I disagree ulysses with your monster deffinition and with your idea that
including different in game monsters is just a way for us to dress something
up to vent our violent urges.
in the past it was necessary to kill wolves and other predators as a matter
of survival, heck there are still parts of britain where it is necessary for
farmers to kill foxes and badgers in order for their animals to survive.
That is part of that situation.
A wolf or a lion or a crocadile is not evil in and of themselves, they obey
their nature, unfortunately part of that conflicts with humans. The same
goes with zombies, malevlolent ghosts like poltergheists, and monstrous
beasts such as dinosaurs.
When we play a game we are interacting with a new situation and environment
and one we would not have in real life, be that controlling a bio dome on
the moon, playing poker and betting thousands of dollars, or indeed
traveling a zombi infested city. As such we participate in the nature of
that environment, and if it includes zombiess mosnters etc, that's part of
the world at that point and we're not going to survive in that world without
doing what must be done the same way a poker player wouldn't survive without
betting money, none are reflections of real world actions or situation, they
are just elements of the games reality and only have relevence according to
that reality.
there is also then the fact that most intelligent fantasy creatures such as
goblins, vampires, orcs, intelligent malign aliens like the Daleks, though
possessing human intelligence lack the choice to act other than in a
malicious way. Doctor who indeed goes into quite a lot of detail with this
with the Daleks, they are a race of aliens genetically bred and deliberately
created by a psychotic geaneus to hate anything and everything that is not a
Dalek.
In a simialr sense, Trolls, Orcs and the other dark creatures in lord of the
rings are direct adjuncts to the will of Sauron. They have no ability to act
independently of his will and Tolkien even states that they went off and
died without him, ---- in fact Tolkien is very careful to draw a distinction
between the various groups of men such as the Haradrim who were persuaded to
fight on Sauron's side, and the creatures such as orcs which were directly
motivated by Sauron.
So, with various intelligent fantasy races there is a good arguemnet that
they are just as much an environmental force as natural predators.
Finally, as regards games where you actually kill humans, again as I said
before intention is the difference. I wouldn't condone a game which
basically had you do mindless slaughter or harming of innocent people for no
reason, but games that simulate say a war agaisnt an oppressive enemy or
fighting against a criminal gang you are just again participating in that
environment, and since it is a simulated and entirely artificial it doesn't
have a baring on what you would do in reality.
This is a reason why in reality I am very anti war in the majority of
circumstances, when to protest against the War in Iraq etc, but am quite
content to play Gma tank commander. I don't hate! the enemy tanks in Gma
tank commander or considder that they are full of soldiers with lives and
desires and friends and families, ---- because frankly speaking they're not!
indeed, it'd be easy to imagine that all the tanks in the game were just
robots.
If however you really! asked me to blow up someone else with a tank, ----
well I would refuse, and I at least like to think unless it was that one in
a thousand occasion where there was! a good reason to kill someone, I'd
refuse even if my life was in danger though of course having not been in the
situation I've yet to find out if I have that kind of courage, --- and I
probably don't.
BEware the Grue!
dark.
---
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