Slavery in an MMORPG

4507

For the last little while, I've been working on a design for an MMO set in the Caribbean at the beginning of the 18th century (1718, to be exact), and the issue of slavery keeps cropping up whenever I try to make it even the least bit historically accurate.

Right now, I'm leaning towards treating slaves similarly to any other resource (sugar, gunpowder, cotton, etc) whose use is to work player-owned land estates to produce other resources, but having the ability to free them for a morality boost (higher morality gives bonuses to RNG drop chances and affects what quests/areas are available to you). I'm also on the fence about including a slave driver NPC that you can hire to produce more resources at the cost of increased slave mortality and a time-based decrease in your own morality.

However, I'm unsure about how people would feel about this, especially because most games don't cover slavery whatsoever (which I don't see as an option for a game set in the Caribbean at that time). 

Thoughts?

kitarad

BDO has a form of slavery. There is even a quest where you chase down a runaway worker. They are paid in beer. Odd mechanics and while you go around you can actually see them working away at their tasks. Reminiscent of the cotton pickers.

Vrika

I think that either have slaves, or don't, but don't try to be moral about it. You can't be moral about it successfully, and a half-assed system because you're trying would just displease everyone.

kitarad

There's no moral way to handle slavery. You can only do it like it was and perhaps the best you can do is not have too harsh ways to handle the punishment of slaves.

Cryomatrix

Conan Exiles has a "slavery system" i know it isn't a classic MMORPG. 

In terms of Slavery, if you look at it historically, it was pretty much par for the course for many years. I'm not condoning it or justifying it, but it wasn't stigmatized as it is today (it should be stigmatized by the way). 

But back in the day, if you got conquered, you were either killed outright or made into slaves. It makes sense if you think of it without any moral compass. Humans are a resource and you could use them like cattle or not. It made sense if you weren't born in the past 100 years. 

So i'd say just do it and do it well. I mean in video games like GTA V, it pretty much allows wanton murder and mayhem, people still do it. So if you have a slavery system, it should be looked at as the same thing. 

Of course, I'd draw the line at rape or child-anything, but everyone has a sand in the line. I know other people would have the sand drawn at slavery, but personally, in a video game, i don't. In real life, of course slavery should be outlawed. 

For example, i'm about 99k words into my fantasy (sci fi novel). I would have a slavery system if i wanted to (i've seen it in many books), but I would never put in a rape scenario or a child-anything scenario, that shit is too disturbing, but each to their own. 

If you are okay with a slavery system in your game, then do it. If not, then don't do it. Who cares about what other people think. 

Cryomatrix

alkarionlog

do like in uncharted waters, ignore the slavery fact, it will make you game are more easier to deal with, most people will take pitchforks and torches against it just for it, plus you will get a mature rate with is not a desireable thing

otterball

The character creation in Age of Conan was really cool, I thought...you could see exactly what kind of conditions your slave character was in; it was brutally honest in a way. The males were laborers and the female was pampered and ready for service. To be fair, I haven't played many RPGs, but the well-received slavery systems/elements have a certain profoundness to them. Of course, design your game to your own precise liking, but I'd say your system should be particularly interesting, i.e. not just another mechanic to shove into your game. Depending on your type of game it should contribute to atmosphere, story, etc. It should really mean something, because slavery in real life really means something.

4507

Vrika said:

I think that either have slaves, or don't, but don't try to be moral about it. You can't be moral about it successfully, and a half-assed system because you're trying would just displease everyone.

I don't think that the system I laid out is all that moral - the main way to get resources in the game is through slave labour and since most equipment is also player-crafted from said resources, the entire economy is built upon slavery. Similarly to real life at that time, the game is designed such that you won't go very far as a land-owner or crafter if you abstain from the use of slaves.

I originally included the option to free slaves for when you capture a slave ship on the high seas and can't carry them as cargo (cargo hold full, no restrainment facilities construtcted, more valuable cargo was carried alongside them, etc) because I thought only having the option to kill them ('dump cargo') was harsh (and not historically accurate - pirates did free slaves to bolster their crew numbers).

The morality system was also pre-existing, and originally intended to stop players from randomly killing NPC civillians and such, even though they have the option, so I figured why not allow players to get a morality boost for capturing slave ships, and making slaves like buyable morality as an additional resource sink.

Sephiroso

kitarad said:

BDO has a form of slavery. There is even a quest where you chase down a runaway worker. They are paid in beer. Odd mechanics and while you go around you can actually see them working away at their tasks. Reminiscent of the cotton pickers.

lmao i never saw the workers as slaves because you paid money for them but you're right. You paid the "supervisor" and not the worker and their wage was beer, aka food to keep them going. damn, i gotta tell my friend that.

Cryomatrix

Or perhaps have freeing slaves give a certain type of risk/reward. 

@otterball welcome to the boards. 

Cryomatrix

Hariken

Funny how there's a big discussion about this now on Massively. I remember in Morrowind they had slaves but you could free them and kill the slavers if you could. They also had a secret anti slavery faction in the game to. Options are always nice to add for something like slavery. 

Bellomo

Is this conversation giving the illusion that we are all not slaves and we are free?     Succas

Octagon7711

Game of Thrones did a good job of handling the complexities of slavery.  It can get complicated and unless it's really needed for immersion best leave it out, IMO.

Keller

Is the world ready for a historical correct mmo (or a sim) with slavery? Social media only has to pick up on the word "Slavery" and they will go bananas without ever having played the game or even looked into it. 

FlyByKnight

Just make sure you're historically accurate about the Maroons and how typical it was for the slave owners and families to get their necks opened up and buried under the sugar cane fields they "owned". Folks who want to make "historically accurate" entertainment at others expense typically omit or round off the edges.

Good luck.

Vermillion_Raventhal

I would say slavery is only acceptable in games as antagonist or prison work we are condition to not believe is slavery. Outrage will likely be instant and strong.  

Ungood

Keep in mind, Slavery in the Caribbean which involved people all skin colors, was mostly indentured servitude or a form of incarnation, and once the debt was paid off they were free to go. Unlike the American chattel slavery which was for life.

So putting in a system where you paid upfront for a slave for a set amount of time might be better, with the option to clear their debt sooner to build something like, appreciative workers, that you could then hire, and they would have higher loyalty to you. (IE: They won't run away and have increased productivity)

Maurgrim

If you want it historical accurate so why not.

Just for the record, there were white slaves also, free ride over to the colonies to be slaves to "pay back" the voyage over were quite common and the whites usually were treated far worse than the blacks due to whites only needed to be slaves for a few years until they payed back.

Just a tingle thought.

TheScavenger

Slavery should be forgotten, and not even be put into the history books. Burn any book with slavery as far as I'm concerned. It shouldn't even be talked about or written, and hopefully one day all the statues being torn down make the dark history of slavery forgotten. The people who kept slaves should be forgotten, and maybe at most only the people who freed prisoners (which is a better word than slaves) would be the only ones remembered.

I would never play a game that had slavery of any kind. It is something in future generations that will hopefully never know "slavery" even existed.

Quizzical

Slavery was hardly unique to the 18th century Caribbean area.  If you want to say that the existence of slavery then makes it essential to depict in a game set in that era, then you could say the same of every other significant civilization in human history until Britain abolished it in 1809.

Why was slavery so common?  It's not a simple case of no one getting the idea that freedom was preferable to slavery.  Rather, we are so far removed from the way life was centuries ago that we have no clue what their options were, let alone what the likely consequences of choosing them would have been.  Among the other prominent features of life were:

1)  A constant threat of famine and even starvation.  Most of society had to work in agriculture because that was the only way to produce enough food.  And when something like unfavorable weather, a natural disaster, or an untimely invasion made that somewhat less productive than normal one year, starvation was a real prospect.

2)  Life-threatening diseases--and sometimes, epidemics of them.  A baby born in developed countries today is far more likely to live to the age of 60 than a baby born in much of human history was to live to the age of 1.  Some of the things that we can do with modern medicine would have been considered nothing short of miraculous a few centuries ago.  For people of any age to die with relatively short notice was massively more common than it is now.

3)  Invaders who would take whatever they wanted of what you had, and possibly destroy some of what they didn't want just to spite you.  You could lose your house, any food you had stored, livestock, tools, friends, family members, or your own life.  An invasion could come with limited warning, though who your powerful neighbors who could theoretically invade were was likely to be known well in advance.

But why stop at slavery?  Why not include the three things I've listed above, which were commonly a more prominent feature of life than slavery even in places in the world that had slavery.  After all, some such harsh realities of life were major contributing factors in why slavery existed in the first place.  We are so far removed from the way life was centuries ago that you probably wouldn't be able to create an accurate depiction of it even if you wanted to.

Ultimately, a game is a model of sorts.  And a model is a simplified version of whatever it is that you're trying to model.  You pick some salient features to include in the model, and then discard everything else.  That makes the model unrealistic in ways, but that's the point of a model:  you discard some features to make it simpler.

The ultimate measure of how good a game is as a model is how fun and interesting it is, not how realistic.  We understand very well that you need food and water to survive.  Few games bother to implement that; even if they have food and water, deciding to go without isn't life-threatening.  Games do that because having to constantly stop to eat and drink really isn't a very interesting game mechanic.  Slavery probably isn't, either, unless you have some ideas that you think will make it interesting.  Don't add slavery just for the sake of realism.

Kyleran

TheScavenger said:

Slavery should be forgotten, and not even be put into the history books. Burn any book with slavery as far as I'm concerned. It shouldn't even be talked about or written, and hopefully one day all the statues being torn down make the dark history of slavery forgotten. The people who kept slaves should be forgotten, and maybe at most only the people who freed prisoners (which is a better word than slaves) would be the only ones remembered.

I would never play a game that had slavery of any kind. It is something in future generations that will hopefully never know "slavery" even existed.

You do know slavery is not a thing of the past, right?

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2014/11/23/247-wall-st-countries-most-slaves/70033422/

FlyByKnight

Maurgrim said:

If you want it historical accurate so why not.

Just for the record, there were white slaves also, free ride over to the colonies to be slaves to "pay back" the voyage over were quite common and the whites usually were treated far worse than the blacks due to whites only needed to be slaves for a few years until they payed back.

Just a tingle thought.

Oh word? That's how it happened? Okay.

Sandmanjw

I voted keep it out. I would just change the game to use indentured servants...slaves in all but name in that time period...but without the stigma and grief that may come trying to be "time period realistic".

TheScavenger

Kyleran said:

TheScavenger said:

Slavery should be forgotten, and not even be put into the history books. Burn any book with slavery as far as I'm concerned. It shouldn't even be talked about or written, and hopefully one day all the statues being torn down make the dark history of slavery forgotten. The people who kept slaves should be forgotten, and maybe at most only the people who freed prisoners (which is a better word than slaves) would be the only ones remembered.

I would never play a game that had slavery of any kind. It is something in future generations that will hopefully never know "slavery" even existed.

You do know slavery is not a thing of the past, right?

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2014/11/23/247-wall-st-countries-most-slaves/70033422/

"Mostly" propaganda from pro-slavery supporters and from the same people who helped get a certain person as a leader that the KKK support. 

The only thing correct is, yes slaves exist, but its not most countries and not like the past. I do admit defeat in that...there are child slaves, and women enslaved into prostitution. But it isn't slavery like it used to be. And many organizations spend countless time freeing children and women from slavery, which isn't how it used to be where they had no chance of freedom up to the civil war.

As for the link. Not gonna bother reading past what I saw in the article, its fake news and propaganda for slavery at best.

Which brings me back to the point, why is there even an article about slavery? It is only going to make others (not everyone of course) want slaves like the old times. It should be forgotten, silenced and not be given any attention or even be part of history to prevent slavery happening again.

Its why people shoot up schools, because they get put in history, the news talks about them, they get their picture plastered everywhere and are remembered forever. Same exact thing as talking about slavery.

As for child and women slaves in prostitution, that is the only thing any news article or history book should focus on (but not the criminals, only the victims), and then when that is fixed, it too should disappear so it never is repeated again

red_cruiser

Make them indentured servants working off their college loan debt, so that the kids playing your games will be able to relate to them.  "If I didn't have to work and pay off this debt, I'd be smoking weed and playing video games... y'know, at least until the NBA needs a new CEO."

Cryomatrix

TheScavenger said:

Slavery should be forgotten, and not even be put into the history books. Burn any book with slavery as far as I'm concerned. It shouldn't even be talked about or written, and hopefully one day all the statues being torn down make the dark history of slavery forgotten. The people who kept slaves should be forgotten, and maybe at most only the people who freed prisoners (which is a better word than slaves) would be the only ones remembered.

I would never play a game that had slavery of any kind. It is something in future generations that will hopefully never know "slavery" even existed.

Wow, you are so extreme? It is history dude. If you want to remove slavery from the history books, you may as well remove many countries involved in World War II. As well as pretty much every civilization in the world. Remove anyone involved in Genocide? Ethnic cleansing? what about colonialism which is another way of saying raping, pillaging, and abusing a local population better known as "civilizing the savages". Let's remove the Aztecs from history for sacrificing virgins to their gods. We'll remove the pharaohs for enlisting slave labor as well. Let's tear down the pyramids too. Great wall of china as well because that was built with slave labor. 

History in Scavenger's world would show a map of just the ocean or would you erase the oceans cuz of tsunamis?