As a game reviewer, I often find my self playing strange games which I would never of found on my own. One such game is NosTale, a free to play Korean MMORPG with colorful 2D graphics and simple game play. I wasn’t expecting much from this MMO, your basic grindfest with some fetch quests thrown into the mix. Following the main quest line, I was surprised that at around level 17 I was asked to investigate rumors of a miner’s strike. I had to go ‘undercover’ into a mine and listen to a group of workers and either confirm or deny the rumors of a strike to the Mine Boss. Unfortunately for the miners, the rumors were true – the miners were planning a general strike! I informed the Boss and he gave me the following instructions:
That’s right, I had to ‘break’ the strike by killing 8 of the miners. That’ll put those workers in their place! Bear in mind that these NPC miners are NOT aggressive towards players and have names like ‘Happy Miner.’ Political and ideological concepts in video games can be used to enhance a game’s overall plot, just look at Bioshock. But it seems to me that the developers and publishers of NosTale, a game aimed at a young audience, just didn’t think things through when they wrote this quest line. Now don’t get me wrong, nothing in NosTale is offensive but this quest did raise an eyebrow. I wonder how many other games have subtle (or unintentional) political statements in them?
For those of you interested in NosTale, an overview is provided at:
http://mmohub.org/2008/nostale
Source:
Perhaps the company did think things through when they wrote this quest line. Teach the kids how to keep the unions down. ^_^
Tue Oct 21 2008 3:23AM
Lol yeah... stupid unions next thing u know the king of england will be pushing you around.
Tue Oct 21 2008 7:31AMThere is no king of England ....... 0.o
Tue Oct 21 2008 7:33AMSouth Korea is a very class based society, manual laborers are veiwed little more than animals...the world outside of the U.S./Europe is a very messed up place.
Tue Oct 21 2008 9:49AMAny retard who is influenced by this probably would of ended up choking on candy and dying anyway.
Tue Oct 21 2008 2:55PMHAHA OWnD take that you union Bees
Tue Oct 21 2008 7:04PMAs if miners could cripple the economy the way traders and bankers do.
Tue Oct 21 2008 9:58PMIf miners went on strike then the supplies would be cut short which in turn would raise prices and in some cases halt production of certain things. That can end up crippling an economy depending on where it is based.
Tue Oct 21 2008 11:52PMSorry to be off topic
Tue Oct 21 2008 11:52PMAs many are whining to get more choice in their mmos this is the perfect example where I'd prefer to kill the bastard asking me to teach miners a lesson. Then I would group with other guilds, make a revolution and nationalize all means of production and put bosses to work in these gloomy mines 8-P
Wed Oct 22 2008 1:08AMWow only the most hardcore socialist would take this so seriously. I mean maybe your character just isn't supposed to be nice anyway.
Wed Oct 22 2008 6:29PMMMORPG.com writes:
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