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Raking Muck In The Sims Online
Dr. Spork writes "According to a Salon article [ad click-thru required], after launching a newspaper website chronicling tawdry dealings in the Sims Online city of Alphaville, Peter Ludlow, a professor of philosophy at the University Of Michigan, had his Sims Online account terminated by EA/Maxis, the company behind the service. 'Censorship', charges Ludlow, who has exposed dealings such as underage cyber-prostitution and extortion of simoleans (the Sims currency, exchangable on eBay for real-life money)."
As the author says in the article, on one hand there's the player and the whole virtual community's interests (have fun mainly, but sometimes actually make real money for themselves), and on the other had the interest of the game company (make a lot of money for themselves).
As EA's TSO is not a succesfull money-maker (quite the opposite actually), do you wonder that such things happend?
The issue here is wether or not somebody can SUCCESFULLY SUE the company in real-life for in-game things (remember the kid suing the company for the "dissapearance of biological weapons"? or the companies suing "sweatshop" owners in UO?)
By reading this signature you agree to not disagree with the post you just read.
It is a free game world. EA isn't a government, they don't govern the world in the sense that our government does. They're God to the Sims. Only EA can make a SimLife, EA can kill whoever it wants, and EA can break all the rules if they wanted to. Physics is theirs to control. What you can and can't do are written down on a sacred TOS.
The real problem here is that SimDeath is the only way to control the world. Say you put a sim in jail. Would you pay money per month to be a prisioner in your spare time? Why, when you could just create another account and kill off your old sim.
Maybe monetary punishment would be good. Fine people simoleans. It seems to me that most people are out to try to make money in the game (via whatever means), so EA could implement laws. The only problem here is that it seems that they don't care about minor infractions, such as prostitution or domestic violence, because of the game world that ensures everything is consentual. The only problems that seem to arise is when you have out of game cracking/bug exploiting, etc...
I guess the best way to solve problems like this is the way that it's been done so many times in the past (ie real rpgs) - heated debates and bitter feelings.
What do YOU do when you have problems in an RPG?
Salon's writer says "Several other games have fan sites or newspapers that cover them, but experts could recall no other instance of clear-cut censorship."
If you consider this a case of accounts being banned for out-of-game activities that paint the game in a poor light, it's similar to Mystere's banning from EverQuest. Man writes (to be fair, not very tasteful) fan fiction, posts it publically, gets banned from game.
However lame you may think Peter Ludlow is for his pastime, EA has done something much lamer:
Rule #1: Don't Shoot the Messenger. No matter how distasteful the message may be, you can not and should not blame a person just because he delivers it.
Now it looks like EA is trying to sweep whatever nastiness he was reporting about under the rug ...and you'll have to wonder what else they're hiding.
Maybe they should rename it "The Slums"?
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