Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Role Playing (Games) Entertainment Games

Restart, Restore, or Continue Creating Democracy? 154

Posted by michael from the abort-retry-ignore dept.
The Importance of writes "LawMeme's James Grimmelmann, whose work has previously been noted on Slashdot, has written a new piece about virtual life and death in MMORPGs, and what that means for online democracy. Any serious discussion of democracy online that features comments on "The Secret of Monkey Island" has got to be good."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Restart, Restore, or Continue Creating Democracy? More

Restart, Restore, or Continue Creating Democracy?

Comments Filter:

  • 5000 new job (Score:3, Funny)

    by stonebeat.org ( 562495 ) on Friday October 03, 2003 @04:38PM (#7127643) Homepage
    Plus gaming industry created 5000 new jobs last year. How more democratic can we get ;)

  • The key to incumbency (Score:5, Funny)

    by kurosawdust ( 654754 ) on Friday October 03, 2003 @04:38PM (#7127645)
    Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A Select Start

    Re-elected baby!!

  • GROG!!! (Score:2, Funny)

    by ENOENT ( 25325 )
    Hi, I'm Guybrush Threepwood. I want to be a pirate.

  • Keeps me away from online (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Dark Paladin ( 116525 ) * <jhummel.johnhummel@net> on Friday October 03, 2003 @04:43PM (#7127681) Homepage
    I don't mind playing a good LAN party game with people I know, but back when I was pretty good at Quake II, and started to try out MMRPG's like the "Ultima Online" beta, I realized that I just didn't enjoy playing the online games for one simple reason:

    Most of the people online acted like assholes.

    Too often, I'd log into a Quake/Quake II server, and get some punk calling me a MotherF---er because his team was losing at Capture the Flag. I got tired of Ultima Online when, during the beta, some jackass got in the way of the door and wouldn't let me walk out.

    Diablo? Town killed by someone who thought it was fun to use the cheats to kill people.

    On the whole, I tend to like the gamers I know in person and through my writings. But in online games, it seems that there are hordes of people who never learned to act above the age of 12, and need a good kick in the ass - or just never be allowed to play with anyone else online again.

    It's probably the #1 reason why Nintendo still hasn't moved into online gaming in a big way (so far, Sega's Phantasy Star Online is their only online experience) - they don't want Jimmy's parents complaining about how their child got ragged on as a "Pikachu-f---er" during Pokemon Online.

    The author's right - the penalities for "bad" behavior in an online format might work with some who have a community in the game, but for those who just want to be a dickhead, it's hard to do much other than ban them, since they have little emotionally wrapped up in the game.

    Eh - just my opinion, and I could be wrong.
    • > they don't want Jimmy's parents complaining about how their child got ragged on as a "Pikachu-f---er" during Pokemon Online.

      Hey, that's a new one! I like it! Have you been playing Star Wars Galaxies too? :)

    • Basically it comes down to consiquence and conscience. How will people act if they only thing to prevent action is their own consciences?

      The online world has shown the obvious; a good number will act without consideration of their fellows.
      • Yup. Sometimes (not very often, nor for very long) I think I'd be better off if I were a hole all the time. But my conscience is too strong. How strong? If I'm having a bad night playing Enemy Territory and I frag a couple teammates in a row, I'll call a vote to kick myself. Let them decide. It's only actually passed once, but I feel a bit better about it when the vote fails than just saying, "Sorry!" Weird, huh?
        • v, 4, 5, and the resultant "Sorry!" or Esc, click on vote, players, hunt for your name, kick, and inconvinience everyone with a voting prompt.

          Which is less distracting from helping your team complete their objectives just because some clown got in your line of fire?

          It's almost a reflex for me to dismiss complaint against teammates who kill me (because it happens almost as much as the enemy team) because I know they probably didn't mean to; jackasses who sit at the spawn area with a flamethrower sett
          • Inconvenienced by a voting prompt? It's just 2 more lines on an (admittedly already-cluttered) UI, and it requires the press of a button.

            But really the only time I'll do this is if I drop smoke on a group of people, or fire up my flamethrower in close quarters. I habitually dismiss as well, but in situations where I really fucked up and v-4-5 won't cut it, I think calling a vote on myself is more useful than stopping to type, "Sorry, guys, that smoke canister was supposed to go over that wall," or, "Who

    • Great point... this is exactly what the article is alluding to.

      People act like assholes because they can. There is no punishment. If asshole action = death of your character, then the action would stop.

      The author is trying to express that this is why the gaming world loses its balance. If one were to call me a m*therfscker in real life, there are actions that I could take to keep it from happening again.

      However, this is not just in games... it's the internet as a whole! Nice, well-balanced people in
      • I agree except I really don't see a problem with having dual personalities as long as there is accountability.

        If your online persona was persistent and your reputation followed you, not only in game but between games, people would be much more civil.

        I know privacy advocates hate this kind of talk. Any discussion of putting in a trackable number/code in chip, for example, is scoffed at. While I realize how easy it would be to abuse such a system, there are many advantages.

        • I know privacy advocates hate this kind of talk. Any discussion of putting in a trackable number/code in chip, for example, is scoffed at. While I realize how easy it would be to abuse such a system, there are many advantages.

          While there are extremists in every realm, it seems that the most important thing privacy advocates have to say is that you should be able to decide who gets your information, and know exactly how they use it. It's one thing to know that you have a unique identity online, and you ha

        • The big problem privacy advocates have with unique ids CAN be satisfied, the question genetrally comes down to WILL tehy.

          As long as no database exists that can connect an ID number to a particular individual's other information, it's effective anonymety, somewhat like being seen on a crowded street, everyone sees you, nobody knows who you are other than 'the guy in the striped shirt'.

          A unique online ID in a game should be fine as long as it is not used in connection with logging on. That way, the login

      • Right on.

        However, this is not just in games... it's the internet as a whole! Nice, well-balanced people in the real world (tm) will do things in an email, forum, or IM that would normally be out of character for them. Why? Because they can!

        People will act differently online... because there are no consequences to their actions. Until it comes full circle, we will all have duel personalities... our real world one and our online one.

        As an experienced Diablo II player, recently converted to Everquest, I c
    • But in online games, it seems that there are hordes of people who never learned to act above the age of 12

      You do realize that there are hordes of people, on online games, that are in fact not about 12yo, right ?

      I do ocasionally play MMORPGs, expecially The Realm. Out of curiosity, I do ask for other players ages. With very rare exceptions, most are 16 or under.
    • Interesting points.

      Microsoft is in a good position to wield a bigger stick than almost anyone else - they've proven that they can lock consoles out of the "Live" environment. Repeat offenders could theoretically be booted from the network, not just the game.

      I don't know if they're doing that (I don't have an XBox even) but they could, and perhaps that's why they've chosen that route, as opposed to Sony's route, which is to provide the hardware, and let the publishers come up with their own online str
    • This meme about online gamers being dicks is really getting to me. I've been playing online since quakeworld (not the first generation, I know, but older than the majority I suspect), and the opinion I've taken away is that people playing online are generally really nice.

      Every now and then you run into someone having some fun disrupting a game; I can picture plenty of times someone grappled their spy in the exit of the 2fort spawn room on a MegaTF server. But I can also picture plenty of times when peopl
    • The author's right - the penalities for "bad" behavior in an online format might work with some who have a community in the game, but for those who just want to be a dickhead, it's hard to do much other than ban them, since they have little emotionally wrapped up in the game.

      You might be right and you might be wrong. Ask yourself this: What causes similiar bad behavior in the real-world? Most of the time, I've seen it rooted in some desire to draw attention to themselves. Could not this also apply to thos
    • for those who just want to be a dickhead, it's hard to do much other than ban them, since they have little emotionally wrapped up in the game.

      Here's something I've been kicking around... instead of banning the player completly, take a tip from the Amish and just shun them for a time.

      Or rather -- create and impliment a mechanism by which players may forcably be shunned. I suggest something like this:

      The client keeps a list of the top 5-10 other characters that the offending interacts with. These will pro
      • How would you keep the "shun" function from being abused, for example as a quick way to gain invulnerability against a certain player, or group of players?

        Consider this. Player A is fighting a monster. Monster dies and drops a valuable item. Player B teleports in and grabs both items. Player A is helpless to stop him because C has A set to "shun", so he can't hurt him or talk to him.

        The problem as I see it is that the "ghosts" who were shunned would still be able to interact with the game world. By us
        • How would you keep the "shun" function from being abused, for example as a quick way to gain invulnerability against a certain player, or group of players?

          Consider this. Player A is fighting a monster. Monster dies and drops a valuable item. Player B teleports in and grabs both items. Player A is helpless to stop him because C has A set to "shun", so he can't hurt him or talk to him.

          Restraining orders? Player X can't get within fifty distance units of player Y or somthing like that. Maybe have monster'
      • instead of banning the player completly, take a tip from the Amish and just shun them for a time

        At the risk of exposing my geekier gamer roots, Dark Age of Camelot already has something like this. You can type /ignore {playername} and then anything that person says, messages they send you, actions they take that would normally generate a message, etc., are blocked on your screen. It's like being able to hit the mute button on the village idiot. The nice thing is, the system isn't really abusable because it

    • Key to accountability... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by *weasel ( 174362 ) on Friday October 03, 2003 @06:36PM (#7128614)
      ...is karma, visible karma of some type.

      Yes, players need tools. If a game allows a player to build a wall - someone will inevitably trap another player inside a box to torment them.
      So the game needs to allow you to also -break- anything that can be built.

      If a player can lock or block a door, they will find a way to lock another player on the wrong side of the door intentionally. Therefore the game needs to allow you to -push- such barriers.

      the problem of course is that - even with all the right tools, if someone treats you like a complete *sshole, I'll never know it. They could have spent 4 hours trapping people in boxes, and I would treat them like anyone else if I hadn't seen it or happened to be in your immediate circle of friends.

      massmog communities are too loose. Only 10-20% of players on any given server are playing at any one time. the odds of an effective server-wide community notification system are pretty slim.

      So what's a good solution? karma. an aura. perhaps only visible with a skill or spell.
      Every day that a player logs in, they have some karma points to spend on other players. positively or negatively.

      you simply institute a law of diminishing returns, so that no one person or small group of people can give you enough karma to undo the negative karma a large group of people gave you - and there you have it. (probably put an upper cap on the amt of negative or positive karma a single person can give you and weight it)

      you could even make it so that a person with negative karma themselves has their outgoing karma points reduced in 'worth'. so if an indescriminate killer calls you a jerk - it means even less.

      Don't allow karma to gradually return to neutral over time (easily exploited). And most importantly -never- automatically assume any given action in-game is inherently good or bad karma. Leave it up to the players to decide.

      You may have started a pvp fight with another player - but they may have stolen from you, or been hassling you. It could very well be justified. The game code can't possibly know - but a witness could.

      You may likewise have killed a killer - but you could have done it out of greed or malice or an attempt to game the system. If no trustworthy witness deems it 'good', then there's no reason to assume it was.

      The actions themselves can't be coded good or bad (UO's failed notoriety system being the prime example). Only another player has the proper context to interpret that.
      • You're looking for a Whuffie score [craphound.com]. Dorks would not get high Whuffies if done right (until a hack is found, but hopefully it will be made solid, as it can be used as a method for identifying hacks/cracks). I'm not sure if this is the human equivalent to a "pagerank" and therefore subject to recursive raising of the score, but I'll let more awake /.ers debate this.

        I keep finding this story to be more and more relevant as time goes by.
    • You'll find, if you examine the situation without cultural bias ( or at least a reaonsable facsimile of same ) that democracy exhibits a rather peculiar quality.

      To the extent that it is functional it approaches communism asymptotically.

      Why? Very simply because both systems rely heavily on the quality of the mass of people. Read the works of America's founding fathers and you will find they were painfully aware of this. They attempted a loose democracy. It didn't work very well and they had to reform as a
      • "democracies" are really only going to prove long term viable if an unopposable outside force imposes strict rules of behaviour.

        We've got more options online than off, so it's not a given that the best solution for maximizing democracy/freedom/happiness/order would be the same fear/respect of rule of law from some all-powerful (yet somehow benevolent) government.

        There's still hope for other kinds of self-organizing government to emerge online (as long as there's pseudo-accountability for actions). But a

  • Human psycology and online games (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This is very similar to playing on-line poker with virtual money. What's the point of playing poker with virtual money you may ask? Bluffing no longer works, after all. What's the point of playing poker if you cannot bluff because everyone has infinite money? Surprisingly I found that most people DO place value in their online money - and treat it like real money. They want to accumulate as much online money as possible. Why? What's the point? I guess it's the never ending quest to be better than the next g
    • Probably because some of them use it for training for playing real poker with real money. Either with their buddies or on a Vegas Trip. Blowing the virtual money wouldn't be very good practice, would it?
    • Maybe in order to understand mankind, we have to look at the word itself. Mankind. Basically, it's made up of two words - 'mank' and 'ind.' What do these words mean? It's a mystery, and that's why so is mankind.

      (disclaimer: not mine. jack handey.)

  • Gaming is one of my favorite past times... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by greymond ( 539980 ) on Friday October 03, 2003 @04:54PM (#7127774) Homepage Journal
    And I enjoy a good read about games, gaming, nerdy stuff in general. But that article was kind of meatless. Like a soup made of mostly water. I didn't see any profound concepts or ideas or even a point other than, "in games you can die and it's interesting that people can choose to kill or help others in games."

    The blurb on slashdot was MORE interesting than RingTFA - which why people not wasting 15min of their time reading the article will probably mod me down for flaimbate and overrated.
    • Not much to the article, and nothing about democracy. Social issues != democratic issues. Indeed, online game servers are usually run autocratically by the game company.
    • And I enjoy a good read about games, gaming, nerdy stuff in general. But that article was kind of meatless. Like a soup made of mostly water. I didn't see any profound concepts or ideas or even a point other than, "in games you can die and it's interesting that people can choose to kill or help others in games."

      Well, here's my take on it, then, since I seemed to get more out of it than you did:

      Social interaction in multi-player games is forced, by conventions established in single-player games, to have a

  • Penalties (Score:5, Insightful)

    by amplt1337 ( 707922 ) on Friday October 03, 2003 @04:59PM (#7127813) Journal
    This is precisely what happened when I used to mud a lot -- the people who try to go on and act as spoilers are people who convince themselves that they're playing a one-player game, basically; they don't take part in the communities and [usually] view those communities with great disrespect. They convince themselves that the community ties, social ties, and personality ties (created with characters) are unreal, which is why they can feel ok describing the graphic rape of another player and laugh it off as "just a game." They don't have the investment and can't see it the way other players do.

    I think there's a larger point here too -- destructive forces usually come either from outside a community or from someone who has voluntarily withdrawn from that community. People within the friendship network cannot attack that network without attacking part of themselves, and are reluctant to do this. It's why real-world wars occur between groups that don't understand each other or have chosen to disassociate themselves from each other -- a necessary part of the process of "othering."

    And this, like online democracy, is important because people are the same people in different media -- they just have different levels of investment in the community.

    The online world provides us with a model for solving real social problems: don't increase the legal threat of punishment (for that depends on being caught) -- increase people's sense of belonging to a caring community, and threaten their feeling of status in that community if they violate its norms. That's the real way to solve real-life social problems.

    • Re:Penalties (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Dark Lord Seth ( 584963 ) on Friday October 03, 2003 @05:33PM (#7128109) Journal
      This is precisely what happened when I used to mud a lot -- the people who try to go on and act as spoilers are people who convince themselves that they're playing a one-player game, basically; they don't take part in the communities and [usually] view those communities with great disrespect. They convince themselves that the community ties, social ties, and personality ties (created with characters) are unreal, which is why they can feel ok describing the graphic rape of another player and laugh it off as "just a game." They don't have the investment and can't see it the way other players do.

      Oddly enough, I'm one of those people you just decribed, though much more passive in a way. MUDding was a nice thing, I was convinced the internet was a place without power-hungry assholes and various assorted sycophants and MUDding taught me otherwise in the most cruel, devastating and memorable way. 3 years on a MUD has shown me that there simply are NO social or personality ties from mere in game stuff. It's more of a simple aristocracy with some sort of elite ruling class; the people who play the game longer then you, know more admins then you, who met eachother for real unlike you... These kind of people who play the players, not the game, are far worse then those bare few like me who differentiate themselves from emotional ties to net people.

      I've seen the most stupid relationships in MUDs form into real marriages, I've seen MUD disputes rage in real life and cause a divorce, I've seen relationships form, grow, wither and die on MUDs. I've seen betrayal over a silly net relationship, envy over in game objects, hatred because of a simple disagreement and bitterness over petty arguements. I ask you; who is off worse? They who take the internet way too seriously or those like me who simply don't care about net people?

      • well its all a medium of communication. Some time not too long agom the phone was considered a high tech and novel though less than required piece of technology.

        People are people, and any medium in which they are capable of communicating with each other is going to bring out the best and worse in them. I know a guy that droped out of med School at the end of his forth year because EverQuest had become more important than finnishing an education that had taken him more than 8 years including undergrad. Som

  • International relations in a borderless world (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Samir Gupta ( 623651 ) on Friday October 03, 2003 @05:01PM (#7127828) Homepage
    I've always wondered what it would be like in the world if barriers for people to interact with people from other parts of the world, whether geographical or language were removed. Would we actually have world peace if people weren't so "isolated" as they are in the real world? And I believe we may soon find out, via MMORPGs.

    One of the emerging trends that I see coming is the ability for international players to freely communicate and interact with each other, free of language barriers. Nintendo, SEGA, et al. have been working on this problem for quite some time now, and have even started to commercialize it. It's one of the emerging trends in MMORPG game design will create interesting interactions and facilitate global play to a greater extent than is now.

    Some early results can be seen in the GameCube/DreamCast title "Phantasy Star Online" where you can select from a menu of sentence patterns, subjects, objects, etc. We're trying to get it to the point where you can translate free text, without the awkward results that stuff like Babelfish, et al. yield, maybe augmented by a player-aided cache of words and phrases, with dynanmic improvement in translation accuracy using in-game human feedback and machine learning.

    I am really looking forward to the time where international players freely interact -- it will be an interesting sociology experiement to see how national and cultural means, norms and paradigms manifest themselves in a virtual world free of linguistic, political, and physical barriers.
    • To answer your question usually what I've seen are comments while playing TFC/CS that trashes on a country. Usually something like "I hate playing on American servers" or something like that. It seems the attitude is VERY different on foreign servers.

      I don't play on servers outside the U.S. normally. Any ping over 200ms is just unacceptable to me. Hard to frag when you are lagging :-)

      Personally I wish people would calm down and just have fun. I've been in servers where people are just having a blast
    • > I've always wondered what it would be like in the world if barriers for people to interact with people from other parts of the world, whether geographical or language were removed. Would we actually have world peace if people weren't so "isolated" as they are in the real world? And I believe we may soon find out, via MMORPGs.

      Unlikely -- the most important demographic feature of MMORPGers is not their ethnic or national origin, it's that they're self-selecting in their desire to participate in an onlin

    • Uh, no. (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Regardless of what barriers the internet's nature dissolves (color, geography, etc), my observation is that people will simply find or create some other divide to align themselves upon.

      You are currently reading this post on slashdot, a forum dedicated to technology and related issues. Obviously, this is not a place for someone interested in knitting socks. Your interest in slashdot is a kind of communication barrier, as you are unlikely to communicate with someone with interests that do not overlap yours.
    • People who are alone and anonymous in an online setting tend to clump up with people with at least one similar attribute, same as in real life. Just listen in when one player in a game is found out to be French, or German, or Canadian. Why shoot an American when you can shoot a Hungarian? If English isn't your first language, you frequently become a target.

      In Diablo, there were people who would pk (player kill) only Koreans - they had a different character set for typing so it was instantly known who wa

    • Re:International relations in a borderless world (Score:4, Interesting)

      by scalis ( 594038 ) on Friday October 03, 2003 @06:07PM (#7128411) Homepage
      This was an interesting parent I must say.
      I have been running a NeverWinter server for quite some time and my experience is that people (in the Neverwinter community) both act and design their characters in different ways depending on where they live on the globe. Japanese players design their characters in brighter colors than americans or europeans and tend to focus more on modern style social barriers and bonds as opposed to the americans and europeans that focus more on chivalry and physical power/might.
      Asian players focus their plotting and consipiracy around honor and personal issues while americans and europenas focus more on power, greed and [acted] jealousy.
      I am NOT saying this is the way things really are, just that this is what I, filled with my own values and prejudice, have noticed. I'd love to hear from others what their experiences are when dealing with different people playing out characters of their own choice.

      Also, the surrounding settings and overall design of the game definitely affects how the players will relate to each other and act in the game. As a little note to my parent poster i'd like to say that I think this would definitely have a great impact on any social experiment and conclusions drawn from it...
      The idea to remove the language barrier would ofcourse be a welcome addition to the online gaming community as far as I am concerned and I wish you all the best in trying.

    • Gupta is a troll (Score:5, Informative)

      by ChaosDiscord ( 4913 ) on Friday October 03, 2003 @06:47PM (#7128737) Homepage Journal

      Quoth Gupta's signature (just in case he changes it):

      Samir Gupta, Ph.D New Technology Research Department Nintendo Co, Ltd. Kyoto, Japan

      Gupta is an old troll. He's pretty good at generating a combination of techno-babble and plausible facts, but he sure as hell isn't really involved in Nintendo research.

      Mind you, sometimes he's actually posts interesting ideas, but he claims that his ideas represent current Nintendo research. If any of his claims do match Nintendo actions, it's only by accident or external research by the author; it's not based on inside information.

      I suspect Gupta gets a kick out of knowing that he is misleading people, "Look, they all believe I work at Nintendo and am privy to secrets, aren't I clever."

      Apparently Gupta is getting lazy, this post is just a copy of his post from last month [slashdot.org]. (At the very least, this duplication should earn him a "Redundant") And that post is an almost word-for-word retrend of one of his posts from July [slashdot.org].

      Some classic Gupta for comparison. Some of his technobabble can be hard to sort through if you're not familiar with the field.

      • Clustering GameCubes [slashdot.org] - No, GameCubes are not a terribly good system for doing clustering with, anyone doing so is doing it on a lark, not as real work.
      • Some strange ideas on reducing crashes [slashdot.org] - One of the goals of an operating system is to reduce the impact of a crash or malicious code, running everything at the highest level doesn't really gain you stability. Catching a NULL pointer dereference is handy, but recovering from it is nearly impossible; anything that caused a null pointer dereference this frame is likely going to cause it again next frame.
      • GameCubes have Zen Buddhist design [slashdot.org] - Ummmm, right. There is nothing like a bright purple box to "fitting into the big picture without standing out."
      • Nintendo is excited about Peer-To-Peer game distribution [slashdot.org], odd that the only real reference is on Slashdot.
    • I've always wondered what it would be like in the world if barriers for people to interact with people from other parts of the world, whether geographical or language were removed.

      "Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation." -- Douglas Adams

  • There is no real democracy anywhere.

    [insensitive clod]The US of A is a Democratic Republic.[/insensitive clod]

    Democracy is inherently evil and results in Mob Rule. A republic provides a much more civilized way of tempering mood swings of the public.
    • "Democracy is inherently evil"

      You seem to have a rather negative view of people. The fact is, I'd rather have Mob Rule than Elite rule, which is what we (oh so Ameri-centric, I know) have right now. I can talk to the mob.

      Places that have attempted real and wide-spread democracy (not just in government, but elsewhere, in schools [edrev.org], workplaces, etc.) have had pretty fair success. Granted, the best example I can think of right now is maybe the Zapatistas in Chiapas (though there are plenty of others, Paris
      • I am a Libertarian. Which means that man's rule over another should be STRICTLY LIMITED. Imagine where people were responsible for their actions, AND took responsibility for their actions?

        The problem is, most Sheeple are happy to be told exactly what to do, what to think, where to go, taking NO responsibility for their own lives.

        The Patriot Act is the result of a Government that has over stepped its bounds. Just as bad as the proposed Heathcare Takeover by the Clintons. Both are different symptoms of the
        • And what is it that creates "sheeple" and ingnorant mobs? The government designed and run public education system. The goverment PREFERS this, it designed our education system for this. If people learned to think for themselves while they learn other stuff in school, our country would be a much better place. Currently they are taught conformity and how to follow blindly. We must reform our education to improve the efficacy of our current system.
          • There is a fine example of where the Republicrats agree and there is no difference between them (as in most issues). They Both believe in supporting the government indoctrination system called Public Education.

            The sad thing is, most KIDS know what school is really about, except they don't have the capability to express it correctly. This is why schools pretty much SUCK these days.

            They don't teach reading, writing or Math. They teach social conformity. Most people don't realize that their kids are being in
      • "The fact is, I'd rather have Mob Rule than Elite rule, which is what we (oh so Ameri-centric, I know) have right now. I can talk to the mob."

        Socrates tried that, but Athens democratically voted to make him drink the hemlock anyway.

        Democracy is all well and good, but it isn't a panacea and it is dangerous to use it as such.

  • Equality in games (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Stalyx ( 633692 )
    Democracy is not the reason why most games fail, its due to the lack of socialism. In every single online game I have played, I have seen a sharp division between the "leets" and the "noobs". The so called elite players will do their level best to create a social system that is beneficial to themselves, whilst the noobs quit in disgust due to the inequality. The very nature of PvP is that the strong survive and the weak find other games.

    Now since the problem has been identified, whats the solution? Some
    • The way to create that socialism is to make numbers count in PvP. that way the noobs can gang up on the leets.

      How do you think socialism works in the real world???? I would say though that unlike the real world noobs can leave a MUD. They may never achieve critical mass to overthrow their oppressors.

  • LucasArts had a GREAT philosophy (Score:4, Interesting)

    by g_adams27 ( 581237 ) on Friday October 03, 2003 @05:20PM (#7127989)
    I remember the exact scene the author describes, with Guybrush Threepwood falling off a cliff, the dreaded "YOU HAVE DIED! Restore/Restart/Quit?" box appearing briefly, only to disappear as Guybrush boooiiings back onto the cliff ("Rubber Tree"). And even though I was only 14 or so, I knew exactly what it was - a satire of Sierra On-Line's games.

    I know exactly when I starting hating the programmers at Sierra On-Line. It was Space Quest 2. You crash onto a planet and begin looking around for a way to escape. Only problem is that every single thing on that planet is trying to kill you. Let's see, I think I'll walk over here... oops! Didn't see those faint dotted lines that marked a trap door over a spike pit! Here's a maze of vines I have to carefully manuever, pixel by pixel with the keyboard arrows... whooops! I touched a vine, and now the plant is eating me! Hmmmmm, I wonder if I should take some of these berries to eat. Nope! I guess my convulsing, and now dead body indicates I shouldn't have!

    But here's the worst puzzle on that planet - every single tree is too slippery to climb except for one which has a slightly different description, indicating you can probably climb it. So you type "climb tree" and guess what? Roger Wilco gets his hands and feet stuck on the tree, critters descend from the tree limbs, and eat him.

    GAAAAHHHHHHH!! Not only did Sierra On-line games kill you for making a wrong move - they killed you for doing something entirely logical! End result? You creep through the game with a trembling hand, expecting death at every step, stabbing the "Save" key every 30 seconds or so.

    LucasArts was a breath of fresh air. In "The Secret of Monkey Island" there was only one way to die. One! You had to be foolish enough to stay underwater for more than twenty minutes. And in "Monkey Island 2" you couldn't die at all!

    And even better, you couldn't do anything in either game to permanently ruin your chances of winning. What's that, you forgot to read the combination at the beginning of the game in Space Quest? Too bad for you, when you need it 10 hours later! Hope you saved that game! But what's that, you insulted Governer Elaine Marley so much that she threw you out of her room in the mansion of "Monkey Island 2"? No problem! Go back in and she'll sigh and give you another chance! Try all the funny conversation choices! It's OK, you can always do the right thing later!

    Of course certain LucasArts games had elements of risk (you could kill Indy in "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" if you weren't a good fighter), but for the most part their philosophy was "Explore - solve - have fun! Don't worry about trying different things - you can't mess anything up permanently."

    Which, IMHO, made for a much more fun adventuring experience than wondering if you're die the very second you step onto the next screen because you wandered out into the desert one screen too far. Thank you so much, Sierra On-Line.

    • But isn't this really indicitive of a societal problem? You have grown up in a culture that has ingrained upon you that there are no consequences to your actions, and as a result, you prefer games that reflect this. You can play games like GTA where you can do whatever you want, explore every angle, and do things that would get you jailed in real life. Meanwhile, new online gamers have no respect for any of their opponents, and online boards are full of trash talk, elitism, & self-importance. In gam
      • You have grown up in a culture that has ingrained upon you that there are no consequences to your actions, and as a result, you prefer games that reflect this.

        I don't necessarily think this is true. In some cases, yes, it is... but let's remember that games are, for the most part, escapism. The more like our real lives they are, the less "fun" they are. Why should I play a game that forces me to concentrate super hard on every move, not knowing where the traps are, if I can just go upstairs and have a
      • > But isn't this really indicitive of a societal problem? You have grown up in a culture that has ingrained
        > upon you that there are no consequences to your actions, and as a result, you prefer games that reflect this.

        I don't think so - I mean, I was in my early teens and mom/dad certainly made sure I was painfully aware of the consequences when I did something wrong in real life. I think it was more an issue of deciding, "do I want to play a game that includes at least one way of dying on every

    • Not only did Sierra On-line games kill you for making a wrong move - they killed you for doing something entirely logical! End result? You creep through the game with a trembling hand, expecting death at every step, stabbing the "Save" key every 30 seconds or so.

      Man have I got the perfect game [nethack.org] for you!
    • I remember that Zak McCraken and the Alien Mindbenders had plenty of ways to spoil your chances. (For example, you could "burn" any paper with the lighter and then the object would be gone..forever!) Maniac Mansion was the same way but not quite as bad (you could kill your characters with maybe 5 or 10 different methods, but you really had to TRY to accomplish this.) Thankfully, Day of the Tentacle (one of the greatest games ever created!) did not have this limitation.

  • Action and Reaction (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Daedalus4096 ( 710310 ) on Friday October 03, 2003 @05:22PM (#7128016)
    Personally, I think this guy has hit the nail on the head. Most people (or at least most people I know) log into online games so that they can get away from the general lousiness of the real world, if only for a time, and to do it anonymously. They do, however, expect or at least hope that general civility will be maintained in this alternate reality. But without consequences for one's actions, how can that possibly come about?

    If I were to go up to some random person on the street and call him some of the things that I've been called online, even some of the tamer things, they'd knock my ass out. That, however, would be the least of my worries. If I were to perform this action on a regular basis, word would very quickly spread about my rude behavior and soon nobody would want to have anything to do with me. It would take a long time to repair that damage to my reputation.

    When somebody is online, however, they generally feel that they can behave like that as much as they want. What's anybody going to do about it, after all? If people ostracize you socially, you can just log out and come back when the heat dies down. Worst case: create a new account and start over. In real life, not only can people not escape punishment like that, we also have harsher measures to deal with them, like restraining orders, fines, and prisons. You can't just leave whenever you feel like it. If you could, the whole system would fall apart.

    • And the better online games provide tools for the community to police themselves with.

      And these tools don't even have to be tools per se... they can be something as simple as needing to depend on another player to get from point A to B quickly.

      Other games attempt to depend on a police force of some sort... and there's never a cop around when you need one.

  • I don't agree... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MarcoAtWork ( 28889 ) on Friday October 03, 2003 @05:24PM (#7128034)
    a painless execution is the absolute worst punishment any game society can impose on the characters who are its citizens. Torture is not an option. Imprisonment and fines can be imposed, true, but as soon as the player behind the character finds that these punishments are too onerous, she can simply terminate her account

    I don't agree, actually IMHO 'virtual jail' -is- the worst possible punishment if implemented properly: while you are sentenced you

    - can't create new identities or log in as a different character (assuming they're all in your name in terms of billing) for as long as the sentence lasts

    - can't just leave the computer on and walk away, the sentence time would go down only if you are performing some action (ideally not fun, say, playing tic-tac-toe games with the computer which is not easily scriptable and really boring: every move gives you, say, 5 seconds off your sentence).

    - can't chat with fellow players or move about, you'd be put in a virtual cell in a virtual prison.

    Also I really can't figure out why MMPORGs don't implement police/jails etc. after all you could have all the various dynamics that currently exist in society (punishment for crimes, opportunities for people who like to play cops/guards, risk/reward for trying to organize a breakout, risk/reward for accepting bribes etc. etc. etc.)

    If you delete the player account somebody will just recreate a new one and, helped by their guild, fairly rapidly regain lost levels/items: a sentence of, say, 40 hours of jail (tic-tac-toe) would be much worse, don't you think?
    • If you delete the player account somebody will just recreate a new one and, helped by their guild, fairly rapidly regain lost levels/items: a sentence of, say, 40 hours of jail (tic-tac-toe) would be much worse, don't you think?

      What's the difference? How many people will go through 40 hours of "jail" rather than just start a new account? People who get into that kind of trouble rarely start out with any kind of respect for the game systems. They will see "jail" as another thing for them to cheat, explo
      • How many people will go through 40 hours of "jail" rather than just start a new account?

        I don't think you understood my post: if you have a jail sentence you would not be ALLOWED to start a new account (after all the billing information would stay the same). Your only options would be to either serve the sentence or to stop playing the game altogether. If you cancelled the account and tried to reopen a new one you would still have your jail sentence to go through as well.

        Also you'd obviously implement so

        • Re:I don't agree... (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Ironica ( 124657 )
          I don't think you understood my post: if you have a jail sentence you would not be ALLOWED to start a new account (after all the billing information would stay the same).

          So what you're actually doing is jailing the credit card number, not the person.

          What if everyone in the family has an account, using the same number? Do they all get jailed when little Timmy thinks harrassment is fun?

          How do you prevent a bigger Timmy from borrowing his friend's info? People do that anyway when they don't have a credit

          • Re:I don't agree... (Score:3, Interesting)

            by MarcoAtWork ( 28889 )
            So what you're actually doing is jailing the credit card number, not the person.

            I would hope that the person doesn't give their c/c number to everybody... in any case I'd jail the person+address, not the c/c number (as they could have more than one c/c). This obviously implies that to subscribe to 'my' MMPORG you'd have to give out your real contact information.

            What if everyone in the family has an account, using the same number? Do they all get jailed when little Timmy thinks harrassment is fun?

            the w

            • Re:I don't agree... (Score:3, Interesting)

              by Ironica ( 124657 )
              I would hope that the person doesn't give their c/c number to everybody... in any case I'd jail the person+address, not the c/c number (as they could have more than one c/c). This obviously implies that to subscribe to 'my' MMPORG you'd have to give out your real contact information.

              So, your account wouldn't activate until you'd responded with the code they mailed you to your home address? So you could verify that you gave out real contact information?

              the whole family wouldn't be jailed, only Timmy's c
              • So, your account wouldn't activate until you'd responded with the code they mailed you to your home address? So you could verify that you gave out real contact information?

                obviously the account would be activated via an online signup page (instant gratification and all that) but it would be marked as 'unverified' and if the person doesn't register with the code they received in the mail, it will be automatically suspended after, say, 30 days. For infractions done by 'unverified' accounts there would be no
  • SCUMM (LucasArts) games are bound by a certain number of possible actions you can take. All of those actions are predestined to succeed or fail. You can't "think outside of the box" in these games. If the writer of the game doesn't want you to use the pickaxe on the dog, then forget it. MMORPGs are much more open. Even games like Quake allow for more flexibility. Take Rocket Jumping for example.
    • It's still a pain. I hate when my character can't step over a fence that reaches to its knees, crawl through a hole where you don't fit while crouching, can't knock out the enemy, tie him up and explain the misunderstanding without killing, break any (arbitrary) wall with explosives or pickaxe (loved that in Moria) or use anything not available in the game engine.

      Rocketjump was pretty much a bug. (I'm pretty sure nobody at ID thought to implement it as a feature. It became one much later)

      Pencil&Paper
      • Pencil&Paper RPG still rock.

        Absolutely true, and given that MMORPGs are descended from them, it's surprising that the author of the article didn't make any reference to them. One would think that considering what makes PnP RPGs work where their MMO descendants fail would be quite valuable.

  • Why online games suck (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fluxrad ( 125130 ) on Friday October 03, 2003 @05:24PM (#7128042)
    Abstraction.

    Ever notice people in their cars waiting in line are a hell of a lot more rude than people *standing* in line? Same principle...when people feel abstracted from the rest of the people around them they tend to give in to whim and emotion to a greater degree.

    But that's not going to change. The only interesting question (which was not, interestingly enough, brought up by this article) is "Will the internet decay into a shithole completely devoid of personal accountability or will it slowly evolve into a place where people realize that everyone they're chatting with have feelings too"?

    I'm rooting for the latter, but it's too soon to tell.
    • Neither really... Because the people behind the internet won't evolve either way, and I'm not sure there's a human acceptable solution to change the situation that causes a large lack of consiquences on the internet.

      Decent people have been dealing with Lamers for millenia.
    • The only interesting question (which was not, interestingly enough, brought up by this article) is "Will the internet decay into a shithole completely devoid of personal accountability or will it slowly evolve into a place where people realize that everyone they're chatting with have feelings too"?

      The article definitely did bring this up in the final example with Second Life. They point out that the community participation made people feel more satisfied with the outcome of the taxation issue, even when
  • Train to zone!!!!!!!!!
  • I played Asheron's Call [asheronscall.com] for 3 years as a 'hardcore' player (40+ hours a week). Played in multiple worlds, and I played with a lot of people. In the PvP world (Darktide), the entiriry of your life was pure Chaos. High level players would sit in the 'newbie' towns and just kill newbs repeatedly. The only way out was to have another high level friend escort you away from everyone else.

    On the 'normal' servers, it was totally different. True you had your jerks / scammers etc, but for the most part, people helped each other out. I was in one of the largest guilds for the world for a couple years (even sat on the executive board) and it was interesting to see the dynamic as users pulled resources together to buy the guilds mansion (you honestly couldn't support a mansion without a largish group to donate resources). People in the guild helped each other out on missions, on getting upgrades in armor and spells, and everyone benefitted.

    Everyone's experience in the online world is different, but for the most part people will surprise you.
    • Long-time AC player here too. Asheron's Call had a pretty good community there for awhile. The mostly PVP-free nature of the game helped out a lot I think. If people find it extremely difficult to really hurt one another in a meaningful way, then chances are the griefers will really not get a lot of enjoyment out of it, and will go elsewhere...

      PVP can be really enjoyable when done right. But it is so hard to get it right. Even the slightest flaw in an otherwise good PVP implementation will be exploited so
  • I know Im an asshole for doing this, but when I am playing an online game I try to be the most obnoxious person possible. I play warcraft3, 3v3 and just buy shredders...steal my teamates wood, then start calling them names for bening dumb enough to team up with me. On some of the custom maps in starcraft you can build invincible buildings, so I spend all my time covering the map with them...so no one else can build. I am definetely part of the problem, but I wouldnt stick out compared to everyone else.
  • On the re-election poster for Governor Marley on the dock house on Melee Island: "When there's only one candidate, there's only one choice."

    (Is it scary I remember that and haven't played the game in 6+ years?)

  • The Essential Problem with MMORPGs (Score:3, Insightful)

    by CodeBuster ( 516420 ) on Friday October 03, 2003 @06:34PM (#7128596)
    The essential problem with all current MMORPGs is not that players cannot be punished effectively, but rather that the companies which host these games do not enforce their own policies against bad behavior. They do not enforce them because they have a vested financial interest in maintaining as many paying customers as possible over the expected lifetime of the game. This is the same reasoning process that companies go through when they decide that the privacy policy is less important than the revenue which could be generated by selling the information in violation of the "Privacy Policy" or "Mission Statement". Thus, the game company is likely to adopt policies which never completely satisfy any one faction of players, but which also never alienate them quite enough to give up what they have already "invested" in the game either. In this manner they continue to receive a stream of monthly payments from the largest possible audience of players/subscribers with the least possible amount of work in maintenance, administration, etc...

    The best solution, in my humble opinion, involves the players as a stakeholder in the long terms success of the game not just by granting in game rewards, but rather by dividing the real world ownership of the company that administers the game among the players who support it. The effect of shareholder ownership and market forces would necessarily isolate and eliminate those players who choose to be jerks from continuing to harass the majority of the remaining players, only this time, since the players are owners the enforcement would have teeth. As the article stated, the main problem now is deterrence of bad behavior and the problem exists because of inadequate enforcement due to corporate conflict of interest.
  • Was I the only one that read, "Run/Stop - Restore" in the headline?

    What's really weird is that I'm an Atari person, but I still remember that.

  • The irony of ironies relating to MMORPGs is that most people play to escape the mundane, hamster-wheel-like existence of real life. Who doesn't yearn to escape the real world, where you're constantly bombarded with messages that you're inadequate and less-resourceful than everyone else? Who doesn't dream of being a valiant warrior or explorer with great riches and power? The lure of MMORPGs is that you can be whatever you want to be in this fantasy world.

    The problem is, the games have become so complex

Slashdot Top Deals

Anyone can make an omelet with eggs. The trick is to make one with none.

Close