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Protests, Politics And Parties In MMORPGs
The Importance of writes "LawMeme's James Grimmelmann has written an interesting piece on protests, politics and parties in MMORPGs. In particular, he talks about the 'tax revolt' in Second Life."
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If I don't like how life is in a game, I'm free to leave at any time and start a new life elsewhere agreeing to the new rules of that society.
that in a game such as Second Life, that something of this nature would happen. It is a game, that is totally openended, which lends itself to the creation of a "government". Take Golding's Lord of the flies for example. A bunch of kids set up a "system of government." this government ultimately fails, but the premise is the same. A group of people, with a common interest get together, in this case their country is a digital domain. It really is an interesting study in anthropology, if you ask me.
Game Overdrive - Gaming News
...that's a complete load of crap.
Lord Of The Flies is a book that illustrates how easy it is for us to fall into anarchy without the presence of a society to keep us in check.
The book isn't about failing systems of government, it's about how, in the absence of any form of government, we quickly we fall back to a selfish "survival of the fittest" state with the strong preying on the weak.
The boys don't try to set up a system of government, they try to live by the rules that society has taught them. But, pretty soon, they realise that without society watching over them, those rules are easily disposed of - and weaker figures like Simon and Piggy suffer as a result.
Witness the near-deification of the conch, the hunting, the return to "normal" behaviour when rescue arrives, etc. This isn't a book about government or society, it's a book about a lack of government and the breakdown of society.
No book more clearly illustrates the mentality that turns ordinary people going about their daily business into a rioting, blood-thirsty mob than William Golding's masterpiece. When it comes to examining how easily we can descend into anarchy, LOTF is the bible.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Meanwhile, US citizens are barely registering a whimper of protest at the draconian laws passed every day in the name of "patriotism" and "protecting the homeland".
It's pretty sad that people organize "protests" in a fucking -game- but won't stand up for their rights in real life. What is the matter with you people?
Please help metamoderate.
This game tax was supposed to fix runaway inflation by changing behavior by giving 'players an incentive to get rid of things they don't really want any more.' In the real world people are getting sick of taxation as social engineering. Taxation should be about funding the government.
Cancel your subscription. That's what I did with Star Wars Galaxies. The game clearly isn't ready for release.
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> Its so freaking boring...the tutorial fine, but the game, you get to a world, and it consists of guys looking for raw materials so they can level up characters, so they can then look for different raw materials so they can level up characters...
> I'm only saying this because I think the mentality of people who play these games is not part of what most people consider "normal", and therefore, the current MMPORPG population is just a collection of weird geeks.
At least the premise of Second Life sounds half-interesting. ("There is no content. Here are tools. Build it yourself. Play it yourself.")
By comparison, Star Wars Galaxies is "There is no content. There are no tools. Pretend you're inventing content." (Don't level up, you evil powergamer! There's so little content, and there are no tools for players to create add-on missions, but that's why you're paying $15/month, so you can roleplay... you know, imagine the content and roleplay what you'd be doing if the content was there! :-)
I'm a weird geek. SWG fans make me look positively normal. Bah. Gimme NWN. Hell, gimme Bard's Tale and Wizardry. If I wanna roleplay social interaction, I'll roleplay a party of six on my old-school CRPG. And not one of those characters will know the word "pwn".
You missed the point. They're not taxing the rich, they're taxing the productive. The tax is actually agressively anti-progressive, oddly enough.
You tax rich people to keep them from hoarding and just leeching off society. Progressive taxation is supposed to encourage the financing of large projects, as you pay less the more money you dump right back into charities or museums or whatever. If they lack the creative energy to act as a positive force on society, like most rich people, the government takes a portion of their money and does it for them.
This is not what the game was doing. The game was charging people in-game money for building intricate stuff that uses up the company's real-world server resources. The people who this affects most are the in-game philanthropists who spend their money on public-use cool stuff. The protesters are arguing that the company is hurting itself by discouraging the insane art projects that slow down the servers but attract new users needed to pay to upgrade the servers.
There is no point about so-called "progressive" taxation, because there is no economy for anybody to try and progress, or fail to progress, there's just a company that doesn't want to risk scaling up their MMORPG.
>Employees think of the ideas, engineers and scientists make it possible
Who pays them?
>artists make it look good
Who buys expensive art?
>factory workers make the parts
Who pays the fatcat union wages?
>construction workers build it
For whom are they building it?
All those questions are answered quite simply:
They're doing it for the man with the money. Because they want some of that money.
>The CEO and stock holders aren't contributing much of anything to the project.
You really might want to look at how a corporation operates. I'm thinking you don't have a grasp of it.
>They might be clever but they aren't contributing much to society.
I disagree. Without the wealthy, those other jobs wouldn't exist.
Notice that whenever the wealthy do better, there's more jobs? It's easier to get money?
Notice that whenever there's a recession, the wealthy get screwed first, then you?
>Released from the ritual robbery by the wealthy many working class artists, scientists, and engineers would act those needs out in real life.
Highly unlikely. None of these people could afford the tools necessary for their jobs. None of these people individually have the skills to produce those tools themselves. The only solution to that conundrum is communism, and that doesn't work.
>It helps society a lot that they can afford three large homes and a dozen fancy cars.
Who built the homes? The cars?
If they didn't buy homes and cars, it seems it would satisfy you, but it would put a LOT of people out of work.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
...we would protest more if when we all get together and tried to do anything the wouldn't game lag...lag some more and finally sbexe out. (For those of you lucky enough to never have to experiance the sb exe error, it's a fatal error resulting in the process being removed from memory, aka a crash)
Anyone know if it's gotten better. Haven't played in a few weeks but have heard from a friend it is a bit better, probably due to the fact enough people have left where the server side has a lighter load it can handle, not that there was ever enough players to have what should be considered a large load under these cirsumstances.
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
Well, I'd have to disagree with that one. I can only drink so much water, use so much electricity, and drive so many miles in a day (all of which I pay for, either directly, or indirectly). I'd also say that my vote doesn't count for any more than joe the garbage collector's vote.
Why ought the rich to pay a greater percentage? Because they are bad people? Because they stole it? Because they don't deserve it? Because they perspire more than other people? Why? I've yet to have any higher-tax-rate proponent explain that to my satisfaction. A flat tax that kicks in at a certain income level is the epitome of fairness... everyone above a certain income level pays the same cut. They pay different amounts, of course, but the percentage is the same.
I didn't steal my wealth from anyone... I worked hard for it, and I continue to do so. I won't be told that I somehow don't deserve to enjoy it, or that I'm wrong to be well-off.
The progressive taxation argument is simple class warfare, and plays on the baser emotions of jealousy and envy, nothing more. As I listen to the lefitsts of the world, I wonder if I somehow missed something, I wonder if I'm going to wake up tomorrow and find out that I'm an armed robber instead of a healthcare professional... listening to some democrats, you'd think that's how I made my money.
I refuse to accept the moral aspersions that are thrown in my direction, simply because I make a good income... as if we are all idle rich who inherited it, and lay around all day putting on airs and abusing the "less fortunate." I utterly reject the implied lack of moral fitness that some want to tie to wealth.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
The credit card is to keep 12 year olds out of the game. Believe me, it makes the game a LOT better when you don't have little teens scampering about asking ASL and shooting you with home-made guns (which you make in-game... you can make anything, really, even stuff that annoys the piss out of people.)
:)
They had an experiment that just got done where they took the credit requirement out... almost overnight the maturity level plummeted as morons straight from Counterstrike would come up and shoot people off their property at mach 12. Yeah, it's not very fun.
Of course, we came up with our own ways of disposal... launching them into the upper atmosphere is a good one
But seriously... if more games required a credit card for use, the world would be better off. SL is a nice haven from the retards that troll the majority of online games.
hookers and grits.
What are online revolts and revolutions? They are the resolution to a paradox of a society that encourages and rewards individualism, but at the very same time generalizes, stereotypes, and also rewards conformity. In other words, we tell individuals that they are important, but at the same time, thanks to the proliferatino of mass media, Americans now have a greater perception of those around them than anyone else at any time in history. Prior to this, the world was contained to largely a town, or section of a city. Now, however, Americans are individuals, yes, so we are told. But we also feel terribly small when we realize that we play such a small role in the perceived world around us (the world that mass media presents us with). We are made to believe that individuals are of the highest importance. The paradox, though, is why do our actions mean so little? If we, as individuals, are as important as the American idealogy would have us believe, why then are our actions meaningless as individuals? Why is the mass media more concerned with seeminlgy everything around us, except ourselves? The paradox? Individuals are important. But individuals are also ignored. If I am important, why can I not apply this level of importance to the world around me? If the individual is penultimate in American society, why am I completely ignored by society when I want lower taxes? Why can I not change and control the environment, if I am as important as everyone tells me? The people in this online games have realized, either on a conscious level or otherwise, that if they cannot change the immediate environment around them, if their individual actions do not mean anything in the immediate world, all that is required is to switch environments, change worlds. It is in online games that their importance as individuals is recognized alongside the importance of their actions. They are both individual and impacting. It's important to note that American society has always moved in this direction; gangs, cliques, etc, are all manifestations of this. But online games give the illusion of incredible impact. They match the importance of individualism with the importance of impact. The players in Second Life are creating a revolt! A revolt! How is that possible within the confines of the real world? What does a nude sit-in in the real world accomplish? A novelty at best, and nothing at worst. But a nude sit-in in Britannia? That accomplish something. I believe that what is now on the absolute fringe of society will gradually make its way into mainstream. They are the perfect solution to the American paradox of individuals and impact, they manage to squeeze by both and integrate these two elements into a world where an individual's personhood and their actions are as important.
There are important reasons to actually save money though, especially on a month to month type basis. Things like retirement accounts, risk aversion, financial security in an unexpected crisis, etc. I currently have about 20% of my annual income just sitting in my bank account in case a rainy day comes along. For instance, in 1998, my dad had a brain aneurysm and stroke and was in the hospital for 5 months. After he got out, he still needed constant rehab and someone to be with him all the time so I ended up taking nearly 18 months off from work. My savings, along with some supplimental income (his pension plan kicking in and all his vacation/sick time he saved at work), is how I made it that long.
There are also parallels to the dot com bust. The faster you blow the money, the sooner you'll find yourself working 3 jobs to try to make ends meet when the unexpected occurs. So, do you start allowing exceptions for savings? If so, how do you define the savings limits? Someone who has a $5000 a month mortgage payment is going to need a substantially larger rainy day fund than someone with my $500 a month payment.
What all of the economic theories of taxation come down to is controlling people via the government urging rather than keeping the government off their back. Under the current scheme, people are punished for working their tail off to earn a good living. Under your plan, people are punished for trying to make sure they have a nut saved in case a storm comes along.
I may not be making any money off the few grand I've got sitting in the bank, but the fact that it's there means the bank can lend it to someone else who can try to make something happen with it. Similarly, the money of the filthy rich isn't sitting in their mattress, its being excersized in creating business through stock ownership, allowing government improvement projects through bonds, sitting in a CD while the bank lets someone else use it, etc. Retail is only a small, though critically important, portion of the vast capitalist economic system.
Don't leave your mind so open that your brain falls out. Don't close it so much that you cut off the blood.
LOTF is just well-dressed propaganda, teaching youngsters that without the guiding adult hand they inevitably descend into primitive violence. No coincidence it's such a favorite of teachers.
Life's real stories of youngsters abandoned shows something quite different. In the Polish ghettos, Nazi camps, streets of Rio and of Kinshasa... children form groups and look after each other.
The most flagrant examples of children acting violently are wars in which adults abduct children and train them as soldiers: Colombia, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Liberia, and many other cases... it's the adults doing the damage.
Children don't have holy water running through their veins, but they do not embody naked evil either. They just try to get along. LOTF is a caricature, based on the idea of "original sin", saying that we ar civilized only because society keeps us in check. Bullshit. Society is an expression of our human nature, and civilization is a natural consequence of our innate desire for an easy life and our built-in mechanisms for conflict avoidance.
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LegendMUD was good, but his graphical MMORPG have sucked.
UO his first only got good and started to attract people once he left. SWG has terrible design problems, alot of stuff you have to wonder if he every played any type of game.
The only good thing about him and SWG is that he was promoted in Sony so now he will have part of this time messing up EQ2 and make it available for competent people to start fixing SWG.
Cynical this may be, but I can't see Star Wars: Galaxies ever being truly ready. After all, even with vehicles, it's still just a game given a Star Wars makeover. That may have worked for Knights of The Old Republic, because while it's quite open in form the plot can still be directed. But Everquest is pretty much a sprawling formless game and just throwing lightsabres etc intot he minute doesn't make it a compelling game. Or one that actually does the Star Wars license any justice (though that hasn't stopped Lucasarts in the past).
"Remember, the article starts off talking about the rampant inflation inherent in MMOGs"
Which is, of course, utter bollocks. The problem, if there is one, is rampant _deflation_ of prices: items that would have cost 2000 whatsits when they first appeared cost 20 whatsits today because they're so common. It's only the brand-new and very rare items that cost a lot.
"the rich have an easy time accumulating more wealth to compensate for inflation."
Why do you need to accumulate wealth when goods cost 1% of the price they sold for when they first appeared? A new "poor" player in Everquest can equip themselves with items for a thousand platinum that would have cost many tens of thousands when the game was young... and make that thousand platinum in a few hours of killing spiders.
Frankly, whenever I read an article complaining about "inflation" in MMORPGs I know from the start that the author doesn't know what they're talking about.
It's worth noting also, in keeping with the main thrust of this article, is that SWG has its own severe economy issues.
Duping resources (particularly credits) has become an almost overnight cancer. Whereas until recently the methods for duping was known only by a select few, now they are widely known (and even posted on Ebay). There are people running around in the game with upwards of 200 million credits, some have 500-900 million spread stashed away. And if its not being stashed, its being sold everywhere on Ebay.
To give some kind of context - a large *house* is typically sold in game for around 75,000 - 150,000 credits. Right now, since the loot system is entirely different to EQ and suchlike (i.e. there is no "uber" loot - the game is engineered in such a way that player-crafted items are always better than any looted item) - a large house is about the most money you could spend on a single item.
The sad fact is, whichever way you look at it, with an economy so skewed by artificial duped wealth when the developers come to think about suitable prices for starships in the upcoming Space expansion pack, they're going to see a completely disjointed wealth median, and price ships accordingly.
(You think I'm overexaggerating? They [the Devs] expressed concern recently that an overwhelming majority of the players were pistol users. Guess what weapon you start with when you create a character.. yup, a pistol. Hardly a leap of faith to assume that this is what most people would naturally start to level up in)
I read the article, and read up on some of the complaints and the stories. It appears that they could have solved this problem by offering tax credits/rebates for philanthropic "projects".
The next complaint by the user community will be based on what is considered philanthropic and what is not. Judgement will come into play. People will be angry for different reasons.
I can almost guarantee that if someone built a monument, got their tax break, someone else will scream bloody murder because they didn't get their tax credit for building blankety-blank.
Face it, some people are unhappy in their own skin. There are people who object to everything. These are people who will never be happy. They might best be served by creating their own game and playing it the way they want to play instead of forcing change on 98% of the rest of the world.
Lastly, it's a game. Get a life! Read a book. People who spend that much time "escaping" from reality need help.
-- No sig for you!
"Lord Of The Flies is a book that illustrates how easy it is for us to fall into anarchy without the presence of a society to keep us in check." :
First of all, you point towards a definition of anarchy that is completely false.
Secondly, you say
"The book isn't about failing systems of government, it's about how, in the absence of any form of government, we quickly we fall back to a selfish "survival of the fittest" state with the strong preying on the weak..."
I'm having a hrd time seeing how this is different that ANY system that exists today.
_____ "If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." -- Orwell