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A Tale In The Desert's Social Evolution Examined
Thanks to Gamer's Pulse for their revised review of A Tale In The Desert, discussing their re-visiting of the unique Windows/Linux MMORPG. The review sums up the combat-free MMO title's goals as: "working together, being social, and trading with other people, all in the name of a unified Egypt", and the reviewer talks about the "new laws and structures and new technologies" being implemented, and the new problem of virtual deforestation: "Recently, the skill of clear cutting was offered in a new university, and some people didn't heed the warnings [that] once a tree was clear cut, you couldn't get wood from it for a whole week." The resulting wood shortages mean that "newcomers to the game won't be able to pass their tests to become citizens", but in-game, tree-friendly legislation may be pending.
It could also be possible to 'try out' unusual political solutions in a virtual world to give some idea of how people may react (and what effects it may have), in order to fine-tune the ideas before presenting them to real-world political bodies.
While I agree that it holds potential to get more people involved in politics, I don't think we have the ability yet to simulate a world that's as lifelike as the "real" world. For instance, The Sims 2 recently announced that it would have people getting older, and maybe dying... we'd need to take into consideration the parents, the schools, the friends, and all the activities that one may participate in to effectively model a world to test theories in. If, in the simulated world, we were going to test the real-life reactions and consequences of legalizing marijuana, how would we represent all the myriad opinions and reactions on the subject without a fully detailed background on each and every simulated person it affected? It would be like trying to build conclusions when you only have the latter 1/3 of the facts.
Also, you'd have to get people to be more involved than simply sitting at a keyboard. You'd have to get them INTO the simulation... and I mean REALLY into it. Some people are willing to die over their belief that abortion should be illegal (or, more to the point, kill for that belief, ironically). If there aren't extremely serious consequences for any illegal actions, people wouldn't take it seriously enough to, for example, stage a protest, riot, revolt, etc.
It's a lofty goal, to be sure, but just not possible yet... of course, I'm all for legalizing marijuana... (just thought I'd put that in there).
"It's better to have a gun and not need it than need a gun and not have it." ~ Christian Slater, True Romance
It's not a lot of fun. Conceptually, I was enthralled by the notion of the players creating and backing their own currency. Passing their own laws. Working together to accomplish a goal. Truly, these are things that hint at what wonders MMOGs could truly be!!
So I payed my 13 bucks. I played for two weeks, and all I did was make bricks, run around, click on a bunch of trees, and 'farm' flax plants by repeatedly clicking on the ground. A Tale in the Desert SOUNDS really freaking neat, but I don't get off on doing the job of a peon or peasant in Warcraft.
Seriously, these are things though that I would love to see in a game that's actually fun to play.
no thanks
That's pretty much what ATITD is, without new people coming in to code. Laws in Tale ARE at the code level, allowing or disallowing behaviors, creating new buildings (i.e. gyuldhalls), whatever you can get to pass will be done. Recently a player tried to declare themselves emperor, and the lead dev contaced her to find out what powers she wanted as emperor.....