Do you think taking up-skirt shots of peoples characters is creepy?

[Zeldert-Castiel]

This whole thread is a mess...

Remember that characters played by us is a reflection of our personality and attitude. So when someone tried to take panty shot of our character without consent, then it's their problem because they may have the habit or the will to do so outside games.

When someone tried to strip their character naked when they pay their own sub, it's up to them but the moment they involve other people without their knowledge then it's harassment.

[CookiesNCreams]

This whole thread is a mess...

Remember that characters played by us is a reflection of our personality and attitude. So when someone tried to take panty shot of our character without consent, then it's their problem because they may have the habit or the will to do so outside games.

When someone tried to strip their character naked when they pay their own sub, it's up to them but the moment they involve other people without their knowledge then it's harassment.

I’m speechless.

[Shougun]

This whole thread is a mess...

Remember that characters played by us is a reflection of our personality and attitude. So when someone tried to take panty shot of our character without consent, then it's their problem because they may have the habit or the will to do so outside games.

When someone tried to strip their character naked when they pay their own sub, it's up to them but the moment they involve other people without their knowledge then it's harassment.

This argument sounds a lot like video games cause violence argument. Which I feel like I've seen almost prop up a few times here, and I often see used for gender based video game issues.. I think it's a dangerous position used to empower their argument but I don't think it can be true, at least without dire consequences.

I'll try to use some examples with pvp as a start and before "pvp is consented if you play the game" response- I would add there are a lot of people who play games that happen to have pvp but don't want to take part in the pvp portion (they play the game for other features, not for the PvP). If their consent had any importance then killing non-consenting players in a pvp enabled game would be similar to taking pictures of a non-consenting player's digital avatar (game allows you to 360 your camera, but the player would prefer you didn't use the game's tools- like in a pvp enabled game).

Which means players who use tools provided by the game to attack other players in open pvp, even if that other player is non-consenting, would have some sort of influence or at least pre-existing urge to attack people in real life (not saying they must act on it though, urge/desire). Similarly taking pictures of avatars without their consent meaning you'd do it to real people.

I do think there are a lot of creepy things people can do in game, stalking being one of the scarier ones, but in terms of actions upon the avatars and the severity of the issue.. these avatars at the end of the day MUST be just (beloved) objects (like some people love their car or computer or favorite blanket). Such there is no such thing as objectification of a video game character but rather personification (and therefore we should view it from that perspective), else we are all suggesting and are subject to extreme corruption. Which at least from statistics of ever growing popularity of games and yet decreasing rates of those bad things would strongly suggest it's not true- games become more popular and yet corruption rates haven't seemed to really grow, if anything many have shrunk.

Taking a picture of someone's character (without interacting with the player, so without their knowledge AND without consent) is like taking a picture of a person's car... It's weird if they're stalking you, and maybe weird if you thought they were going to harm you or something but in the sense of the person taking the photo going "THAT IS A NICE CAR *click*". It's relatively a non-issue (not a person, and not interacting with a person).

Of course I'm aware that people will actually interact with the person (people are not objects, cars are objects, people operating the car is not)- so when interacting with the operator of the avatar, stalking the operator, telling them disturbing things, it becomes different. If I loved your car and took a picture of it, without harming it, even if you didn't know.. then no big deal. If I followed you to your house, opened the hood of the car, told you how I loved how clean the engine was, that fine pinstripe (??? lol), and just kept bothering you about it, making you feel unsafe and just disturbed (or more disturbing things I'm sure some people deal with) - well yeah okay that's harassment of the player (not the object).

Personally have never taken a picture of someone's unders.. lol.. (weird sounding, maybe creepy, but ultimately non-issue, imo, since the avatar is not real and is not a person), if someone told me they loved my model and put it into one of their adult comics I'd just laugh. That image is not mine, technically- legally, it belongs to SE and it clearly isn't mine since I can still log into my character. Now if they stole my account to do that, well that's quite different then they're "stealing" my car (my fantasy car lol).

I don't mean to call people's characters objects to make them sound not important, that's why I say car- some people LOVE their car (even name them, like old days with swords), but just that they must be this way.., else games are far more dangerous than gamers would like to admit. You can care greatly about objects. I'm mad when people don't treat my stuff with respect (like leaving my headphones on the public floor when they asked to borrow them), but at the end of the day they didn't hurt a person when they mistreated my objects and so I shouldn't be allowed to be mad as if the headphones were a person they harmed, as it's not (even if they broke them or sold them). What they hurt was the feeling of trust and respect (relationship). Now through the magic of personification, which we'd obviously do to greater or lessor extents based on the person, our characters can mean quite a lot and "almost" feel alive (lots of time invested too, like making your own car- people can be quite passionate about that) but still.. like I said, unless we want games to actually be real issues of corruption at the end of the day they can only objects and not people. Therefore there is no objectification in video games (an object is already an object), only personification. Can't harass my headphones by taking a picture of them without my consent (and specifically without my knowledge, as of course as people interact person to person the situation begins to shift).

I also wouldn't want to say you can't feel weird if you found out people took pictures of your character oddly, but that a lot of those feelings would (should?) come from your personification of an object- a personification that the other person probably doesn't share with you. Rather than if it coming from them objectifying your character, a person, or because they didn't have consent to view or interact with it within the game's confines, but then like I said if that's true then I think gamers are in trouble and games are potentially very dangerous (but I also don't think that is true in a general average sense because statistically it doesn't seem to relate, the popularity vs corruption doesn't really jive). Also I don't want to suggest all the situations are the same- there could of course be other components in a situation and even concerns like fear of safety, they're stalking, actively messaging you and circumventing your black lists, emoting non-stop like a kid going "I'm not touching you, I'm not touching you", etc, those would be other issues (person to person issues).

[Mikhaill]

Jesus FrickFracks, this is still going?

[Melichoir]

In all seriousness, this is what I more or less understood from the other side ( the side that's not necessarily rping but mostly have their characters have extension of themselves):

-The line is afforded to msq, npcs and gameplay content. If the story and duties does things to their character, it doesn't count. Much.

-The line is drawn at greeting emotes. Hellos and Welcomes and Goodbyes and anything similar to those are okay.

-The line is crossed at emotes displaying physical contact or "affectionate" in nature. So the hugs and the pats are bad. Doting and Blow Kiss are also bad. Similar emotes to what I just listed are bad.

At least, that's the gist of what I think I got. The reason I underlined this is because it's clear that the arbitrary line when it comes to the last two lines is generally just about everywhere. It might have sounded at first like just not talking directly to the player was one way to avoid making people uncomfortable but now it seems like you might as well add emoting to it. Funnily enough, the latter wouldn't be so bad IF (and a big IF here) some people simply resorted to talking to the "culprit" about stopping their targeted actions instead of rushing headfirst into either reporting or venting to the forums about it. Especially when it comes to only suspecting someone of having committed a possible offense rather than fully confirming it.

But hey, let's torch the witch first, then check if she's one.

I think youre understanding isnt to far off base in regards to where 'the line' is at. But thats the core of what I dont understand. Why is that line subjective. Again, why is it "I am this character when you do this thing, therefore you are doing this to me the player" only the case in certain situations, but in other situations its "I am not the character and am not being injured/harmed/etc". It's literally a situation that one context you are suddenly the character, and in all other contexts you are easily able to divorce yourself from the character and what they go through. Why cant players do this all the time?

That conundrum frankly just moves me to believe that this is a kind of faux outrage or a mental disconnect the player is not squaring away. It's like saying "LoL, Eden Prime just blew away my character with a laser beam" and then turning around and screaming "Ive been assaulted! Ive been violated! This is not acceptable!" when someone walks under your skirt and looks up.

[alimdia]

Remember that characters played by us is a reflection of our personality and attitude

Speak for yourself there. Most of us can separate the real world and fictional world.

[SturmChurro]

Speak for yourself there. Most of us can separate the real world and fictional world.

I AM my character! If I could live in the world of Eorzea forever as my warrior of light I WOULD. I WAS BORN TOO SOON. I wish I could be strapped into a VR chair, and live my life out as an elf in VR space. I would have a family, a dog, A REAL LIFE.

[FaileExperiment]

This whole thread is a mess...

Remember that characters played by us is a reflection of our personality and attitude. So when someone tried to take panty shot of our character without consent, then it's their problem because they may have the habit or the will to do so outside games.

When someone tried to strip their character naked when they pay their own sub, it's up to them but the moment they involve other people without their knowledge then it's harassment.

Nah. This isn't true at all.

[Mostly_Raxus]

no its pixels, if you don't agree put on pants.

[SturmChurro]

Nah. This isn't true at all.

Don't you know? Video games are the cause of all the worlds problems. The Roman Empire conquered the world because they had mario party, WW2 could have been stopped if they had just put their controllers down. The vikings - too much Madden. That's just violence though. Taking up-skirt shots of player character's in a video game should be used as evidence, against these players. Kind of a preventative measure. Something like in Minority Report.