What do you think of this?

IdleRich

IdleRich
"You heard about the online child prostitute scandal a year or so back, right?

I think it was in the Sims, rather than Second Life, but as I understand it the games are quite similar in principal. Anyway, apparently there was a flourishing market in cybersex within the game, so much so that some individuals set themselves up with brothels and made substantial real-world cash by supplying services. Then it turned out that one of the most prolific prostitutes/brothel owners was in fact a 13 or 14 year old operating out of their parents bedroom..."
I never heard that and I don't really understand. Was real sex involved or were people paying real money for their characters to have virtual sex? This is so confusing because every time you say something you have to make it clear if you're talking about the game or what the gamers (kind of creepily?) refer to as RL.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
OK, found something about it here

http://dir.salon.com/story/tech/feature/2003/12/12/sims_online_newspaper/index_np.html?pn=2

To summarise, an academic called Ludlow set himself up as a journalist called Urizenus in the Sims game and investigated and interviewed a scammer who was a woman called Evangeline on line but actually a pre-adolescent boy. Game-dollars or "simoleans" can be bought and sold on ebay so real profit is to be had.

"Ludlow has interviewed Evangeline several times, and in her discussions with him, she seems bemused by her exploits, taking nothing very seriously. Ludlow mostly shares that attitude, but he and Candace Bolter, a philosophy grad student at Michigan who works with him on the Herald, were a bit disturbed by one interview Evangeline did with Urizenus (Ludlow's online name) in which she describes running a brothel. In "The Sims Online," prostitution is, necessarily, an occupation that is more of the mind than of the flesh. "Sex" in this world consists mostly of dirty talk. "It basically involves typing to each other in descriptive ways -- typing with one hand, let's put it that way," Ludlow says. Evangeline told him that she would pleasure other characters that way, and they would give her simoleans in return -- sometimes as much as 500,000 simoleans, which at the time was more than $50. (Due to massive inflation in Alphaville, the value of the simolean has since plunged.)
What bothered Ludlow and Bolter about this was that Evangeline asserted that, in real life, he was a minor and that many of the "girls" he hired to talk dirty in his brothel were also underage. Bolter wondered whether the characters were breaking any laws or doing anything else immoral or unethical. She says she acknowledges that, because the characters weren't having real sex, it's hard to say they were involved in prostitution."
 

tryptych

waiting for a time
I never heard that and I don't really understand. Was real sex involved or were people paying real money for their characters to have virtual sex? This is so confusing because every time you say something you have to make it clear if you're talking about the game or what the gamers (kind of creepily?) refer to as RL.

Ok sorry - no real sex involved, just "cybersex", within the game. People were paying game money i think (but as previously mentioned, game money has real value and can be converted into real money).

I've just found the interview with the alleged child prostitute here - it's fairly long reading from what I remember. And it is in Second Life - typing cybersex and second life into google produces an astonishing amount of morbidly interesting links.

http://www.alphavilleherald.com/archives/000049.html

It's pretty interesting that there's an online paper for the game too...
 
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IdleRich

IdleRich
Virtual Desecration

OK, thought this was interesting today and it seems to belong in this thread.

http://www.channel4.com/news/articl.../media/sony+game+a+virtual+desecration/556377

Basically Manchester Cathedral is saying that Sony has "virtually desecrated" it by setting part of a computer game (involving shooting aliens) in the cathedral without getting or even seeking permission.
Strange one, you wouldn't need permission to set a book there - would you?. Of course rules have always been less strict for those activities in which educated people participate (reading books) relative to those of the proles (watching tv and playing computer games) but in this case I don't think that's the reason for the anger. Seems to me that the churchies feel that people playing a game where they run round the thing shooting is somehow too close to reality.
 

mixed_biscuits

_________________________
I applaud Sony's sensitive treatment of Manchester Cathedral in their derivative shooting game.
 
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Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
If you have kids and are worried about what games they play - buy Nintendo, simple as that. Beautiful, challenging and non-violent software is their speciality.

What? I have some mates who owned, or used to own, Game Cubes. All the games looked like they'd been designed by and for someone on about eight strong Es. Strobing lights, bright primary colours, cartoonish graphics and irritating kiddie-techno soundtracks.

If I had kids I'd rather they played Counterstrike and GTA, and run the risk of them turning into campus killers, than have them play that shite and end up developing epilepsy, ADHD and Tourette's all in one go.
 

Grievous Angel

Beast of Burden
For my part I regret the amount of time I spent arsing around with games on a ZX Spectrum in my early teens. Yeah it did make me computer literate, but I think it was a bit of a retreat from engaging with the world, really.

If it hadn't been that it would've been something else.

You've got a massive talent for games, it's a shame you don't use it, instead of doing lame things like writing, politics, children etc. You've missed your vocation.
 

john eden

male pale and stale
If it hadn't been that it would've been something else.

:D

You've got a massive talent for games, it's a shame you don't use it, instead of doing lame things like writing, politics, children etc. You've missed your vocation.

Yeah, but I can at least live out my frustrations through my child like all those parents in american who enter their kids into competitive sports and don't let them have a life ;)
 

bassnation

the abyss
Yeah, but I can at least live out my frustrations through my child like all those parents in american who enter their kids into competitive sports and don't let them have a life ;)

"son, i'm going to give you something i never had as a child - something i always wanted - a fanatical obsession with computer games, unwashed socks, skunk and general nerdery"
 

sodiumnightlife

Sweet Virginia
I was kind of a weird kid, but I found that with computer games i would get completely obsessed with them for a while, and associate with that world hugely. When i wasn't playing the games i'd be thinking about them endlessly, makign up scenarios and expanding them. In that way i guess games stimulated my imagination hugely - they allowed me to have an (almost) physical manifestation of my dreams/fantasies. Which is quite scary really. I can see how people with problems could trip over from living their lives in games to actually thinking their lives were a game. Which, if that game were violent, could be a problem.
 
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