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To Kill An Avatar

Posted by simoniker on from the wabbit-upset-at-being-neglected dept.

Thanks to Legalaffairs.org for their new article called 'To Kill An Avatar', discussing lawmaking in online worlds. Although this is an often-explored subject, some interesting examples come up, such as a case in which "..an avatar [in virtual world There] put up a 'For Sale' sign in front of a house that he didn't own.. the scam artist collected some serious Therebucks (the currency of There) before the creators of the world discovered what was afoot and took corrective action." The article concludes without much hope of resolution: "You could make a virtual world without the possibility of crime - but it would probably be about as dynamic as Pong or Tetris.. by creating virtual lives, investments, and freedoms, we create the conditions for virtual crime."

4 of 44 comments (clear)

  1. Well, in the real world... by recursiv · · Score: 4, Interesting

    We have authorities to stop this, such as police. Why should the virtual world be any different? Have some avatars be virtual police. Human or machine controlled.

    --
    I used to bulls-eye womp-rats in my pants
    1. Re:Well, in the real world... by Zork+the+Almighty · · Score: 2, Interesting

      On one hand if you make virtual worlds which are similar to the real world, who would want to play ? I thought the whole "fun" in having a virtual world was the fact that you didn't need to abide by all the conventions of the real world. If I could have a pet dragon for real, I would have one, etc. On the other hand, there is the fairly large problem of "griefers", people who play these games specifically trying to ruin it for everyone else. Most people would like to see this stopped, but can you even reconcile these two ideas ? Maybe the ultimate "MMORPG" is simply the player interacting with thousands of highly intelligent NPCs, which behave how the player wants them to behave.

      --

      In Soviet America the banks rob you!
  2. welcome to the real world ... by PaganRitual · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ... i suppose thats what you get tho ... if you create a 'real' world, dont be suprised when 'real world' problems rear their heads ... ... if they are human, then you are effectively hiring people to become virtual police, which would effectively become a full time job, which they then have to be paid for. how much do you pay a virtual cop? surely not heaps, but it has to be enough to be able to keep them from wanting another job. ... if they are machine controlled then i can imagine a robocop style situation where the perp has stopped doing whatever is illegal, but the huge towering ED-209 is still counting down in preparation for destroying the bad guy due to some sort of dodgy AI loop. ... i suppose the only other answer would be to endow certain heavy users with police powers, mods if you will, but not employed mods, people that just play the game a lot who are rewarded with police powers. powers which of course would inevitably be abused ...

  3. A Tale in the Desert by DeathPooky · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I know I've seen a few stories posted about this game in the past, but I wonder if those who wrote this article had a chance to look at A Tale in the Desert. In this game there are no laws for a reason - players must create the legal system from the ground up. Laws are then implemented by the devs (with some reasonable restrictions of what can be legislated). Examples of important laws passed so far would be laws that allow players to tear down or use the buildings of 'Departed Players', as well as laws that allow people to feed or slaughter starving sheep (sheep unfed can become sick, and this sickness can spread to other player's sheep). The funny thing is, the laws that try to prevent greifing or solve problems almost always have their own ill-effects, so it makes for a very interesting experiment to watch laws get.