Industry Bodies

Why isn’t there a trade body to represent the interests of virtual world developers?

In the UK we have trade associations for body piercers, cartoonists, the greetings card industry, television camermen, packaging companies and homeopaths, among others. Why isn’t there any organisation at all for virtual world developers?

I first brought up this idea back in the heady days of 1989. The general consensus among the dozen or so developers I approached was that we didn’t need one. Two further factors were the cost, and the suspicion with which developers regarded each other.

With the legal system chipping away at developers’ autonomy, reliance on press releases and hearsay for performance comparisons and the benefits of sharing blacklists becoming increasingly apparent, is the time yet ripe for the formation of an Association of Virtual World Developers? Or are we still too disparate, disjointed and untrusting of one another to make the call?

Corollary: if players really do regard developers as arrogant, unsympathetic, power-abusing fat cats, why don’t they form a trade union?

Richard

Comments

[Matt Mihaly]

1.

Well, first, there aren't that many professional virtual world developers in the West, and second, almost all of them are game developers and already have an association to represent them. Granted, the interests of games generally and virtual worlds generally do not have 100% overlap by any means, but that's my guess, beyond the simple, "We're too new."

--matt

[Michael Chui]

2.

It's worth trying for, if anyone feels up to it.

[Prokofy Neva]

3.

Re: "if players really do regard developers as arrogant, unsympathetic, power-abusing fat cats"

Join Fair Play or Consumer Advocates in Second Life, start a chapter in your game today!

[Hiro Pendragon]

4.

I brought this up at the end of State of Play III's "Law In Virtual Worlds" panel during Q&A - whether there was a way that the panel foresaw an outlet for developers to get scalable, affordable legal representation.

...

The panel shrugged at me.

Richard, you hit the nail on the head precisely with your questions. There is an expectation that developers like me who are trying to establish themselves - or even established, indie artists and coders - should not be able to make any money without the blessing of a large game development company. Linden Lab has been starting to recommend developers in Second Life to outside contractors, but of course favoritism (and familiarity, knowing they can recommend someone reliable) is a big factor in whose name is passed on to 3rd parties. Along with retainment of copyright by creators and encouraging sale of L$, Linden Lab is perhaps the industry leader in enabling indie developers.

Of course, this falls back on supply & demand. There are a ton of people who want to design cool game stuff. Any union would be an choosy, exclusionary entity, at best. And we look at stories about the sweat-shops in China for powerleveling and other services and I think it's a matter of time (if not already) that this shifts to product creation, as well.

So I don't think unions are the solution, and even as a short-term fix, I don't think it's viable; any union formed would become too powerful to ever think of voluntarily stepping aside for a better solution.

I think ultimately, we need to focus on ways we can empower individuals. Perhaps a non-profit entity that is funded by game companies (and such) that provides legal services to indie developers?

[Richard Bartle]

5.

Matt Mihaly>Well, first, there aren't that many professional virtual world developers in the West

Mmorpg.com lists nearly 100 such games in existence and another 70 in development. OK, so many of those are from the Far East, and some developers have more than one product listed. There does seem to be the basis for a trade association there, though.

>and second, almost all of them are game developers and already have an association to represent them.

This is fine if their interests are indeed represented by the IGDA. Most IGDA members are not interested in this particular field, though, so whether they'd enjoy stumping up cash to defend a lawsuit or maintain a central database of banned players is debatable.

Also, there could be instances where the interests of the wider game development company come up against those of virtual world developers. For example, EULAs are not as important to single-player games as they are for virtual worlds; might the IGDA accept a legal watering-down of their content in return for government concessions in, say, the way that parental advisory classifications are made?

>beyond the simple, "We're too new."

This is a valid argument, I agree, but how old do they have to be before it no longer holds true?

Richard

[Prokofy Neva]

6.

Re: "or maintain a central database of banned players"

Oh, dear, Richard, I hope you will find a more useful and noble purpose than this for a trade association. Such centralized dbases can be terribly abused as they replicate beyond their original circumstances. You also have the problem of lack of conformity among the TOS of many games, so that what could get you banned in one game would be tolerated in another, defeating the purpose of centralization except to gather intel. What would be the threshold for getting on the blacklist of this Game Interpol? How would you get off it?

And if you're going to put in such a punitive devise, I'd like a Metaverse Supreme Court then, please, where we can appeal the abuse of this system. Because all too often, players get banned when sychophantic fanboyz trying to suck up to game companies, even to get a job in them, are using them to settle scores. There's already a terrible lack of transparency about these measures, and no way to check allegations of collusion that often seem to have merit when independently investigated.

[Brent Michael Krupp]

7.

Could it be that the MMOG developers are all fighting tooth&nail to come up with a bigger, better game and don't really feel too favorably inclined towards competitors that they constantly fear will poach their programmers and copy their good ideas?

[Richard Bartle]

8.

Prokofy Neva>Oh, dear, Richard, I hope you will find a more useful and noble purpose than this for a trade association.

I didn't say I was for it - I was reflecting some of the opinions I heard at the Austin Games conference. Example: Damion Schubert described what happens when people cheat at a Las Vegas casino - they're instantly banned from all other Las Vegas casinos. In the ensuing discussion, it didn't seem unreasonable to propose that virtual world developers do the same thing.

As it happens, I am inclined to support such a database, if there are sufficient safeguards. I wouldn't want CSRs to be able to threaten people with being banned from every game because they're being boisterous in one particular game, for example. However, if two different companies were to put the same individual on their banned list, then that would be far less open to abuse.

However, I haven't given the matter a great deal of thought, and may well change my mind; I was merely using it as a reason why developers may decide to co-operate after they've been IGEd once too often.

>How would you get off it?

You'd wait a year for the first banning to expire.

How do you get unbanned from casinos?

>And if you're going to put in such a punitive devise, I'd like a Metaverse Supreme Court then

We'll do whatever the credit reference companies do when people complain about being blacklisted.

Actually, we should do more. If the organisers did indeed allow some kind of appeals procedure, that could help people who were unjustly banned from games. At the moment, if yours is one of the 1,000 accounts banned for receiving duped gold, you have no comeback even if you didn't actually receive any duped gold. With an impartial body monitoring bannings, you might be able to get unbanned.

>all too often, players get banned when sychophantic fanboyz trying to suck up to game companies, even to get a job in them, are using them to settle scores.

Hopefully, the fact that such fanboyz would have to answer not only to their own developer but to other developers too would give them pause for thought. If it turns out that one company is banning people for trivial reasons and is taxing the appeals procedure, then that company can be denied the benefits of knowing who everyone else has banned. Therefore, there's pressure to ban only those people whose bannings will stand up under public scrutiny.

Richard

[Richard Bartle]

9.

Brent Michael Krupp>Could it be that the MMOG developers are all fighting tooth&nail to come up with a bigger, better game and don't really feel too favorably inclined towards competitors

Yes, of course; this is going to happen in any immature industry.

However, even if you absolutely hate your opposition, nevertheless you can agree that there are some things that will benefit you both. In World War II, for example, both sides agreed not to use chemical weapons. If that can be agreed between philosophies so widely apart, it shouldn't be too hard to get virtual world developers together if they can see how it benefits the whole industry.

Of course, they do have to see some reason why an association would benefit the whole industry...

Richard

[Hiro Pendragon]

10.

Richard > However, even if you absolutely hate your opposition, nevertheless you can agree that there are some things that will benefit you both. In World War II, for example, both sides agreed not to use chemical weapons.

And yet, enemies will find innovative ways to go through loopholes. Nazi Germany clearly did use chemical weapons in WWII - but on its own "undesired" citizens. Meanwhile both countries were researching the atomic bomb - which America then used - which produced far more horrific effects than chemical weapons.

Even today, we have Geneva Conventions for war, which we're watching the US's gov't double-speak its way through loopholes to torture people even remotely connected with terrorists. We have United Nations human rights accords, but countries like China ignore it. We have non-proliferation treaties, and Russia, Pakistan and China all scrambling to sell their secrets.

So I would say your statement needs revision. Enemies can agree to mutual agreements -- as long as its convenient. Ultimately any set of social rules in the Metaverse / VWs hangs on principles alone, and some sort of real power of enforcement may be needed to ever hold an effective agreement.

[Prokofy Neva]

11.

I guess we're not coming up with any real compelling reasons why game companies should make a trade association -- and the only thing discussed of viability so far is this international blacklist -- which is troubling.

You'd think the games companies, seeing all this constant hemorrhaging of customers out of one game into another for long periods, and then sometimes an ebb back, would be eager to make a kind of European Union of games, where they'd punish people less for leaving, and also encourage guest-workers and encourage repatriation. They could be lowering the barriers at which they end people's accounts, or perhaps encourage more inter-game tourism.

Imagine if you could go to a sim in Second Life and click to get a day-pass or a two-week round-trip fare to World of Warcraft or Guild Wars without that fear of being killed in the first frame, or being horsed into joining a guild, which are what prevent many people from going to those kind of FPS games.

Some of us have even talked about how Second Life could become the inter-game Grand Central Station with lockers in the terminal where you could keep your avatars, weapons, loot, etc. in between games. Wouldn't that be cool?

"what happens when people cheat at a Las Vegas casino"

Richard, I'm thinking this might be an easier call to make than such SL issues like buying up 30 accounts and farming first land and duping newbies, or TSO issues like suggestive weblinks on your profile. There aren't clear-cut TOS rules about this.

I'm thinking the outer edges of Eve haven't been so specified in the TOS, either, and we know that at least one top game exec has said with a twinkle in his eye, "fraud is fun" lol.

First, we'd need a court in these games themselves to exhaust local remedies. The abuse of the AR system is rampant. I saw this all the time in TSO, where people would even collude with liaisons to set up people by goading them and chasing them around and trying to get them to swear in ways that violated the TOS. Or as a roomie with perms, they'd trash they land, then spell out obscenities with floor tiles which you technically managed, but hadn't created. Thus you could be nailed for an act that occurred on your property which in fact was a form of griefing against you.

The peer review system we've seen on SL is boycotted by many who are asked to participate in it because it strips out so much relevant contextual data.

But let's say there isn't local remedy, but we can still get a Metaverse-wide court procedure going. I like your idea of having pressure then on game companies that turn in too many frivolous suits.

[Andrew Crystall]

12.

Heck, you can be banned from certain games for putting your email address on the game's forums.

Equally, you have games like Eve Online, where elaborate scams ending in the ripping off of massive amounts of virtual property (a recent one being for 50 billion ISK, ~$15,000 worth)

You can scam, cheat and rip off in Eve. This kind of behavoir would get you banned from most other MMO's in an instant.

There a lot of games, and comming up with a one-size-fits-all catagory of offences to ban for, with the *SOLE* exception of hacking would be nasty, messy and affect a number of the games in a negative fashion.

And, the example of PunkBuster banning people for running TeamSpeak or FRAPS allways comes to mind.

[Matt Mihaly]

13.

The Vegas analogy doesn't work. Vegas bans work because every casino offers exactly the same games and almost exactly the same gambling experience. Sure, the waitresses may have skimpier outfits here, or maybe there's some dude dressed up like Caesar entertaining the Midwesterners there, but the -exact- same game is being played. It therefore becomes very easy to apply consistent rules to players: A player breaking a rule in one casino would be breaking that exact same rule in every other casino in Vegas if he was gambling there instead.

Not so for MMOs, where the rules vary dramatically from world to world, and with good reason.
--matt

[Hiro Pendragon]

14.

Matt> Not so for MMOs, where the rules vary dramatically from world to world, and with good reason.

There are certain things that will be universally bannable, like breaking felony laws, hacking the MMO, etc.

Instead of some rigid ban-all list, I suggest a more reasonable method would be to have a menu of reputation - where you might be tagged for different possible aspects, be it age, griefing players, swearing - and let the MMO decide if your violations warrant a ban / prevention from joining.

[Matt Mihaly]

15.

Hiro Pendragon wrote:

There are certain things that will be universally bannable, like breaking felony laws, hacking the MMO, etc.

Nobody who is going to try hack into your MMO is going to be stopped by a ban list especially when we remain completely incapable of reliably ascertaining the identity of players.

--matt

[Hiro Pendragon]

16.

Matt> Nobody who is going to try hack into your MMO is going to be stopped by a ban list especially when we remain completely incapable of reliably ascertaining the identity of players.

... which is why we would have the database - people would have to be verified, and MMOs could simply require registration with the database. I suppose that won't stop identity theft, but that's a much larger problem anyway - that perhaps in another 5 years lawmakers will start waking up to.

[Toby Barnes]

17.

There is.
TIGA - The independent Games Association. www.tiga.org I think, They represent the interests of developers of all forms of games, console, pc, mobile, serious games, and virtual world developers.
and ELSPA work for the interests of Publishers, all forms of leisure software publishers. And then there is Skillset looking at the industries skill needs, and there are more...

what we need is an objective collective body like the design council, or the film council.