theultimateend said:
1) Yes I am aware of Autism and what it entails, I didn't just pick my nose while studying Psychology for 8 years.
2) For sure. They should be able to petition the cheat branding be removed and merely lose all their current achievements. However I think you should be working harder to get permanent records of criminals expunged if this is your feeling. Since I hardly thing Xbox achievements should be the first priority (of this correct) feeling you have.
3) Steam is a pleasant service indeed. I don't quite see how mentioning that to me when my point is that we are setting up our kids for failure.
The US is ranked very low on global education but our self-esteem ratings are #1. Effectively we are buttering our children for no reason. I'm not going to go out of my way to combat it, if the majority of voters feel it's a good idea then they can deal with the consequences I suppose.
I've met people with many different cognitive and developmental disorders, not one of them appreciated being babied, this is anecdotal of course but it's my own experiences regardless.
1) Why must every statement on the internet be taken personally? No, I wasn't being smug or directing any attention toward you and your apparent coursework in psychology.
To respond, in general - if you read the post I made originally - I said something along the lines of "notice the story doesn't mention if he cheated or not. If he did, he should be treated equally." Later, I modified the statement, which, I admit now that I should have been edited within the post. That was - "I would also add that Microsoft should look at their cheating policy..." meaning that this isn't just a black/white cheater/non-cheater issue, and Microsoft should probably take a look at its policies.
You responded to that by saying, basically "children shouldn't be coddled."
To further clarify, my response being that he IS autistic was to clarify that this child wasn't a "child in general" and does have specific issues relating to his autism. To clarify - these virtual achievements possibly mean something deeply to him as autistic children (don't know about him specifically) tend to latch on to things like this with emotional connections. This isn't true of all members of autism spectrum, of course, and may not even apply to him. And yes, I believe the mother is using her child's illness to garner sympathy, especially with the news brought to light.
2) I completely agree. This isn't the most important place to stand for justice and juveniles. Would it surprise you to know that I have supported the latter cause in means other than a forum post? Because it's irrelevant to the issue at hand. In the issue at hand, Microsoft has a blanket policy which isn't easily changeable, apparently. However, in this specific case there was good reason. The mother certainly went to the news prematurely, and this was hardly a grave injustice in the world in general. Even when I saw the original story, I hardly found it newsworthy to begin with - though there was one thing I found interesting, and I'll expand on that later.
3) I brought Steam up as a competing service that handles cheaters in a completely different manner. They manage to deal with them and allow for them simultaneously, banning cheaters to non VAC servers when it comes up. And while it does have its own problems of permanence, it doesn't do the same as what Microsoft did here. A permanent, non-negotiable scarlet letter is cruel punishment for a child, especially over virtual goods. Now, how Steam handled Drunken Fool may be something to look into - although even Drunken Fool understood and accepting the consequences (likely because he is an adult and knew what he was doing).
You see my inclusion of Steam as a non-sequitor, well, so is this nations education system. Yes, we have a lot of trouble with our education system, and yes we rank incredibly low because of the way we handle children. We've become a litigous society heavily involved in the idea that our children can do no wrong, and in that environment we've created an entire generation of children with false senses of entitlement.
Sometimes, consequences need to be allowed, and parents need to step aside. So on this, we agree, though my view may be more nuanced on a case to case basis.
We aren't talking about the general issues of education. I have a specific case here. Yes, he did, in fact, cheat. Microsoft didn't answer at the risk of a PR hit, why? To protect the kid's privacy. The mother went to the local news and asked for sympathy. The local news affiliate got a "great" david vs. goliath story with all of the emotional pitfalls. It helped that Microsoft was a local company and therefore they got a local issue - that (fortunately for them) became an internet-wide viral news story, one for gamers everywhere. But the story was irresponsible, as they didn't bother to get the whole story before filming emotionally heartbreaking footage of a woman bravely fighting a brave company. Further, they missed out on an even bigger issue altogether, and the point I mentioned I'd come back to later -
Here was a sensationalized story about video games, and it was largely POSITIVE about video games. There was no negative angle looking at whether the games could and should affect this boy so emotionally. Here was a child who literally poured his life into a virtual world, and no negative spin. What they sorely missed here was an opportunity to talk to a neuroscientist, neurologist, psycholoigist or other autism expert on whether video games were positive or negative for those with autism, or specific parts of autism spectrum. I'd be incredibly interested in that, really, which could cause so much trauma that a mother had to go protect her child over that.
In other words, what the story missed were the stakes of the matter. Because honestly, missing virtual goods are rather low stakes to begin with, and are certainly not important enough to report. But they were important to him, and I wanted to know why. If it was negative, I wanted to hear that. If it were positive, I wanted to know that. Opening a door to whether video games having acceptable therapeutic value would be an incredibly interesting story, and one that would actually be in the global interest.
Not the manipulative, poorly researched video that the station packaged.
