Aggro Moose
From an article on Wired a couple days ago:
Hans Jørgen Olsen, a 12-year-old Norwegian boy, recently survived a moose attack by feigning death, “just like you learn at level 30 in World of Warcraft.”
Seriously. Go read the article. I was stunned. With all the bad press video games receive regarding their harm to children–their “inherent evil” or “poisonous effects,” what are we supposed to make of this little beauty? I can’t even tell if it’s negative or not, it’s so incredible. If I were this boy parents, I would be terrified of the kind of positive reinforcement he must be feeling after witnessing the success of an in-game survival technique in a real-world, life-and-death scenario. Everyone (well, all cold-climate-born people) knows that moose are incredibly dangerous. For all their absurd, gangly, cow-on-stilts appearance, moose are fast, unpredictable, and very large, and they kill dozens of people in the northern wildernesses every year. “Taunt” and “Feign Death” are not the ways to deal with enraged moose. Yet the press seems to be amused, even charmed by Hans’ success. Am I crazy, or is this only making the problem worse? Many game developers will tell you that they do view games as a fully valid form of communication, and that they believe games can and should teach. I believe that too, and I can see only one way to interpret a situation like this: video games teaching a boy dangerously altered thinking that is completely out of touch with real life. I dread to imagine what’ll happen the next time he thinks he can diffuse a hazard by applying World of Warcraft moves.
I read that article a couple of days ago, some WoW players here at work were talking about it. On the beginning I found it really amusing, but then I found myself hoping that boy understands the situation was an exception, a happy one. And that he wouldn’t try it again.
Heard about it, and I thought it was hilarious and extremely resourceful of the kid. You don’t see me using Thunder Stomp to try to stun my enemies.
Actually, feigning your death helps a lot with wild animals, doesn’t it? I heard that was how you deal with bears–that, or yell at them and scare them away.
True, it is the right thing to do for bears. But the article says he taunted the moose to stop it attacking his sister. Granted, in a similar situation, I would taunt a wild animal to prevent it killing my family member, but I recognize that it’s a very dangerous ploy. The kid shouldn’t be thinking, “hey, taunt works great! I’m gonna go taunt some more wild animals.” I don’t see that he recognizes how lucky he was.