"SPARKY1922;c-17831079" wrote:
@RavenSpit
It never actually occurred to me that digital pet representations in game could lead to RL abuse of animals even unconsciously as maybe (mistakenly) on my part I would never have dreamt anyone would either gain their knowledge about pets from a game or even worse apply those standards in RL. I cannot really blame the game developers for this either as it's just a game and I believe any normal minded person would see it as such. I have always believed in a sims sandbox game as I am (mostly) in control of how I want to play my own game and while I might find some aspects of the way other players theme their playstyle distasteful it is still their right to play the game however they want to. I think if any so called RL pet owner ever takes their pet responsibilities based on a game (any game) they need some serious RL rehabilitation and tested thoroughly prior to ownership of any animal small or large. The other iterations of the game were better in my opinion as @haisin points out small animals could die if not looked after properly and the whole process of looking after smaller animals was definitely more hands on..(so to speak-)
I am not talking about what the player does deliberately, but how the pets and their needs/the way they are kept are depicted by the developers.
Like if they already come with (too small) cages and the like.
As I said, imagine if they gave us cats and dogs in cages only....
for cats and dogs most (if not all) people would of course know that would be wrong, but in the case of small animals a lot of people wouldnt notice if a cage is too small or shouldnt be there in the first place.
When it comes to small animals alot of misinformation is already out there and alot (if not most) of them are already suffering irl due to this.
I own two pet rabbits and am rather active on a forum for rabbit owners, and most new owners who join the forum suffer from extreme misinformation regarding pretty much every aspect of what a rabbit needs (how much space, the right food and so on) and how they behave.
This misinformation has been spread for ages, and is still being spread by petshops and sometimes even vets (at least here in Germany not all vets are qualified to thoroughly know about small animals but many people dont know that either).
It is already considered "normal and right", to keep rabbits in waaay too small cages, alone and feed them petshop food that is almost always bad for them.
So a wrong depiction alone in a video game wouldnt do much, but since the misinformation is already heavily there, it would contribute to it and therefore contribute to the further mistreadment irl.
Umm..I hope this clears it up, sorry for the rather long text.
