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."

Comments

There is a true social contract

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:There is a true social contract

[frovingslosh]

If you don't like something, even something that you are paying for, just shut-up and leave is one approach. I'm sure that many businesses would prefer that a few people do this and most people continue putting up with what they get than to have to address issues. But when issues are raised and changes made, the system is generally improved for the customer and usually even for the business. Protests can be frivilous, but they are often valid and usefull.

Pardon my French but...

[WIAKywbfatw]

...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.

Pretty sad

[SuperBanana]

protests, politics and parties in MMORPGs.

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?

Re:Pretty sad

[kfg]

Very simply because in real life you can get really arrested, really have your life ruined, really get shot dead.

In a game you can act out in complete security and comfort. All you risk is maybe having to find another game to play.

Conversely, of course, this also means there is no real valor or heroism in games either. You just get to act out heroism. The next day you can back to the cube farm, or mailroom, or whatever, to earn the payments on your nice car.

In short, the game, however closely it may mimic real life, is just a game.

Anyone who loses sight of this simple fact is heading for trouble.

KFG

Re:Pretty sad

[Pendersempai]

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 stop grandstanding. I feel confident guessing that many more protests happen every hour in real life than have ever happened in any massively multiplayer game anywhere.

We protest what affects us. We protest what we care about. If I lived in Australia and spent a signifcant part of my life playing Second Life, you'd better believe that I would be far more interested in changes in Second Life than in America's laws.

Further, as the article indicates (did you read it?), online protests are often mostly recreational. If playing a game is fun enough to spend hours doing, and protesting within that game is even more fun, then many players will protest. If you somehow made protesting the PATRIOT act the most enjoyable out of the three, then they'd do that instead.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that being upset or offended is a right, not a responsibility. It follows that protest should be similarly optional. No one is stepping on your toes by being apathetic about the PATRIOT act, so your vitriolic straw man doesn't seem terribly justifiable.

Screw taxation as social engineering

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

The best protest

[AvengerXP]

Cancel your subscription. That's what I did with Star Wars Galaxies. The game clearly isn't ready for release.

Re:I tried an MMORPG...

[Tackhead]

> I tried the star wars MMPORPG because friend insisted it was "the greatest thing ever".
>
> 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...

...and then, because they can't do anything without giving up their skills, they surrender all their skills and start over. And this is supposed to be something different than just quitting and reloading?

> 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".

Re:Taxation is theft

[tgibbs]

You utilize a classic socialist argument, the economy as zero-sum game. The resources collected by the wealthy can be used to generate even greater benefits for society, such as easier access to things like information and a wider variety of products. I doubt a poor person living off the public teat could fund the businesses that build your home, deliver your food to the grocery store you visit, and finance the research that led to your computer.

No the argument that the wealthy should pay more taxes because they reap a disproportionate fraction of the benefits is an ethcial argument, not an economic one. The economic argument you make is itself a zero-sum argument, because it frames it as an either-or choice between expenditure of wealth by the state for the benefit of the poor and expenditure of wealth by the rich. But remember, the wealthy don't go away because they are taxed. As long as the tax rate is less than 100%, there are benefits to wealth. So the economic question is at what point the reduction in the trickle-down benefits to society from the self-directed expenditures of the wealthy exceeds the benefits to society, both incidental and direct, of the public expenditure of those tax revenues for the public good. Certainly, in the US, there has historically been no apparent correlation between low rates of taxation and high rates of economic growth, suggesting that tax rates have always been below the levels that would significantly curtail the beneficial economic activities of the wealthy.

Bollocks

[heironymouscoward]

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.