Virtual Crime 101

Greg and I are doing a paper for the State of Play conference and our contribution is on Virtual Crime. It picks up on ideas from our thing in Legal Affairs. Anyway, I'm working on it today--the paper is late, as usual--and I thought it would be worthwhile to get your thoughts as I was writing. (Blog hosting: $149.50 per annum. Broadband connection: $49 per month. Having other people write your papers for you: Priceless)

Rather than try to explain all of the paper in one hit, let me divide it up into bits, this being Bit 1. In this Bit want to examine the idea of purely in-world criminal activity. Crimes that cross over into the real world will be the subject of tomorrow's posting.

So, main thrust of this Bit is on the nature of the crimes, and the nature of the regulatory responses that emerge to combat crime. First, what sorts of "crimes" emerge within the virtual world? My initial response was that, well, there's killing, and stealing, and maiming, and... But, as Greg patiently explained, these are perfectly permissible, and so within the limited realm of the world these are not crimes at all. Turns out that the main type of in-world crime (we think) is griefing. Of course this can take many forms, depending on the nature of the world. But in general it seems that crime=griefing within world. Or are we wrong here?

The next section is on what regulatory responses emerge to combat crime. Here, again, we're only talking about the in-world response. I'm interested in people's experience of these responses. As Larry Lessig has famously said, "Code is Law" and nowhere is this more true than in virtual worlds. What examples of coding-to-remove-crime-or-grieving can you think of? The much-used example is the UO reputation flag, but there are others. Perhaps more interesting, are there examples of non-developer (ie community) regulatory responses to the griefer problem? We have a few candidate examples (posses typically) but your mileage may vary.

Comments

[James Grimmelmann]

1.

Oooh. You're going to have to be careful with your categories here.

For example, are you considering "crimes" to be offenses against the game or against other players? If the former, then exploits and hacks can be typed as "criminal." If the latter, then the definition "crime=griefing" is tautologically true, because you've just said that what's criminal is what other players dislike. Whether killing is "permissible" or not is entirely a question of norms -- when do other players consider it to be griefing?

[DuckiLama]

2.

Even further, I'm unclear as to your definition of in-world.

Does in-world include in-character, or just, strictly, in(side of the virtual)-world?

I think the distinction is important because, though a "good" system seems not to have been implemented, I think it's perfectly possible to have in-character (virtual, roleplayed) crime that is not necessarily griefing.

Much (IMO) good parallel information on the discussion in Evil Avatars at http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2003/10/evil_avatars.html as pertains to my distinction of in-world and in-character.

To me, as single, roleplayed, in-character pickpocketing or bungled mugging turned murder would be in-game crime, which I personally distinguish from repeated, OOC, newbie-ganking, which, while still in-game and still following the "letter of the (in-game) law" betrays both the community and the "spirit of the (in-game) law." I see the two as different as night and day, but both can be used as definitions of "in-game crime".

[Jeff Cole]

3.

JG's point is very well-taken.

More interesting is whether, and if so, why, we should distinguish between intra- and extra-community.

Jeff

[Dan Hunter]

4.

My reason for distinguishing between in-world and out-of-world (not OOC) is that in a separate section of the paper we're going to consider whether RW law is going to consider actions taken in-world as transgressing RW laws. But before we get to this, we need to have an idea of what is and what isn't crime in-world.

Now, as the three posts *already* (!) establish, this question is a lot trickier than it first looks. We hit upon griefing as the best definition of crime (at least for this first pass) since it seems best to capture the idea that crime involves an action outside the community norms. Thus, thieving may (or may not) be outside community norms, and may/may not be formally allowed within the ToS of the world. It almost never would be considered griefing. However, n00b-ganking, corpse-raiding, etc may be formally within the laws of the world, but seems to screw around with community expectations, and so seems to be the closest thing to crime that we can imagine--as long as we look at the world as wholly internally-regulated.

[Ian McGee]

5.

Most of what I see (as a player) is account stealing/hacking, misuse of personal data, fradulent trades, and well, in-game griefing (personal harrassment through text or actions).

The first two, at least, would seem to be covered by existing laws, but I'm not aware of any actual cases that went to court.

[Jeff Cole]

6.

I understand why you (and others) might want to try and make a distinction.

But when I wonder why "we" should distinguish, I mean "we" as society. The fact that "griefing" is the best example that you can propose suggests that the distinction is artificial.

Also, "community norms" are not (even mostly) intra-community-- they are very directly effected by the extra-community expectations of the participants.

As soon as intra-game activities implicate criminal extra-game effects, the law will take notice. I think the much more weighty issues would involve exactly what intra-game activities would support the elements of any criminal cause of action.

Jeff

[Josh Winslow]

7.

When discussing comunity norms, I think it might be enlightening to examine the differences between servers and game rules within a give MMORPG. Take for example Asheron's Call with its "white" servers (only consentual PvP) and Darktide (all PvP all the time). Back when I was playing, the first few plugins were being developed and several of them gave the player information or powers that weren't present in the client. Your radar could extend further, you could target enemies faster, cast spells easier and quicker, etc.

There was a loud and long debate about the ingame "legality" of using the plugins that enhanced the players capabilities. Obviously something that would increase your XP gain by 25% might cause, at most, mostly harmless level inflation on a white server. However, the same effect of level inflation on a PvP server allowed the people who used the plugin to kill those players who didn't by virtue of having additional game granted skills/abilities/hitpoints/etc. they obtained through use of the plugin. Even worse, a player could be victimized by another player using a plugin with direct effects on PvP combat. A group of plugins may allow player A to target player B from off map, run on map, cast multiple spells faster than the client allows, and flee faster than player B could possibly go.

Is using a plugin to level but then killing someone in a fair fight an act of griefing? How about killing someone using a plugin? What if both players are using plugins? What if they just level with the plugin but never initiate attacks? What happens to the answer to these questions on non PvP servers? When examining the question of "What is outside the bounds of the comunity", a whole different can of worms is opened just by changing the internal rules of the server. How can we expect people who haven't ever played these sorts of games to understand that sort of distinction?

[Dan Hunter]

8.

Jeff: "But when I wonder why "we" should distinguish, I mean "we" as society. The fact that "griefing" is the best example that you can propose suggests that the distinction is artificial."

Well, I think that the distinction is a hard one to make and it may be artificial, but I don't think it's meaningless. Haul a guy into your local state courthouse for ganking you in UO and the judge (once she gets a handle on what the hell you are talking about) is probably going to dismiss the case for failing to state an actionable, real-world, case. And yes, I agree with you, Jeff, that intra-community expectations come from "extra-community expectations of the participants." But we can surely leave these out of the mix if all we're trying to do is work out what is defined as crime for the purposes of the in-world gameplay.

Josh: "How can we expect people who haven't ever played these sorts of games to understand that sort of distinction?" Well, the one benefit of looking entirely internally is that you don't have to ask whether an outsider is going to understand the process. It's a bit like the first attempts at (Western, European) anthropology, which involved a white guy going off to an "uncivilized" place and reporting back to a bemused and amazed "civilization" that in that place the "natives have a code of criminal law that forbids a chief's son from marrying anyone other than the sister of the chief of the next village over."

Of course these attempts to understand the legal system were almost always wrong (the marriage, e.g. wasn't a marriage as we would consider it, but a tribal-strengthening exercise). But if you could actually ask the members of the community :what do you consider a crime, and why?" then you'd get a better handle of what amounted to community expectations.

[Jeff Cole]

9.

But, Dan, you can't leave the real-world expectations out of the mix: one player's griefing is another player's fun.

Griefing is only griefing because players expect to put their time in on the treadmill without having to worry about somebody tossing a banana peel on the "path."

And, ultimately, what constitutes "criminal" is defined by the power that enforces-- that is, wields he "strongest club."

Killing isn't always criminal.

So, I guess what I am missing is the distinction between intra-game "criminal" and extra-game "criminal," and why it is important to make such a distinction. The very use of the word "crime" or "criminal" invokes those extra-game expectations.

Jeff

[Phinehas]

10.

I think that, especially in a subscription-based service, in-world crime needs to be defined by the service provider moreso than the community. In most cases, the service provider will define the *purpose* of the virtual space. A typical purpose might involve providing entertainment and attracting/retaining customers. From this point-of-view, "crime" might involve doing things in-world that have an adverse affect on the ability of subscribers to find entertainment/enjoyment in the game or that cause subscribers to cancel subscriptions.

This helps bring into view how "evil" role-play can be a crime or not. If the evil role-play is entertaining and attracts rather than drives away subscribers, then no sane developer is going to label it a criminal act. However, the problem is that it is very difficult to give players the freedom to be evil without also giving them the freedom to ruin the enjoyment of other players or to drive them from the game.

From the Laws of Online World Design (http://www.legendmud.org/raph/gaming/index.html), take a look at a couple of Jon Lambert's Laws.

# As a virtual world's "realism" increases, the pool of possible character actions increase.
# The opportunities for exploitation and subversion are directly proportional to the pool size of possible character actions.

It isn't clear to me whether Jon is referring only to code exploitation and subversion or not, but I would think these laws are just as appropriately applied to social issues and in-world crime. Where things get really interesting, though, is considering whether or not restricting character freedom might also restrict a community's ability to address grievances appropriately in-world.

Someone once said that a surprising amount of courtesy is rooted in the knowledge that anyone can punch me in the nose if I get too rude. That's probably a pretty simplistic handling of what motivates us to be courteous, but it does appear that invulnerability (especially aided by anonymity) is a fertile breeding ground for rude behavior. Neither does restricting freedom appear to guarantee good behavior.

It seems to me that virtual world designers might want to handle in-world "crime" in-world as much as possible in order to help relieve CS requirements if for no other reason. I believe that the solution lies in formalizing communities that have greater control over game resources and the ability to place limits on content or even prescribe "capital punishment" for certain in-world crimes committed by its citizens. Instead of restricting character freedom so much, I'd like to see virtual world developers empower communities much more so that the community can select for itself what is or is not beneficial to its own purposes, and legislate and enforce accordingly. But again, I think this is all subject to whatever purpose the developer chooses for the virtual world they create.

--Phin

[B. Smith]

11.

"Someone once said that a surprising amount of courtesy is rooted in the knowledge that anyone can punch me in the nose if I get too rude. That's probably a pretty simplistic handling of what motivates us to be courteous, but it does appear that invulnerability (especially aided by anonymity) is a fertile breeding ground for rude behavior. Neither does restricting freedom appear to guarantee good behavior."

Remember the proverb: An armed society is a polite society.

Like I suggested before....perma-death with unrestricted PvP. Knowing that the other person has the potential ability to hurt you makes you careful about words and actions. Provided that you keep the Hit Points at somethign like a sane and reasonable level, so that even a newbie *could* hurt a high end character, provided that they went at it right.Or ran in a pack. That has always bugged me, that a human character starts out with enough HPs to stand up to something like a wolf, or maybe cougar, and survive with wounds. Yet three days alter that same human character can stand up to multiple direct hits by a war god. Doesn't make sense.

[Phinehas]

12.

B. Smith> "Like I suggested before....perma-death with unrestricted PvP."

Maybe, but then what's to deter someone from perma-killing? In other words, rude behavior may be deterred by another's ability to punch me in the nose, but punching me in the nose is also deterred by the possibility of the puncher going to jail for assault and battery. There is a parallel escalation of consequences for the escalating offenses. However, the arrangement seems to have as its goal the avoidance of all actions in the chain.

To implement a similar construct in virtual worlds, perhaps you have few hard restrictions on PvP, but then guard agains certain types of PvP (intra-realm ganking, for example) by giving, at the community level, the ability to perma-kill a character. Hopefully, the result is that characters realize their vulnerabilities and thus treat each other with a bit more respect. There is always the possibility they can be ganked. On the other hand, ganking is discouraged because it could get your character perma-killed (or some lesser consequence, at the discretion of the community). Again, the goal of the construct is to deter all of the negative occurances in the chain.

--Phin

[B. Smith]

13.

That is basically what I was trying to say. By perma-death I mean permanent character death. One kill, goodbye. Re-roll and start over from scratch. And anyone, at any level, could theoretically kill anyone else. No god characters, all mortal. HP to be based on race, perhaps on gender and/or other bodily characteristics. But the only advantage that i ahigher level character would have woudl be better equipment and skills. Otherwise, they would be as vulnerable as any naked newbie.

This would force people to consider the consequences of their actions, just as it does in RL. Eventually a type of vigilante justice system would evolve, which would grow into a functioning system of laws, or at least a strongly binding code duello.

That's my theory anyway. Based on my understanding of human nature and observation of gamers at play. For whatever it might be worth.

[Brask Mumei]

14.

I can't help but notice that the "punishment" of character death is not consistent across players. The griefer's character is much more likely to be considered just a bunch of pixels, so the deterrent of having them replaced with another set of pixels is much less than for the more involved, pro-social, player.

Along the same lines, anyone who is planning on "exitting" the game has no disincentive against seeing how many people they can take with them. One does not have to search long to find Ultima Online PKers whose justifications start with "As the game sucked I figured I'd see how many people I could kill/drive off".

- Brask Mumei

[B. Smith]

15.

The mroe I think abou tthis, the more I like the idea of being reincarnated as different things depending on your behavior in a past avatar. A righteous servant of light woudl get to restart as a human, a PK murderer might have to do time as a snake or rat, or a "righteous" servant of a dark god might get the chance to come back as a high-level monster of some sort. The role-playing possibilities are mind boggling.

[Phinehas]

16.

B. Smith> "That is basically what I was trying to say. By perma-death I mean permanent character death. One kill, goodbye. Re-roll and start over from scratch."

Yes, but the difference in what I was proposing(which I obviously didn't explain very well) is that the one-kill-goodbye-re-roll-start-over kind of death could only be administered by a community and not by an individual. So while an individual could defeat another player in a conflict which perhaps gave the victor accesss to some items and adversely affected the defeated character's stats or XP (i.e. what is currently so poorly named "death" in most MMORPGs), they wouldn't be able to perma-kill their victim. Rather, the attacker would, by their own actions, open up the possibility that the online community might perma-kill their character as a consequence of the online community determining that their actions were criminal.

The goal of this arrangement would be to avoid rude behavior through the threat of being attacked and defeated (but not perma-killed) by some individual who might take offense, and to avoid criminal-type attacks (as defined by the community) through the threat of being perma-killed by the community. Hopefully, this would result in players with more freedom, but moderated by empowered communities such that the sort of concerns expressed by Brask are not as troublesome. Sure, someone who is leaving the game might decide to gank fellow players, but since, as an individual, he would not be able to perma-kill anyone, the damage is mitigated. Furthermore, the victim can feel that justice has been served when the criminal character is perma-killed by the community. The community could even be given the ability to take ownership of the estate of the criminal and might be able to pay damages back to the criminal's victims.

Personally, I think I'd much prefer this sort of community justice over vigilante justice, since the latter doesn't seem much removed from anarchy.

--Phin

[B. Smith]

17.

Certainly it is not much removed from anarchy. It is the first thing that emerges from anarchy on the road to a self-sustaining justice system. First comes vigilantes, which are better than anarchy but just barely. Then comes a court-judgement system, to mitigate the excesses of the vigilantes. Then comes a solid code of conduct. My reason for advocating letting this process proceed naturally is because the players would do it themselves. Just as players in M59 police the Griefers themselves. A player who feels that they have made a contribution to the way things are handled will be more likely to comply with the rules.

As a certain traveller in the early 1800s once wrote of the new American Republic: "Conceiving themselves to be the authors of the law, Americans are inclined to obey the law."

I have often speculated how much of America's current troubles are based on the increasing sense of isolation that peopel feel between themselves and the government. But anyway, that's a different thread for a different forum.

[Brask Mumei]

18.

An interesting appraoch, Phinehas. I certainly like your idea of community administered perma-killing more than the state-of-nature which I was replying to.

The community approach still has an important qualification to be made when we talk about MMORPGs. Unlike MUDs, where the community is often the playerbase, MMORPGs don't have a single "community". They have many, many, different communities. Most anti-social problems would arise between communities, not within them. So while it would make sense to grant the community the ability to adminster justice within itself, what would be the rational of allowing another community permakill a member outside it? And if there is no rational, how can one punish the griefer who is insulated by his griefer community?

One approach is the one that I think SWG is trying to take with player made cities. Your community is defined as the residents of the city in which you live.

Another approach is the reputation approach - people are granted the ability of flagging others actions as pro-social or anti-social. If one's anti-social level goes too high, you are perma-killed. This, however, runs into the problem of fame - you can't please all the people, so the more famous you are, the greater the number of people who will dislike you. This will thus result in the high-valence nodes of your social network being expulsed, which is the complete opposite of what the game designer wants (you need the famous people to hold the world together)

It's definitely a tough problem. And, like all tough problems, it has a simple and obvious solution that is wrong :>

- Brask Mumei

[DuckiLama]

19.

"the griefer who is insulated by his griefer community?"

Is there such an animal as "griefer community" or is it a classification instead? Maybe I'm being too esoteric, but a wolfpack of gankers doesn't seem to fit what I thought the definition of community was.

Now that I try to differentiate, I find I'm not educated enough to explain why they are different. Or maybe I am and they simply aren't.

What is a griefer community? I've twisted my own brain into a knot here, someone help me out.

[James Grimmelmann]

20.

I know the discussion has wandered a bit, but I'd like to jump back to the definitional question: defining crime as griefing has some very interesting features.

Most strikingly, it completely short-circuits the idea of a victimless crime. The whole concept becomes oxymoronic. Something bad for the game as a whole won't be a crime; something bad for some identifiable player will be.

My suspicion is that when you have behavior bad for the game as whole, the designers will try to prevent it outright in code, rather than waiting for reports and punishing it. For certain activities -- for example, hyper-hoardng -- this kind of strategy makes a lot of sense. But it does put a bit of a slant on your conception of crime.

Another thought is that this definition very directly focuses attention on the normative contests that take place over criminal law. If some people like a particular behavior and others hate it, the player-haters will try to get it defined as griefing and banned. Not necessarily because they expect enforcement against grieifers to fix the problem, but also because it sends a signal that the behavior is blameworthy (and thus may also help _players_ to stamp it out.)

[Bart]

21.

I agree with some of the comments above about classifying 'crime'. If someone gets jumped by a gang of thugs in a place in the gameworld where PK'ing, thiefing, stealing is permissable, I don't consider this a crime. Unfortunately, this *can* happen at times when a player is on his/her way to a house or dwelling, with keys and valuable goods. The player is going to grief much more if this is the case, but I still don't consider this a crime.

On the other hand, if a player wrongfully exploits a bug or hacks the code to attain something that belongs to someone else...I do see this as a crime. Is this a crime against another player, a crime against the game developers (EUA anyone?), or both? I'm not sure.

In the beginning of UO, people would 'house sit'. Wait until someone recalled to a home, jump out of the bushes, kill the person, take their house key and go loot the house. By the time the player could round up enough friends to clear out the house from the thugs, most of the goods were gone. This type of gameplay was completely permissable in the parameters of the game at this point (UO has since changed this, but this is the way it was). This I don't see as a crime. Now, there were also a plethor of bugs, where players could abuse the system, and reach through walls of houses to loot chests and items against the wall. This, IMO, is a crime.

[Dan Hunter]

22.

My apologies for taking so long to respond. It's bad form on the part of the poster of a thought to ignore it so long. Usual excuses apply. Anyway, to start with James' fascinating comment...

James: "[the grief=crime] definition]... completely short-circuits the idea of a victimless crime. The whole concept becomes oxymoronic. Something bad for the game as a whole won't be a crime; something bad for some identifiable player will be."

Interesting thought to which I have a number of queries. First, I can't think of a victimless crime in virtual worlds. The typical RW candidates (prostitution, drug taking, suicide) don't seem to have any correlates in-world. Am I wrong here?

Second, the definition does handle the situation where an individual user is victimised, and so it's ok here. A crime against the entire game (which would look like what?) would presumably affect the individuals within the world, albeit perhaps only a small amount. The example that springs to mind is a gold dupe or something similar. If this affects the value (in-world only remember, that's all we're talking about at the moment) of an individual's assets then presumably it can be spun as a crime against X and Y, not just against the game as a whole? Am I wrong here?

Finally, I'm not sure that the definition of griefing=crime works (I'm attacking myself here) since it seems to be over-inclusive. There is a particular social construct for what amounts to a crime, and of course this construct differs depending on the society. Infidelity is a crime in some places, and a hobby in others. But am I happy with the idea that blocking a portal, or tele-fragging someone, or trash-talking them (all of which are examples of griefing, I think) is a crime? Not exactly, but it's the best I can come up with here. As long as all we are talking about is the construction of "crime" within the world.

James: "My suspicion is that when you have behavior bad for the game as whole, the designers will try to prevent it outright in code, rather than waiting for reports and punishing it. For certain activities -- for example, hyper-hoardng -- this kind of strategy makes a lot of sense. But it does put a bit of a slant on your conception of crime."

Yes, but I think that it leads to an interesting series of questions. For example, is the community happy with the developers making the decision to punish the hoarders, or dupers, etc. Imagine the situation where, in a real-world (representative, democratic, Westminster) system, there was a punishment for sodomy or drug-taking or something else that was out-of-step with current community views. Punishment of offenders takes place by the appropriately constituted members of the executive, but the community is unhappy about this. What is the response? Politicking, changes in law, etc. We don't have this within virtual worlds.

The reason that I think this is interesting is that crime+ punishment is a very loaded political football. If developers start punishing for in-world "crimes" then they need a fairly strong basis for doing so. If we don't have a theory of what is crime within these worlds, then this sort of behavior appears arbitrary. Witness the discussion about about what is appropriate behavior. Everyone disagrees at the margins about what amounts to a crime and (presumably) what would be the appropriate punishment. This is slightly troubling for developers, n'est-ce pas?

James: "Another thought is that this definition very directly focuses attention on the normative contests that take place over criminal law. If some people like a particular behavior and others hate it, the player-haters will try to get it defined as griefing and banned. Not necessarily because they expect enforcement against grieifers to fix the problem, but also because it sends a signal that the behavior is blameworthy (and thus may also help _players_ to stamp it out.)"

I think you're right here, but I'm not sure that much rides on it. If the behavior is accepted as griefing by the developers, then you're gonnna get booted. If we also call it crime (within the world only, remember) then that gets you booted. No substantive difference. My experience of these worlds is that griefing is the one thing that is perceived as actively criminal. Lots of activities that would be perceived as criminal within the real world is, of course, just roleplay.

I could say lots more, but I've already hogged the screen enough. Let others get in.

[Dan Hunter]

23.

Oh, one separate thing: no-one has talked much about the approaches that developers or users take within the world to curb crime. Does anyone have favorite examples? Mine are:

1. Reputation flags - eg UO etc
2. Posses - eg End of the Line, EQ / UO guilds, etc
3. Well, booting without public reason given - Shadowbane example given previously by Ted in this post: http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2003/09/vulnerability_i.html

[James Grimmelmann]

24.

A couple of random followups to Dan:

If you buy into the CLS idea that our notions of crime are secondary to our notions of blameworthiness, then there's a nice honesty to the [crime=griefing] definition, because it puts on the table quite openly what's at stake. And as for gold-duping and the like, well, since those aren't going to be dealt with as crime, the lack of political processes aren't so bad. The game may try to prevent you from doing it, but there's no stigma attached to the penalties for getting caught at it.

And as for the game-world equivalents of individual "victimless" crimes -- prostitution, suicide, drugs -- I can see two responses. One is that I could very well see some game community deciding that prostitution was offensive and would be banned. If you could find a way to work it into Toontown, and some other player saw you at it, you would be booted.

The other response is, "mmm. how interesting. what does it say about virtual worlds? does it mean that there's no real virtual equivalent to drugs? does it mean that the nature of the world renders drugs harmless or inoffensive to others? does it mean that the people who play these games wouldn't care about others' drug use in real life? or something else entirely?"

[Dave Rickey]

25.

Let me try a not-so-hypothetical example that might straddle the line between gameplay and crime:

Wish Houses will collect taxes from Player <-> NPC transactions. Those revenues don't go directly into the House bank account, the NPC accumulates them for a few hours. The plan is to let Rogue characters from enemy Houses steal those funds, if they can get in and out without getting caught.

It's "theft", but is it a crime? Here's an even grayer example: Houses will be able to decide who can and cannot harvest resources from their domains, but members of enemy Houses won't be bound by their policies, they'll be able to come in and take resources without permission, assuming they can avoid being killed. It's "trespassing with intent", but is it a crime?

--Dave

[Phinehas]

26.

Dan> "Yes, but I think that it leads to an interesting series of questions. For example, is the community happy with the developers making the decision to punish the hoarders, or dupers, etc. Imagine the situation where, in a real-world (representative, democratic, Westminster) system, there was a punishment for sodomy or drug-taking or something else that was out-of-step with current community views. Punishment of offenders takes place by the appropriately constituted members of the executive, but the community is unhappy about this."

As it pertains to in-world crime, though, are the developers better seen as executives or gods? Creator of worlds might not be a strictly political position. Of course, the developers can allow it to be political and may have good reason to do so (eg. for the sake of happy customers) since they unfortunately don't possess the infallibility aspect of another World Creator. Either way, perhaps some in-world grievances are better understood as sins instead of crimes. ;)

*tongue only slightly in cheek*

--Phin

[Dan Hunter]

27.

As to Dave's examples, I'm convinced that--from the perspective of those within world--neither of these are crimes. They've been sanctioned (hell, they've been designed) by the designers. They don't transgress the norms of the community nor of the world designers. Ergo, no crime within the world, even though you might call it "stealing" or "trespassing".

As to Phin's comment, it's interesting to ponder the relationship between sin and crime. The former is a transgression against religion, the latter against law. While there is often a connection (though the causal relationship is murky) it's pretty clear that only crimes involve sanction by state authorities--assuming that there is a state-religion separation, which is of course often not the case. I'm gonna restrict discussions to criminal activity, coz it's simpler that way.

But it would be an interesting exercise for a world to be designed around a strongly-held set of religious tenets (or series of conflicting tenets) and then enforce these through various criminal/legal statutes. Very reminiscent of the discussion on Evil Avatars elsewhere on the site. I haven't seen it done, but I bet it would make for very different (and probably compelling) gameplay.

[Dave Rickey]

28.

I don't think the House getting ripped off will feel so charitable. I'm *hoping* that unlike UO, where house break-ins were originally intended gameplay, the Houses will take it out on each other, rather than on me.

For your other notion, two words: Paranoia Online. ;-)

--Dave (The Computer is Your Friend)

[Dan Hunter]

29.

Dave: "your other notion, two words: Paranoia Online"

My fave online game is still Sissyfight.