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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.
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
But even aside from the purely technical issues with the game, I really didn't like the feeling it gave me. The community seems to be focused on creating porn-star avatars and virtual penises. And to buy these oh-so-attractive items, you have to convert real cash to ingame cash or start some sort of similar business yourself. Or you could whore yourself out to a richer player. Seriously. The game has tons of potential, but the tech problems along with the culture they seem to foster turned me completely off from it.
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.
It amazes me how much power players are willing to give to people who have no sense of due process. If you've ever been banned from a MMORPG you would know that typically you are not given any access to the evidence against you, the right to confront your accuser, or the chance to respond. Once banned or suspended no-one in the game gets the opportunity to communicate with you. The only way to stay in touch with people who have been banned is via out-of-band messages that typically require giving the anonymity the game supplies. As such not only does banning harm the individual, it harms the friends of the individual and through them the entire community.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Hmmm, yes... and when criminals are put in prison or have to pay fines it damages the entire community... wife, kids, relatives, and so on.
But the damage of letting the crime go unpunished is larger, and I think the same is valid in this virtual case. If he needs to reconnect with his friends he should have other means to contact them with... if they havent exchanged emails at leats by then, they are probably not that tight. So the damage to the society is what... a few guys going "oh noes, my friend did somethign horrible and was PUNISHED...this is so bad. stop punishing people."
No... no.. doesnt fly.
But I do agree that it is annoying that people who get banned are given no acess to evidence, no rigth to defend themselves, or anything. I believe this will have to change, but it will take time. however... if guilty, they will have to be punished. Even if it does "harm the entire community". lesser of two evils, ya know.
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