Restart, Restore, or Continue Creating Democracy?

The Importance of writes "LawMeme's James Grimmelmann, whose work has previously been noted on Slashdot, has written a new piece about virtual life and death in MMORPGs, and what that means for online democracy. Any serious discussion of democracy online that features comments on "The Secret of Monkey Island" has got to be good."

5000 new job

Plus gaming industry created 5000 new jobs last year. How more democratic can we get ;)

The key to incumbency

Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A Select Start

Re-elected baby!!

GROG!!!

Hi, I'm Guybrush Threepwood. I want to be a pirate.

Keeps me away from online

I don't mind playing a good LAN party game with people I know, but back when I was pretty good at Quake II, and started to try out MMRPG's like the "Ultima Online" beta, I realized that I just didn't enjoy playing the online games for one simple reason:

Most of the people online acted like assholes.

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

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

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

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

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

Eh - just my opinion, and I could be wrong.

Key to accountability...

...is karma, visible karma of some type.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The actions themselves can't be coded good or bad (UO's failed notoriety system being the prime example). Only another player has the proper context to interpret that.

Human psycology and online games

This is very similar to playing on-line poker with virtual money. What's the point of playing poker with virtual money you may ask? Bluffing no longer works, after all. What's the point of playing poker if you cannot bluff because everyone has infinite money? Surprisingly I found that most people DO place value in their online money - and treat it like real money. They want to accumulate as much online money as possible. Why? What's the point? I guess it's the never ending quest to be better than the next guy at something - even something as useless as an online game.

Gaming is one of my favorite past times...

And I enjoy a good read about games, gaming, nerdy stuff in general. But that article was kind of meatless. Like a soup made of mostly water. I didn't see any profound concepts or ideas or even a point other than, "in games you can die and it's interesting that people can choose to kill or help others in games."

The blurb on slashdot was MORE interesting than RingTFA - which why people not wasting 15min of their time reading the article will probably mod me down for flaimbate and overrated.

Penalties

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

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

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

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

Re:Penalties

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

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

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

International relations in a borderless world

I've always wondered what it would be like in the world if barriers for people to interact with people from other parts of the world, whether geographical or language were removed. Would we actually have world peace if people weren't so "isolated" as they are in the real world? And I believe we may soon find out, via MMORPGs.

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

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

I am really looking forward to the time where international players freely interact -- it will be an interesting sociology experiement to see how national and cultural means, norms and paradigms manifest themselves in a virtual world free of linguistic, political, and physical barriers.

Re:International relations in a borderless world

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

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

Gupta is a troll

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Democracy or Democratic Republic?

There is no real democracy anywhere.

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

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

Equality in games

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

Now since the problem has been identified, whats the solution? Some games have taken out Player vs Player aspect, for example Horizons (www.istaria.com) or a game called Shattered Galaxy (www.sgalaxy.com) has something called a power rating system, the stronger the player the more noobs he has to fight.

Attaining equality is easy, however, attaining it whilst still allowing people to get on the levelling treadmill is hard. I am sure that developers all over the world are looking at ways to appeal not only to their most loyal hardcore fans but also to the travelling lowbie.

Misquoting someone important - "With great power comes great responsibility", If the gameplay was set in a way that it is beneficial to help lowbies, then I am quite sure most games problems will be solved, till then I will keep dodging the "I ownz joo, noob" comments :)

LucasArts had a GREAT philosophy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Action and Reaction

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

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

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

I don't agree...

a painless execution is the absolute worst punishment any game society can impose on the characters who are its citizens. Torture is not an option. Imprisonment and fines can be imposed, true, but as soon as the player behind the character finds that these punishments are too onerous, she can simply terminate her account

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

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

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

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

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

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

Comparisons between MMORPGs and SCUMM games

SCUMM (LucasArts) games are bound by a certain number of possible actions you can take. All of those actions are predestined to succeed or fail. You can't "think outside of the box" in these games. If the writer of the game doesn't want you to use the pickaxe on the dog, then forget it. MMORPGs are much more open. Even games like Quake allow for more flexibility. Take Rocket Jumping for example.

Why online games suck

Abstraction.

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

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

I'm rooting for the latter, but it's too soon to tell.

ummm

Train to zone!!!!!!!!!

Views of a longtime MMORPGer

I played Asheron's Call [asheronscall.com] for 3 years as a 'hardcore' player (40+ hours a week). Played in multiple worlds, and I played with a lot of people. In the PvP world (Darktide), the entiriry of your life was pure Chaos. High level players would sit in the 'newbie' towns and just kill newbs repeatedly. The only way out was to have another high level friend escort you away from everyone else.

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

Everyone's experience in the online world is different, but for the most part people will surprise you.

When in rome do as the romans

I know Im an asshole for doing this, but when I am playing an online game I try to be the most obnoxious person possible. I play warcraft3, 3v3 and just buy shredders...steal my teamates wood, then start calling them names for bening dumb enough to team up with me. On some of the custom maps in starcraft you can build invincible buildings, so I spend all my time covering the map with them...so no one else can build. I am definetely part of the problem, but I wouldnt stick out compared to everyone else. Ive also fined tuned my insults playing monkey island insult swordfighting, and insult armwrestling in escape from monkey island.

Better Monkey Island democracy quote

On the re-election poster for Governor Marley on the dock house on Melee Island: "When there's only one candidate, there's only one choice."

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

The Essential Problem with MMORPGs

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

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

Wha?

Was I the only one that read, "Run/Stop - Restore" in the headline?

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

MMORPGs as they get better, defeat themselves

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

The problem is, the games have become so complex and "realistic" that they end up embodying the very nature of existence which people were trying to take a break from. In today's games, you have just as much ass-kissing and mindless grinding as you do in real life, only your rewards are more-or-less intangible. Ultimately as a result, you become an even more pathetic slave to the power-hierarchy.

Someone should do a study and compare the effects of a MMORPG time/productivity-sink with alcohol and other drugs. I think the results would be surprising. There's a new kid in town sucking productivity into a big black hole. It's called Everquest, Asheron's Call, Anarchy Online, SWG, etc.

Just a brief device for your consideration.

Players can always flip the switch or pull the plug on a game that has ceased being fun. The image of a frustrated player upending the checkerboard contains an important truth: there is nothing in the rules of checkers to keep both players in their chairs.
Joshua: Strange game. The only way to win is not to play.

I would propose a form of Draconian copy protection to ensure that the game is distributed on a one-to-one basis with the physical media. Perhaps a hardware card would come with the game to allow playability. This is to ensure that each account is, in fact, legit.

Secondly, paid accounts. This is to maintain the server and to create an incentive to remain a decent citizen of the game world. You screw up, and your account is terminated, no refunds and no way of getting back.

Third, a moderation system. For the most part, what's used on Slashdot seems to find the comments worth reading while weeding out the poor ones. It works quite well. I think something akin to how that is done here could be applied in a game world.

Fourth, focus adventure games on exploration rather than combat. My particular favorite concept of any game of late is Uru: Ages beyond MYST. I'm not a fan of MMORPGs. In fact, if and when I do by this game, I'll play the online single player version. However, to those who do like cooperative gaming, the idea of having multiple persons to solve a single puzzle and infinite worlds to explore has a certain appeal.

It's such a radical concept. I really hope people don't fuck up others' suspension of disbelief by posting cracks and cheats and walkthroughs, during gameplay. A game like Uru requires one to be fully immersed in the world. The puzzles of the Myst series were challenging, creative, and unique. That one game pretty much launched an entire genre of clones.

Fifth, on the topic of suspension of disbelief. Let us consider the grammar of a certain portion of gamers. "stfu n00b! i ownzored j00." Let's say the scope of the game is a medieval battlefield (all hypothetical). The characters in question are knights. I seriously doubt any knight spoke in 1337. That creates a problem. How believable is a world where the language and customs of that world have not been assimilated by the players therein? Not very.

Which leads to a game that could use adaptive latent semantic analysis on a player's messages. It would intelligently consider word pairs to find the emotional content of the message. stfu n00b would become [insulting command][insulting generic noun] (generically). i ownzored j00 i [claim to victory] you. With parsing of course.

The game could then substitute this with "Silence, thou swine. I hath claimed glorious victory over thine own." Or something of similar meaning. The point being that it would create language in the tradition of the game's historical and social context.

Sixth, culture, tradition. What makes a novel by Tolkien so rich? It's the history, and the traditions of each race. The Hobbits, for example live a life of peace and quiet, performing simple agricultural labors. The elves are stealthy and live in a woodland realm. The dwarves delve deep under the Earth and, being created by a God of a somewhat rebellious nature, have ever been in conflict with the elves. Point being, there's traditions and uniqueness to each race.

How is that to be adapted to give a game world depth? How does one make a person behave like an elf or a dwarf, etc.? Perhaps, before character creation a brief survey is given to match the personality of the player to a character that would best reflect an extension of that personality. Someone with a love for solitude and nature, for example, might be assigned an elf. Gold, metal, working with hands - a dwarf, et al.

These are the things I believe would most immediately improve multiplayer gaming.

Re:Get a life . .

I for one welcome our new democratic police state.

Bah!

On every forum on games, music, sports, or anything not directly related to "our continued survival as a race", there'll be some idiot who chirps up some "this is a waste of time, think of the children!"

Today, you're that idiot.

There's plenty of places to out your insightless politic - games.slashdot.org isn't one of them.

Re:Bah!

You know what... I'm going to agree with you here... What is life and culture? I would argue that it's the ability and the results of discussing things which are not required for the continued survival of the race.

So, Thanks very much, I have a life, and part of it is an experment in virtual worlds and the political systems in them.

Re:the reason i respawn is needed

respawn is needed because i dont want to wait forever waiting forever for players to take forever in completing the mission.

oh gawd no... that's what makes urban terror so great... the assnut that rushes in blazing away quake style get's waxed and the rest of the team can easily plan their ambush of the other team... nothing's better than watching a team mate down to one on one hunting each other... or the one really good player evading the team of 5 that walk around as a pack so they can be picked off easily...

Re:real life&debt scenario vs. unprecedented e

i have seen your other posts and like your style.

Democracy starts at home.

I saw this "Breaking the Silence" report on the telly the other night... very well worth watching, and rather disturbing. I just wish he'd do something with his hair.

http://pilger.carlton.com/ [carlton.com]
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2003/09/272644.sh tml [indymedia.org]
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article48 51.htm [informatio...house.info]

Re:Get a life . .

And how does one go about examining democracy and its inherent problems? How does one go about changing them without throwing nations into turmoil and playing God with millions of innocent lives? How does even buy a clue about what to change?

Exactly the same way I go about designing a car that's safer, has higher performance and greater efficiency without risking the lives of test drivers and the general populace.

I model it. Virtually. On a computer.

Go figure.

KFG

faggity-ass politically correct movement

Alas, it's no longer politically correct to use the phrase "faggity-ass politically correct movement".

Now you're supposed to use the phrase "differently intolerant".