Slashdot Mirror
Don't Go Into The Corn Field
Via GameSetWatch, Clickable Culture's look at the Second Life version of purgatory - The Corn Field. A player explores an off-grid prison that misbehaving avatars are sent too for infractions. From the article: "Yaffle tested the limits of the prison, finding that communication to Second Life's 'Main Grid' was cut off. He even came up with a scheme to crash the server The Corn Field was running on in order to be teleported to the nearest safe simulator by default, but creating objects in The Corn Field appears to be impossible. Having exhausted his options, Yaffle merely waited around to see if anyone else would show up. A Linden Lab employee did stop by, but was incommunicado. 'If I was them, I would have been watching me and laughing,' Yaffle told me. 'I know I was laughing even though it was a punishment.'"
A player explores an off-grid prison that misbehaving avatars are sent too for infractions.
Off to the Corn-field for you slashdot editor!
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
Oh and by the way... I'm sorry, but "too", "to" or "two"? I'm not normally a nazi when it comes to this sort of thing but that's one mistake that really gets on my nerves.
If it squeals, don't smoke it.
Okay...so..that was a cute article... but.. uhm... I cant say I think much of the person who lets a nimrod that breaks rules and gets punished for it get any more attention.
His punishment was boredom, and... we pay him in "fame"?
gee. How... nice of us. Go rulebreakers, then!
It looks like you need a Third Life!
Rimshot, please!
Second Life is a social game. Being sent to play "by yourself" teaches an important lesson: we are dependant on each other to make the game fun. When Yaffle returns to society he may be a little bitter at his timeout but I think he will be affected by it, whether he knows it or not, and show a greater respect for others.
How we know is more important than what we know.
This is probably a good alternative to banning people right out of a game. Instead of doing it for a certain period of time though, they should be given a task and have to perform it. In this case, they should use the tractor to plough the land or pick corn or something and after a certain amount of work is done they will be teleported back to the real world. People can always just sit around and wait to be unbanned in a game, but giving them some kind of boring chore to perform to teach them a lesson would be nice. I hope to see something like this in more MMORPGs.
I'm guessing this is a clever reference to where Anthony's horrific creations go in the TZ episode "It's a Good Life," which I saw again over the New Year break. http://tzone.the-croc.com/tzeplist/goodlife.html
And a truely painful one. They never realize they're wrong and always want to be an exception to the rule. Look at this guy, what did he do after he was banned? Immediately tried to destroy the system!
Then he writes all about it in an attempt to get further attention (like most rule breakers, he's an attention whore and just wants everyone to notice him). I doubt they were laughing at him, they probably didn't care and were just hoping he'd leave and never come back.
Personally if I worked at Second life, after reading this article I'd perm ban the guy. People like this never learn, until the judge sentences them to life in prison. And policing them is a boring and thankless job, with lots of abuse thrown in.
I'm not sure leaving people in a cornfield is really such a good idea, since as the article suggests this is almost something to look forward to. Instead, it would make sense to punish users with something they would fear: a loss of stats and/or items. If these players are willing to put hundreds of hours towards levelling or getting rare items, they will definately not be happy if you take some of that away.
The idea of sending a player somewhere boring for punishment is nothing new like the article suggests. I remember Ultima Online used to have its own thing where players would be sent to a jail for a certain period instead of just banning them.
Those who would trade liberty for security deserve neither
I'd love to pay money to play an online computer game in which I am put into jail and forbidden to interact with other players. Where do I sign up? The paint I put down last week is completely dry now and I have nothing to do, I would love to be trapped in a corn field very much.
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.
Bunch of bleeding heart liberals, coddling the criminals!
Isn't this cornfield related to the Twilight Zone episode "It's a Good Life" in which a kid with god-like powers send people "in the cornfield" to punish them ? The exact meaning of that "cornfield" is never given in the episode, though.
After seeing what this guy did I think permanently banning the account is in order. While some violations may not deserve banning this one is too extreme not to deserve it.
Most games already have alternatives to outright banning, from warnings to account suspensions. It is the fear of banning is what keeps most people in line who would otherwise be trouble makers. Unfortunately people use the anonyminity of game worlds to act out their aggressions. Just as we cannot accept this behaviour in the real world we cannot accept it in a virtual one either. Both are societies and both can suffer from the actions of just one person.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Says he "tried to crash the server" while in prison. Yea, he is exactly the type of player you want back in the game.
Before you can play this propaganda game online, you first have to complete a few courses/trainings.
Those trainings are supervised by an AI General, who, as they seem to do in the Army, shouts your ears off with several commands he wants you to do.
After about one minute of this guy's shouting, I became fedup with it, and instead of using the weapon I was given on the target range, I decided it was payback time... So I shot the General:
To my surprise this would load another map... which would conviently be a prison cell... with no way out (other than restarting the course-mission).
Definitely had my chuckle that day :)
Troll? Whaddya mean troll?? What's trolling about a preference change? Is there a troll in one or more of my armpits?
Oh, ahh, no, I see ... hey look Mr. Moderator Man (you may sing along if you wish), that's a 'p' and an 'l' (repeat after me..."PPEEEE" ... "AAELLL") in front of "ucking". Not an "F", nor an "f", not even a "ph".
Further, I would take this opportunity to point out that:
A) Implying indirectly that a submitted "News" item may be of insignificant worth is not necessarily equivalent to trolling. And...
B) Your BLAK syndrome is not my fault.
[ Bi-Labially-Aspirated-Konsonant ] - the intentional "K" mis-spelling intended to subliminally convey a political affiliation, as in CCCP or ACLU.
( ...jeez... )
PS. Ok, so maybe I'm looking to square a troll.
sv_cheats 1 noclip 1
Um. It's easy to make fun of a game like this if you're expected to pay for it, but the fact of the matter is that you can play the game free of charge without any hindrances - the only reason to pay is to own land and get a larger weekly in-game allowance (land ownership is overrated unless you're using it to sell something or are renting it out like Anshe Chung does, ;-D - there's even a two-way exchange rate of currency. Evil? Probably. )
Besides, rules are rules in any game; if you break 'em, you suffer the consequences, right? In this one, the Linden Corporation could just limit the power they've given users, but instead they still offer enough control to allow a user to potentially bring a server to its knees (and quite easily at that) - for that, their "purgatory" is pretty nice.
--I gots 99 problems but a new machine ain't one!
AMD! Asus! Whoot! 6 years!
Am I the only one who thought that this guy's attempt to get out of the cornfield by crashing the server it was on was clever and amusing? And that if he doesn't solemnly take the punishment in the way it's intended but instead treats it as a joke, that it might not be his fault, but a problem with the punishment itself?
Sheesh, some of you need to pull the stick out.
BTW, if it's true that he was responsible for crashing the "Main Grid" servers, then why wasn't he banned outright? Anyone care to explain that?
Rob
One of my favourite old MUDs featured a prison affectionally known as "the milk room". It was a prison full of incredibly jubilant spammy songs about milk. It was similar in concept to this tried-and-true method of torture.
Erased from history, 1984 style? Hmmm.. an MMORPG set in 1984, there's an idea :)
How we know is more important than what we know.
Sorry, wrong engine.
You probably mean the "ghost" command, which would normally be disabled in a multi-player only game.