But were it not for Wales

Time Magazine's top billing on the controversy within the Protestant evangelist movement ("Does God Want You to be Rich", ref [1.] [2.]  ) provides a segue to my scratching at the mainstream MMORPG itch...

I take this controversy - when viewed abstractly - as an example of what happens when the belief systems, yes, the rules of a world are turned on their head to at least to some of its participants.   Claims of 'false idols' and 'possibly heretical' enter the discussion.

Statistical Heroism vaguely discussed what happens when we are paid to play our own idols:  we can't all be heroes?  Worse, what happens when we prentend a heroism that is reified with the world for all to see (levels, loot etc)?  Extrinsic rewards seem to want to gravitate to a system of explict rewards correlated with status.

True, idolatry is seen badly by at least the Abrahamic religions (Christianity, Judaism, Islam), but it is also true that MMORPG value systems do not rise to the gravity of religion.  Yet, who knows whether players raised on online extrinsic reward expectations will see the world differently (or not) in the future.

Of interest now, however, are the tensions that arise in worlds when players take root and evolve expectations about the intended game that may later conflict with the one designed by the developers.  As we've discussed here many times in different guises, we all understand how A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy in the sense that Clay Shirky once famously described:

The people using your software, even if you own it and pay for it... will behave as if they have rights. And if you abrogate those rights, you'll hear about it very quickly.

In A Pledge of Allegiance I hinted of some of these tensions in online gaming.  I am still smarting all these years later from a number of online combat games I had when players adopted conventions that I thought at the time 'ruined' the experience (see footnote in the above citation).  Having said this, these instances are rightly only a footnote as they were only the actions of a small minority driving little shifts in the communal measures of fairness and play styles.  Yet even small shifts can be emotionally charged, e.g. PvP combat.

Go one step further. What happens when the players decide a game as it was designed was crap but they like the world view and there they are anyway?  What happens when they decide they are playing a different game and yes, they will expect you to conform?  Some may find such delightful - hail the god of emergence!  The first problem is that even under the most ideal of circumstances not everyone will go along with a switch, any switch.  So there is an inherent conflict built in.  A three-way tension between the loyalists, the revolutionaries (fn1), and the developers.

Somewhat melodramatically, I can recall the line from Robert Bolt's classic A Man For All Seasons where Thomas More was given to say to Richard Rich:

Why Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world.

But for Wales?

When players wish to emphasize themselves (e.g. a game hero experience) and their group (e.g. the game they want to play), the result may be a healthy tension that challenges developers through the filter of the marketplace.  But I also wonder if its natural outcome is a specialization of experience: players will play with others like themselves in places others like themselves like to play.   A point that was raised in-and-around The Once and Future MMO was that a spawling place like Ultima-Online could never be built these days.  The argument being that now there is plenty of competition and folks can choose the niche they are looking for in a world (rather than tolerating a big world for the niche).

Is too much individualism ruining virtual worlds?  Are players too demanding of their piece of Wales now, SVP?

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fn1.  Ref. American Revolutionary War.

Comments

[Seven Star Hand]

1.

Hello Nate and all,

RE: "Does God want you to be rich?"
How about, does the Creator want some people to suffer and starve while others wallow in luxury? What about "serving mammon" (money and materialism) instead of truth, justice, and your fellow souls?

Here's some pivotal knowledge (wisdom) so you and others can stop focusing on symptoms and obfuscatory details and home in like a laser on the root causes of and solutions to humanity's seemingly never-ending struggles.

Money is the lifeblood of the powerful and the chains and key to human enslavement

There is a radical and highly effective solution to all of our economic problems that will dramatically simplify, streamline, and revitalize human civilization. It will eliminate all poverty, debt, and the vast majority of crime, material inequality, deception, and injustice. It will also eliminate the underlying causes of most conflicts, while preventing evil scoundrels and their cabals from deceiving, deluding, and bedeviling humanity, ever again. It will likewise eliminate the primary barriers to solving global warming, pollution, and the many evils that result from corporate greed and their control of natural and societal resources. That solution is to simply eliminate money from the human equation, thereby replacing the current system of greed, exploitation, and institutionalized coercion with freewill cooperation, just laws based on verifiable wisdom , and societal goals targeted at benefiting all, not just a self-chosen and abominably greedy few.

We can now thank millennia of political, monetary, and religious leaders for proving, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that top-down, hierarchical governance is absolute folly and foolishness. Even representative democracy, that great promise of the past, was easily and readily subverted to enslave us all, thanks to money and those that secretly control and deceptively manipulate all currencies and economies. Is there any doubt anymore that entrusting politics and money to solve humanity's problems is delusion of the highest order? Is there any doubt that permitting political and corporate leaders to control the lives of billions has resulted in great evil?

Here's a real hot potato! Eat it up, digest it, and then feed it's bones to the hungry...

Most people have no idea that the common-denominator math of all the world's currencies forms an endless loop that generates debt faster than we can ever generate the value to pay for it. This obscured and purposeful math-logic trap at the center of all banking, currencies, and economies is the root cause of poverty. Those who rule this world through fear and deception strive constantly to hide this fact, while pretending to seek solutions to poverty and human struggle. Any who would scoff at this analysis have simply failed to do the math, even though it is based on a simple common-denominator ratio.

Here is Wisdom

Doctrine of Two Spirits...

Peace...

[Anonymous]

2.

Does global freewill cooperation exist in the same universe as the potato with bones?

[Bruce Woodcock]

3.

Nice quote from one of my favorite movies. :)

Bruce

[Anyonymous]

4.

I know, I know... "Don't feed the trolls." But what totally made my day is that if you go to one of this guy's blogs, he actually has "Messiah" listed as his occupation. That plus he's using the Bible to prove how wrong the Bible is. Always good for a laugh on Monday morning. And he's anonymous. Unless "Seven Star Hand" is his actual name... I wonder if it was hyphenated after marriage? Young Mr. Seven Star marries Ms. Tellulah Hand, and they decide, romantically, to combine their names... Sweet.

['Nother Guy w/ Opinion]

5.

Google (money religion leader) SHIFT+INSERT.

[mudkicker]

6.

The articles on this site are utter crap. It used to be great. What happened?

[Arnold Hendrick]

7.

Getting back to the original post, the question seems to be how someone can be a hero in a game where EVERY player supposed to be a hero.

Well, in team-oriented games (like most MMORPGs), by doing your job well you're a hero to your teammates. Alas, this assumes they have the wisdom to know what a mess would result if the tank, healer, damage dealer, crowd controller, etc., failed in their assigned role. However, in my experience most gamers ASSUME that they are super-skilled experts and carp at anyone, including teammates, who don't live up to their expectations. As a result, negativity is a common experience in teams until you develop a steady group of gaming friends.

A more subtle heroic opportunity is the ability to "stand out" from the existential sameness of the game world. Simplistic gamers try to stand out by being super-powerful (hence the desire to level-up quickly) and/or super-competent (know how to approach any situation in the game). Subtler folks are role-players who try to make their character have a uniquely different and memorable personality.

Although none of this is truly heroic in the mythic sense, it certainly provides more hero-like opportunities than everyday life. I would argue that THIS is the ultimate draw of MMOs - the ability to be "better" than you are in normal life.

Walter Mittys of the World, Unite!

[nate combs]

8.

Arnold>
Although none of this is truly heroic in the mythic sense, it certainly provides more hero-like opportunities than everyday life. I would argue that THIS is the ultimate draw of MMOs - the ability to be "better" than you are in normal life.

Walter Mittys of the World, Unite!

-------------------------

Sure, I'll go along with this as far as it goes. This is the inspirational stuff that gets VW visionaries excited.

I am sure we can cite any number of folks (including myself) who gets a thrill out of the sense of accomplishment of "getting something done" in these sorts of online environments. Getting something done is something that I often miss in my occasional FPS/combat online experiences. Liz said it best in her Newsweek interview - something to the effect of being able to check of boxes and finish things. A great contrast to a greyscale RW!

The issue I wonder about, however, is what sort of group system, or should I say society that one encounters from systems that are built in this way. In a way this is the more general question to the one I asked in Civicus where the question there was how MMOGs handled strangers and whether that said something of their maturity as "worlds."

On the one hand, we all know a number of wonderful anecdotes (personal and urban legend) of folks we've met (or a friend met) who may come from an unremarkable RL setting to do fabulous things in the MMORPG: organize grand guilds, super popular etc..

Yet on the other hand, what sort of world has one really built? A rather specialized one, it seems. A social economy built around obtaining Tier N gear? A social system stratefied by levels? etc.

I think the answer is two-fold.

Some individuals are able to build special private social worlds that reside within the game world but seem independent of it. These are your private guilds, the long term friends you make online etc.

Yet, does this occur in spite of or because of the game world itself? I'm inclined to be questioning here, when it comes to the "mainstream MMORPG pattern", thinking most of these folks might be able to do as well in a chat room assuming one can get the participants to hang out long enough.