If you accept that in an MMO (for example) a lot of the game is actually cooperative, then it makes no real sense to call someone a scrub just because they focus on a different part of the game to the one that he does.

It’s an interesting article, but no one likes to be called a scrub. I find that side a bit juvenile.I think he’s also terribly keen to apply what he finds in games to real life, which is fine and they can certainly show people how to apply themselves … but it’s very silly to assume that just because someone is a scrub in game they must be some kind of loser. A lot of people have very successful professional lives and just game to relax.

http://www.sirlin.net/articles/playing-to-win-part-1.html

While I do agree that avatars aren’t just pieces there is an element of scrubdom to our attachment to them.

Though it’s kinda twisted to think it, perhaps the more accurate persona for the player of the game isn’t the train operator, it’s the SS Officer who is commanding the train operator.

Which is where I become conflicted…

Someone could say right back to me that board games like novels are just a medium and just because board games haven’t development the same wide variety of emotional genres doesn’t mean they shouldn’t.

And I’m reminded of the movie, Schindler’s List, too. It’s probably one of the best movies I’ve ever seen, but I doubt I’ll ever watch it a 2nd time. It was an important movie to see, a powerful movie, but not a happy movie. Shouldn’t movies be about replay value too?

To which obviously, some aren’t.

Why can’t a board game be only played once?

I know I’ve been in RP guilds where the officers acted as if they were superior to us in real life and not just in game. Could be I was just unlucky

That’s interesting with the Milgram Experiment. I think you’re right, it doesn’t matter what the train operators knew. But I think it would matter to players. Just I think the experience of being an unwitting accomplice to something really bad is better for people to have via games than via RL.

That said, I still create a persona for a character, even if the only person that knows is me.

As for Auschwitz… does it matter if the train operators knew what was going on? The replications of the Milgram Experiment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment) show that even participants who know what is going on still obey authority figures. The most important finding is that the number of people who said they wouldn’t (1.2%) was so much different than the number of people who did (~60%)