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."

Comments

The key to incumbency

[kurosawdust]

Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A Select Start

Re-elected baby!!

Keeps me away from online

[Dark Paladin]

I don't mind playing a good LAN party game with people I know, but back when I was pretty good at Quake II, and started to try out MMRPG's like the "Ultima Online" beta, I realized that I just didn't enjoy playing the online games for one simple reason:

Most of the people online acted like assholes.

Too often, I'd log into a Quake/Quake II server, and get some punk calling me a MotherF---er because his team was losing at Capture the Flag. I got tired of Ultima Online when, during the beta, some jackass got in the way of the door and wouldn't let me walk out.

Diablo? Town killed by someone who thought it was fun to use the cheats to kill people.

On the whole, I tend to like the gamers I know in person and through my writings. But in online games, it seems that there are hordes of people who never learned to act above the age of 12, and need a good kick in the ass - or just never be allowed to play with anyone else online again.

It's probably the #1 reason why Nintendo still hasn't moved into online gaming in a big way (so far, Sega's Phantasy Star Online is their only online experience) - they don't want Jimmy's parents complaining about how their child got ragged on as a "Pikachu-f---er" during Pokemon Online.

The author's right - the penalities for "bad" behavior in an online format might work with some who have a community in the game, but for those who just want to be a dickhead, it's hard to do much other than ban them, since they have little emotionally wrapped up in the game.

Eh - just my opinion, and I could be wrong.

Penalties

[amplt1337]

This is precisely what happened when I used to mud a lot -- the people who try to go on and act as spoilers are people who convince themselves that they're playing a one-player game, basically; they don't take part in the communities and [usually] view those communities with great disrespect. They convince themselves that the community ties, social ties, and personality ties (created with characters) are unreal, which is why they can feel ok describing the graphic rape of another player and laugh it off as "just a game." They don't have the investment and can't see it the way other players do.

I think there's a larger point here too -- destructive forces usually come either from outside a community or from someone who has voluntarily withdrawn from that community. People within the friendship network cannot attack that network without attacking part of themselves, and are reluctant to do this. It's why real-world wars occur between groups that don't understand each other or have chosen to disassociate themselves from each other -- a necessary part of the process of "othering."

And this, like online democracy, is important because people are the same people in different media -- they just have different levels of investment in the community.

The online world provides us with a model for solving real social problems: don't increase the legal threat of punishment (for that depends on being caught) -- increase people's sense of belonging to a caring community, and threaten their feeling of status in that community if they violate its norms. That's the real way to solve real-life social problems.

Action and Reaction

[Daedalus4096]

Personally, I think this guy has hit the nail on the head. Most people (or at least most people I know) log into online games so that they can get away from the general lousiness of the real world, if only for a time, and to do it anonymously. They do, however, expect or at least hope that general civility will be maintained in this alternate reality. But without consequences for one's actions, how can that possibly come about?

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.

Why online games suck

[fluxrad]

Abstraction.

Ever notice people in their cars waiting in line are a hell of a lot more rude than people *standing* in line? Same principle...when people feel abstracted from the rest of the people around them they tend to give in to whim and emotion to a greater degree.

But that's not going to change. 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"?

I'm rooting for the latter, but it's too soon to tell.