Outrage over SWTOR: Vette Makes the News

Lisa Clark swtor controversy, vette

So apparently Vette has made the news (if you consider the Daily Mail news, that is). Today they ran a story about the outrage of SWTOR which allows players to ‘own’ and torment female slaves with electric shock collars. Bold subheadings declare that the game has “scripted lines such as ‘obey my every command’ and options to beat and torture a female slave.

The article then adds that gamers “boast about how badly they treat her” but it hardly says one thing about the fact that you can choose to be nice to Vette. I, for one, took her collar off as soon as you proved herself by completing the task I gave her.

Anyway, the Daily Mail seems to want to make everyone think that the game is evil with this horrible plot to demean women and promote slavery. It’s hardly that bad at all. First, we are talking about Sith here… so of course there are going to be options for wrongdoings. The storyline will not be full of rainbows and butterflies.

Secondly, they completely fail to mention that players do not have to torture poor Vette if they don’t want to. I find her story pretty interesting and so far, she’s growing on me. She’s not quite my equal yet and I wouldn’t say we’re partners but I feel no need to torture or demean her. She helps me out, she often does my dirty work and she can be pretty funny from time to time.
So anyway, so what that some players decided to opt for the evil route and continue to shock and torture Vette? And some of them decided to make it look extra bad by creating YouTube videos of the many ways to “keep your slave in line”? Did someone forget to tell the Daily Mail that it’s a G-A-M-E? As in… not real.
So who is really in an outrage over this? It seems like another story in the media by someone who hasn’t actually played the game and doesn’t really know what they’re talking about. It just seems like another write-up to try to illicit emotions in people reading it but without a lot of basis behind it.

What do you think? Are you bothered by the fact that SWTOR storyline includes the torture of Vette?

Read the article for yourself here and for extra lolz and /facepalms, read the comments, too.

Lisa Clark

Lisa has been an avid gamer since she was old enough to hold her first controller and a game writer for more than a decade. A child of the Nintendo generation, she believes they just don’t make games like they used to but sometimes, they make them even better! While consoles will always be her first love, Lisa spends most of her gaming time on the PC these days- on MMOs and first-person shooters in particular.