The Institute for the Future looks like the kind of place that ordinary academics can only dream of hanging out at. And they have a blog, called Future Now. One of their Research Directors, Alex Pang has posted an essay called Sheriffs of Norrath where he asks about the laws of virtual worlds. He even references us. Lordy.
"...there are currently three big legal issues being raised by these massive games: How do you enforce real-world laws against theft or fraud when they apply to digital goods? How do you create legal systems that operate in these online worlds? and finally, Who really owns this property?"
I'm particularly interested in others' thoughts on these issues, especially issue two. How do you create legal systems that operate in these worlds? Or perhaps the logically prior question, do we need to create these legal systems at all?
Personally, this is one of the features that I am really excited to see in action in SWG player cities. I think that /ban and /tax get you 80% of what legal systems do. At the same time I think that /voteout will be the preferred method of political griefing in the very near future.
I have often found it interesting that MMOGs do a pretty good job with providing members of their communities with a venue to exercise most of the rights in the first and second amendments of the US Bill of Rights. I have also found it very interesting how much trouble they have with the other eight.
I think most of the problems stem back to the fact that while VWs look like public spaces, more likely they are private areas, if for no other reason than the fact that developers reserve the right to deny access to anyone.
My guess is that the most natural way to create legal systems in MMOGs is by simply extending control of virtual landscapes to individuals (or groups of individuals) and equipping them with /ban and /tax.
How an individual (or group of individuals) then decides to set the conditions and-or prerequisites for being /ban'ed or /tax'ed will allow any number of a thousand different types of legal systems to be developed.
I also think its natural to think that the privileges of /ban and /tax will be abused by individuals. Most likely they will, but I hardly think to the extent that most would suspect. In fact, the easiest way to balance things out is to require advanced notice of all policy changes and make it as easy as possible for residences in these given landscapes to vote with their feet. The easier it is for them to pack-up every last thing they own and move it to the other side of the galaxy, the harder the various landscape operators will try to keep residents happy.
This system of balance is certainly working for the industry as a whole. Not many reasons why it wouldn't work inside the virtual worlds themselves.
Posted by: Bruce Boston | Oct 09, 2003 at 02:18
To partially repeat what I noted in an earlier post, it seems to me that the issues behind any form of normative control is that one has differential sanctions and that:
- For a significant element of the population the cost of a sanction must be:
- - sufficiently high that it deters the action
- - lower than the cost of leaving the world all together
- Sanctions must be enforceable – this implies the whole of a system of detection, justice and application of sanctions.
I think that the key point in getting this all of the ground is that the cost of leaving a virtual world or some part thereof must be sufficiently high.
As virtual worlds are gratuitous-communities this will take time to emerge and my never mature in the kind of virtual worlds we have now, but there is a start. Systems can and do operate at a low level i.e. intra and inter-guild \ clan, and its probably the case that whole-world and cross-world systems will emerge from anti-griefing practices. As noted previously I think that Nozick’s state of nature story about mutual protection societies is very useful here.
Ren
www.renreynolds.com
Posted by: Ren | Oct 09, 2003 at 04:12
I have been upset when MMORPGs "reset" a world back to normal after a hacker attack that devastates that world. Those events become part of the legend of that game, and to simply erase it is disrepectful. Yes, correct the hole that allowed it to happen, and yes, punish those that did it, but don't just reset.
Crime and evil is part of the game, and if the game administrators are not clever, fast enough, or just lack the resources to control the universe they created, then maybe they shouldn't be the ones running it.
Posted by: Mikey | Oct 09, 2003 at 12:10
With regard to this subject...
It occurred on 11-13-2002 in Gludio server which is one of 48 servers of the Lineage.
It was just a squabble between two gamers at first.
A group of gamers took the mickey out of a gamer by call him 'cripple'.
then the gamer who is called 'cripple' confessed that in reality he is crippled.
Nonetheless,they inveighed against him & PKed him.
In a short time, the news along with screenshots were posted at bulletin boards like "playforum.net" the biggest gamers' community site in Korea
It triggered in-game massive rally unexampled.
Even the gamers of the other severs voluntarily
logged in Gludio, the protestors sieged the hideout of the injurers.
The number of protestor amount to 3000.
They also demanded NCsoft take proper & prompt action.
After all, NCsoft looked into the case and distrained the account of the two injurers and the situation was controlled.
Posted by: Unggi Yoon | Oct 09, 2003 at 12:22
Thanks for the note.
"He even references us." Shamelessly appropriates, more like it.
Posted by: Alex Pang | Oct 09, 2003 at 15:28
FWIW, in SWG we are intentionally making cities *not* be gated communities despite the demand from the playerbase that they be allowed to decide who can live in their city. The reason is that we want to drive participation in the cities by folks who aren't necessarily friends, and create some degree of politicking and tolerance (or not).
There's several unofficial ways that they can still make it "gated" so to speak, though, such as harassment. Should be interesting. :P
Posted by: Raph Koster | Oct 09, 2003 at 16:29
Wish, on the other hand, is explicitly *not* democratic or egalitarian, all power over player-held towns will essentially be held by the leader of the controlling guild, as absolute dictator. He can abdicate, either explicitly by selecting a replacement or implicitly by not logging in for a long enough period, and he can delegate power to whatever extent he desires (except for the power to delegate). But other than that, he's pretty much lord of his domain.
Inequality of domains is pretty much hard-coded as well, bigger towns will have built in economic advantages over smaller ones.
Part of this is an aesthetic decision (we're theoretically reproducing an early medievalist feudal power structure), partly it's simply for simplification. Whether and how to respond to the demands of the people is up to him.
Of course, there's probably all sorts of implicit political statements buried in there.
--Dave
Posted by: Dave Rickey | Oct 09, 2003 at 17:03
Eventually I believe laws will appear, set forth by congress and/or states, that are directly intended for, and apply to, virtual worlds. As more and more people become emotionally and/or economically tied to these worlds, government will have to do something to create a set of guidelines/laws. Virtual worlds and games are growing at a rapid rate, and are expected to grow exponentially as more and more people acquire broadband and log in to these worlds. At some point, the government will have to take notice and will, no doubt, take some sort of action.
I'll admit that I am extremely scared on what could happen if the government starts to meddle in VW laws. We have this wonderful, thriving community of players, researchers, professionals, and developers working their butts off to make these worlds an extremely rich, exciting, and rewarding experience. Hopefully when the government *does* decide to step through the door, they won't bring this whole community crashing down around them.
Posted by: Bart | Oct 09, 2003 at 17:21
In Korea, there is Two major MMOG publishers.
One is NCsoft famous for Lineage,
The other is Nexon for Nexus, the kingdom of the wind(which is proud of world first commercial MMORPG, it's born in 1997), Legend of Darkness,Tactical Commanders etc.
The Two company have a same root, cause NCsoft is diverged from Nexon.
With the Tactical Commanders, Nexon make an experiment about in-game Government system including President election, cabinet organization, taxation, vote of nonconfidence etc.
Now, Mabinogi, a Nexon's promising new MMORPG being closed beta test,considering setting up a court system which control in-game conflict, and I'm involved in the matter.
To animate Virtual World own autonomy, I favoe the element of unwritten law, jury system in Common Law. (While, the real legal system in Korea is based on Civil Law)
Posted by: Unggi Yoon | Oct 10, 2003 at 00:29
Unggi --
> Now, Mabinogi, a Nexon's promising new MMORPG being closed beta test,considering setting up a court system which control in-game conflict, and I'm involved in the matter.
That is amazing... Please tell me what prior models, if any, you're looking at for this, and whether you're looking at MMOPRGs -- and I'd love to hear further posts about issues you encounter in setting this up. This project is obviously right on point with the concerns of this weblog.
> To animate Virtual World own autonomy, I favoe the element of unwritten law, jury system in Common Law. (While, the real legal system in Korea is based on Civil Law)
And this is well beyond amazing -- it literally gave me chills to read it. That's absolutely fascinating, given Korea's civil law status.
I assume you're suggesting here that common law systems are both 1) more animated (meaning they are more dynamic, they evolve more quickly, they're more entertaining for participants), and 2) that common law systems are better attuned to the emergence of law in these spaces, because they promote more direct input into law-making by the governed.
Posted by: Greg Lastowka | Oct 10, 2003 at 10:06
Unggi: "To animate Virtual World own autonomy, I favoe the element of unwritten law, jury system in Common Law. (While, the real legal system in Korea is based on Civil Law)"
As Greg notes, this is amazing, though once you get past the geographical double-take, I guess it's not so surprising. As law and economics theorists have suggested for ages, the common law provides a competitive advantage over civil systems by being extremely reactive to social change. In VW/MMORPGs there is the additional aspect of developers being loathe to create formal governmental/political institutions. So in the absence of these institutions, who would create the civil law? You have to have common law within the world itself.
In this vein I'm very interested in Raph's comment: "...in SWG we are intentionally making cities *not* be gated communities despite the demand from the playerbase that they be allowed to decide who can live in their city. The reason is that we want to drive participation in the cities by folks who aren't necessarily friends, and create some degree of politicking and tolerance (or not)."
Can I ask Raph why you want politicking? It seems always to lead to political actions against the developers (see LambdaMOO, Second Life, etc) when there are problems. In the end, the users see the problems not as problems caused by their interactions, but as ones created by the developers. Why would you generate this sort of grief for yourself.
Reminds me of Agent Smith's discussion of the first instance of The Matrix, where the Machines made a perfectly happy world but humans couldn't tolerate it...
Posted by: Dan Hunter | Oct 10, 2003 at 12:31
"Can I ask Raph why you want politicking?"
Because he is building a game. And politics is a game. It's not serious, it's just all good fun. A big goofy laugh riot. A joy to watch, and even more fun to participate in.
And if you don't believe this, you need to spend some time in California.
Posted by: Edward Castronova | Oct 10, 2003 at 12:50
I'd also be interested in hearing Raph's rationale for city governance (and Dave's rationale for his different model), but I would also like to hear from Raph (if it can be disclosed) if UO had similar marketing concerns re PK'ing -- I got the feeling (from looking at some of Raph's old comments) that the initial decision to not prevent PK'ing was about facilitating the emergence of societies and governance in these spaces. Dan and I suggested in our paper that LambdaMOO could undertake that kind of experiment, but it was unlikely that for-profit corporations would be inclined to foment in-game emergence of law.
I get the feeling, though, that Raph thinks some degree of political voice undergirds participant investments in these games and simply makes for a better game. So lofty notions of virtual governance may not be as oppositional to market success as one might think. This accords with what Unggi has posted.
Posted by: Greg Lastowka | Oct 10, 2003 at 12:54
The chief problem with setting up real virtual world (that is NOT an oxymoron!) governance is one most games have avoided: there must be real penalties. This means not only incarceration of a sort, but a "death penalty" in a virtual sense that matters. As long as a player can create another account and come back (as his own ghost, as it were) to continue wrecking havoc, penalties are meaningless.
Yes, most have in place banning systems executed by game management, but the players creating the govenment need this sort of power or their government is a sham.
This sort of penalty is contingent on non-anonymity in virtual worlds. There has to be real authentication of a more robust sort than even online banking employs today. Giving someone else a user ID and password is just too easy. With this blame passes or is diluted, or cast into doubt. We don't have to connect character to real world names and addresses in game, but we need to tie them to specific individuals in such a way that there is some confidence that problem players (always players matter, even if in theory only characters in game should) can be identified and removed permanently, if need be.
Speaking of Nexon, though, I played their English-language game, Dark Ages, for quite a while. That had a lawmaking system and mostly player-run government, including enforcement (at the character level, if not at the player level). It was very interesting. I participated at various times as lawmaker, and enforcement official. The DA library has a host of player(-character) written material on the subjects of making laws and related topics. Creating this sort of thing was a prerequisite of entering the political stage to any serious degree. It did prevent a lot of the easy abuse of the system by vesting players (and their characters) in the system before allowing them to tamper with it. That was a bit of a logistics problem for game management, wading through all the submissions, but it was also a pretty interesting way to tackle the problem of how to at least make the griefers a part of the system in which they were griefing. The bad guys were mostly bad guys in context. They were serious players seeking to tamper with local government in such a way that they increased their own power and decreased that of others, rather than just inflicting petty pain on others (though there's always some of that).
Posted by: Dan Scheltema | Oct 10, 2003 at 13:19
Brief note to Dan S.: As I understand it, only one commercial game gives banning authority to players: A Tale In The Desert (which is explicitly a politically oriented game). Specifically, players can elect a "Demi-Pharoah" who has the power to ban one account. I don't know if any Demi-Pharoah has ever used that power, or even been elected.
To Greg: The rationale is two-fold:
1) We're explicitly trying to create a specific social environment with dynamics similar to that of pre-Charlemagne feudalism (with NPC's playing the part of the serfs).
2) When you start giving groups of players control of limited community resources, many "tragedy of the commons" type questions are raised. Who is responsible for ensuring those resources are distributed to the benefit of the group, rather than being hostage to everyone's good behaviour? Who gives that person the authority? Yes, all of these are solvable by democratic means, but dictatorship is easier to code.
Benign dictatorships aren't neccessarily bad, if "right of departure" is guaranteed and the dictator depends on the rest of the group to function effectively. A benign dictator can be restrained to use gentle political methods through neccessity, without raising all the "Who decides who decides who decides?" questions. Wish will have extensive capability for House leaders to delegate authority, and a town will be impossible to maintain without delegation.
--Dave
Posted by: Dave Rickey | Oct 10, 2003 at 16:24
Yes, A Tale in the Desert gives players that right under those conditions (I played that for a few months, a lot of interesting ideas in that one). The fear of that power had kept demi-pharoah a theoretical position in live, last I heard. I haven't kept up the last month or so. But the crowd of players there was not representative of the usual crowd. Since there is no combat, those with a taste for PvP stay away mostly. It is from the PvP crowd that a lot of the more disruptive griefers arise. (No, a lot of PvPers are very responsible players, but the sort that likes to cause pain in others is drawn naturally to an environment where inflicting virtual death is the object, so they end up in the general PvP group.)
A lot of the tragedy of the commons sort of dilemmas are/were occurring in ATITD. It's an interesting combination of push and pull between solo and group activities. Along with those conflicts, there are real resource issues (like the first discoverers of gold, and how they monopolize and/or manage that asset). There are huge research projects done as communities. If everyone participates, everyone gets the benefits faster, but if some work on their own projects, they gain a leg up for the next step... etc.
The game promotes social play in the way it manipulates goals, but at the same time an enlightened self-interest which keeps one from overcommitting to a group or groups is probably a better long-term strategy.
Posted by: Dan Scheltema | Oct 10, 2003 at 17:57
I think everything I was going to say has been said. :) So you get to live with cryptic statements.
1) Check out Dark Ages. Seriously. Also search for posts by Dave Kennerly on MUD-Dev regarding Dark Ages.
2) Not gated because I hate cliques. I dislike elitism. It's a political statement on my part.
3) Not gated because homogeneity is not resistant to outside stresses.
4) Not gated because I want tough calls to be on players' shoulders and I want them to have consequences.
5) Yes, PvP in UO was there in large part so that players had recourse to forms of punishment, of defense, etc. A system where any group can just ban or block or be 100% safe leads inevitably to cliques. I also wanted people to have to actually work together and fight for a foothold. The attrition along the way was WAY too high, though, and the lack of permanent victory conditions for the forces of civilization meant anarchy and entropy always won in the end.
6) If you rely on admin policing, then everything will be an admin issue. Expensive. Troublesome. Paternalistic. Another political stance on my part. I'd like player choices to matter, and I'd like to foster different cultures.
Posted by: Raph Koster | Oct 10, 2003 at 20:50
I confess to being puzzled in the extreme. Perhaps you guys might care to enlighten me, if it is not too much trouble.
How is allowing players to develop their own version of common law different than social darwinism? My befuddlement is based on being an outsider, but I have always been fascinated by the social dynamics of virtual environments. But are you folks making games (which I think of as casual options for passing spare time in an enjoyable manner) or are you actually attempting to pre-define the social dynamics of a quasi-living world?
If the latter, I think you have bitten off more than you can chew. Stalin might agree with you, and Lenin, and Marx, and Mao. It can't be done. There are too many variables. But this is the impression I am getting. If I misinterpret, please correct me.
You want player-enforced law and order in virtual environments? Nothing simpler. Perma-death with unrestricted PvP. But then your game population will remain kinda small. Of course, just like in real world situations, the handful of survivors will be very polite.
"If you rely on admin policing, then everything will be an admin issue". Yup. It is anyway. You can't give players real power over each other. Not power that allows permanent real world type consequences. It will always be abused. You cannot delegate this. The only workable approach is to keep sufficient staff on duty at all times to settle disputes the old fashioned way, "because we say so".
Or so it seems to me.
Posted by: B. Smith | Oct 10, 2003 at 22:55
"are you actually attempting to pre-define the social dynamics of a quasi-living world?"
It's not necessarily that we WANT to. It happens whether we want to or not. We're building boxes, and social dynamics happen to happen inside the boxes we build. If we preclude something, then we preclude it from the social dynamics. Most of our errors are of omission at the moment.
"You can't give players real power over each other. Not power that allows permanent real world type consequences."
Players already have all sorts of power over each other. Fortunately, it's mostly not the sort that has real world consequences (though, see Julian's book for a nice chilling tale of real world consequences).
"You want player-enforced law and order in virtual environments? Nothing simpler. Perma-death with unrestricted PvP. But then your game population will remain kinda small."
Actually, what you get is the bad guys coming back like bad pennies, and the good guys vanishing like boojums. Or snarks, whichever it was.
Posted by: Raph Koster | Oct 11, 2003 at 01:28
You have to understand that although Raph and I start from many of the same principles and theories, we have very different baseline assumptions and therefore aim for different goals.
To oversimplify, Raph trys to grant players a maximum amount of freedom, and then impose only those restrictions neccessary, I would prefer to impose a high degree of structure and then allow limited freedom within those restrictions.
But yes, both of us are working in the direction of "designing cultures". Mostly because, as Raph said, our design choices *do* determine social formation whether we wish it or not, so the only responsible thing to try and use that capability wisely and with forethought for the consequences.
There are a wide variety of reasons why we need to give players more power over the worlds, ranging from aesthetic (a desire to make the player experience more meaningful and truly empowering) to practical (the worlds are rapidly getting too large for us to build ourselves) to machiavellian (divide and conquer, if the players are busy resenting each other's use of power, they'll stop resenting our use of absolute power).
--Dave
Posted by: Dave Rickey | Oct 11, 2003 at 03:27
"Actually, what you get is the bad guys coming back like bad pennies, and the good guys vanishing like boojums. Or snarks, whichever it was."
This was in response to my suggestion about perma-death with unrestricted PvP. From the statement I conclude that this has actually been tried at some point, and it did not work out. Where and when and who and how did this happen? This is the first time I have encountered anyone who actually has witnessed the experiment attempted.
I have seen unrestricted PvP many times, but I have never seen perma death in conjunction with it. Not true perma-death, where the total character is gone, kaput, and the player has to start over from scratch. I operate under the assumption that we are all decended from predators, and none of us are too good to commit virtual murder if we know we can get away with it. So it seemed to me that mutual fear would be a good deterrent. (Again, based on the assumption that anyone who survived long enough to become truly powerful would have learned the wisdom of restraint).
Seems my assumption does nto hold up in the real world. So where can I find info about this? I want to know what happened.
Posted by: B. Smith | Oct 11, 2003 at 17:29
I can't think of a permanent deletion game I've played, but I have played some with rather significant penalties for death. It does give PvP a different flavor than where it's a minor inconvenience (as in SWG). But even so, the "bad guys" have the advantage that they care more about the havoc they wreck than their own characters, where the "good guys" are generally the sorts who care about the significant penalties. This results in the good guys rarely getting the drop on the bad guys, because they are not inclined to provoke conflict where the risk (in their eyes) isn't justified by the reward. The reverse is true of the bad guys.
Based on griefing behavior of other sorts, I'd say permanent death wouldn't slow the bad guys down much. They'd take it as a challenge to see how much havoc they could wreck with each successive incarnation.
If the rumors on Jedi are true in SWG, we should have a near test case there. Be interesting to watch that develop.
Posted by: Dan Scheltema | Oct 11, 2003 at 18:57
Not to side track this thread, but maybe someone would like to start a new one. In any case, I can't resist asking the question.
"Good guys?"...."Bad Guys?".... Who, why, how do we define who's who?
I'd bet Jedi to newbie troll clerics that we all have a different answers to those questions.
Posted by: Bruce Boston | Oct 11, 2003 at 23:39
Bruce,
Here's an answer that should hold for *any* game out there, past, present or future:
Bad guy: One who makes you lose more customers than they bring in.
Good guy: Everybody else.
Of course we can agree that player number N may be turning away customers but adding an element to the game that draws more customers in, in which case he's a "good guy", yet player number N+1 may be doing the exact same things player number N is doing but now the net result is negative player flow - Hence the activities must be capped or controlled somehow. Call it "too much of a good thing..."
Posted by: DivineShadow | Oct 12, 2003 at 02:39
Just to provide a quick update on ATITD & the Demi-Pharaoh
Dave Rickey wrote
> Brief note to Dan S.: As I understand it, only one commercial game gives banning authority to players: A Tale In The Desert (which is explicitly a politically oriented game). Specifically, players can elect a "Demi-Pharoah" who has the power to ban one account. I don't know if any Demi-Pharoah has ever used that power, or even been elected.
Yes there is a Demi-Pharaoh. There election system was extremely like a physical world one. Each candidate had a set of polices, they were interviewed on in-game radio-channels, took part in debates etc. The voting system also included several rounds of elections until the final one (with about 5 candidates I think) was held.
So far as I know the Demi-Pharaoh has not used their power to banish (think some candidates stood on the basis that it would never be used) – it they did it would be major news.
Given my experience of ATITD so far it is highly unlikely that the power would be used arbitrarily, if it were the DP may as well resign the game as I would assume the back lash would force them out. Moreover the developers tend to retain veto of things so they might step in (though I might be good to ask Andrew Tepper what the situation would be).
Even if there is no developer veto the choice to give a single this much power seems fine in the context of ATITD. As I think Raph noted, ATITD is a highly political game where the legal structure is embedded in the game world so a good proportion of the players spend a lot of time rewording laws about tree cutting. There are silly laws of course.
An interesting case was that of the character “Douchbag”. This name annoyed \ upset some players so they managed to get a law past to change the character name to “Flower”. The character name was changed and, as I understand it, the player quit soon after. There was a big debate about this as may players argued they simply would not talk to or trade with the this player and the level of social ostraciseation would meant they that either charged name or quit.
Ren
www.renreynolds.com
Posted by: Ren | Oct 12, 2003 at 04:27
Call for a xWorld Council ?
I stated above that I think that the key to effective in-game ‘law enforcement’ is the ability to have differential sanctions that are change behaviour but are below the threshold that would make a player want to quit, and that an issue with this system is that these worlds are ‘gratuitous-communities’ hence the quit threashold is realtivly low (relative to civil society that is).
xWorld Council
The degree of cross world trading is increasing, such that Ted’s notion of Avatar Capital is becoming increasingly portable. This means that the structures of different worlds are starting to impact each other more heavily.
So if a player is exiled from World A and can transfer 80% of their capital to World B, then forming sanctions in A becomes even more difficult than it already is (and here I a don’t mean shards, I mean UO to SWG something like that).
One can almost see a xWorld structure of representative democracy emerging in the medium term future to manage this sort of thing.
Granular Trust Structure
Oh and an example of very granular structure of in-game sanctions comes from ATITD guilds. These have membership levels and guild resources are tagged with the level at which they can be accessed. This effectively provided an in-guild way of moving people up and down a hierarchy of trust at quite a fine level. Id be interested to know if other games provide this level of resource control.
ren
www.renreynolds.com
Posted by: Ren | Oct 12, 2003 at 04:40
Why the assumption that democratic govermental structures are inevitable and desirable? If you want to participate in democracy, you can volunteer for a political campaign, run for office yourself, go out and vote in real elections. We can potentially create any political structure that ever has or ever could exist, and yet the discussions always seems confined to variations on modern democracy.
We have environments where the capacity for experimentation is potentially limitless, and yet we confine our thinking to particularly narrow forms of democratic utopianism? Don't get me wrong, I am very imprssed with and interested in things like ATITD's direct democracy, but is that it, the only legitimate method?
What about a world where government officials earn their place through a series of blood duels, with the loser facing permadeath? What about a game where all magic is religious in nature, and followers (players) unlock new powers for their god (also a player) through elaborate sacrifices of NPC's?
Are we just frustrated politicians, trying to create in games a more pure form of the governments we find disappointing in the real world? Can't we come up with something more *entertaining*?
--Dave
Posted by: Dave Rickey | Oct 12, 2003 at 12:37
Dave,
Good point. I would like to see VW as play spaces in a wider sense. I think would like to see ethical and governmental systems take wider forms.
However, I find it hard to see it happening. We are talking here about the management of assets with real value – and I’m not just talking ownership and cash here but the wider set of values that we associated with avatars and virtual assets. Given the size of the player base it’s hard for me to see anything other than a reflection of some from of physical world control structure and probably a broadly democratic one. While role-players might like the idea of the people that run things having go there through trials of combat, if these people can impact my game play and my asset value (to get back to economics) then I think most people would default to trying to get a democratic system.
If we think of other Internet governmental bodies such as ICANN and IETF (hmmmmmm) then they have some form democratic control, you might argue that this is very different, but these are areas where there could have been very difference control structures.
>Are we just frustrated politicians, trying to create in games a more pure form of the governments we find disappointing in the real world?
Probably
>Can't we come up with something more *entertaining*?
You probably can, but the majority of players the feel they are stake holders might not be able to.
Lastly, 'desirable' - mmm not sure on that one.
Ren
www.renreynolds.com
Posted by: ren | Oct 12, 2003 at 17:44
I'm not just talking about roleplayers here, I am trying to raise the larger question of whether these worlds are about creating a social experience of a particular kind, a kind we choose to create. Are we just blindly stumbling our way towards some kind of inevitable social product of the technology?
To hell with that. Yes, the social implications of the internet are a fascinating question, and they will rebuild society as we know it, but is that all? There's nothing new there, advances in technology have been forcing social change for millenia.
But here's a chance to go *underneath* the basic forces that shape society, to change the fundamental environments the societies exist in. Maybe get ahead of the social change curve by turning the study of social systems into an *experimental* science. Stop reacting and start predicting.
Maybe we don't want to do this, maybe we shouldn't do it, but everyone seems to be taking that as a matter of course, that it would be unethical and irresponsible to create a society that was anything less than "enlightened". But what if unenlightened societies are more fun in games? What if enlightened societies, although great places to live for real, aren't any fun?
I don't want to live in a world where despotism and theocracy or any of the other potentials are hard-coded into the fundamental fabric of the universe. But it might be fun to commute.
--Dave
Posted by: Dave Rickey | Oct 12, 2003 at 19:01
Dave,
"I'm not just talking about roleplayers here, I am trying to raise the larger question of whether these worlds are about creating a social experience of a particular kind, a kind we choose to create...."
No offense, but aren't you getting a little carried away? Maybe? Just perhaps?
The players will create and define the society. The designers can lay out ground rules, but the players will adapt those ground rules to suit their own purpose. Please note that EQ did not originally intend for camping spawn points to become the standard play style. Players defined it.
For in-game governments, you have to arrange for something that players will tolerate. Given your playerbase, I suspect that democracy is the only workable solution. The reason that democracy keeps creeping forward in real life is that it happens to be the least objectionable option for most people, despite its' multitude of faults. Besides, most players in developed nations are used to democracy and will default to the familiar patterns whenever possible.
I can't even imagine that it woudl be fun, even for a short time, to play a game that placed me unwiling, without my consent, under the power of some twitch-obsessed pre-adolecent whose only claim to rulership comes from being good at deathmatch. No offense.
Posted by: B. Smith | Oct 12, 2003 at 19:34
A little carried away? Perhaps. But I'm not known for hyper-ambitious flights of fancy, I tend to be pretty nuts-and-bolts in my approach to design.
However, some of these nuts and bolts are people, and I'm finding some really...interesting things about the ways they fit together.
See, the players create the society, but designers define it. Unlike governments, we *can* sweep back the tide. Societies are adaptive organizations which try to match the imperatives of the members against the restrictions of the environment, and designers control the environments.
Are there things we can't do? Certainly. We cannot force the players to play. We cannot force them to accept leadership not of their choosing. We can set up reward strustures, but we cannot make the players desire those rewards. We can provide the players with tools, but we can neither force them to use them, nor excercise much control of what other tools they may use.
Societies are self-sustaining adaptive organizations in dynamic equilibrium, using individual desires as the energy source that makes them function. If you step back from questions of "enlightenment", and analyze these equilibria at a functional level, you start to see patterns. Given *this* set of desires, *that* set of cultural restrictions, and *those* environmental constraints, it is potentially possible to make predictaions about what form the resulting society will take.
Governments and religions have operated in this way for thousands of years, although with little subtlety (having only limited control over any of the three). But we create worlds, ex nihilo, into which we pour a soup of players that arrive almost as newborn babes, without mutual history for the most part. No government or religion has ever had the tools, powers, and materials to work with that we do. On the other hand, we can't put anyone in prison, kill them, or threaten them with eternal torment.
Raph's old stomping grounds, LegendMUD, had the mission statement of "History as they believed it to be." Altered, untrue views of reality that were so universally accepted as to be the truer, more significant form of reality have shaped societies throughout the ages. The power of the Pope in pre-Enlightenment European poltics, and for that matter today, is all built on the belief that he is the literal heir of Saint Peter, holding the keys to Heaven. It didn't matter if it was true, what matters was what people *believed*.
I'm hardly the originator or best proponent of these theories, Jared Diamond, E.O. Wilson, and others are way ahead of me on analyzing the implications of complexity theory and emergence on social dynamics. But I have the advantage of pocket universes in which to run experiments, which must *be* experiments in social dynamics, whether I wish it or not.
And don't kid yourself, most of our social structures are not democratic, and most of those that are, do not have day-to-day significance to the majority of the public. Families are rarely democracies, employment almost never, nor are educational environments from the viewpoint of the students. We're all quite used to dealing with non-democratic social heirarchies.
LawMeme's James Grimmelman has been pointing out the quasi-governmental properties and potentials of Guilds in online games. But they are overwhelmingly not democratic in nature, but rather closer to tribal or feudal societies. The members are free to leave at any time, yet they *choose* not to as long as they retain confidence in the leadership. And they seem to find them fun.
Heads of guilds are rarely the most effective characters as individuals. What they are is natural leaders, who can inspire people to follow them. Both the leaders and the followers seem to enjoy the experience. The same dynamic repeats in even more pronounced fashion in pure skill-based environments like Air Warrior, WW2O, or the old Multi-Player BattleTech, the most effective leaders were rarely the most skilled at the actual game.
I won't create an environment where players are forced to accept leadership not of their choosing, I don't believe such an environment would ever work for a game. I *will* create an environment that encourages them, almost requires them if they want to share in the domination of territory, to choose.
--Dave
Posted by: Dave Rickey | Oct 12, 2003 at 21:14
"I *will* create an environment that encourages them, almost requires them if they want to share in the domination of territory, to choose."
This of course presupposes that the player desires to share in the domination of territory, rather than explore. But there is nothing wrong with that, as long as you realize that you are going to be targeting a particular subset of players. As an explorer/socializer, I am not going to be interested in in-game politics except as they interfere with my exploring/socializing.
But I hope you don't miss out on the places where some of your analogies break down. I have no argument at all with your statements about what constitutes a society. But the parallel breaks down when you factor in the fact that game societies are all voluntary.
A family is not a democracy. But you have no choice which family you start out in. And they are structured the way they are in an attempt (instinctive) to maximize survival of offspring. As soon as the offspring get old enough, they break free. Not actually a society as such, rather they are the base unit from which a society can be constructed.
Employment is not democratic, of course not. I am trading my skills and time for money. or vice versa, I am swapping money in order to persuade someone to do what I want them to do. It is not a society, it is a marketplace. The analogy breaks down. You work to survive, you play to gain pleasure.
Educational environments are either forced slavery by parental fiat; or another marketplace-type environment where you swap money for a certificate proving that you are a member of the club of college graduates. In both cases it is something you do because you believe that circumstance requires it, not for pleasure.
Sure, I agree with you about the most effective leaders are not necessarily the most skilled at the game. At team deathmatch, where quick reflexes and a tendency to act first and think later are rewarded, the guild leaders/battle planners are often meat unless protected. But they are chosen by the membership.
I guess I just don't understand how you can possibly produce an in-game goverance system that isn't based on democracy. Maybe my imagination is limited. I can't see it.
Posted by: B. Smith | Oct 12, 2003 at 22:26
Just to pick a few nits: I left home at the age of 15 rather than submit to the authority of my parents, I dropped out of school at the same time, and I have never stayed with the same employer for more than 3 years (only one more than 2), mostly because of an inflexible demand for employers that didn't do things I thought were stupid. Freedom = I Won't, no authority can compel cooperation if you're willing to accept the consequences of non-compliance. I'd be an anarchist except that I've seen what happens in the absence of strong central authority, it gets real ugly.
The problem is, democracy is *not* the best method of ensuring legitimacy of leadership for the players. If someone is democratically elected by 50.1% of the electorate, but that election grants them authority over the entire electorate, then 49.9% of the electorate is not getting leadership of their choice. If there are more than 2 candidates, or in electoral college systems, it may not even be a majority that gets their choice of leader (witness our current president, or the current governor-elect of California).
Leaders of player organizations are not chosen by democracy, they are chosen by *consensus*. Anyone who doesn't want to accept their leadership is free to depart, no-one is compelled to obey.
By the same token, no-one is compelled to play an online game, and no-one in Wish will be compelled to submit themselves to the authority of a House. I expect that most will not participate in the House system and its associated complexities and vulnerabilities, but will instead choose to remain members of ordinary guilds or completely unaffiliated. The impact of Houses on those players will revolve around what the Houses can offer or deny them. The reward/taxation system is so structured the Houses will probably try very hard to attract the interest of those players. But the Houses will have no direct dominion over them.
Like real feudalism, Wish is predicated on the efforts of a class of sub-humans who lack the rights of free men. In the case of Wish, these are *literally* sub-human: computer-controlled NPC's.
So now you have my dirty secret: I'm also a utopianist. I just have a somewhat different view of utopia.
--Dave
Posted by: Dave Rickey | Oct 12, 2003 at 23:19
There's no reason why a republic wouldn't work fine... in fact, Dark Ages is more of a republic-style government than a democracy. Electing representatives who actually make the laws and rule is pretty effective as a game mechanic.
And as far as your statements about education go, D. Smith :) speak for yourself. I went to college for the pleasure of it. The second time, that is.
Posted by: Dan Scheltema | Oct 13, 2003 at 00:38
DivineShadow:
"Bad guy: One who makes you lose more customers than they bring in."
"Good guy: Everybody else."
That's it? That's all that matters? So, no requirement to follow the TOS? No requirement to follow the in-world rules? No stipulations towards exploits? As long as your actions don't make the developer lose customers, you'd consider them a 'good guy'?
What about when the developer does something that causes the VW to lose customers, are they now a 'bad guy'?
Not sure its that simple...
Posted by: Bruce Boston | Oct 13, 2003 at 13:06
Bruce,
"That's it? That's all that matters?"
Pretty much. A business is a business. While there may be legal and ethical implications you have to ponder which could flip a short-term benefit into a PR and long-term disaster, if something like a TOS violation or an exploit actually causes your business to grow, are you going to stump it? Or re-review your TOS, your game mechanics and your reward structure?
It would be a disastrous mistake to outright discard emergent behavior just because you stipulated differently at the onset of the service.
"What about when the developer does something that causes the VW to lose customers, are they now a 'bad guy'?"
I was talking about players, not developers. You can use the same criteria to measure individual development/design decisions into weather they were good or bad for the service.
Posted by: DivineShadow | Oct 13, 2003 at 19:58
"if something like a TOS violation or an exploit actually causes your business to grow, are you going to stump it? Or re-review your TOS?"
Something very like this happened in Everquest a year or two ago. After a very long time of it being against the TOS to run EQWin, a program that allowed 2 copies of Everquest to run on the same computer, EQ installed their own windowing patch and allowed EQWin. Because they realized they were getting customers buying 2 accounts and running them both, and trying to fight that would actually lose them business. At least that's what I imagine the reason to be :)
Posted by: Dee Lacey | Oct 14, 2003 at 17:12
Do ends really justify the means? And while we are at it, why not just let intent justify both the end and the means?
I fully understand that there are some be very good reasons to re-evaluate your TOS on a regular bases, and I think that businesses are required to focus clearly on profitability.
However, isn't it a bit dangerous to start to thinking that a TOS can be trumped by any effort done in the name of increasing membership, or any effort that happens to have the side effect of increasing revenue.
This is like saying that a city has laws, but you can break a law as long as by so doing you increase the average housing value. This may seem reasonable, but this sort of language totally defeats the purpose of having laws in the first place.
Posted by: Bruce Boston | Oct 14, 2003 at 19:14
"Do ends really justify the means? And while we are at it, why not just let intent justify both the end and the means?"
That is why I worte that you have to ponder the legal and ethical implications of what you're planning. This is not about a game company run by Machiavello, it's about maintaining integrity while not loosing sight of the goal: A business.
"However, isn't it a bit dangerous to start to thinking that a TOS can be trumped by any effort done in the name of increasing membership, or any effort that happens to have the side effect of increasing revenue"
A little. But it is much more dangerous to assume that everything you laid out in your TOS, or laws, or game mechanics, is perfect. The most prevalent governments hold laws that allow them to change laws, and for a good reason: Being static means inadequacy to a constantly changing environment. Unless you provide a controlled channel to change the laws, you will soon be facing a full-on revolution or -in game terms- an exodus. Where does this lead with the TOS being solely in the hands of developers with no provisions for change? I'm not entirely sure. The only thing that pops into my mind right now is that by not having a mechanism to change 'the law' (as stated in your TOS) you are essentially outlawing the future instead of providing a channel to embrace it.
Posted by: DivineShadow | Oct 14, 2003 at 19:50
Well, this is a small world, for sure.
Raph, Dave and Barry... maybe somebody should ring Jed so we can proclaim an official relocation of BtH talks ;)
Making a game that offers a set of cultural and legal values different from those commonly accepted in western contemporary society is in more than one sense a thrilling perspective.
Whether or not player can cope with a mental setting different from their RL usual in online games is indeed a provoking question.
More specifically, if players are able to do so, to which extent can they enjoy it ?
- How to handle the fact that behind each character there is a player, most likely below 30 in age and raised as a PC, western-centric and historically iliterate democracy citizen ?
- How to handle the fact that (unless permadeath is implemented) the only thing that ultimately decides of the survival of the character in-game is the enjoyment of the player on the other side of the screen, not the "realism" of the character existence ?
- What kind of userbase do you expect for such a game, both qualitatively and quantitatively ?
- How to handle the balance between the size of the userbase required to generate better-than susbsistance income for a commercial game and the possible low adoption/high churn generated by the "disturbing" setting ?
Moreover: why would people use their "right to departure" if they don't go past the free trial period because they can't "get into" the setting and see as design flaws what was an aesthetic/political statement ?
TTFN,
Yaka.
Posted by: Yaka St.Aise | Oct 15, 2003 at 15:20
As a mainly a player, but not "raised PC, western-centric and historically iliterate democracy citizen" but more pragmatically rather than politically correct, by a cultural anthropologist to be a world citizen and hopefully semi-historically literate ...
I find the debate fascinating. But lacking.
I don't think you can apply game-wide imposed political systems from contemporary or past times and expect them to function in on-line societies.
Games can't close thier borders.
Game citizens aren't constrained to stay for any reason (other than fun - as has been mentioned).
Game citizens don't have id cards and most societal structure systems which rely on "that catching up with you" can be circumvented with minimal creativity.
Small - group societal dynamic do seem to hold true. So immediate social ostracism still exists. But beyond that life as a game citizen has no rules other than what your immediate - I'll call it familial group - for lack of a better term - imposes. And as anyone who has played these games can attest. Different "familial" groups within the same game will have quite varying moral codes.
I don't see how you can predict, or encourage adopting of any larger political structure without being able to predict and strongly influence the moral codes that will be chosen and enforced socially in the familial units. And with online citizens having the effective rights of becoming anonymous at will, exodus at will, and no meaninful judge of thier moral actions beyond thier familial unit ... I'm not sure player run top-down political structures are even applicable.
In judging my ability to have fun in the political structure of a game I look at two things only:
- will I be easily able to locate or bring with me people that I would be likely to align into a familial unit with
- does the game's immediate rules (not CS imposed rules or policies) allow other avatars to do things to my avatar that would ruin my fun
Except in ATID, perhaps, I would argue as a player that the political system chosen by the game is abstract enough to be irrelevant to my fun.
Note for clarity - "familial unit" is a smaller social set than a clan, guild, tribe, etc ... it would be more along the lines of your "regular group"
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