Ethnocentric/ Quasi-religious Content in SotA

It seems popular and fashionable to add pro christian content into a game and NOT cater to the minorities.
Myself: I don't think real religion topics on these forums is a good idea and after chatting with a mod some time ago Its clear he didn't agree with me..

Religion is very personal and people have strong passionate views.

World religions have too much blood on their hands. Keep world religion out.

Lets add in game lore and religion based on Ultima.

I like the response above by Aron Swordmaster

 

Aron Swordmaster your very excellent reply should be made a sticky, and sent to Portalarium staff to be read. Wonderfully said.

 

Because the're fighting over something that is a fantasy. A product of imagination and own ego. The most dangerous mix you can put in your mind ever. If you want to enjoy at least a computer game, you'll have to start freeing your mind. Natural sciences is a good way to go.

Have you heard of term "holy war"? They call it a war caused by differences in "religions". Actually, these are never-ending wars. All people believe in different things. If you put two "Christians" in the same room, they'll still be different. Maybe they'll agree on some topics of their book of life, but there will always be something they don't agree on. This applies to all people.

I don't think there was ever any kind of religion in Ultima. It is just a game. With things that visually and verbally fit into the game's atmosphere. It's the matter of which items, sounds, effects, events would trigger interest in virtual environment of the game, and its simple as that. Let me put it this way. You are trying to find an extraterrestrial explanation of why Malevich has drawn a black square. The reason is simple - he is an artist. Most likely he thought it would bring him joy watching you reason about it.

Bottom line - the true religion is the one you keep to yourself. Everything else - your desire to be heard, to become important, to give yourself an illusion of being important.
You have to free your mind and enjoy the creation of the team of artists, enjoy the GAME.

 

People have to all stop believing things and become nihilists, I guess -- if having beliefs is really problematic. I don't think most people, religious or not, find religion as problematic as you do. Vyrinor was pretty rude, but you're response to him was overkill. The only reason why threads like this turn into flame-wars is some people encourage it and seem to like fighting with others.

The Ultima games have incorporated Christian and Western symbols and concepts in them, though, in addition to ideas from other existing world religions, so I'm not sure where you're getting the idea that its beyond Richard Garriott to do that. Using the standard Christian cross in the game for anything but grave-markers would just too closely parallel the real world, and its a fictional world. Its not as complicated as you're making it sound -- I doubt he would find it "worrying." In fact, in line with what you said (about the killing children issue), I'd guess if the only issue with having Christian crosses in the game was that it made people uncomfortable, he would start doing it -- because he wouldn't care if crosses made people feel uncomfortable -- just like he didn't care that including killing children made people uncomfortable. You make him sound like an enemy of "right-wing Christians everywhere", but at the time he started including ethics in Ultima games, starting with Ultima IV, it was common in that political environment for the same "right-wing Christians everywhere" to complain about how games and television didn't have any morals, and it was just about sex and violence. It was also common for their political opponents to put down this as moralistic preaching. RG seemed to sympathize with their complaints, though. Perhaps, you wouldn't have.

 

So...
If the premise of the game is that we are pulled from our world into New Britannia, then it is reasonable that some of us would bring religion with us.

It might not be a great idea to practice Earthly religion in New Britannia, because it labels us as Outlanders. Tracy and Richard have even warned us against revealing our Earthly origins.

So, I would vote for not including real-world religious content for that reason.

But players, being the way they are, will just stick candles to the wall in the pattern of their chosen religious symbol anyway.

 

And yet the very first interaction with a person from New Britannia we have is to ask us where we are from, and 'penalize' us if we are not honest... Hmmm.

 

I said I was from "nowhere" and he responded he never heard of the place

 

Well, if we're going to veer off topic:
I said "up the road" and he called me a liar. It didn't seem to have much affect on my interactions with others.
I deleted that character and started over. This time I said "I'm an Outlander", and life was pretty much the same.
I deleted again and started over without answering, and just pushed my way into town. Everyone in town then told me I had to go back and talk to whatever his name was.

 

And to continue to veer off topic, I do hope Lum will be incorporating all of our responses to that question and adding new dialog in response to how we've each answered. With so many Avatars invading their world, Guard Michael might have heard of quite a few place names from Earth. I think he even knows all the 50 states and some countries, perhaps

What would be neat is if that dialog tree can be updated server side in real time without requiring a patch.

 

Reminds me of Vesper in U7 where you can reveal yourself as the Avatar to a pair of disgruntled gargoyles. They take the news poorly, and you're forced to kill them... unless you don't give yourself away.

On a side note, in Ultima 4 the whole premise of the Virtues and of the Avatar was establishing a quasi-religious system of morality, and even RG has pointed out that your character becomes a very Christ-like figure to Britannia. But as a good storyteller, he didn't leave it simply at that. In Ultima 5, we see how someone like Lord Blackthorn could use his power and influence to pervert the absolutes of the Virtues into the very harsh and inflexible Laws. In Ultima 6, we learn that the Avatar's removal of the Codex from the Abyss spelled the destruction of Gargoyle society, and that our character was LITERALLY spelled out as the Devil of their prophecy. That's pretty deep philosophy for a computer game, and it was beautifully told in our reasoning not to commit genocide against an alien race, but to find a method of peace between the cultures.

In Ultima 7, there was the introduction of the Fellowship, and its influence upon Britannian values and the minimazation of the Virtues after 200 years of the Avatar's absence. In Serpent Isle, we learn that a completely separate culture and philosophy arose after the Sundering of Sosaria, and how the madness of the Order and Chaos imbalance erupted after Exodus pulled the Balance Serpent from the Ether. On Pagan, we were thrust completely into a world where the citizens were living under the belief of our prime enemy, and would violently oppose any attempts to convince them otherwise; we ultimately dismantle the very structures and forcibly destroy the demigods placed on that world to empower our return home.

There is a great deal of room for expansion of lore and storyline on how the belief structures will affect this New Britannia, and the consequences our characters will face in the choices and decisions our adventures will take. However, I'm strongly opposed to pandering to real world religions and their secular holidays within the game simply for marketing and cash ploys. If they want to come up with in-lore holidays established by the storyline, that would not break the immersion as jarringly.

 

Yes I KNOW what it is...that's the point. There's no reason to sell it in the add-on store, anymore than there's a reason to sell Yule Trees or other religious items.

 

How about catering to the most dominant religion in the world, Islam? Where's the SotA prayer rug?

 

Evolver: if that was an attempt to debunk my post I think you did a terrible job. Your post was strange at best. I'm not one for a tennis match but I will say Ultima has been full of religion, religious ideas, religious subtext and context.

Yes I have heard of a holy war but it means little to me. Spilt blood is still spilt blood and I don't condone any kind of war let alone your....what did you call it..."grand war"

"Holy war" is such an oxymoron...

Evolver: its uncanny and convenient your name is suitable for this thread and I appreciate your first post being directed at me ..I feel somewhat special.

I would hope everyone feels comfortable enough to express opinions from their main forum account without fear.

 

That's true. But the game and the community still has to be managed. What the current available items are telling people is that there are two religions that are acceptable. I know that's not the message that was intended, but that's the message that is being heard. So how do you manage that? You now can't have a rule that says "no outside religions in the game" because that train has left the station. So what happens when the Golden Dawn political party in Greece begins to show itself? (look those guys up - scary) Or followers of Osama Bin Ladin? (there was a guy in Shadowbane (pre-911) with both a character AND GUILD based on this)

This is not "much ado about nothing", it's a big freakin deal.

 

This thread is still going, eh?

I snipped the irrelevant and bolded the really important stuff.

Any communication requires two people - speaker and listener. Both jobs carry equal weight. The fact that you know the message wasn't intended and are hearing it anyway means that you are at fault for this. You are willfully and intentionally taking this the wrong way, because reasons.

It is much ado about nothing. You are being intentionally offended.

 

No, I'm not offended. I'm saying it's a horrible idea because it will lead to people doing bad things that can't be equally managed by the community. There's a big difference between the two things.

So if you continue to say "you're offended for no reason" that's just a strawman arguement, and since we've established that it's an arguement that I'm not making I would appreciate it if you'd stop pretending that I've made that argument and move on to what I've actually said. Thank you.

Just for kicks, can anyone name another online game on the planet that has a menorah in it? I sure can't, I wonder why that is?

 

Do you have evidence to support this? Have their been bad things in other games that couldn't be managed by the community that directly stemmed from the sales of holiday trees in the cash shop?

 

It's like people only see the tree and not the menorah. Menorah! Say it with me, menorah. There's also a menorah in the add-on store.

• Menorah

If you don't think that someone is going to use the menorah (or the tree) as a way to get people really angry, you are mistaken my friend. So how can that be managed effectively? Is it fair to say that players can make an in-game bon fire using normal trees but not yule trees? Is it fair to say that players can stack menorah's in the form of a swastika? Is it fair to say that players can't randomly attack people just because of their out of game religious beliefs but they can attack players if they worship the "obsidian order"?

Where do you draw the line? Because I draw the line before players ever get into the game. Leave your out of game religions out of game.

 

Should we ban sticks, because people could stack them in the form of a swastika?

You seem like you want to eliminate the chance of bad behavior before it starts. That's an unrealistic expectation. People behaving badly is going to happen. You deal with it as it happens.

 

No one can make you angry, you get angry all on your own. If you think you are going to be offended by something take a deep breath and remember: You don't have the right to not be offended. People do have the right to freedom of speech and expression.

In the game world, I'm certain that they will be much more interested in protecting your feelings against things like this, but frankly you need to learn to ignore things you don't like. When you react, either positively or negatively to things, you are giving people power over you; they have the ability to manipulate your feelings with their actions. Relax.

I, for instance, could really get upset with the fact that there may be clovers and whiskey in the game (I'm sure there will be). I'm Irish after all, and those are stereotypical representations of my culture. They remind me of the struggles we faced when we were persecuted by the English, and then when we immigrated to America and were left in the streets to starve. We died by the thousands over and over again. I don't let it get me upset though, and almost nobody else who is Irish does either. We let it go and it went away....