Grand Theft Auto 5, stylised as GTA V, released across the world a few weeks ago, and publisher Rockstar Games raked in around $1 billion in revenue — and counting. However, what it also raked in is a lot of controversy about the games fuelling violence among people, especially teenagers. After all, it does deal with stealing cars from people, running away from the police, and interacting in all sorts of ways with female characters who could be described in a family newspaper as “women with a reputation”. The more your character falls, the more you score.
So should India be worried? Not as much about GTA V as the Civilisation games, apparently! Because this famously inaccurate game turns our own Mahatma Gandhi into a “back-stabbing, nuking *unprintable,*” the moment his virtual simulation completes the Manhattan Project in the game.
So should India be worried? Not as much about GTA V as the Civilisation games, apparently! Because this famously inaccurate game turns our own Mahatma Gandhi into a “back-stabbing, nuking *unprintable,*” the moment his virtual simulation completes the Manhattan Project in the game.
What, Gandhi! The champion of non-violence! Well, it would seem so. Gaming forums, especially those dedicated to the Civilisation franchise, are rife with examples of the Gandhi-simulation launching nuclear attacks out of nowhere, displaying more aggression than even Genghis Khan!
If, by now, you are shaking your head and asking me why I am talking about what must be just a stray bug in a gaming industry. Apparently, the coders behind Civilisation 2, while providing the leaders of civilisations their in-game character, had developed a scale of 1 to 10 (or 1 to 14, depending on where you get your information from) for their aggressiveness. As would have been painfully obvious for Gandhi, the aggressiveness-rating was set as 2, meaning if you engaged with him, he would try to solve any international incident amicably.
For those unfamiliar with the game, you can win in many ways, be it annihilating opponents or “neutralising” them with diplomacy. Of course, your actions are supposed to be mirrored in your opponents' or allies' actions. Thus, if you choose the path of peace, even the most aggressive of civilisation leaders will tone down his or her level of aggression, but not entirely abandon it. However, choose the “diplomacy” setting with Gandhi on Civilisation 2, and he would nuke the soul out of your game!
Why? It so happens that Gandhi's aggression-rating was originally 2, and when a player chose diplomacy, all the leaders' ratings would be reduced by 2. Now, because the aggression scale began at 1, the big zero we would arrive at here, thanks to a bug, would be interpreted as 255 by the programme. So, on a scale of 1 to 10, Gandhi's aggressiveness would be 25 times the maximum!
The game developers kept the bug as a joke in the later versions as well. Gamers seem to be getting a kick out of it, but wonder how our lawmakers will react to this.
If, by now, you are shaking your head and asking me why I am talking about what must be just a stray bug in a gaming industry. Apparently, the coders behind Civilisation 2, while providing the leaders of civilisations their in-game character, had developed a scale of 1 to 10 (or 1 to 14, depending on where you get your information from) for their aggressiveness. As would have been painfully obvious for Gandhi, the aggressiveness-rating was set as 2, meaning if you engaged with him, he would try to solve any international incident amicably.
For those unfamiliar with the game, you can win in many ways, be it annihilating opponents or “neutralising” them with diplomacy. Of course, your actions are supposed to be mirrored in your opponents' or allies' actions. Thus, if you choose the path of peace, even the most aggressive of civilisation leaders will tone down his or her level of aggression, but not entirely abandon it. However, choose the “diplomacy” setting with Gandhi on Civilisation 2, and he would nuke the soul out of your game!
Why? It so happens that Gandhi's aggression-rating was originally 2, and when a player chose diplomacy, all the leaders' ratings would be reduced by 2. Now, because the aggression scale began at 1, the big zero we would arrive at here, thanks to a bug, would be interpreted as 255 by the programme. So, on a scale of 1 to 10, Gandhi's aggressiveness would be 25 times the maximum!
The game developers kept the bug as a joke in the later versions as well. Gamers seem to be getting a kick out of it, but wonder how our lawmakers will react to this.
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