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Banned Sims Online Chronicler Bites Back
Thanks to GameSpot for its interview with Peter Ludlow on his recent banning from The Sims Online following his documenting of tawdry dealings in the MMO title. He discusses the interesting, if unintended griefing dynamics that have sprung up in The Sims Online: "You are given tools to mark individuals as friends (green links) and other individuals as bad (red links)... clans can emerge that will deploy the red links as weapons to control property in the game and extort in game currency from users", and why exactly he was banned from the game by Maxis/EA ("They say it was a TOS violation, but that hardly seems credible"), before concluding with his concerns over the title: "It's as though [EA] bought a shopping mall that was supposed to have all sorts of content for children and homemakers, but then let gangs and prostitutes run the place, and let scammers stand in the doorway and intercept everyone."
Philosophers tend to dabble in theory and metaphysical far more than the physical.The statement:
/. types get more sex? He's been playing the Sims waaaaay too much.
Creatures that game (whether playing house or war gaming) could arguably have a clear selectional advantage...
Is a clear indication of this.
He seems to be implying that
(smirk)
It's suppose to be a SIM right? Well... That shit happens in RL also, but you just cant see the friendly/unfriendly markers above peeps heads. Be kinda cool if you could though.
"Why ban weapons? Just make the ammo cost like $5000 a round... then only the rich ones can kill" - Confusedious
Why do people pay a subscription fee to be annoyed by other people? Take a step outside people, the grief is just the same and it's free.
But even if Ludlow was censored, is that wrong? Ludlow says so. He just completed reading a biography of Benjamin Franklin, and "the Pennsylvania Colony, at the time, was basically the possession of the Penn family. Franklin had the temerity to say to them, 'It's not your world.' And a question is going to begin to arise in some of these worlds about exactly how arbitrary and capricious game owners can be just because they're maintaining the infrastructure for a virtual community."
This claim is ridiculous -- can he really not tell the difference between a real life colony and a virtual world? The Penn family didn't create the grass people walked on or the air they breathed. Wheras Maxis created everything. I think this shows how he has lost touch. He has taken the game too seriously and feels like he owns part of it. This is a natural recation but it's just not true in the end. It's Maxis's game through and through.
As for the story that they reported to the authorities about hearing a kid mention he beat his sister -- I cant see why that is any of maxis's resposibility. How many people do you think talk in chat rooms an in online games about bad things they have done which may or may not be true. Also, How many people make false reports of such stories? This is role that maxis COULDN'T perform logistically even if it wanted to. And, if it did police the chat with a heavy hand people would be up in arms about it and rightly so.
Also, he was generating a lot of bad publicity ( he was a self-described muck racker) for the game. This happens all the time and lots of people get banned from all sorts games for it and sometimes for even worse reasons like GM's being in a bad mood. It seems that his problem wasn't with the game but rather with the people it attracted. It seems like he had no problem with the game except that it wasn't the happy go lucky world that he imagined. And that's what he complained about. And those are the complaints he went around advertising by putting his site in everything.
Don't get me wrong though, I dont think he is a bad guy and I do think the newbie griefers should be banned too. But I don't this that maxis did the wrong thing either. From their perspective I could see this guy as someone who is really just there to complain about all that is wrong with people. Maybe that doesn't deserve a totall ban, but I think we should imagine what it was that HE was doing wrong before we jump down Maxi's throat with sensationalist stories about evil corporations. In the end it is they who have the chat logs and he only has his word.
meep
what valuable knowledge did i come away with after watching my ex play the sims for 4 months? basically, it goes a little something like this:
you get to play dolls with a dollhouse you build, one that you pay for by going to dollwork, given you have the appropriate dollstats to do said dollwork, and you do this while having to interact with random strangers from godknowswhere, usa, who are also building dollhouses in other dollneighbourhoods and having dollfamilies of their own.
to me it just seems that now that the sims has been out for a while, more people (and new people) are getting somewhat more inventive as to what activities they choose to pursue in the hopes of being different, conformist, more annoying, nicer, more perverted, or ___fill_in_the_blank___ that gives em their kicks. not that much different than other entertainment media, imho. the content provider for this soap opera, however, is the game's subscriber base.
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This censorship is totally against everything I have ever read about Will Wright and his perspective on virtual communities. I suppose this proves how far Wright really is from the day-to-day operations of his infamous creation.
Should these companies be responsible for reporting such abuse? In this case they are the only entity with sufficient information to report the issue...
A r/l analogy could end with the entity being charged with accesory, or at least accesory after the fact.
The suspension of his account seems to me to be a attempt to remove a "squeaky wheel". Such a shame it ended up on gamespot and /. (can you spell bad publicity boys and girls?).
Q.
PS. To be honest I don't know where I stand on this issue, but I think EA has a resposibility to at least investigate such serious allegations.
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I play TSO. I quite like it. I've not been scammed, but my wife has. Turned out okay in the end as the ratio of nice people far outweighs the scum, and she wound up far better off than she was prior to the bastard, Ryan Hummel (he plays on Interhogan), scamming her. (If you see this shit, make him an enemy. He's a cunt.)
I think this person needs to quit whining. The original article he posted was lame, and it seems a large number of people don't believe it was genuine, me included.
The BIG problem with the game is the enemy thing. If Maxis just removed that, that would cripple a lot of the extortion artists overnight. It servers absolutely no purpose in the game other than to be abused.
It's funny though, Maxis make a big deal about banning this guy for what he's posted, and yet if you complain about the scammers, Maxis send you a form email about gentlemans agreements etc, and how they have no control.
Give me the money, and I'll spray paint you green if you're good, and red if you're bad.
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
Intrestting. Some people claim humans are basically good but you are saying you are not. Wich suggests that the moves to create a police state with everyone being monitored is exactly the way to deal with you. Since you yourselve admit that without the police out their to monitor you you would run wild.
Is this true? I don't know but if you look at games like The Sims or places like Iraq and the ex-soviet states in wich for some reason "normal" people are suddenly put into a position where "the law" is removed, then those people argueing for thight control of the public might have a point.
If online games are going to require a constant police presence to control players behaviour it doesn't exactly bode well for our real world does it?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Come on... If he read the Terms of Service for the game and followed the rules Then he would not have gotten himself banned. When you install the game and also when you register your game code your a accepting and following the TOS. If you break them, well certain punishments happen. His just so happens to be banned.
I used to like playing video games because I wanted to escape reality. As games become more and more realistic, they continue to appeal less to me.
The Unfolding Project
on another note, it sounds like the Sims could use a little more structure to prevent "outside" interference. Perhaps they should have a "stock" market where all sellable things have a global average price and you can't buy/sell at more/less than X% off that price. That would eliminate part of the cash for simoleans problem...and similar mechanics should be set up for other factors like popularity, etc. The sims is unique in that they should be actively trying to minimize outside influances rather than allowing things like live chat and outside deals to wreck the game like this.