Real-world sensitivities and game names

[Leif_-]

johan osterman said:
To the best of our knowledge no one rioted because of that either.

Well, no, but that's primarily because you still haven't added peasant infantry armed with torches and pitchforks to the game.

[Kristoffer O]

But there are!

Thralls! Vampire Counts generate them. Armed with pitchforks and all.

[JimMorrison]

Agema said:
It can be beneficial to restrict liberty.

I'm going to have to disagree entirely on you there.

Gun control is a great subject for you to bring up, because it is such a hard issue. The best answer that I can offer you, is that twice as many people die in motor vehicle accidents, as die from violence in all forms (in the US itself). We do not ban motor vehicles, because we believe we can teach people to be better drivers, and regulate where and how they drive in ways to keep them from becoming dangerous. The same can apply to the use and ownership of firearms. A wise man once stated "laws don't keep guns away from criminals". Which is true, and can be extrapolated to the point of prohibition - as illustrated with our prohibition of alcohol in the last century, as well as the current "war on drugs" which is about as effective as our "war on terror" - we see that much misery comes from the oppression of people.

As long as populations continue to develop and exploit interconnectivity through the internet, and other forms of interactive media, we will continue to only grow closer to other people, not farther apart. Implementing superfluous or detrimental laws which restrict personal freedoms, will in fact be what continues to drive people apart, this schism between those who willingly follow unjust laws, and those who refuse to and thus are forced to live as criminals in "the land of the free".

<3

[Atreides]

Zeldor said:
Lch:

You treated my post seriously? That topic is not serious. Some people simply seek things to offend them. And truth is that Jews and Muslim are now best at it, better than Christian fanatics. You can read newspapers or listen to TV and you find a guy like that. Then you send him dominions, ask if it insults him and he will find 50 bad things about it and demand it banned.

Zeldor, I just wanted to take a moment to respond to this statement because I found it pretty confusing. To contextualize my opinions for everyone reading this, I was brought up as a reform Jew, and as the joke goes, that means in practice I'm an atheist In any case, the statement that Jews and Muslims are most easily offended by trivial things is just a little ridiculous. I'm certainly in no way offended by the name Adolph, or the fact that you said people from my religion are apparently petty and offended by absolutely nothing.

In any case, I don't think there is anyone involved in this discussion who doesn't realize that people on television are generally completely insane. Political commentators are frequently drawn from the extreme left and the extreme right with little regard for any middle ground. Similarly, when individuals are on television railing about insults to their religion, those people are quite simply religious fanatics who represent the smallest portion of the smallest constituencies of any major religion. In specifically addressing your comment, maybe its my tendency to ignore the irrational arguments and sensitivities of religious zealots, but I don't think I have ever seen a Jew on television screaming about being offended over nothing in particular. Likewise, the only Muslims I've ever seen ranting on television are the clips the American mainstream media loves to play of bin Laden and other Al-Qaeda operatives in an effort to convince people that Muslim's are irrational and want to kill us because of cartoons. When you consider that an estimated 1.8 billion people in the world are Muslims from a world population of approximately six and a half billion and less than one percent of those 1.8 billion are considered "radical adherents of Islam," what probably pisses off and offends Muslims most is 99.9% of them being lumped together with radicals because the media in the United States and throughout the "developed world" has a completely one-sided portrayal of Muslims that fails to mention anything about the constant denunciations of extremist Islamic groups by the majority of Islamic countries, groups, and people throughout the world. And as for Jews, we are by far the most liberal demographic in the United States, and being liberals, Jews generally are not very offended when someone makes either a profoundly uninformed or just outright incorrect statement.

Being as I am from the United States, if you want to talk about religious nutcases on television getting easily offended about absolutely nothing, you might want to pay a little more attention to evangelical Christians and the Republican party who somehow think that homosexuals existing and living in this country, where tolerance and freedom of expression is a right, is offensive to G-d. The American media is crammed full of hate-mongers who bask in finding offense in everything and nothing and speak for and represent millions of like-minded fundamentalist Christians, like George Bush "No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots.", James Dobson "Homosexuals are not monogamous. They want to destroy the institution of marriage. It will destroy marriage. It will destroy the Earth," Jerry Falwell (currently in Hell learning that hating people probably wasn't what Jesus wanted him to spend his life teaching people) "If you're not a born-again Christian, you're a failure as a human being," and Pat Robertson "The Constitution of the United States, for instance, is a marvelous document for self-government by the Christian people. But the minute you turn the document into the hands of non-Christian people and atheistic people they can use it to destroy the very foundation of our society. And that's what's been happening." So I hope I'm not offending you Zeldor, but these are the guys with millions of followers in the US and they are on TV, or organizing politically, or running the government, and they are on TV everyday spouting their hate and bigotry and when it comes down to it, these are the groups who can't stop *****ing about violence in video games, violence and profanity in movies, pornography, and a host of other issues that would honestly not be offensive if not for the fact that these people want to impose their social views, their religious beliefs, or their bigoted judgment and puritanical standards on people who think differently.

Since it is almost inevitable that someone will say that I am bashing Christianity (because they are easily offended and won't actually read my arguments or my justification for my statements) I'm not suggesting that only Christians do that, but in the United States Christian fundamentalist groups are by far the largest radical religious groups in the country. To argue the other side, there are certainly Jews and Muslims that are also offended by violence and whatnot, Senator Lieberman is a prominent example of hating the video game industry and getting outraged and offended for political purposes, and he is quite frankly ridiculous and a douche bag who is in no way representative of any Jew that I know. Anyways, the possibility certainly exists that I'm wrong and maybe there is some satellite television channel of Jews and Muslims giving "I'm offended by X" diatribes that I'm not aware of, please feel free to inform and correct me.

Oh and aside from responding to Zeldor's comment, if it wasn't clear from the previous paragraph, I'm obviously coming down on the side of PC not really needing to be an issue for dominions. PC is a strange concept, and I generally believe that it really shouldn't exist because its the thought and attitude behind words that matters rather than the actual words themselves. Dominions 3 is a video game. It is meant for entertainment purposes only. There is honestly nothing as petty and wasteful as getting angry and offended over something that does not have any impact or importance to issues that exist in the real world. As people have already said in this thread, people who get offended by something from a video game should probably examine more closely what it is about themselves that is causing their reaction rather than what it is about the video game that 99.9% of people have no problem with whatsoever.

[JimMorrison]

I'm impressed, that was quite well expressed. I was a little daunted by the general lack of breaks in the text. A couple of paragraphs would do wonders for getting people to read what you have to say. <3

[Atreides]

Haha, Yeah I tend to write in pretty solid blocks. I need to work on that. Thanks for the comment though, I'll see if I can find some logical places to break that first paragraph up...

[HoneyBadger]

Don't feel bad-they yelled at me about that too.

[Leif_-]

JimMorrison said:
Gun control is a great subject for you to bring up,

But perhaps not on the Dominions 3 forums? Nothing good ever comes of gun control debates, I've found. (Now, if only Illwinter would add rabid, demon-possessed wilderbeest to the game, and the spells to control them, we could have on-topic debates about gnu control.)

[Leif_-]

Atreides said:
Zeldor, I just wanted to take a moment to respond to this statement because I found it pretty confusing.[...]

Personally, I'm deeply and griveously offended by your hatred for paragraph breaks.

[Atreides]

Leif_- said:

Personally, I'm deeply and griveously offended by your hatred for paragraph breaks.

To borrow from Family Guy, I can't help it. Paragraph breaks killed my father... and raped my mother.