, and oops, making torture fun.

First off, killing in games is generally a rather abstract concept. The enemy disappears or goes limp, and more often than not you’re going to be seeing that enemy again in a few moments. Chances are the players themselves can die, and often will, it’s a case of kill or be killed against something that is fundamentally not human. Often with games that have lower ESRB ratings whether an opponent is even dead will remain in question. On top of all of that, we rarely go very far in expressing the NPC as being in any pain.

Torture is a different beast. The purpose of torture is to create enormous amounts of pain, and any system dealing with it is going to have to find some way to express that. On top of that, it’s surrounded by a very real controversy over whether it is effective at even the most immediate of it’s goals. The action is fundamentally unidirectional, the person tied to the chair/table/wall is unlikely to place you in a situation where you must immediately cause them pain in order to protect yourself. Finally, and I think the real reason why this is outlawed even in cases where killing is socially accepted, you don’t walk away from torture. Whether it’s purely physical or purely mental, the process of torture in and of itself causes lasting damage to the person, even if you can’t immediately observe it from the outside.

None of this means that a game about torture wouldn’t be fun. There are plenty of ways to wave the problems and just focus in on making it a rewarding system. But chances are it would be pretty tasteless, of course that is hardly uncharted territory for gaming.

Say the choice were to interrogate without torture or with:

(a) no torture

Complicated conversation tree, excessively complicated, with recursive bits, etc. You need to catch the prisoner in a lie, or otherwise unravel the truth from clues. THis is difficult and/or takes lots of time.

(b) with torture

Much quicker to results… but you don’t know if the intel is right. And it’s being wrong may actually cost you (send you into a trap, etc).

But the most intersting part of your post was this little snippet….”Because games teach.” Haven’t game designers been denying that for ages now? If killing and stealing and torturing games “teach”, aren’t you all in big trouble?

I look forward to this discussion.

And on the subject of torture. Torture is good when you know that they are within an evil conspiracy.

How do you ‘know’ they are elements of a conspiracy? Because under said torture they or an alleged accomplice said so? How can you verify the authenticity of remarks made under duress? Torture MAY be used to discover some hidden knowledge which MAY be used to benefit the lives of threatened individuals, etc. However, it has been shown that humor, empathy, and cooperative exchanges have produced more accurate and useful intelligence towards the same purposes. Considering the existence of an alternative which provides superior results without moral ambiguity, why engage in torture, again?

For better or worse, yes, there have even been cases of people carjacking and then saying they got the idea from GTA.

…as credible as witness testimony. People say all sorts of things to get lesser sentences. “I was insane, temporarily.”

In the overall, I have to agree that purposed reasoning and aesthetic considerations are the heart of the issue here, not the pure existence or non-existence of specific subject matter.

There’s a difference between teaching that “torture is fun”, “torture gets results”, and “torture rarely provides reliable intelligence and often leads to some kind of blow-back”.

Just as there is a difference between “Prostitutes give you more health” and “frivolous, casual sex often only provides a fleeting and ultimately disappointing experience to those seeking companionship”.

If the only reason it is there is for ‘shock value’ while you gain a buff or positive reinforcement of some kind, it has in no way added to my understanding of anything outside of the game world.

I think a big chunk of this revolves around our real-world experience with simulated activities, as well. We can see past killing things because we know in real life that +3 sword of sharpness will not be found on anyone’s real body. Torture, however, is something most people are not familiar with beyond “its bad”. Introducing new, completely inaccurate representations of torture to those with no grounding or understanding of it is a bit more dangerous.

Summary: “The Art of Persuasion – Librarian Normantis on Amber Ledge wants you to use the Neural Needler on the Imprisoned Beryl Sorcerer until he reveals the location of Lady Evanor.”

Details: “It is fortunate that you’re here. You see, the Kirin Tor code of conduct frowns upon our taking certain ‘extreme’ measures — even in desperate times such as these. You, however, as an outsider, are not bound by such restrictions and could take any steps necessary in the retrieval of inofrmation. Do what you must. We need to know where Lady Evanor is being held at once! I’ll just busy myself organizing these shelves here. Oh, and here, perhaps you’ll find this old thing useful…”

[he gives you the Neural Needler, which "Inflicts incredible pain to target, but does no permanent damage."]