How effective should law enforcement be?

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Which is why I said "realistically" speaking. xD Perhaps I have that issue only because of the fact that I read much historical and military-based books (if you all want it then fine, I was just saying that stuff like this wouldn't likely happen in reality, especially in America).

Well, reality is all around you, look at what happened recently:
A cop shooting an inocent guy VS a drone strike isn't that much a far stretch (mostly when it's more and more lending toward "let's use drone to fight crime"), not going in political stuff or whatever, but the "power" (states, corporations, etc...) in cyberpunk is simply our world in an over the top way.
Sure, we're not yet third-world-country, etc...
But people still blindly accept a lot of awfull things.

If people were really concerned about their freedom and how the world run, they would have started protests long time ago.
People are selfish and greedy, by the time things works fine for them, no problem to keep their eyes closed.
Everyone has at least once heared the classic:
"Not my problem, I have enought bullshit to deal with to get interested in those kind of stuff, that's sad but... not my problem"


Once you're used to something, it's way less shocking.
A drone strike is "shocking" because we don't have any.
Now, wait 10years, once everyone will be used to drone and what they can do, you can be sure that most people will be fine with it, just like some finds excuses to police brutality, or political corruption, etc...

Like in the last episode of the "Homeland" serie.
They drone-bomb a wedding, killing a lot of civilians and one terrorist, and the CIA agent is all "Whatever, they knew he was a searched-terrorist, they shouldn't have been there with him, it's their problem"
You can justify everything, even the most terrible ones (some people actually thinks nazis were right, so... I'd say everything is possible)

I could totally see drones used has "crowd control / survey" in the streets, using some "low cost, more efficiency" excuses, etc...

Just take it in an "over the top" way, and you have a pretty cool Cyberpunk setting.
 
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OK it's semantic trivia ... but perhaps change it to "You can self-justify everything".

Oh no. I'm pretty sure I can justify whatever you do, too. I mean, that hair today, sure it looks terrible, but that's because you're hiding a .45 in there!
 
Well, reality is all around you, look at what happened recently:
A cop shooting an inocent guy VS a drone strike isn't that much a far stretch (mostly when it's more and more lending toward "let's use drone to fight crime"), not going in political stuff or whatever, but the "power" (states, corporations, etc...) in cyberpunk is simply our world in an over the top way.
Sure, we're not yet third-world-country, etc...
But people still blindly accept a lot of awfull things.

If people were really concerned about their freedom and how the world run, they would have started protests long time ago.
People are selfish and greedy, by the time things works fine for them, no problem to keep their eyes closed.
Everyone has at least once heared the classic:
"Not my problem, I have enought bullshit to deal with to get interested in those kind of stuff, that's sad but... not my problem"


Once you're used to something, it's way less shocking.
A drone strike is "shocking" because we don't have any.
Now, wait 10years, once everyone will be used to drone and what they can do, you can be sure that most people will be fine with it, just like some finds excuses to police brutality, or political corruption, etc...

Like in the last episode of the "Homeland" serie.
They drone-bomb a wedding, killing a lot of civilians and one terrorist, and the CIA agent is all "Whatever, they knew he was a searched-terrorist, they shouldn't have been there with him, it's their problem"
You can justify everything, even the most terrible ones (some people actually thinks nazis were right, so... I'd say everything is possible)

I could totally see drones used has "crowd control / survey" in the streets, using some "low cost, more efficiency" excuses, etc...

Just take it in an "over the top" way, and you have a pretty cool Cyberpunk setting.

Fair enough.
 
Well, reality is all around you, look at what happened recently:
A cop shooting an inocent guy VS a drone strike isn't that much a far stretch (mostly when it's more and more lending toward "let's use drone to fight crime"), not going in political stuff or whatever, but the "power" (states, corporations, etc...) in cyberpunk is simply our world in an over the top way.
Sure, we're not yet third-world-country, etc...
But people still blindly accept a lot of awfull things.

If people were really concerned about their freedom and how the world run, they would have started protests long time ago.
People are selfish and greedy, by the time things works fine for them, no problem to keep their eyes closed.
Everyone has at least once heared the classic:
"Not my problem, I have enought bullshit to deal with to get interested in those kind of stuff, that's sad but... not my problem"


Once you're used to something, it's way less shocking.
A drone strike is "shocking" because we don't have any.
Now, wait 10years, once everyone will be used to drone and what they can do, you can be sure that most people will be fine with it, just like some finds excuses to police brutality, or political corruption, etc...

Like in the last episode of the "Homeland" serie.
They drone-bomb a wedding, killing a lot of civilians and one terrorist, and the CIA agent is all "Whatever, they knew he was a searched-terrorist, they shouldn't have been there with him, it's their problem"
You can justify everything, even the most terrible ones (some people actually thinks nazis were right, so... I'd say everything is possible)

I could totally see drones used has "crowd control / survey" in the streets, using some "low cost, more efficiency" excuses, etc...

Just take it in an "over the top" way, and you have a pretty cool Cyberpunk setting.

That's the problem with individualism. People don't have a sense of community (outside of the very useful nationalism, which is waved around at certain ocasions by the same people that want "state to be small enough to let me do what I want, but big enough to protect me from the people/lower class") or a class conscience. They genuinely believe that just about every person has the same oportunities and power to have his way in the world, which is ludicrous. People end up isolated, they think that their neighbour's problem is not theirs and so when they start having a problem they believe it shouldn't be shared, they don't form a coherent mass that has any power.

You also mentioned Homeland, a tv series that I don't watch so I suppose I'm not the most indicated person to talk about it. Still, the reason why I don't watch that or Person of Interest, etc. is that I get bad vibes about them. I've read many critics' thoughts that in the Bush era a lot of fiction and media were meant to counteract or balance the conservative nature of this government, there was a sense that movies with a more left-winger, anti-establishment and libertarian were more popular, while movies in the supposedly liberal Obama era are considered to be full of conservative, Islamophobic, pro-torture, pro-big brother, anti-civil rights, anti-human rights, pro-USA as world police, pro-state sanctioned terrorism, occupy wall street shaming propaganda...

I even think that even when they try to include a bit of irony in all of this, they fail and this irony is lost to most of its audience, which is the impression that I got from the Robocop reboot and Samuel L. Jackson's "God Bless America" at the end of the film.
 
“Show me a young Conservative and I'll show you someone with no heart. Show me an old Liberal and I'll show you someone with no brains.” ― Winston S. Churchill
 
Modern Era of Law Enforcement:

Delinquent teen used "Speed racer rush" to escape from cop... It's not very effective.
Cop used "Pull over boy and get your ticket right"... It's super effective!


CyberPunk Era of Law Enforcement:

Cop used "Pull over boy and get your ticket right" on delinquent teen... It's not very effective.
Delinquent teen used "Akira's motorcycle" to escape from cop... It's super effective!
 
Well, reality is all around you, look at what happened recently:
A cop shooting an inocent guy VS a drone strike isn't that much a far stretch (mostly when it's more and more lending toward "let's use drone to fight crime"), not going in political stuff or whatever, but the "power" (states, corporations, etc...) in cyberpunk is simply our world in an over the top way.
Sure, we're not yet third-world-country, etc...
But people still blindly accept a lot of awfull things.

I hope the cops (and players) get drones.

Voyeur drones for perverts and tactical thinkers alike
Exoploding drones that act as guided grenades and practical jokes
Machinegun drones for crowd control or sheer intimidation
Electronic Warfare/Communications drones to jam other drones.
Tech drones for beasts of burden and general repair and maintenance
and so on and so forth
 
A cop shooting an inocent guy VS a drone strike isn't that much a far stretch (mostly when it's more and more lending toward "let's use drone to fight crime"), not going in political stuff or whatever, but the "power" (states, corporations, etc...) in cyberpunk is simply our world in an over the top way.

There's a rather significant difference between killing a person (or even couple) and blowing up some Corps property (the building) and killing a dozen or even a hundred or so (if it's say an apartment or office building) folks to get one target.
That's why terrorists "hide" in civilian areas, if they were at a camp someplace in the boonies everyone around and the camp itself is perfectly justifiable collateral damage since they're part of the organization not innocent/unrelated bystanders.
And even is no one really cared about the human loss of life no Corp is gonna want their property destroyed without a damn good reason and/or compensation.

Maybe it's my farm girl conservative upbringing, my time in the service, and as a cop but I find the attitude many gamers display toward NPCs a bit unnerving. Maybe they don't really understand the concept of role play as opposed to game play, or believe personal entertainment justifies any and everything. Yea they're only pixels not real people but mass murder as personal entertainment?
 
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There's a rather significant difference between killing a person (or even couple) and blowing up some Corps property (the building) and killing a dozen or even a hundred or so (if it's say an apartment or office building) folks to get one target.
That's why terrorists "hide" in civilian areas, if they were at a camp someplace in the boonies everyone around and the camp itself is perfectly justifiable collateral damage since they're part of the organization not innocent/unrelated bystanders.
And even is no one really cared about the human loss of life no Corp is gonna want their property destroyed without a damn good reason and/or compensation.

And beside, imagine the political repercussion. No cop in his right mind will want to lose his unionized craddle-to-grave pension plan.

Maybe it's my farm girl conservative upbringing, my time in the service, and as a cop but I find the attitude many gamers display toward NPCs a bit unnerving. Maybe they don't really understand the concept of role play as opposed to game play, or believe personal entertainment justifies any and everything. Yea they're only pixels not real people but mass murder as personal entertainment?

kekeke
 
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Maybe it's my farm girl conservative upbringing, my time in the service, and as a cop but I find the attitude many gamers display toward NPCs a bit unnerving. Maybe they don't really understand the concept of role play as opposed to game play, or believe personal entertainment justifies any and everything. Yea they're only pixels not real people but mass murder as personal entertainment?

Farm girls I know tend towards the cold-blooded killing types.

Anyway, you already explained it - mass murder as personal entertainment. It's not - murder requires taking the life of a sapient. Pixels are not. No life is taken.

It's more like playing basketball, and instead of shooting hoops, it's simulated heads. There is a sport element.

Both you and I have fired real guns at real living targets and we both know the difference is VAST.

Playing an FPS is no more murderous than PnP - maybe less, since a good GM can really simulate a living person quite well. In either case, though, there is no sense of death or murder for a healthy person.
 
Maybe it's my farm girl conservative upbringing, my time in the service, and as a cop but I find the attitude many gamers display toward NPCs a bit unnerving. Maybe they don't really understand the concept of role play as opposed to game play, or believe personal entertainment justifies any and everything. Yea they're only pixels not real people but mass murder as personal entertainment?
I don't understand your approach on multiple levels.

1) NPCs are not humans. They don't feel. They don't think. They don't even exist. What's wrong in doing anything to them?

2) Humans can display attitudes towards other humans that are more than "a bit unnerving". It's also not uncommon for humans to do much more than just "displaying attitudes", like taking specific, real-life actions. Actions that have impact and leave their mark on the real world and beings in it (mostly humans). If they can do nasty things to their fellow humans, what stops them from doing nasty things to AI? Or reverse the question: does the fact that people can do nasty things to AI means they will do nasty things to their fellow humans?

3) Maybe you didn't notice, but a lot of "fun" in games is centred around killing, mass killing, sometimes murder or mass murder. So why being so surprised about this right now? What does it even mean? Did you notice correlation between playing such games and killing people? People killed other people long before games were even made. Now try to compare game with real life and decide which course of action is objectively worse: killing someone in game or in real life?
 
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Maybe it's my farm girl conservative upbringing, my time in the service, and as a cop but I find the attitude many gamers display toward NPCs a bit unnerving. Maybe they don't really understand the concept of role play as opposed to game play, or believe personal entertainment justifies any and everything. Yea they're only pixels not real people but mass murder as personal entertainment?

Yeah, I personally want to feel the weigh of the death of NPCs in this game for a change. I also dislike the concept in some games like the upcoming "Hatred" (pretty much a school shooting simulator, although to be honest it's neither set in a school nor it has a teenager as its protagonist - although, everyone has had a life as a student, so maybe this can count as an ex-student...-) where it's all about mowing down not only innocent civilians but also not having anyone pose a threat to you. I conversely do love GTA, but I feel going on a rampage isn't mandatory, nor the only element of the game. A lot of enjoyable things of GTA are pretty peaceful (enjoying the OST, the talk radio shows, driving -somebody over, but hey, I always say sorry -, exploring, subjecting your own avatar to pain -self mutilation, yay!-...). You can play those (especially IV and I don't know V) more as an anti-hero, but that's personal choice with not much gameplay implications (maybe less notoriety over the whole playthrough).

If people aren't caring enlough about NPC life it can be either that games are failing in that department, that some developers are holding them back, that consumers are the ones holding them back or yeah, a serious problem. Like I implied in one of my earlier posts in this thread, I find it unsettling that people of this generation see things like political correctiess in the fields of sexual, racial, political, cultural... diversity as "pushing an agenda" in videogames while when talking about certain media as the tools of opinion makers that make people feel more comfortable with invasion of privacy, torture, illegal detention, state terrorism... they see that as being relaxed and "not pushing an agenda at all". A lot of media that I enjoy but has those elements, doesn't really advocate for them: they just happen in its world and it's up to you to read into them the way you want: Deunan Knute and Batou use torture in their respective mangas, Motoko does state-sanctioned murder, the intelligence agencies of different nations practise state terrorism on each other in these works, there's the case of Mossad in GITS and gladly, it's just touched upon as "a struggle of national interests in a cyberpunk setting" as it's just an intelligence agency acting as the antagonist opposed to the anti-semitism of Angel Cop, another cyberpunk anime. These don't tell you "this is good", it's like with Judge Dredd. The original authors were concerned that younger readers didn't get that "Dredd was fun as a character because he was good for stories that involved action, BUT he's also a fascist.". I like it when writers expect that level of intelligence from the reader/audience, but still, it doesn't mean making it obtuse and not making any efforts to imply that the author doesn't condone the kind of actions portrayed in the game or to provide food for thought, so that people analyse why things are bad or good.
 
To quote Yahtzee

"The best way to blow off steam is to blow someone's nadgers off." Mass murdering fictional people for kicks is great for stress or pent up anguish, not to mention being a dick is a guilty pleasure to some people. Its why I and some others go around shooting random people in GTA and SR for no apparent reason. Catharsis.
 
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Anyway, you already explained it - mass murder as personal entertainment. It's not - murder requires taking the life of a sapient. Pixels are not. No life is taken.

I don't understand your approach on multiple levels.

Yeah, I personally want to feel the weigh of the death of NPCs in this game for a change.

Don't misunderstand, I KNOW it's pixels not people, I KNOW playing video games doesn't lead to real life mass murder, and I KNOW many (most?) games are centered around killing stuff.
It's just that I'm seriously disappointed that most supposedly RPG computer/console games can be used by a player as a shooting gallery with little to no repercussion in the game itself. It's NOT so much that I lament players doing so but that I find the games lack of response to it very disappointing.
 
It's just that I'm seriously disappointed that most supposedly RPG computer/console games can be used by a player as a shooting gallery with little to no repercussion in the game itself. It's NOT so much that I lament players doing so but that I find the games lack of response to it very disappointing.

Oh, same, same. I find the lack of responsiveness in the world to such character-changing events to be one of the big flaws in RPGs of all kinds.

I did like Spec Ops The Line pleasing in this regard, but generally the inflexibility of CRPGs remains one of my biggest frustrations.

Everything you do has ripples..some of them are really, really wide ranging ripples.
 
3) Maybe you didn't notice, but a lot of "fun" in games is centred around killing, mass killing, sometimes murder or mass murder.
I quite enjoy the Gran Turismo series.

I also enjoyed Portal very much.

2) Humans can display attitudes towards other humans that are more than "a bit unnerving".

...

If they can do nasty things to their fellow humans, what stops them from doing nasty things to AI? Or reverse the question: does the fact that people can do nasty things to AI means they will do nasty things to their fellow humans?
I think this opens up the conversation to philosophical tangents. I'm sure we're all aware of the various debates on whether video game violence translates into real-world violence, so I won't rehash that here.

1) NPCs are not humans. They don't feel. They don't think. They don't even exist. What's wrong in doing anything to them?
Though, in most open-world games, there's hardly any consequence (if any) for mowing down NPCs / civilians en masse, I don't enjoy wiping out a flock of NPCs, just to get at one target. Seems inelegant to me. Less fun for me than a careful, precise strike.
 
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