Slashdot Mirror
Lawmakers Game The System
Thanks to Wired News for its article discussing government officials and massively multiplayer game designers sharing ideas on the best ways to deal with community feedback. Neil Eisner of the Department Of Transportation explains: "We're both dealing with large populations, and (like with the public-comment process for legislation) the public helps them design the rules for the game, or petitions them to change the rules to have things happen." Raph Koster of Sony Online adds that it "was startling to me... that (the federal comment process) is identical to how we build our patches and patch notes", although since the government has "a legal obligation to protect the privacy of people submitting comments on legislation", this means some disadvantages compared to MMO feedback, as Koster explains: "We get to know the people who are good testers, who are good at catching bugs. The federal government is legally not allowed to do that."
Massively multi-player voting system with feedback! Cool!
-- Sig meltdown immine...
already run america. They shouldn't have a problem with a MMORPG
The community should be more active in the design phase of video games. It should make for a better game with more comments from the public about how the game should look and play.
---
http://spaceruckus.web1000.com
These guys are putting together a free 3D action/adventure game.
Free Wii Points
I'd probably feel different if I'd ever been threatened based on the way I voted, but since no party or politician I've ever voted for has got into power I don't think that's likely to happen.
As I am sure you would all agree, at a certain point you stop patching and redo entire functions in a program. So why doesn't the government enforce the laws on the books and repeal (remove from the books, etc) laws that are being contradicted in the patching? Just like you optimize code (removing the crap) they should optimize the laws.
...this is only when you want to make a difference as you say it. It's a no-brainer to acknowledge that you can't do that if you keep your face hidden (no offense intended). However, then it is your conscious choice to do so. Anonymity means that if you don't take that choice, you can remain hidden and not be counted anyway because your democratic government thinks you should be.
PWNED !
Raph Koster of Sony Online adds that it "was startling to me... that (the federal comment process) is identical to how we build our patches and patch notes", although since the government has "a legal obligation to protect the privacy of people submitting comments on legislation", this means some disadvantages compared to MMO feedback, as Koster explains: "We get to know the people who are good testers, who are good at catching bugs. The federal government is legally not allowed to do that."
This is not true. I can come up with at an example that should work from a practical standpoint off-the-cuff.
You can build a black-box database that can identify the same persona as being the source of multiple input submissions. This box must be given supeona-proof status. There are a lot of improvements you could make to the thing, but this should work at a basic level.
Now, this may or may not be acceptable in terms of data logging. However, statistical analysis of the text will inevitably allow linking of comments to some degree, and if the MMO guy is right about a practical benefit to logging, this should work. There would be some onus on users to not submit information that could be linked back to their real identity, but that's true of just about any anonymous feedback system I can think of.
There are people much more experienced in this field who could give a much more intelligent answer than I do -- if the gov't wants a good system that can provide a certain set of functionality with certain privacy restrictions, they and similar folks should be talked to. It's hardly an insoluable problem.
May we never see th
"When they told us that, several of the gamers said, 'Well, you're doomed then. Without some degree of accountability, you're going to have problems.'"
That's not the only issue. Most readable MMOG-related websites maintain a contingent of flame-happy antibodies to kill any infectious stupidity, and those that don't slide rapidly into sycophancy. I really can't see your average busybody soccer mom taking well to being told to die in a car fire, especially not under the auspices of the federal government.
Microsoft delenda est!
Now let's hope that the government doesn't actually start playing these games. The last thing we need is for the bureaucrats to be playing Everquest (Evercrack) all day.
Applicatants must have experience with SimCity, Communism v1.1 or higher, and experience manipulating the Everquest or Ultima Online Economy. Player Killing is a plus.
If they want feedback, they should just create slash.gov and post proposed laws there so every could post feedback. At least that would be better than some anonymous e-mail comments that never get acknowledged. But wait, we can't have democracy, we need "democracy"
(From the Laws of Japanese Animation) Law of Inherent Combustibility -- Everything explodes. Everything.
I dont see 30 people armed with BFG's helping :)
The legal system the MMORPG 'A Tale in the Desert' formalizes player-generated petitions for game requests, and lets the players vote democratically on whether they should be implemented (within reason).
It seems to require a lot more time to filter and prioritize requests, but I think it's more honest than the 'lobbying' style that most games (and government) use. The citizen most adept at being heard by the developers/lawmakers isn't always the most representative.
--Owen--
Althought those two area that holds the same kind of public feedback , they are still very diffrent in that the goverment affecting every people life by thier action . not so in the game industry that you can choose right away what the best game fot you.
...MMOGs and such are probably the best large scale working models of societal interaction to date. They work more dyanmically than mathematical models. While you have to abstract out the suspension of disbelief (i.e being a Nanomage doesn't really translate to a common role in meatspace), you essentially have many of the same macro and micro level interaction you do in real life, and being in a virtual world, aggregating behavioral data (i.e population migrations based on opportunities, aggressive versus combative roles and how their patterns of movement and interaction change, et al) It is really interesting stuff.
great, just great, nerfing real life.
and you get a camel not a horse
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
G30rg3_BU5h69 has joined the game
G30rg3_BU5h69: WASUUUUP!!!
France: Aw damneet, 'ow deed he getz in 'ere?
Australia: Oi! One of ewe buggars betta' notta' told 'im tha' passy!
England: Aw now, don't be silly chaps! No one 'ere woulda done a thing like that now!
Russia: *growls*
England: Hey! Wot ewe lookin at me for?
Germany: Ach! Ver ish das admin?!
UN: Hey guys how do buy stuff???
Korea: Bah! Admin is dumb like bowl of noodles! No good for us!
Cuba: Si, and without admin, we stuck with this... loco muchacho.
Afghanistan: Pfft.
Bomb has been planed!
G30rg3_BU5h69 was killed by Afghanistan
G30rg3_BU5h69: WTF!?!? OMFG U R CHETER!!! U SUCK BITCH IMA PWN JOO NOW!!!
Afghanistan: Eep.
Afghanistan was killed by G30rg3_BU5h69
Iraq: Hahaha! George is silly, like little infidel boy!
G30rg3_BU5h69: WTF FAG U WNT SUM 2?!?
Iraq: You cannot touch me! The will of Allah will not allow it!
Iraq was killed by G30rg3_BU5h69
G30rg3_BU5h69: PWWWNEED!!!
PUNKBUSTER: Warning, cheats detected!
G30rg3_BU5h69 was kicked: WMD-Spoofing
France: Haha!
Germany: Haha!
Canada: Haha!
Russia: Haha!
Italy: Haha!
Japan: Haha!
Switzerland: Hey guys, whats THAT?
CONNECTION ERROR: HOST NOT FOUND - #877: Catastrophic Meteor Event
Disconnected.
Exiting game.
Logfile closed, 02/13/04 02:11:32
Democracy doesn't work!
- Homer J. Simpson
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Things You Should Never Do, Part I
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Maybe, just maybe they could have loaded a back-up made pre-Sept. 11th/Enron/Worldcom/Iraq Reloaded/ect, but then we'd have Gigli again...
Anyone else suddenly feel forced Realm vs Realm wouldn't be so bad?
I've finally got a fan! Now what do I feed him?
As so many online games and forums such as slashdot have proven, their will always be people who manipulate, troll, or game the system in a democracy. Most systems use a form of dictatorship to keep people in line. Slashdot has editors who not only ban crapflooders, but decide what things people get to even think abouto on the site. Apparently more egalitarian systems such as Kuro5hin start slipping into failure modes and the editors have to uncloak to fix them. Online games of course have game masters and sysops that have the power to ban naughty players. ;)
The same applies to governments of all sorts.
So if it becomes clear that any sort of government on the masses is going to susceptable to cheats, hacks and manipulators, the conclusion must be that the thing must not be allowed to become too important.
Game and internet forums already have the built in, regardless of what some slashdot readers might think
To keep government from becoming important, the individual must choose to be responsible and independent of the government, lest they become manipulated into little slave cells by the greedy and unscrupulous.
Five years ago when I decided on the spur of a moment to join one of the two Team PvP servers in Everquest, I never thought I'd spend the next 3 years there. As I became more involved and the game continued to evolve with new expansions, being on a PvP server became increasingly difficult to just have fun on. I posted on those damn forums every single moment I could, I worked up relationships with the GM's, I e-mailed Abashi more than I'd care to admit. And for what? In the end they chose to simply remove the looting aspect from Team PvP servers so people wouldn't feel so bad when they were zone ganked because someone had more memory than someone else.
I used to run and develop a version of the Promisance Browser-Based game system. At its peak, had about 100 active players and found that only about 20% participated in the forums and larger community. From what I have read on the subject, only about 10% of people ingague in say active forum participation and those tend to be from the 5% that are the most addicted and the 5% that are trolls and hate everything you do.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
If they're busy playing EQ then they won't be doing shit like this : Four-strong county council party flies club class to a conference in New Orleans at 2,699 pounds a ticket.
A trip that cost local tax-payers 58,000 pounds!
(for some reason slashcode won't let me enter £)
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Its one thing to talk about government knowingly, its another thing to have a good command of the English language:
The federal government is legally not allowed to do that."
Should be:
The Federal Government is legally required not to do that.
There is a huge difference between 'not allowed' and 'required not to'.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
The article states:
... to be part of the justification for taking their comments seriously."
"In other words, Koster explains, the government has a legal obligation to protect the privacy of people submitting comments on legislation and, therefore, it can be difficult if not impossible to assign any kind of special weight to a comment from an expert on a topic.
"You're not allowed to look at the history of the given proposals that person's made in the past to see if they have a good history," Koster argues.
with the following caveat:
"There's not a whole lot of anonymity," Stuart Shulman says. "Most people want you to know where they're from, who they are
The first statement is hopelessly naive. The second only partially hits the real point.
Politicians do have screens to identify high-value high-credibility input. These include:
- Reputation
- Power
- Money
Together, these traits are wielded by lobbyists. Lobbyists, by practical definition, yield influence through reputation, power, money.
Reputation. A highly reputable source of input can have a very high impact to legislation. When the National Academy of Sciences (historically very objective, and producer of excellent research) makes a finding or suggestion, it certainly has more weight than the Federation of American Scientists (which, although it has over 60 Nobel-prize winning endorsers, was founded on a political stance against the A-bomb).
Power. Legislation always involves compromises, and input coming from a very powerful party usually takes much more weight. When the Sierra Club, America's largest (and oldest) environmental advocacy club, makes a statement or sponsors research that could have legislative impact, you can bet that legislators will give it more thought than many other groups.
Money. When a certain company is a legislator's former employer or when the company is funnelling money into a legislator's pocket/campaign-fund, you can certainly bet that that company will have a big say in legislation.
Everybody with a stake in legislation has a chance to make their voice heard in a democracy. But face it, some voices just will be louder, clearer, and more persuasive. That sometimes works to the benefit of society (FSF, EFF, etc.) as well as to its harm (Big Tobacco, oil lobby, etc.) To beat the game, you've got to play the game.
It seems people like virtualities precisely because they incorporate a communicational fluidity that is diametrically opposed to the the hierarchical constraints in real life - you cannot really aks to change anything out there, the best you can do is answer when someone asks you whether you want to have it changed.
Now, I don't want all of my life to hang of a menu-driven system, with somebody else designing the menu. I think that if the online games culture rigidifies to the same extent as political life has rigidified in its transition from Greek direct democracy to today's mediated democracies, pople are going tu rush to alternate fora.
This is not a signature.
Slashdot has editors who not only ban crapflooders, but decide what things people get to even think abouto on the site. Apparently more egalitarian systems such as Kuro5hin start slipping into failure modes and the editors have to uncloak to fix them....
So if it becomes clear that any sort of government on the masses is going to susceptable to cheats, hacks and manipulators, the conclusion must be that the thing must not be allowed to become too important.
Your post operates on two assumptions:
1. There is no such thing as fair administration.
2. Slash, K5, etc. represent the pinnacle in public commentary systems, and cannot function without admins.
Item 1, while probably true in an absolute sense, is not true in a general sense. Reasonable administration is entirely possible, and I would argue works pretty well here. We already assume that it works in our gov'ts - for example, in the US, we assume that Congress is capable of administering law creation.
Item 2 may or may not be true, but it's certainly too soon to tell. Massively multiposter forums have only existed for a couple decades, and have only acheived true mass within the past 10 years. It is still a science in it's infancy, there's a lot of room for advancement.
The "don't let it matter too much" theme I agree with, sort of. Slashdot works because the amount of investment in impartiality of the system is in proper proportion to the weight of the subjects at hand. K5 works, even thought the subjects tend to be weightier, because there is a larger investment in the impartiality of the system. One might argue that the US gov'ts current failings are, likewise, a direct result of the lack of investment in impartiality of the system - EG: rather than pay the price of campaign finance reform, we have chosen to take the less expensive route of letting our politicians sell their votes.
To clarify the last rambling paragraph: Absolute impartiality is not possible, and so critical decisions should not be left to the system. But there are very few truly critical decisions in gov't.
Things like whether to nuke Cuba during the missile crisis should probably not be decided in an online forum (at least not yet). However, for a huge percentage of more mundane decisions, it is entirely reasonable to assume that with a sufficient investment of effort, a sufficiently impartial system could be designed. It could be made sufficiently impartial that the benefit of the public participation would outweigh the cost of the remaining partiality.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
How many people really get involved with politics unless it affects them? It's the most common remark, that people don't care unless they benefit. From the top/down, politics is about personal gain, whether it be Senators and/or Reps who must juggle the good of the nation versus that of their own constituency. You'll often see the same in MMO's, where the loudest voices are quite often those who have something to eitehr gain or lose.
The largest outcry of customer response in MMO's have typically been the extreme gamers with an agenda, or those who currently reside in an operational game that feel either disenfranchised or threatened by the development cycle.
During game development, you have the RP'ers who want elements that allow them the freedom to practice role playing, although each person may have a completely separate intrepretation of this. You'll have the hardcore players who'll want rather strict rules of PvP, as cutthroat as possible. You'll have other players, the perennial drifters from game to game, who want the perfect utopia.
Once the game has been launched, you'll have factions built within the gaming community. The vocal components will voice their concerns over whether certain aspects are unbalancing. In a class style system (which most are), you'll have classes, which fearing nerfs will be quite adamant in professing their perceived flaws so that they will pose less of a target to the masses. You'll have others, who might feel their class is disenfranchised and not seeing the same benefits from the company, wanting dev attention.
This is fine for MMO's where not only is "all characters are created equal" the creed, it's also, "all characters must remain equal, regardless of time, effort or ambition". MMO's cater far more towards the Lowest Common Denominator than you'll find in modern society. You can't take these same concepts of lowering the bar of achievement and transferring them to the real world, otherwise you end up with schools that don't teach children how to compete.
Basically people are only willing to speak up when it benefits them, since our "Commercialistic Democracy" as a whole centers around being selfish. People will cater to that which benefits themselves the most, and given a choice, they don't care unless it affects them.
Those who typically have an agenda are those you normally fear the most. People with a single item or issues they wish to push through. Yes, the US is founded upon fervent idealism, but far too often you have passion coupled with politics. Political issues that are far more emotional than objective, and yet you're creating laws for the populace. One thing you want to avoid is kneejerk "nerfs" in the real world, that purely emotional, otherwise you end up with such far reaching laws like the Patriot Act.
Raph Koster of SWG is now an expert in designing societies?
Please.
If you play SWG, you know what kind of society it is. One where players are encouraged to do mindless missions in pursuit of the mystical plum to be a jedi. Have players complained? Sure, check out the development forums (restricted to paying subscribers of SWG), and you'll find many requests going untouched. And the people who actually go and complain on a bulletin board is just a small percentage of the persons who actually play, get disgruntled, and leave. If you were a SWG beta tester, you know this pain intimately. One of the reasons why it's so frustrating is because I sincerely believe there's a good game waiting inside, just like there's a great government that we can have...but we're not there in the game and I'd argue that I'm actually happier with the government (see sig for how I feel about our government).
Having said that, as previous posters have noted, designing public feedback systems for government is tough. But seriously--why not a slashdot-style government posting forum? Probably it's a chicken-and-egg problem--I don't want to post on a website that nobody will read, but legislators have no incentive to read a slashgov board with 7 users. Moderation will swing towards the masses, but if you're supposed to be serving the masses, then that's good. I think one of the problems is that legislators won't want to have to be on record (i.e. wayback machine) as saying one thing or not responding to one comment and having it haunt them in the future. But if we can get slashgov to work well, I think it would be spectacular.
I'm willing to host. I lack real programming ability. If you want to jump in, let me know. I think this is a cool concept.
Good ideas should be judged on their merit whether they come from reality or a simplistic model or reality, since reality is hard to measure.
It is scary considering how long it takse for anything to get fixed in everquest (bankers standing behind the bank in felwithe, Epic quests being broken, network problems "caused" by routers or ISP's that had no problems with more advanced games with higher bandwidth and lower latency requirements which suddenly disappear after a patch... although it does seem familiar, both SOE/Verant and the US Government refuse to admit there is a problem untill they have a solution and like to blame others for their problems.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
"We get to know the people who are good testers, who are good at catching bugs. The federal government is legally not allowed to do that. When they told us that, several of the gamers said, 'Well, you're doomed then. Without some degree of accountability, you're going to have problems.'"
Sony Online (EQ in particular) was notorious for ignoring bug testers. Heck, I remember when I still played and there was a public forum, I gave a 100+ itemized bug list, to which they completely ignored. And after that they made a bug discussion group, so they could force everyone to post their problems there and ignore them there. They got to know us all right. They got to know us so they could ignore us.
IF the bug helped the players, it was fixed immediately. If it hindered the players, took several months to fix if it was ever fixed.
Most MMOGs are in the habbit of banning like there's no tomorrow. And that goes double for Sony. They've been known to ban people for stuff like posting a distateful fan-fic about their game.
The RL government of banning would be capital punishment.
That's it. No lawsuit, no jury, no appeal, no recourse. Bang, you're out of the game. Just because we didn't like the article you've posted about our country. Bullet to the back of the head, right here and now.
Do we really want to live in that kind of a country?
MMOGs also have whole castes which exist without any democratic checks. E.g., overworked underpaid game-masters which hold the power to apply the law on the spot. Tech support, judge, jurry and executioner rolled into one. They're not paid to do extensive investigations, and there aren't enough of them for that anyway. They're basically there just to ban on sight or confiscate items on the slightest suspicion. Do we really want that kind of a Judge Dredd caste IRL?
And I'll go and say another thing: MMOGs don't have to deal with RL economics. They can and generally _do_ blunder through monumental mistakes, making the economy swing wildly between "everyone is a billionaire" and "everyone is starving." But since it's all virtual, it's OK. We'll just randomly tweak two lines of code and see what happens.
Ultima Online initially managed to get most species extinct, and end up a world-wide shortage of any resources. A dead obvious problem with their model was, surprisingly enough, not predicted. Noone even thought about it, until some players used it to deadlock the whole economy. Literally.
The solution was to tweak the code and make more ore spawn in the mines. Can the RL government do that, to cover for mistakes? Can George Bush wave a magic wand and make cheap oil sprout in the US, to fix the economy? No.
Well, then, I'll want more responsible people in the RL government. It's easy to be smug about their virtual world, where they make catastrophic decisions weekly, and fix them by just spawning more or less resources or changing production rates overnight. RL governments don't have that luxury. Their job is to _not_ make those catastrophic mistakes in the first place. That's why they're slower and less efficient.
And, to get back to the article, speaking of lawmaking: UO also initially ended up with _massive_ PK problem because their legal system just didn't work. The RL equivalent of that would be people shooting each other on the streets in broad daylight. Everywhere, all the time. And whole hordes of outlaws waiting at every city's exit to kill you.
Somehow I don't want the same people in charge of RL laws.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
As was stated here before, MMOGs aren't a very good model to base real life on. Why?
1)Accountability. In MMOGs you can't get a punch in the face for making lewd comments to a member of the opposite sex for example. People are more 'loose' with their actions and statements without the imminent threat of physical pain or restrictions of their freedom. If the worst thing that can happen to you is a few days suspension or even a ban from the game....if you want to be counter-social there isn't much to stop you.
2)Input, and how it changes things. Every MMOG I've played to date provides lip service to user input for change, but it's false. As a gamer you can't really change anything the developer doesn't want you to. This may seem to be a parallel to real life until you realize that the chance is always there for revolution through the use of violence. I mean really, what are you going to do when something is changed hundreds (thousands?) don't like? Stamp your virtual feet and hold your character's breath till they turn blue? I suppose if you're wanting to model a dictatorship then it may be accurate. I know from personal experience at least one of these 'industry leaders' behaved more like Sadam or Adolf than Washington or Kennedy.
3) Don't like your elected officials? Vote them out! Don't like your developer? Here, have this nice can of Vaseline and a pack of Marlboros. It's either that or pack your toys and play in the other sandbox.
4) Freedom of Speech.
-Raph Koster
Don't like what your 'community' has to say about you? Filter it! Castro would be proud. I'm sure if he was involved the first thing that would happen is you'd have to prove you're an American citizen to post on slashdot.gov (I mean Koster, not the other dictator).
Hardly. In a game 'money' isn't a commodity that runs out. People don't starve to death because you made a bad policy decision in EQ. The last time I looked mothers weren't crying because their SWG babies were killed during the batte of Endor. And try as I might, I can't recall a single Jenquai in Earth & Beyond complaining about the developer's healthcare plan.
Your whole perspective on life is changed when you can just push a mouse button and you're back alive again.
Saying a MMOG is a good model for real life is like saying paper airplanes are good models for stealth fighters. MMOGs are without exception ran like miniature dictatorships.
I suppose I should quantify my statement. MMOGs are good models for tiny communist island nations, not large democracies.
US Treasury to Post Previously Private Email Addresses Online:4 /01/09/00 10200&mode=thread&tid=103&tid=158&tid= 99
g =n efd_top
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=0
http://news.com.com/2100-1028_3-5137488.html?ta
Having been involved in a number of MMOGs, the goals of a MMOG and Gov are (should be?) very different.
1) MMOGs design and admin can't please everyone. The good one's accept that, and design around a creative vision that will appeal to some people and not to others. The others will just play some other game, or not play at all. Government, on the other hand, does not have that option. It can't create a paradise for 5% of its users while pissing off the rest (or maybe it can, but it shouldn't be able to).
2) MMOG administration is usually based on the premise of "get rid of the griefers as quick as possible, they cost us money". In Gov, getting rid of the griefers usually involves feeding and clothing them and paying for their guards, so it actually costs more money (or at least until Patriot Act VII allowings police yank your license to live for terriorist acts of drunk driving).
Like it does with movies, you mean?
Hollywood movies are extensively tested on the general public, and carefully tweaked based on their feedback. I guess we all love the intelligent plots and inventive movies that result, huh?
Design-by-marketing has costs as well as benefits. In general, it will turn bad products into palatable ones... but it also turns really good products into palatable ones. Most really good art is polarizing; for example, Terry Gilliam's "Brazil", half the audience came out of the previews and said "That was the best movie I've ever seen", the other half came out and said "That was the worst movie I've ever seen". If you apply the public feedback process, you get something which pleases more people, but the result is the infamous "Love Conquers All" edit of "Brazil".
Personally, I think we have enough Hollywood-style "Well, it was OK I guess" video games. What we need is more people taking risks, more people producing truly innovative and unique games like "Rez", "Ico", "Sentinel", and so on. Of course, I think that because those are the games I like to play. If you like playing "Generic Sports Game 200x" or "Movie Tie In FPS", you will indeed prefer the results of designers taking more notice of user feedback.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
... where people can submit "(feature|law)" requests to existing "(features|laws)" and can comment on certain "(bugs|law inconsistenties)" in the "(sourcecode|democracy)" ?
:)
Sounds reasonable. But how does the "(project administrator|government)" decide which requests will be implemented ? Do they use a "(priority|voting process)" to decide which requests are more important ?
Would there be a versioning system like CVS for the "(sourcecode|democracy)" ? And can I download the "(sourcecode|democracy)" version X.Y somehow ? How is a new "(software|democratic)" "(baseline|constitution)" decided upon ? Do all "(users|civilians)" approve it, or are only the "(project members|ministers)" allowed to vote ?
How will it be "(packaged|written)" then ? Can I assume I can download a "(tarball|lawbook)" with the current release in it ?
Somehow it sounds OK, needs some touching up perhaps, but the idea is nice
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
This discussion occurred in the afternoon/evening after State of Play. It was very interesting to learn about the rulemaking process. For those who aren't familiar with it, rulemaking is when government agencies convert policy decisions passed by congress ("reduce automobile emissions") into actual federal statutes ("all light trucks lines will reduce their average emissions by 5% by 2007"). Part of the rulemaking process is posting the proposed rules and then soliciting public comment. In the old system, these periods of feedback were announced via the Federal Register and feedback was submitted via snail mail. The result was that a small number of lobbyists and individuals who scoured the Register would submit feedback. The agency in charge of the new statute would then publish a response, and eventually, the new law. The government doesn't have to follow the feedback but is often influenced by multiple submissions with similar viewpoints. The new system (partially implemented) allows for automated searching of proposed rules and electronic responses. A requirement is that posting be anonymous. As readers of /. can see, this is a very gamable system. The lobbyists now have a cheap and easy way to scan all proposed rules for ones that touch on their area and a undetectable way to submit massive numbers of similar viewpoints from apparently multiple sources. The new system is supposed to make the system more democratic but the actual result is to make it less democratic. Somehow not at all shocking that the Wired article missed that.
Now, given that there were many smart game designers/developers in the room who've had experiences managing communities that are full of people who try to game systems, there were ideas put forth -- /. was even mentioned -- but the government folks who were there weren't particularly interested in hearing that there system was flawed. Instead they just wanted information on how to educate people about the new system.
It was an enlightening and terrifying view into how senior government employees attack problems.
Mr. Ludlow's banning corresponds very nicely to an execution by angry priests of the local deity. While you may not be happy with that aspect, any social model that doesn't include that possibility is incomplete.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
In fact, I've watched MMOG makers make the same political comparisons and make the same dictatorial policy decisions over and over for years...
THe bottom line is that the dictatorial solution is always what wins out because it's easy. In a MMOG no one has any share in the game except the owners of the company that produced it. People keep saying "listen to the players", and the result of this is that the winner is the one who fakes the hardest while trying to put across an impression of being "democratic".
Hmm, there's a lot about politics that is this way. And people eat it up, too- look at Bush... and John Kerry.
A truly democratic system would be a weird, weird game. No one's tried it yet, though.
MMOG developers are more aptly cast in the position of deity than that of president.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
Hahaha. This is so funny. Raph is a self ego stroking mental masterbaiter(sic) of the highest order. The *only* way SWG compares to a government (or society) is in the level of corruption found in both. SWG is basically a game of corruptions. Game play is based on how fast you can advance through skills - so, of course, all gamers figure out how to cheat their way through. (I should now I wasted 5 months playing the damn thing)
Goverment is already like Ultima Online. By that I mean that if you pay extra you get special treatemnt. Just look at the 29.95 'enhanced' characters they offer.
Um, is the government forbidden to permit people to identify themselves voluntarily? Because you could start out with everybody as AC and let people opt in for identification.
> Raph Koster of SWG is now an expert in designing societies?
> Please.
> If you play SWG, you know what kind of society it is. One where players are encouraged to do mindless missions in pursuit of the mystical plum to be a jedi
"He's perfect for the job!"
- Treas. Secretary John Snow
> Have players complained? Sure, check out the development forums (restricted to paying subscribers of SWG), and you'll find many requests going untouched.
"He's perfect for the job!"
- Norm Mineta, the entire Department of Transportation, and TSA
> And the people who actually go and complain on a bulletin board is just a small percentage of the persons who actually play, get disgruntled, and leave.
"He's perfect for the job!"
- The entire contingent of HomeSec that used to be the INS
And what the original didn't say - people who do raise questions about things like server stability or scalability tend to get banned from the forums.
"He's perfect for the job!
- Atty. General John Ashcroft.
All we need is www.bugzilla.gov.
they can't even manage their own people properly much less make any sort of constructive changes tio the game. Whatever BS they pass off to the public, if you play EQ for a while you see the truth...Trial and error, mostly error, greed, and stupidity rule the SoE world. SoE is barely able to keep up with the exploits that are pointed out to them and documented by someone else much less find, derive, or intuit any themselves, don't make me laugh :)
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
If the government started patching all the exploits inherint to the system what would all the lawyers and accountants do?
Talking about games and government reminds me of nomic Fun stuff.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Sorry, but the headline on this article gave me a very weird idea of our representatives sitting at home "playing" the "United States House of Representatives" online role playing game - a sort of virtual congress where you can walk your level 20 lobbiest up to congressional committee members to hand over cash donations via paypal.
I guess I picked the wrong day to stop sniffing glue.
144l. ph34r my 133t l3g4l 5k1lz!
Er ... feedback doesn't necessarily mean success. I see nobody pointed out that Raph Koster of Sony Online headed up StarWars Galaxies. That development group bent over backwards to get community feedback, but look what we got. Game design by committee.
No sig for you.
(now to read the Wired article)
Those old laws can come in handy--the executive branch can selectively enforce them until doomsday.
Cabaret laws made a recent comeback in NYC and in other cities. You know what those are? An establishment needs a permit if people there are going to dance to recorded music. That includes shimmying in the corner because the jukebox is on. From what I've been told, the law in NYC was passed way back in the days of yore to keep a handle on clubs in the disreputable parts of town (ie. Harlem). Nowadays they're being used selectively to shutdown any place the police don't like (much as it was in the old days) which may just be because they didn't get a free drink there one night.
It would be nice if there were a built-in review age on laws that required them to be re-evaluated for applicability. It would probably have to vary based on the type of law, but the shortest period would likely be something like 5 years. To work, the review process would have to be detailed such that a clerk can't just stamp a piece of paper and put it back in a drawer.
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