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Role Playing (Games) Entertainment Games

Protests, Politics And Parties In MMORPGs 373

Posted by timothy from the william-shatner-said-it-best dept.
The Importance of writes "LawMeme's James Grimmelmann has written an interesting piece on protests, politics and parties in MMORPGs. In particular, he talks about the 'tax revolt' in Second Life."
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Protests, Politics And Parties In MMORPGs More

Protests, Politics And Parties In MMORPGs

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  • There is a true social contract (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 21, 2003 @10:05PM (#7021721)
    If I don't like how life is in a game, I'm free to leave at any time and start a new life elsewhere agreeing to the new rules of that society.
    • Some people would argue a bullet to the forehead has the same effect... does that make protests in real life any less legitimate?

    • Re:There is a true social contract (Score:5, Insightful)

      by frovingslosh ( 582462 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @12:09AM (#7022211)
      If you don't like something, even something that you are paying for, just shut-up and leave is one approach. I'm sure that many businesses would prefer that a few people do this and most people continue putting up with what they get than to have to address issues. But when issues are raised and changes made, the system is generally improved for the customer and usually even for the business. Protests can be frivilous, but they are often valid and usefull.

  • my favourite online protest.... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by wo1verin3 ( 473094 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @10:06PM (#7021736) Homepage
    The naked riot of 1997 in Ultima Online:

    From AlterNet: [alternet.org]
    History has shown gamers that online protest can result in positive change, as exemplified in Ultima Online's 1997 naked riot demanding bug fixes and server upgrades. Not only were some of the rioters' issues addressed by the game publisher following the incident, but the event was widely reported, and gamers worldwide have been inspired to acts of virtual civil disobedience ever since. Remember that your worst enemy, aside from integrated branding, is inaction. Electronic Arts clearly wants players of The Sims Online to be wildly imaginative, and has already recognized that the online world is unpredictable.
    • Wheres the above UO Protest has a 'concrete' goal, bug fixes and upgrades to the server, this is protesting a feature of the 'game/application'. If the people dont like it, dont use it, there are plenty of other 3D-Virtual-Building-Places out there.

      • Re:my favourite online protest.... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by fireduck ( 197000 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @10:40PM (#7021891)
        What the players are protesting essentially is the taxation of their role as content providers.

        From what I've read on Second Life (which admittedly has been this article as well as the interesting story a month or 2 ago about people being abducted ingame by aliens), players create most of the content. Content is most MMORPGs is produced by developers who are paid to do so. In SL, the players are seemingly given a toolkit to build what they want. So rather than have pre-rendered dungeons or quests, players can "build" a UFO which goes around randomly abducting other players. rather nifty. And for their efforts at coding the new item, they are being taxed.

        So they're essentially being taxed for content that in other games is produced through the real-life subscription fees. Seems a bit unfair. So they are protesting. And, as the writer of the article points out, the very act of protesting within the game is part of the game, and part of the fun.

        (then again, i could be completely wrong, as I've only recently heard about second life)

        • Re:my favourite online protest.... (Score:5, Interesting)

          by JayBlalock ( 635935 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @12:37AM (#7022308)
          It's deeper than that.

          Remember, the article starts off talking about the rampant inflation inherent in MMOGs - items are constantly produced, and nothing ever really goes away. (and, as a result, the poor (in this case, new gamers) find it a LOT more difficult to make money, whereas the rich have an easy time accumulating more wealth to compensate for inflation.

          The tax was introduced as an attempt to counteract this, and to ensure that property values for EVERYONE stayed as close to nominal as possible, at the "expense" of a relative few of the richer players.

          Does this sound familiar? It should. This protest is a virtual recreation of the on-going real-world economics battles between Left-leaning and Right-leaning policies.

          Do you spare the rich by saying "hands off, make money however you can", but in doing so make life harder on the poor? Or do you intentionally tax the wealthy few to make life better for everyone else?

          And the great thing about MMORPGs is that you can use them as an experimentive toolkit for economic policies, without risking the lives of millions of real citizens.

          I could see economic think tanks intentionally creating MMORPG worlds with different starting conditions, just to see how they evolve.

          • Inflation? (Score:4, Insightful)

            by 0123456 ( 636235 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @05:17AM (#7023043)
            "Remember, the article starts off talking about the rampant inflation inherent in MMOGs"

            Which is, of course, utter bollocks. The problem, if there is one, is rampant _deflation_ of prices: items that would have cost 2000 whatsits when they first appeared cost 20 whatsits today because they're so common. It's only the brand-new and very rare items that cost a lot.

            "the rich have an easy time accumulating more wealth to compensate for inflation."

            Why do you need to accumulate wealth when goods cost 1% of the price they sold for when they first appeared? A new "poor" player in Everquest can equip themselves with items for a thousand platinum that would have cost many tens of thousands when the game was young... and make that thousand platinum in a few hours of killing spiders.

            Frankly, whenever I read an article complaining about "inflation" in MMORPGs I know from the start that the author doesn't know what they're talking about.

      • Re:my favourite online protest.... (Score:5, Informative)

        by eggstasy ( 458692 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @04:37AM (#7022942) Journal
        As a member of the group who created the tax protest, I can tell you very well what it was about.
        In SL, each region is a server with clearly defined limitations - 10 thousand prims, which stands for primitive shapes (cube, sphere, cylinder...)
        Instead of getting a fixed amount of space, like what happens when you purchase some space for a webpage, the developers thought it would be better to create a virtual economy to distribute resources to everyone.
        Just to give you an idea, a prim costs 10 Linden dollars and is taxed at $1 per week, more if its far above the ground, if its very large, or if it is a light.
        Taxes are meant to prevent rapid resource depletion. Without an economy in place, a malicious user could fill up a server in seconds, and a particularly creative user playing normally could very well fill it up on his own.
        As you can see, the limits imposed by the game constraint our imagination a bit, and force us to learn some efficient 3d design techniques, keeping the details in the textures and doing only the basic structure with actual polygons.
        This is what everyone's angry about. They came to SL with the expectation that they could build to their heart's content, and started doing so, but quickly hit a wall where their income could not pay for their taxes anymore. So naturally they felt frustrated because they didnt want to delete anything. The tax system has been tweaked a bit and now everything is going fine.
        If you guys have any questions about SL or the tax protest I'll do my best to answer them.
    • forward microsoft all of your M$ worms, asking how the hell they could get defense contracts without bribery/extortion.

      If that involves too much thought, just go streaking at SCO.

    • UO Lake Superior protest (Score:5, Funny)

      by Motherfucking Shit ( 636021 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @11:17PM (#7022024) Journal
      Several years back, the Lake Superior shard (UO game server) was having serious problems. So a bunch of folks who played on that server hopped over to the Atlantic shard to protest. For whatever reason, it was red dress instead of going naked: Screenshot 1 [shat.net] Screenshot 2, they put us in jail [shat.net]

      Of course, naked protests aren't unheard of. I don't recall what this one was about, but we were a merry band of nude archers: Naked Posse [shat.net]

      Frigax

  • Apt protest. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Thomas M Hughes ( 463951 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @10:07PM (#7021738)
    Dissent appropriately took a very American form: the project's Washington monument had been replaced by a giant tower of tea crates; the baseball stadium rendered unusable by similar stacks; the Route 66 gas station set ablaze by an insurrectionist midget shooting off seditious fireworks.
    Those insurrectionist midgets with seditious fireworks...sounds an awful lot like real life. One of those insurrectionist midgets attacked me the other day for my own stance on taxes. This is just another sign that the Internet mirrors real life rather realistically.

  • it only makes sense.... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Dorothy 86 ( 677356 ) * on Sunday September 21, 2003 @10:10PM (#7021748) Homepage
    that in a game such as Second Life, that something of this nature would happen. It is a game, that is totally openended, which lends itself to the creation of a "government". Take Golding's Lord of the flies for example. A bunch of kids set up a "system of government." this government ultimately fails, but the premise is the same. A group of people, with a common interest get together, in this case their country is a digital domain. It really is an interesting study in anthropology, if you ask me.

    • Pardon my French but... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by WIAKywbfatw ( 307557 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @10:28PM (#7021838) Journal
      ...that's a complete load of crap.

      Lord Of The Flies is a book that illustrates how easy it is for us to fall into anarchy without the presence of a society to keep us in check.

      The book isn't about failing systems of government, it's about how, in the absence of any form of government, we quickly we fall back to a selfish "survival of the fittest" state with the strong preying on the weak.

      The boys don't try to set up a system of government, they try to live by the rules that society has taught them. But, pretty soon, they realise that without society watching over them, those rules are easily disposed of - and weaker figures like Simon and Piggy suffer as a result.

      Witness the near-deification of the conch, the hunting, the return to "normal" behaviour when rescue arrives, etc. This isn't a book about government or society, it's a book about a lack of government and the breakdown of society.

      No book more clearly illustrates the mentality that turns ordinary people going about their daily business into a rioting, blood-thirsty mob than William Golding's masterpiece. When it comes to examining how easily we can descend into anarchy, LOTF is the bible.
      • I allways saw it as a statement to young adults as to why they're not considered full members of society - our understanding of it at that age sucks.
      • The book isn't about failing systems of government, it's about how, in the absence of any form of government, we quickly we fall back to a selfish "survival of the fittest" state with the strong preying on the weak.


        I.e. a government...

        Regards,
        --
        *Art
      • No book more clearly illustrates the mentality that turns ordinary people going about their daily business into a rioting, blood-thirsty mob than William Golding's masterpiece. When it comes to examining how easily we can descend into anarchy, LOTF is the bible.

        I didn't know Lord of the Flies was based on a true story. If George W. Bush put out a book called "Oh god we love you because you're so great." Where a bunch of private school students take a trip, get stranded on an island, and have to live wi
        • Uh, where did I say that LOTF is based upond a true story?

          Perhaps you should go back to your English teacher and ask her for some remedial comprehension lessons, because you seem to need them.
        • Okay, you win. "Lord of the Flies" isn't the bible on what happens with the lack of government. Maybe it's the "flies" part that isn't reliable. I personally never trusted flies much myself. They always land on my food. It must be "Lord of the Rings." Rings are much better than flies, after all. If somone came up to you and said, "What do you want, a ring or a fly?" I bet you'd go for the ring every time. I know I would.

          With lack of "government" (mortal kings, dwarf lords, and elf lords who were

      • Bollocks (Score:5, Insightful)

        by heironymouscoward ( 683461 ) <heironymouscowar ... m ['oo.' in gap]> on Monday September 22, 2003 @01:38AM (#7022488) Journal
        LOTF is just well-dressed propaganda, teaching youngsters that without the guiding adult hand they inevitably descend into primitive violence. No coincidence it's such a favorite of teachers.

        Life's real stories of youngsters abandoned shows something quite different. In the Polish ghettos, Nazi camps, streets of Rio and of Kinshasa... children form groups and look after each other.

        The most flagrant examples of children acting violently are wars in which adults abduct children and train them as soldiers: Colombia, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Liberia, and many other cases... it's the adults doing the damage.

        Children don't have holy water running through their veins, but they do not embody naked evil either. They just try to get along. LOTF is a caricature, based on the idea of "original sin", saying that we ar civilized only because society keeps us in check. Bullshit. Society is an expression of our human nature, and civilization is a natural consequence of our innate desire for an easy life and our built-in mechanisms for conflict avoidance.

        • Re:Bollocks (Score:4, Insightful)

          by ojQj ( 657924 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @04:01AM (#7022878)
          LOTF is just well-dressed propaganda, teaching youngsters that without the guiding adult hand they inevitably descend into primitive violence. No coincidence it's such a favorite of teachers.

          I didn't see it that way. You see the adults who arrive on the island and make everything ok were involved in WW2. And no next-level authority figure was going to arrive and save them from the horrors of their own creation. LOTF was trying to make a statement about adult societies and human nature by creating a microcosm to show just how ridiculous some of our behavior is. The fact that it was children was just incidental -- probably a literary choice designed to emphasise how horrible that behavior is.

          Heck even if this interpretation is wrong, the fact that my english teacher spent most of our class time analysing interpretations which go in this direction discredits your statement that english teachers choose to teach this book as propaganda. And that goes for both english teachers who taught this book to me. (I moved after my second year in high school, so had to endure this hideous book twice.)

          I hated LOTF not because it was saying that children embody the naked evil, but because it was saying that human beings are fundamentally evil. That is a sentiment I whole-heartedly disagree with.

        • Re:Bollocks (Score:3, Insightful)

          by WIAKywbfatw ( 307557 )
          LOTF is just well-dressed propaganda, teaching youngsters that without the guiding adult hand they inevitably descend into primitive violence. No coincidence it's such a favorite of teachers.

          Life's real stories of youngsters abandoned shows something quite different. In the Polish ghettos, Nazi camps, streets of Rio and of Kinshasa... children form groups and look after each other...

          To quote The Shawshank Redemption, how can you be so obtuse?

          LOTF isn't literally about kids, it's about people as a whole,

        • Re:Bollocks (Score:3, Informative)

          by spacecomputer ( 545222 )
          >Life's real stories of youngsters abandoned shows something quite different. In the Polish ghettos, Nazi camps, streets of Rio and of >Kinshasa... children form groups and look after each other.

          Watch some documentaries of the street kids of Rio and you do see that they band together, but the strong in the group abuse and use the weak (younger) members... Naked cruelty that breaks the heart.

    • Re:it only makes sense.... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by MMaestro ( 585010 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @10:42PM (#7021901)
      I'd also like to note the fact that Second Life is an extremely unique type of game since the developers have little real control over what the players must do. In MMO games like Ultima Online you're playing a RPG-like game with fairly set restrictions. However in Second Life, the goal is whatever a group of players agree to do/try. In Second Life, the idea is make a world where players can "build" whatever they want and play with it the way they want. In a world like that, reality or fiction, people will test the limitations of their freedom.

      To compare the real world with games is a far cry until more (mainstream) games adopt a "free world" system. Last time I checked, Everquest players weren't having virtual wars over spawn points and players weren't forming political parties based on which class or race should be beefed/nerfed.

    • Actually, a better reference would be the stranded kids in R.A.Heinlein's Tunnel in the Sky, where they do set up an interim goverment, only to have it rendered obsolete.

      Snapshot Review Tunnel in the Sky [lostbooks.org]
  • Dating back to MUD days [durismud.com], could always have fun killing each other, forming groups, getting purged (ostracized) from a group, etc.

    The best online game party has to be when an RPG converts to a chaos-like free-for-all deathmatch/capture the flag. OH YEAH!

  • Raph Koster (Score:5, Informative)

    by Mr.123 ( 661787 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @10:14PM (#7021777)
    Still hard to believe that Raph Koster has come so far since LegendMUD. I started with that mud in 95 and played on and off for 5 years wasting thousands of hours. Although the mud peaked at only about 80 players, it was still very enjoyable. The man use to take part in his own MUD, building a tight and interesting community.

    He's definitely a talented designer also knowing the importance of a good mix of playerbase is essential to sustaining a in-game society. I can't vouch for any of the graphical MUDs he's been part of but I will always remember LegendMUD and late late nights doing quests, rescue parties, and infamous clan wars. (Knights and Grendels baby!)

    • Re:Raph Koster (Score:3, Insightful)

      by will_die ( 586523 )
      LegendMUD was good, but his graphical MMORPG have sucked.
      UO his first only got good and started to attract people once he left. SWG has terrible design problems, alot of stuff you have to wonder if he every played any type of game.
      The only good thing about him and SWG is that he was promoted in Sony so now he will have part of this time messing up EQ2 and make it available for competent people to start fixing SWG.

  • I tried an MMORPG... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I tried the star wars MMPORPG because friend insisted it was "the greatest thing ever".

    Its so freaking boring...the tutorial fine, but the game, you get to a world, and it consists of guys looking for raw materials so they can level up characters, so they can then look for different raw materials so they can level up characters...

    I'm only saying this because I think the mentality of people who play these games is not part of what most people consider "normal", and therefore, the current MMPORPG population

    • Re:I tried an MMORPG... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Tackhead ( 54550 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @11:06PM (#7021989)
      > I tried the star wars MMPORPG because friend insisted it was "the greatest thing ever".
      >
      > Its so freaking boring...the tutorial fine, but the game, you get to a world, and it consists of guys looking for raw materials so they can level up characters, so they can then look for different raw materials so they can level up characters...

      ...and then, because they can't do anything without giving up their skills, they surrender all their skills and start over. And this is supposed to be something different than just quitting and reloading?

      > I'm only saying this because I think the mentality of people who play these games is not part of what most people consider "normal", and therefore, the current MMPORPG population is just a collection of weird geeks.

      At least the premise of Second Life sounds half-interesting. ("There is no content. Here are tools. Build it yourself. Play it yourself.")

      By comparison, Star Wars Galaxies is "There is no content. There are no tools. Pretend you're inventing content." (Don't level up, you evil powergamer! There's so little content, and there are no tools for players to create add-on missions, but that's why you're paying $15/month, so you can roleplay... you know, imagine the content and roleplay what you'd be doing if the content was there! :-)

      I'm a weird geek. SWG fans make me look positively normal. Bah. Gimme NWN. Hell, gimme Bard's Tale and Wizardry. If I wanna roleplay social interaction, I'll roleplay a party of six on my old-school CRPG. And not one of those characters will know the word "pwn".

    • Its so freaking boring...the tutorial fine, but the game, you get to a world, and it consists of guys looking for raw materials so they can level up characters, so they can then look for different raw materials so they can level up characters...

      So, um, don't play it. That was easy.

      I'm only saying this because I think the mentality of people who play these games is not part of what most people consider "normal", and therefore, the current MMPORPG population is just a collection of weird geeks.

      Just b

  • Pretty sad (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SuperBanana ( 662181 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @10:28PM (#7021840)
    protests, politics and parties in MMORPGs.

    Meanwhile, US citizens are barely registering a whimper of protest at the draconian laws passed every day in the name of "patriotism" and "protecting the homeland".

    It's pretty sad that people organize "protests" in a fucking -game- but won't stand up for their rights in real life. What is the matter with you people?

    • Re:Pretty sad (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Whyte ( 65556 )
      On the other hand, this might give them enough confidence to try this type of thing in the real world.

    • Re:Pretty sad (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Chromal ( 56550 )
      Insightful and inciteful point. Skewed sense of priority? Maybe they think that, unlike iRL (in Real Life) they can actually stand a chance of making a difference in an online gaming context. This is perhaps just another symptom of the US public education system failing to produce citizens.

    • Re:Pretty sad (Score:2, Insightful)

      by nlangille ( 700199 )
      It's pretty sad that people organize "protests" in a fucking -game- but won't stand up for their rights in real life. What is the matter with you people?

      What do you expect? People who play MUDs don't go outside unless forced to, let alone do anything requiring effort once they get out there.

    • Re:Pretty sad (Score:5, Insightful)

      by kfg ( 145172 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @12:09AM (#7022213)
      Very simply because in real life you can get really arrested, really have your life ruined, really get shot dead.

      In a game you can act out in complete security and comfort. All you risk is maybe having to find another game to play.

      Conversely, of course, this also means there is no real valor or heroism in games either. You just get to act out heroism. The next day you can back to the cube farm, or mailroom, or whatever, to earn the payments on your nice car.

      In short, the game, however closely it may mimic real life, is just a game.

      Anyone who loses sight of this simple fact is heading for trouble.

      KFG
      • Very simply because in real life you can get really arrested, really have your life ruined, really get shot dead.

        And here I though that the US was the land of the free... you might get arrested if you're an idiot and start getting violent, but a peaceful protest is hardly likely to end up with those consequences in any Western country.
      • Personally, I only protest in games instead of real life because I don't have to really walk around in games, just click a mouse, and I never walk when I don't really have to.

    • Re:Pretty sad (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Pendersempai ( 625351 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @12:37AM (#7022305)
      It's pretty sad that people organize "protests" in a fucking -game- but won't stand up for their rights in real life. What is the matter with you people?

      Please stop grandstanding. I feel confident guessing that many more protests happen every hour in real life than have ever happened in any massively multiplayer game anywhere.

      We protest what affects us. We protest what we care about. If I lived in Australia and spent a signifcant part of my life playing Second Life, you'd better believe that I would be far more interested in changes in Second Life than in America's laws.

      Further, as the article indicates (did you read it?), online protests are often mostly recreational. If playing a game is fun enough to spend hours doing, and protesting within that game is even more fun, then many players will protest. If you somehow made protesting the PATRIOT act the most enjoyable out of the three, then they'd do that instead.

      I guess the point I'm trying to make is that being upset or offended is a right, not a responsibility. It follows that protest should be similarly optional. No one is stepping on your toes by being apathetic about the PATRIOT act, so your vitriolic straw man doesn't seem terribly justifiable.

  • Screw taxation as social engineering (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 21, 2003 @10:36PM (#7021872)
    This game tax was supposed to fix runaway inflation by changing behavior by giving 'players an incentive to get rid of things they don't really want any more.' In the real world people are getting sick of taxation as social engineering. Taxation should be about funding the government.

  • Another revolt (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Gorelab ( 689501 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @10:37PM (#7021879)
    Reminds me of a time in one game I play called Dragonrealms, where they changed how some aspect of experiance in the game worked, so all the healers in the game refused to heal any wounds. Between that and the general chaos it caused, the experiance system was changed back quickly. Sometimes a little in game riot goes quite far.

  • The best protest (Score:4, Insightful)

    by AvengerXP ( 660081 ) <jeanfrancois,beaulieu&mckesson,ca> on Sunday September 21, 2003 @10:51PM (#7021936)
    Cancel your subscription. That's what I did with Star Wars Galaxies. The game clearly isn't ready for release.
    • Cynical this may be, but I can't see Star Wars: Galaxies ever being truly ready. After all, even with vehicles, it's still just a game given a Star Wars makeover. That may have worked for Knights of The Old Republic, because while it's quite open in form the plot can still be directed. But Everquest is pretty much a sprawling formless game and just throwing lightsabres etc intot he minute doesn't make it a compelling game. Or one that actually does the Star Wars license any justice (though that hasn't stop

    • Re:The best protest (Score:4, Insightful)

      by danila ( 69889 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @03:01AM (#7022760) Homepage
      This is not a protest. This is you deciding not to play. If you though the net effect was negative, of course, go ahead and stop playing. But what if you enjoyed the game but was annoyed by bugs or some other things? You want to continue playing, but you want stuff to be fixed. What to do? Protest by doing sit-ins, demonstrations, rallies, distributing pamphlets, etc.

  • So when will things change, and people stop considering such social experiments to be "games"? Surely by now we're starting to see that the society represented electronically in these MMORPGs is no less valid than the physical world...

    Personally, I've been caught up in a couple of these MMORPGs and while I've always managed to keep the boundaries between the "game" and "real-life" nice and clear not all players manage to do this. To some of them, their on-line "life" is just as important as what most peopl

  • I would really like to see a MMORPG be designed with a pay controled government in place. Imagine if there are a few hundred variable rules in place that contrain things like taxes, lang usage, skill acquisition, hunting, etc. Now, you have a congress/parliment set up to control these variables through bills. Every 6 months of so, you can have an online election to elect the president and a congress whose size is based on population. Online worlds are already divided into districts, cities, servers, etc. No
  • Hmm.. ok I was gonna check out Second Life cause I was bored tonite. When are they gonna learn that a free 7 days trial should NOT include a requirement to provide a credit card number?

    Skip that game trial.....

    • The credit card is to keep 12 year olds out of the game. Believe me, it makes the game a LOT better when you don't have little teens scampering about asking ASL and shooting you with home-made guns (which you make in-game... you can make anything, really, even stuff that annoys the piss out of people.)

      They had an experiment that just got done where they took the credit requirement out... almost overnight the maturity level plummeted as morons straight from Counterstrike would come up and shoot people off t
      • SL is a nice haven from the retards that troll the majority of online games.

        Provided, of course, you are leftist anarchist.

        I remember the welcome we WW2OL'ers got. And I am leftist... well, compared to most WW2OL'ers.

        For the curious, read back a bit in the archives (same "embedded reporter") about the "War of Jessie". If you are in search of competition, stay far, far away from SL. You're just supposed to get along there, presumably while munching granola. ;)

    • Re:Credit Required for Reg. (Score:4, Informative)

      by smeat ( 18128 ) <bbaptist@@@mordant...com> on Monday September 22, 2003 @01:55AM (#7022546) Homepage

      I tried out "A Tale In The Desert" [atitd.com] and it has a free 24 hours of playing trial with no credit card required.

      I highly recommend the game.

      smeat

  • My thesis (Score:4, Funny)

    by Exiler ( 589908 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @11:25PM (#7022048)
    When I tried to persuade a waring faction of savages to lay down their weapons and join me in peace, I quickly found myself splattered against a nearby wall by a stray rocket. Awakening in a nearby chamber (Damn cloning, I protested against that, too!) and proceeded to shout my pleas to pacify the barbarians shooting at each other. After several hours of this and quit, there's no use playing a roleplaying game with so little character interaction and virtually no economy.

    Quake had to be the worst MUD I'd ever played!

  • why tax? break shit. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by MikeFM ( 12491 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @11:31PM (#7022071) Homepage Journal
    If they are taxing just because things are so easy to get that they aren't fun any more then why not make them harder to get? Or make them wear out with use or time. Seriously, that is why consumer goods break so often.. because otherwise people wouldn't need to buy them very often.. so huge corporations wouldn't exist to supply people with new can openers on a regular basis. We could make these things last longer but we choose not to. So do the same with your game.
    • Natural disasters and invading armies, that destroy infrastructure and bury goods forever. Little gremlins that slip past and thief gems and amulets. These would tend to spice up the games.

  • Solution? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by shirai ( 42309 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @11:42PM (#7022113) Homepage
    Perhaps the solution to the tax is to incorporate some form of manufacture, sales and profit. One would have to limit or provide cost to the manufacturing/labor to make this work. The primary problem with the inflation, it seems, in all these games is that the money supply is virtually limitless once you know how to get it. Instead, stop the money supply (for the most part) and rely on commerce to take over.

    In a game like Ultima or other combat based games, this might have to be revised but it seems like Second Life is more about life. So anyways, your stadium is taxed more but people come and visit it and you charge for it. This makes you a net profit.

    Okay, I realize I may be missing some of the boat since I don't play MMORPGs but I think it would be vastly interesting to model these RPGs in a manner similar to real life. This would make it even more interesting if/when "twists" are thrown in as they might reflect interesting revelations about what might happen in real life. Or even "playing" with economics a little. :)

    By the way, in the Ultima or combat style MMORPGs, you could still limit the money supply but one would need to realistically have the villages sacked every once in a while by a band of orcs, dragons or whatever. Then the good warriors have to go and get it back.

    Finally, I've always had an interesting theory about economics. The old line is that nothing happens until something gets sold. Yet in many ways, government focuses on "taxing" things which of course reduces the amount of items sold. I propose an interesting experiment to be to reduce taxes for spending a certain portion of your income within a month. For example, let's say 50% of your income within a month. This means that the poor would likely be spending this amount anyways (and be subject to those savings) and the rich would be encouraged to spend more to help vitalize the economy. I'm sure I haven't thought this entirely through yet but I'd be interested in hearing some responses to this. I get this feeling, however, that the criticisms can be worked through.

    By the way, this would have to be matched through some accounting system that matches bills to taxes and of course would require automation to make it viable. This may involve privacy concerns but, of course, you could opt out if you wanted to keep something private or come to some other solution.

    At any rate, ideas like this could be interesting to test in a real economically based, paper-money limited, MMORPG.

    • Re:Solution? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by phantomlord ( 38815 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @01:35AM (#7022483) Journal
      Finally, I've always had an interesting theory about economics. The old line is that nothing happens until something gets sold. Yet in many ways, government focuses on "taxing" things which of course reduces the amount of items sold. I propose an interesting experiment to be to reduce taxes for spending a certain portion of your income within a month. For example, let's say 50% of your income within a month. This means that the poor would likely be spending this amount anyways (and be subject to those savings) and the rich would be encouraged to spend more to help vitalize the economy. I'm sure I haven't thought this entirely through yet but I'd be interested in hearing some responses to this. I get this feeling, however, that the criticisms can be worked through.

      There are important reasons to actually save money though, especially on a month to month type basis. Things like retirement accounts, risk aversion, financial security in an unexpected crisis, etc. I currently have about 20% of my annual income just sitting in my bank account in case a rainy day comes along. For instance, in 1998, my dad had a brain aneurysm and stroke and was in the hospital for 5 months. After he got out, he still needed constant rehab and someone to be with him all the time so I ended up taking nearly 18 months off from work. My savings, along with some supplimental income (his pension plan kicking in and all his vacation/sick time he saved at work), is how I made it that long.

      There are also parallels to the dot com bust. The faster you blow the money, the sooner you'll find yourself working 3 jobs to try to make ends meet when the unexpected occurs. So, do you start allowing exceptions for savings? If so, how do you define the savings limits? Someone who has a $5000 a month mortgage payment is going to need a substantially larger rainy day fund than someone with my $500 a month payment.

      What all of the economic theories of taxation come down to is controlling people via the government urging rather than keeping the government off their back. Under the current scheme, people are punished for working their tail off to earn a good living. Under your plan, people are punished for trying to make sure they have a nut saved in case a storm comes along.

      I may not be making any money off the few grand I've got sitting in the bank, but the fact that it's there means the bank can lend it to someone else who can try to make something happen with it. Similarly, the money of the filthy rich isn't sitting in their mattress, its being excersized in creating business through stock ownership, allowing government improvement projects through bonds, sitting in a CD while the bank lets someone else use it, etc. Retail is only a small, though critically important, portion of the vast capitalist economic system.

  • In Shadowbane... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by nate nice ( 672391 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @11:47PM (#7022137) Journal
    ...we would protest more if when we all get together and tried to do anything the wouldn't game lag...lag some more and finally sbexe out. (For those of you lucky enough to never have to experiance the sb exe error, it's a fatal error resulting in the process being removed from memory, aka a crash)

    Anyone know if it's gotten better. Haven't played in a few weeks but have heard from a friend it is a bit better, probably due to the fact enough people have left where the server side has a lighter load it can handle, not that there was ever enough players to have what should be considered a large load under these cirsumstances.

  • Protests as the resolution of the Modern Paradox (Score:3, Insightful)

    by superultra ( 670002 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @12:19AM (#7022250) Homepage
    What are online revolts and revolutions? They are the resolution to a paradox of a society that encourages and rewards individualism, but at the very same time generalizes, stereotypes, and also rewards conformity. In other words, we tell individuals that they are important, but at the same time, thanks to the proliferatino of mass media, Americans now have a greater perception of those around them than anyone else at any time in history. Prior to this, the world was contained to largely a town, or section of a city. Now, however, Americans are individuals, yes, so we are told. But we also feel terribly small when we realize that we play such a small role in the perceived world around us (the world that mass media presents us with). We are made to believe that individuals are of the highest importance. The paradox, though, is why do our actions mean so little? If we, as individuals, are as important as the American idealogy would have us believe, why then are our actions meaningless as individuals? Why is the mass media more concerned with seeminlgy everything around us, except ourselves? The paradox? Individuals are important. But individuals are also ignored. If I am important, why can I not apply this level of importance to the world around me? If the individual is penultimate in American society, why am I completely ignored by society when I want lower taxes? Why can I not change and control the environment, if I am as important as everyone tells me? The people in this online games have realized, either on a conscious level or otherwise, that if they cannot change the immediate environment around them, if their individual actions do not mean anything in the immediate world, all that is required is to switch environments, change worlds. It is in online games that their importance as individuals is recognized alongside the importance of their actions. They are both individual and impacting. It's important to note that American society has always moved in this direction; gangs, cliques, etc, are all manifestations of this. But online games give the illusion of incredible impact. They match the importance of individualism with the importance of impact. The players in Second Life are creating a revolt! A revolt! How is that possible within the confines of the real world? What does a nude sit-in in the real world accomplish? A novelty at best, and nothing at worst. But a nude sit-in in Britannia [newyorker.com]? That accomplish something. I believe that what is now on the absolute fringe of society will gradually make its way into mainstream. They are the perfect solution to the American paradox of individuals and impact, they manage to squeeze by both and integrate these two elements into a world where an individual's personhood and their actions are as important.
    • Hit the HTML submit button instead of the extrans preview:
      ----------
      What are online revolts and revolutions? They are the resolution to the paradox of a society that encourages and rewards individualism, but at the very same time generalizes, stereotypes, and also rewards conformity. In other words, we tell individuals that they are important, but at the same time, thanks to the proliferatino of mass media, Americans now have a greater perception of those around them than anyone else at any time in history

  • open source gamming (Score:3, Interesting)

    by SignificantBit ( 677809 ) <carlosgaonaNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Monday September 22, 2003 @12:38AM (#7022309) Homepage Journal
    greetings,
    on the vein of opensource, have someone else try something like this:
    1)A team of developers create, design and code the game, which is opensource. Lets call them The Founding Fathers
    2)People who want to play, must pay a fee. This fee is to maintain the server, and pay the developers -as usual
    3)After a period, comes election times. other developers step in, make their new propossal to the game and gammers vote.
    4)So, this guys take the administration and improvement of the game on his hands, they rule the game and get paid for it trough the gammers fees.
    5)GOTO 3... and you have a ever evolving game with democracy.

  • not your normal MMO (Score:4, Informative)

    by Brat Food ( 9397 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @01:34AM (#7022476) Homepage
    Taxes are levied in Second life because of finite server resources(ALL content is server-side, the client download is a mere 11mb). A server can handle x amount of objects, and tax levels are calculated based on things like total available land, and other factors.

    For example, i have an empty "sim" (one game world unit, in an interconnected grid of sims), and i first want to buy some land in that sim. I buy a 32x32m plot of land for x amount of money. Now, you get taxed for that land, since its a limited server resource. Now i want to build say a house. I "rez" in 4 cube primitives, shape them to form walls. Each item costs y money to bring in to the world, then has a tax for stying in the work for an extended period of time, based on a variety of factors. Basically anything that costs server ram and CPU cycles, you get taxed for. You would have to play the game to fully understand the results this actually has, but as the base of it.. is theres a finite amount of resources, and the rules keep them form being exploited.

    Second life is a game where the players make their own content. Theres a scripting language and primitives based modeller. You can import textures and sounds, and create what you like. Dont want to create? no problem. Its a game you play as you like. Its a paradigm shift, and worth your time to take a look at if you want a truly new gaming experience.

  • It has to be said... (Score:5, Funny)

    by BiOFH ( 267622 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @01:36AM (#7022485)
    Second Life?
    Are the creators sure these people had a 'first' life?

    [Chief Wiggum] Mod it down, boys! [/Chief Wiggum]

  • Every Game Has Them (Score:4, Informative)

    by Cylix ( 55374 ) * on Monday September 22, 2003 @02:20AM (#7022627) Homepage Journal
    I remember back about 6 to 7 months ago a protest by the players occurred in DAoC (Dark Age of Camelot).

    The complaints were regarding a particular faction (hibernia to those who know the game). Players encouraged other players in the same faction to join a particular server for a protest regarding the issues.

    The problem being, the Hibernia realm was the last developed realm and this does show rather well when compared against others.

    Class balance issues, some monster/mobile issues and general complaints were all held. Interestingly enough it did get some attention, but I believe most of the answers weren't exactly concrete.

    None the less, a protest is a protest, and it is worth mention.

  • Tributes and Memorials (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Tailhook ( 98486 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @03:25AM (#7022810)
    I played DAOC excessively for a little more than a year. In that time, several players on my server died for one reason or another. It hurt to discover that someone you encountered in virtual battle, possibly many times, had cast his last spell or ganked his last noob and assumed room temperature.

    If the dead has any virtual friends a memorial will get organized. These get announced on various forums and in-game. In the case of DAOC, at almost no other time will you stand among the enemy without being in battle. At these times, however, possibly hundreds of players gather and have good thoughts about the departed. Honor prevails and people behave.

    So lets not get too worked up about a little virtual disobedience. There is a lot more than that going on inside MMORPGs. Ironically, one can imagine that the virtual turnout for the dearly departed will nearly always outstrip the real life version by an order of magnitude. Figure that out and you might have something interesting to get worked up about.

  • The paradox of the MMORPG (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Garwulf ( 708651 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @08:52AM (#7024087) Homepage
    This certainly demonstrates one of the paradoxes of the MMORPG. On one hand, it has to be fun, and everybody has to be able to do everything in it. On the other hand, you somehow have to create the illusion of a living, working world.

    And it is an illusion. To satisfy the first condition, the moment you have a built-in quest, the players are rendered powerless to change the world around that quest - a town in danger from a Dragon is always in danger from a Dragon, no matter how many times the Dragon is slain.

    But, there are certain concerns that make running an MMORPG a very tricky balancing act:

    1. The company must retain control over the game. This essentially renders democracy in an MMORPG impossible. The moment the players actually have a controlling interest in the game itself, the creator of the game is placed in the impossible situation of being responsible for what happens inside the game, but being to control it.

    (This is the reason, for example, that when you create a character in any MMORPG, the company running the MMORPG owns the character. If you own the character, you can make demands on the company that are unreasonable in the greater scheme of things, the company HAS to give in [as the character is your property], and since the company owns the game, they are liable for anything you do.)

    2. For the game to survive, the players must form a viable community. This means that the game must be fun, but also encourage people to contribute to the world in ways other than slaughtering monsters (such as creating items in UO and EverQuest). In the end, it is the people that the regular players come back for, not the game itself.

    3. The game must be balanced, both in design and community. And that is the hardest of the lot, considering the first two factors. Too much inflation and the majority of the players are driven away. Have a closed system, such as the real world, and all of the resources get eaten up by the first players in the game, leaving everybody else in a state of poverty (which happened in the early days of UO). The tax system in Second Life is an interesting solution, and possibly the best I've heard so far (as just pushing new and better stuff into the economy creates inflation).

    The big issue is whether democracy can end up existing in an MMORPG. Quite frankly, I don't think it can. It is one thing to petition a developer for a change, which is what the protest basically amounts to, but quite another for the players to dictate to the developers what can and can't be done in the game. The moment you have the gamers in full control of the game, the game will start to die - there will just be too many voices fighting for control at once.

  • Unhappy in their own skin. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by bs_02_06_02 ( 670476 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @10:17AM (#7024858)
    I read the article, and read up on some of the complaints and the stories. It appears that they could have solved this problem by offering tax credits/rebates for philanthropic "projects".
    The next complaint by the user community will be based on what is considered philanthropic and what is not. Judgement will come into play. People will be angry for different reasons.
    I can almost guarantee that if someone built a monument, got their tax break, someone else will scream bloody murder because they didn't get their tax credit for building blankety-blank.

    Face it, some people are unhappy in their own skin. There are people who object to everything. These are people who will never be happy. They might best be served by creating their own game and playing it the way they want to play instead of forcing change on 98% of the rest of the world.

    Lastly, it's a game. Get a life! Read a book. People who spend that much time "escaping" from reality need help.

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