Morality is everywhere in RuneScape, the fantasy MMORPG that I used to play with my friends in middle school. Then, we all got hooked on MySpace and stopped playing RuneScape. Those were the days.
We would get on RuneScape after school to chat among each other with our nifty usernames and avatars, often playing in the same World and walking through the town together, often stopping to slay a chicken, deposit money in the bank or pursue a trade for a quest.
Looking back on RuneScape, at thirteen years old, I never recognized the major elements of the game: combat and murder. Possibly the largest element of morality in RuneScape is the harm/care feature. Killing is essentially the game – whether it’s killing chickens or killing other players. When dead, and often in a pool of blood, there lies an amount of gold or items possessed by the victim. Unlike in World of Warcraft, looting is allowed, diminishing the value of fairness/reciprocity: if you don’t immediately collect your treasure, tough luck – it can be easily taken by another player.
It’s a simple formula that allows no further movement in the game without some aspect of murder. Even if you don’t want to complete quests or be social in the game, without a food supply, you lose life points and eventually die. To even walk around in the game, murder of at least small chickens is necessary. And to increase success and levels, you must kill larger and larger things – including people.
Authority ranks into the heavy combat element in the game. Those who are stronger with more life points (gained by the consumption of food or drinks) obviously perform better when trying to kill, and players at higher levels will annihilate their victims easily. The lesson? Make sure you take on someone that’s your own size or smaller, because otherwise, it could fare badly for you. Also present are authority figures who distribute quests and are alienated because they are machine operated, and some of the only people in the world that are machine operated.
The purity element is not prevalent in the game as a good or bad factor, but more in the ironic element of the cycles of death and rebirth. You die because, typically, because you are not strong enough to tackle the other player. You are then reborn and keep skill points but lose some articles that you have with you because of your death. And then you continue to kill – just the way you died – and keep hoping to survive. It turns the entire game into a rather hideous cycle of murder.
It’s through this cycle that the essence of loyalty and in-group success becomes seriously diminished in the game. RuneScape functions as a purely individualistic game, fueling the mentality that you can be successful by killing alone – though killing will help the “achievers” side by furthering quests and the “social” side by spurring interactions and trades with others. For RuneScape, harm is the main moral function at stake – a dark purpose of the game that I didn’t realize when I was younger that’s perfect for killers.
Based on Beena’s examination of RuneScape I think I would enjoy this game. She describes RuneScape as a game with a significant social component and as a game heavily focused on the harm/care aspect of morality. Although I would never wish harm on anyone in real life, I think the aspect of harm in video games tends to attract players that like to achieve. With every kill there is an opportunity to increase wealth which is a measurement of achievement. In the rare occasion that I play a video game, I tend to gravitate towards those where I can measure my achievements. The social aspect of the game also sounded very appealing. The description of Beena and her friends walking through the virtual town together made the game sound fun and definitely made it sound like a game I would enjoy.