Slashdot Mirror
Restart, Restore, or Continue Creating Democracy?
The Importance of writes "LawMeme's James Grimmelmann, whose work has previously been noted on Slashdot, has written a new piece about virtual life and death in MMORPGs, and what that means for online democracy. Any serious discussion of democracy online that features comments on "The Secret of Monkey Island" has got to be good."
This is very similar to playing on-line poker with virtual money. What's the point of playing poker with virtual money you may ask? Bluffing no longer works, after all. What's the point of playing poker if you cannot bluff because everyone has infinite money? Surprisingly I found that most people DO place value in their online money - and treat it like real money. They want to accumulate as much online money as possible. Why? What's the point? I guess it's the never ending quest to be better than the next guy at something - even something as useless as an online game.
And I enjoy a good read about games, gaming, nerdy stuff in general. But that article was kind of meatless. Like a soup made of mostly water. I didn't see any profound concepts or ideas or even a point other than, "in games you can die and it's interesting that people can choose to kill or help others in games."
The blurb on slashdot was MORE interesting than RingTFA - which why people not wasting 15min of their time reading the article will probably mod me down for flaimbate and overrated.
Ave Molech Setting
I've always wondered what it would be like in the world if barriers for people to interact with people from other parts of the world, whether geographical or language were removed. Would we actually have world peace if people weren't so "isolated" as they are in the real world? And I believe we may soon find out, via MMORPGs.
One of the emerging trends that I see coming is the ability for international players to freely communicate and interact with each other, free of language barriers. Nintendo, SEGA, et al. have been working on this problem for quite some time now, and have even started to commercialize it. It's one of the emerging trends in MMORPG game design will create interesting interactions and facilitate global play to a greater extent than is now.
Some early results can be seen in the GameCube/DreamCast title "Phantasy Star Online" where you can select from a menu of sentence patterns, subjects, objects, etc. We're trying to get it to the point where you can translate free text, without the awkward results that stuff like Babelfish, et al. yield, maybe augmented by a player-aided cache of words and phrases, with dynanmic improvement in translation accuracy using in-game human feedback and machine learning.
I am really looking forward to the time where international players freely interact -- it will be an interesting sociology experiement to see how national and cultural means, norms and paradigms manifest themselves in a virtual world free of linguistic, political, and physical barriers.
-- Samir Gupta, Ph. D. Head, New Technology Research Group, Nintendo Co. Ltd., Kyoto, Japan.
I know exactly when I starting hating the programmers at Sierra On-Line. It was Space Quest 2. You crash onto a planet and begin looking around for a way to escape. Only problem is that every single thing on that planet is trying to kill you. Let's see, I think I'll walk over here... oops! Didn't see those faint dotted lines that marked a trap door over a spike pit! Here's a maze of vines I have to carefully manuever, pixel by pixel with the keyboard arrows... whooops! I touched a vine, and now the plant is eating me! Hmmmmm, I wonder if I should take some of these berries to eat. Nope! I guess my convulsing, and now dead body indicates I shouldn't have!
But here's the worst puzzle on that planet - every single tree is too slippery to climb except for one which has a slightly different description, indicating you can probably climb it. So you type "climb tree" and guess what? Roger Wilco gets his hands and feet stuck on the tree, critters descend from the tree limbs, and eat him.
GAAAAHHHHHHH!! Not only did Sierra On-line games kill you for making a wrong move - they killed you for doing something entirely logical! End result? You creep through the game with a trembling hand, expecting death at every step, stabbing the "Save" key every 30 seconds or so.
LucasArts was a breath of fresh air. In "The Secret of Monkey Island" there was only one way to die. One! You had to be foolish enough to stay underwater for more than twenty minutes. And in "Monkey Island 2" you couldn't die at all!
And even better, you couldn't do anything in either game to permanently ruin your chances of winning. What's that, you forgot to read the combination at the beginning of the game in Space Quest? Too bad for you, when you need it 10 hours later! Hope you saved that game! But what's that, you insulted Governer Elaine Marley so much that she threw you out of her room in the mansion of "Monkey Island 2"? No problem! Go back in and she'll sigh and give you another chance! Try all the funny conversation choices! It's OK, you can always do the right thing later!
Of course certain LucasArts games had elements of risk (you could kill Indy in "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" if you weren't a good fighter), but for the most part their philosophy was "Explore - solve - have fun! Don't worry about trying different things - you can't mess anything up permanently."
Which, IMHO, made for a much more fun adventuring experience than wondering if you're die the very second you step onto the next screen because you wandered out into the desert one screen too far. Thank you so much, Sierra On-Line.
If I were to go up to some random person on the street and call him some of the things that I've been called online, even some of the tamer things, they'd knock my ass out. That, however, would be the least of my worries. If I were to perform this action on a regular basis, word would very quickly spread about my rude behavior and soon nobody would want to have anything to do with me. It would take a long time to repair that damage to my reputation.
When somebody is online, however, they generally feel that they can behave like that as much as they want. What's anybody going to do about it, after all? If people ostracize you socially, you can just log out and come back when the heat dies down. Worst case: create a new account and start over. In real life, not only can people not escape punishment like that, we also have harsher measures to deal with them, like restraining orders, fines, and prisons. You can't just leave whenever you feel like it. If you could, the whole system would fall apart.
What? I warned him!
a painless execution is the absolute worst punishment any game society can impose on the characters who are its citizens. Torture is not an option. Imprisonment and fines can be imposed, true, but as soon as the player behind the character finds that these punishments are too onerous, she can simply terminate her account
I don't agree, actually IMHO 'virtual jail' -is- the worst possible punishment if implemented properly: while you are sentenced you
- can't create new identities or log in as a different character (assuming they're all in your name in terms of billing) for as long as the sentence lasts
- can't just leave the computer on and walk away, the sentence time would go down only if you are performing some action (ideally not fun, say, playing tic-tac-toe games with the computer which is not easily scriptable and really boring: every move gives you, say, 5 seconds off your sentence).
- can't chat with fellow players or move about, you'd be put in a virtual cell in a virtual prison.
Also I really can't figure out why MMPORGs don't implement police/jails etc. after all you could have all the various dynamics that currently exist in society (punishment for crimes, opportunities for people who like to play cops/guards, risk/reward for trying to organize a breakout, risk/reward for accepting bribes etc. etc. etc.)
If you delete the player account somebody will just recreate a new one and, helped by their guild, fairly rapidly regain lost levels/items: a sentence of, say, 40 hours of jail (tic-tac-toe) would be much worse, don't you think?
-- the cake is a lie
Oddly enough, I'm one of those people you just decribed, though much more passive in a way. MUDding was a nice thing, I was convinced the internet was a place without power-hungry assholes and various assorted sycophants and MUDding taught me otherwise in the most cruel, devastating and memorable way. 3 years on a MUD has shown me that there simply are NO social or personality ties from mere in game stuff. It's more of a simple aristocracy with some sort of elite ruling class; the people who play the game longer then you, know more admins then you, who met eachother for real unlike you... These kind of people who play the players, not the game, are far worse then those bare few like me who differentiate themselves from emotional ties to net people.
I've seen the most stupid relationships in MUDs form into real marriages, I've seen MUD disputes rage in real life and cause a divorce, I've seen relationships form, grow, wither and die on MUDs. I've seen betrayal over a silly net relationship, envy over in game objects, hatred because of a simple disagreement and bitterness over petty arguements. I ask you; who is off worse? They who take the internet way too seriously or those like me who simply don't care about net people?
Hate me!
Right on.
However, this is not just in games... it's the internet as a whole! Nice, well-balanced people in the real world (tm) will do things in an email, forum, or IM that would normally be out of character for them. Why? Because they can!
People will act differently online... because there are no consequences to their actions. Until it comes full circle, we will all have duel personalities... our real world one and our online one.
As an experienced Diablo II player, recently converted to Everquest, I can plainly see the difference in the consequences issue.
In D2, online play is free, the games are fast paced, and while your character is the same, the game world is not persistent. Everquest, as you may know, is pay to play. When you log out, the game is still there. Furthermore, the game balance is such that Everquest basically requires you to form groups to advance your characters. Really advanced players are likely good leaders and can organize other players in long lasting guilds.
Now for the critical point. The risk free environment in D2 is full of assholes. The game's design is such that you don't have to rely on anyone else to be good, thus eliminating the need to keep up your relationships with other players. You also can completely disrupt cooperative play, since any player can declare hostility and throw you into a player vs player situation. Everquest has it's own PvP areas, but basically it is a consensual thing, which to me seems like the better way to promote a sense community rather than allow random acts of digital violence.
So yeah, I see the article's point about deterents and how it is up to the game designer. In this case, D2 is a strange wide open game, with very few penalties, which only serves the the death penalty to a few cheaters and hackers. Everquest, on the otherhand, seems to be an interesting balance geared at fostering online communities (i.e. guilds), yet is willing to lay down the law on hacking or cheating.
Hecubas
I played Asheron's Call for 3 years as a 'hardcore' player (40+ hours a week). Played in multiple worlds, and I played with a lot of people. In the PvP world (Darktide), the entiriry of your life was pure Chaos. High level players would sit in the 'newbie' towns and just kill newbs repeatedly. The only way out was to have another high level friend escort you away from everyone else.
On the 'normal' servers, it was totally different. True you had your jerks / scammers etc, but for the most part, people helped each other out. I was in one of the largest guilds for the world for a couple years (even sat on the executive board) and it was interesting to see the dynamic as users pulled resources together to buy the guilds mansion (you honestly couldn't support a mansion without a largish group to donate resources). People in the guild helped each other out on missions, on getting upgrades in armor and spells, and everyone benefitted.
Everyone's experience in the online world is different, but for the most part people will surprise you.
Clinton made me a Republican. Bush made me a Libertarian. Trump is making me question reality.
It's still a pain. I hate when my character can't step over a fence that reaches to its knees, crawl through a hole where you don't fit while crouching, can't knock out the enemy, tie him up and explain the misunderstanding without killing, break any (arbitrary) wall with explosives or pickaxe (loved that in Moria) or use anything not available in the game engine.
Rocketjump was pretty much a bug. (I'm pretty sure nobody at ID thought to implement it as a feature. It became one much later)
Pencil&Paper RPG still rock.
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The only interesting question (which was not, interestingly enough, brought up by this article) is "Will the internet decay into a shithole completely devoid of personal accountability or will it slowly evolve into a place where people realize that everyone they're chatting with have feelings too"?
/. seems to be an interesting implementation of this principle. You can post anonymously, sure... but, people are less likely to see your post, and those who do take it less seriously. You are rewarded for developing a positive identity, because you have a stronger voice. If you want to be a jerk, go right ahead, but most people simply won't hear you anymore after a while.
The article definitely did bring this up in the final example with Second Life. They point out that the community participation made people feel more satisfied with the outcome of the taxation issue, even when they were on the losing side. (I don't know how much research they did to come to this conclusion, but let's just stipulate that they're omniscient on this point for now.)
I think the main point the author was getting at was that instead of government-like enforcement and punishment, online games should do more to encourage and leverage that sense of community if they want to enforce good behavior.
Actually, the karma system with
Internet interaction can be worthwhile and positive, if people have an investment in maintaining a good reputation. It's giving them that investment which is tricky. SWG only allows one character per server... that seems to make a difference (anyway, I've run into way fewer jerks, a*holes, and idiots in that game than in other MMOGs I've played). In a world where sticks just drive the mule out of the barn, coming up with tasty but well-balanced carrots is a vital process.
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
At the risk of exposing my geekier gamer roots, Dark Age of Camelot already has something like this. You can type /ignore {playername} and then anything that person says, messages they send you, actions they take that would normally generate a message, etc., are blocked on your screen. It's like being able to hit the mute button on the village idiot. The nice thing is, the system isn't really abusable because it's the people who are being annoyed who chose who and when to do a little bit of personal shunning. The idiot in question usually runs around for a minute or two, then realizes that they aren't attracting attention anymore and goes away.