Slashdot Mirror
MMO Gaming - Virtually Too Real?
bippy writes "The Rocky Mountain News has an article about the evolving face of massively multiplayer online games. PC MMOGs have fostered debates about free speech, made money for people and been home to virtual and real crime. Or as the Rocky put it: 'In a time of global terrorism, high crime rates and world hunger, the virtual evils of a computer game are really trivial. But in a way, that's the point: Why do even our games have to be subject to crime, no matter how virtual?'" A spokesperson for Ultima Online comments on Electronic Arts' view of virtual crime: "EA owns your gold, your swords, your characters - they are all just digital bits. If your entertainment is to destroy other peoples' entertainment, you're going to be tossed."
I play EverQuest and ocassionally code in a Mud.
The grief of losing an item on which you used many hours of your Very Real time to obtain can be big.
As I have seen the player point of view and the administration point of view of a MMOG, I can say only this:
Nothing is virtual. Players are real persons. They use their real time to play. For the hardcore player their character is as real as the paycheck they receive for doing their more 'boring' job.
Yes, it is easy to toss a player with 'it's just a game, get over it', but anyone who has played any of these games know that it's not that simple.
When you play. Remeber; your virtual comrade/enemy is also a living, breathing person.
Bot Assisted Blogging
The internet encourages anti-social behaviour some people. Who hasn't occasionally acted in a way over the internet that they wouldn't dream of doing face to face? Play any shooter and all you get is loud mouthed adolescents and pre-pubescents. MMORPGS add another mask to their personality, players can express their more repressed social feelings. Is it a small step from anti-social to criminal?
Why wouldn't they? Virtual or not, the games, our lives are run and designed by humans. People are people in all their glory and faults. If your looking for utpoia online your looking in the wrong place.
The internet encourages anti-social behaviour some people
Quick and easy confirmation: read Slashdot comments with your threshold at -1. Obviously, those morons wouldn't say the same face-to-face: too big risk for a tiny, stupid, reward.
EA is wrong..
according to game theory and socialogy and physcology crime is just another way to play the game..the difference being is thqat for soem reason these grousp fo people do not normally have the correct tools to play the game in the correct way..
some choose criem to feed their family and etc..
by subtracting crime form the vr EA has set about to make the vr game unstudiable as far as human behaior..
It might be avaluable to have it thge other way
Don't Tread on OpenSource
As S. King pointed out, you have to feed the alligators of the sub-conscious. A polite society doesn't allow for poetic justice; it doesn't give you a space to let your id to roam free. The entire horror genre is dedicated to this idea.
Look at any moralistically repressive system, and you see the worst crimes imaginable being perpetrated. There is no escape valve. What do you expect?
The classics of horror were written during the most repressed times, and hardly ever do you see horror expanding during times of war. Why bother when people are already acting out in real life?
And as it is for games. The mere fact people are acting in an anti-social fashion suggests a need. You _could_ play nice, but people choose not to. Isn't playing PARANOIA still a social event?
Casual evidence suggests this is a step away from criminal. Kick in the doors to people's minds, and they tend to kick back. And it isn't pretty.
In the span of a few hundred million years, the Earth will become less and less habitable due to the expected changes to our giant stellar friend 1 AU away, and that's assuming an asteroid doesn't get us first. On this time scale, the evils of global terrorism, high crime rates, and world hunger are really trivial.
What good does it do if we stop terrorism, crime, and eliminate hunger, if we're still doomed to be completely annihilated in ~500 million years?
Okay, I know I'm going to take a hit on my karma for posting this, but the main reason for my post is to simply prove that it does no good to insult a pass-time that many gamers take seriously by calling aspects of its nature trivial in comparison to something else. Everything is trivial compared to the scenario I just described, just as indeed, I suppose video games are trivial compared to the concerns you described.
Now, would you go around telling people not to live their lives the way they do because we've only got ~500 million years left here on Earth? No, you wouldn't?
Then shut the hell up and let people enjoy a video game in whatever manner that wish, including taking its problems as serious as they wish to imagine them. It may not seem right, natural, or even healthy to you, but there are far worse things people can do with their time.
MMORPGs are an excellent way for the socially inept to form rather serious bonds of friendship, and end up living better lives because of it.
But I guess everyone should stop complaining about the faults of virtual worlds, or maybe stop playing in virtual worlds entirely, since it's so trivial in comparison to your examples. In fact, I think I'll turn in my Dark Age of Camelot account and join the police force right now! Thanks for your insight, buddy!
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
In order to sell their games, creators of MMO games must convince their audience that there is a reason to play the game, that there is something at stake. There is an illusion of power achieved once you reach the top. In order to achieve that power (or a perverted form of that power -- in the case of someone who simply ruins others' experience), there are people who are willing to do whatever is necessary, no matter the cost.
The problem isn't that the game is too close to reality, but in order to keep interest, it must maintain an illusion of certain aspects of reality, otherwise participants will either play only from time to time (as in a hobby) or realize that there is more to life than online gaming and find something better to do. Obviously game manufacturers make more money if more people play more often.
So we find scenarios in games where people form friendships and close relationships. We find cases where the "love" between two individuals is just as strong as in real life, and the consequences of breaking trust just as severe. We find cases where people have real envy, because the game creators create the illusion that there really is something worth envying. We find cases where people become attached to the things they "own" -- when they really own nothing.
Unless human nature is suspended during the course of the game, it's no surprise that crimes and other perversions will happen. And if that happens the game becomes no more interesting than tic-tac-toe or a first-person shooter.
The goal? To have fun. When you no longer have fun, stop playing. It's a simple concept that veterans often seem to forget. It works for me. As I said in another thread, I've played Asheron's Call a lot. I started in June 2000, but I've taken a lot of time off from the game. But I usually come back, because the game can still be fun when you'd been out of it for awhile and there's a lot of new changes to experience. Not currently playing, but big changes are likely ahead, so I've been thinking of coming back in the near future.
:).
So while stalking and calling names etc is certainly uncalled for, messing with other people seems to be the whole point of most MMPOGS. With guild v guild and kingdom v kingdom and pvp, what do you expect but that people will be competitive. And competition means winners and loser, and in an MMPOG thats one winner and a thousand losers.
Well, I think the main problem here is that game developers are trying to create a perception that's not there. In nearly every MMORPG, only a small minority (maybe around 10% for AC, prolly not that different between games) actually partake in PvP if the game isn't PvP-centric. So it boggled a lot of observers (myself included!) when every new MMORPG that came out was oriented toward PvP, instead of just making it completely optional. Perhaps they're trying to tap into a new market? The problem, though, is that they're essentially restricting their market instead; now they have to find people who satisfy two requirements, e.g. they must like RPG PvP and they must like MMORPGs. I don't think there's all that many people in this intersection, and I think they've already found a game by now
So the games bring it upon themselves in a way, the unhappy newbies being picked on by the powergaming kiddies. Thats what they are designed to do, deep down. And since the rules arent written down anywhere, and in fact change randomly, who is to say what is legal and what is not, really, if the game lets you do it, it must be legal unless they tell you otherwise, and even then like in sports, is it only not legal if the umpire notices?
Yeah, and that's why PvP is not very popular in most MMORPGs. The people with too much time on their hands get powerful and kill all the new people. Hence my wondering why every new game is a PvP game.
"EA owns your gold, your swords, your characters - they are all just digital bits. If your entertainment is to destroy other peoples' entertainment, you're going to be tossed."
The only record of my money in the bank is digital. If I take some of that money and play the stock market, I can do so by just transferring it. If I make money, it goes back into my digital account.
Does this mean I don't own my money? Hmmm...
If I'm having fun (in the real world or elsewhere) and someone makes a point of messing with me, it's harassment. Don't get hung up on how I have fun or whether you think it's fun or useful or not. I am free to pursue hapiness in whatever form I choose so long as I'm not interfering with others hapiness.
Of course, just as in the real world someone elses hapiness may depend on my being unhappy. But traditionally the line has been drawn there: the one overtly trying to mess with others loses.
So, to reiterate: virtual shmitual. You mess with people, you pay the price.
Cheers.
"The fact you own a common space doesn't mean you can be automatically autocratic," Ludlow said.
I don't think of game makers as just people who own a virtual world. Since they created this "common space", that would kind of make them god. As god, they can conntrol, change and do to that world as they see fit. And if you piss god off, he will smite you.
This message was brought to you by the death of 30 brain cells.
Also, people need to stop trying to apply real world physics, values, social structures, and so on to a game. There are two major differences between real life and MMORPGs that make attempts to apply real world structures stupid:
1) Different laws of the universe. Things just don't work the same. In real life you kill someone, that's it, they are gone and, near as anyone can tell, not comming back. In most games they just pop back up in a different spot and maybe come back to kill you. Because of this, the whole concept or murder goes out the window, as does what it means. With different laws of the universe you'll have different constraints on what is right and wrong.
2) The presence of gods. There may or may not be a god or gods in the real world and that god may or may not interfere with what goes on. One thing is certain, if there is a god and they do interfere, it is in subtile ways. This is NOT the case in an MMORPG. There are gods, the developers and CS staff of the company, and they DO interfere in the game. They are all powerful too, they created the virtual universe, they can change it as they wish, they can even unmake it if they wish. Thus, they can lay out laws that a society wouldn't normally enforce upon itself.
I really wish that people would stop trying to insist that MMORPGs need to mimic reality. You want to make one that does? Great, be my guest. Go and set it up, and see how you do. But don't think that it's the only way or what all people want. Understand that games are more often than not made to be different, and that's a good thing.
Also realise that, as tha parent poster said, MMORPGs are released to make money. If 100 people go around doing something that is "realistic" or "how it would be in the real world" that makes 10,000 other paying subscribers angry, the game company is doing the right thing by putting a stop to it.
It might be offtopic, but I am so sick of people saying we live in a time of high crime rates. Crime is down. They are lower than ever before. Stop saying the opposite, because it is bullshit. Now my grandma is too scared to go out after dark, even though it is safer than 30 years ago. Sheesh.
Wasn't there a slashdot article the other day that said the opposite? That the problem with MMO games is that they have become single player games where you can chat with other players, and that there is less and less meaningful interaction between players?
I guess it just depends on what sort of game you are looking for. Some people want to play cooperatively against the computer. Some people want to have a virtual world, where competition between players is a strong part of that. Different games will appeal to different crowds.
The mud I used to play and really liked, had a very realistic feel to it. If you wandered into the wilderness, and fought something too hard for you to handle, you died. When you died, you started over with a new character. That's it, game over. Very harsh, but more realistic.
If you got stolen from by another character, you lost things. That's the way it goes. But, if they got caught, the soldiers would throw them in jail, and a templar would likely take all of their things. If they got caught murdering people, they were killed on sight by the guards. And the guards were pretty tough. You could get tough enough to take one, or maybe two if you were really good, but 4 or more would team you to death.
So there was crime, but if you stuck to the safe areas, that were heavily patrolled, you could successfully play a very non-competative character, where social interaction was all there was to the game. But for those that liked the seedy life, they could venture into the slums or the lawless wilderness.
There is a lot of potential to MMO Games. You just have to know what you want from one, and wht the designers have created to accomadate that.
Got Apathy?