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Role Playing (Games)

Don't Go Into The Corn Field 97

Posted by Zonk from the children-have-eyes-that-watch dept.
Via GameSetWatch, Clickable Culture's look at the Second Life version of purgatory - The Corn Field. A player explores an off-grid prison that misbehaving avatars are sent too for infractions. From the article: "Yaffle tested the limits of the prison, finding that communication to Second Life's 'Main Grid' was cut off. He even came up with a scheme to crash the server The Corn Field was running on in order to be teleported to the nearest safe simulator by default, but creating objects in The Corn Field appears to be impossible. Having exhausted his options, Yaffle merely waited around to see if anyone else would show up. A Linden Lab employee did stop by, but was incommunicado. 'If I was them, I would have been watching me and laughing,' Yaffle told me. 'I know I was laughing even though it was a punishment.'"
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Don't Go Into The Corn Field More

Don't Go Into The Corn Field

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  • too vs to (Score:3, Funny)

    by GoofyBoy ( 44399 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2006 @08:44PM (#14397105) Journal
    A player explores an off-grid prison that misbehaving avatars are sent too for infractions.

    Off to the Corn-field for you slashdot editor!
  • I had a good look at Second Life the other day and at first it seemed like an interesting idea, but then I noticed the amount of times that money was mentioned on the website. It seems that it may be difficult to move in the game without spending something, so I gave it a miss.

    Oh and by the way...

    A player explores an off-grid prison that misbehaving avatars are sent too for infractions.

    I'm sorry, but "too", "to" or "two"? I'm not normally a nazi when it comes to this sort of thing but that's one m

    • Re:Not my thing (Score:4, Informative)

      by ClamIAm ( 926466 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2006 @11:01PM (#14397827)
      It's not much better in the game. I have a pretty beefy system (P4 2.5 ghz, 128mb radeon 9700), but that game was still choppy, even with the graphics turned down. While their engine allows for you to build stuff and have it visible right away, this translates into huge bandwidth problems (and I played on a Uni LAN).

      But even aside from the purely technical issues with the game, I really didn't like the feeling it gave me. The community seems to be focused on creating porn-star avatars and virtual penises. And to buy these oh-so-attractive items, you have to convert real cash to ingame cash or start some sort of similar business yourself. Or you could whore yourself out to a richer player. Seriously. The game has tons of potential, but the tech problems along with the culture they seem to foster turned me completely off from it.

    • They try to whore money because that is how the company makes cash. But I've had a basic account there now for around 5 months or so and haven't payed a cent besides the initial 10 dollar sign up fee (which isnt even around anymore).

      Its neat, and for 10 dollars it was worth trying for me.

      The only thing you can't do without money is own land. So you cant put your prims down in a perminate location, unless you happen to find a friend who will share their land with you, which is very possible.

      There are sandbox

  • Cornfield? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Havenwar ( 867124 )
    Okay...so..that was a cute article... but.. uhm... I cant say I think much of the person who lets a nimrod that breaks rules and gets punished for it get any more attention.

    His punishment was boredom, and... we pay him in "fame"?

    gee. How... nice of us. Go rulebreakers, then!
    • His punishment was boredom, and... we pay him in "fame"?

      gee. How... nice of us. Go rulebreakers, then!

      Most of mankinds famous persons are rule breakers. Rosa Parks... Gahndi... Jesus... Martin Luther King... Bonnie and Clyde... The Guy who shot Franz Ferdinand... Monica Lewinski...

      Oh wait... Well I don't know if would want to be famous for what Monica did.

      Well, she's still famous. *coughs*

      But still you aren't going to famous for following the rules of mankind. You have to do something outside the norm rathe
      • Hmmm.. true.. although I do find some important difference in breaking rules made to oppress and rules made to keep the collective experience in a contained environment as fun and rewarding as possible. Some criminals will always get some modicum of fame for different reasons, and some heroes will get fame for daring to oppose rules that where badly thought through and down right stupid from the start...

        I do however know of plenty of people who got famous without breaking any conventional rules, although so
      • Most of mankinds famous persons are rule breakers. Rosa Parks... Gahndi... Jesus... Martin Luther King... Bonnie and Clyde... The Guy who shot Franz Ferdinand... Monica Lewinski...

        Let's continue your list, shall we?

        Charles Manson, Ghengis Khan, Stalin, Ivan the Terrible, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Reverend Jim Jones...

        I think that there is a difference in "rule breakers." There are rule breakers that harm society and those around them, and those who are fighting for basic human rights. Sounds like you have a hard t

  • Yep, you guessed it... (Score:3, Funny)

    by garylian ( 870843 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2006 @09:00PM (#14397207)
    It looks like you need a Third Life!

    Rimshot, please!

  • Teaches a valuable lesson (Score:3, Interesting)

    by QuantumG ( 50515 ) <qg@biodome.org> on Wednesday January 04, 2006 @09:03PM (#14397225) Homepage Journal
    Second Life is a social game. Being sent to play "by yourself" teaches an important lesson: we are dependant on each other to make the game fun. When Yaffle returns to society he may be a little bitter at his timeout but I think he will be affected by it, whether he knows it or not, and show a greater respect for others.

  • I think it's a good alternative (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Parham ( 892904 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2006 @09:08PM (#14397274)
    This is probably a good alternative to banning people right out of a game. Instead of doing it for a certain period of time though, they should be given a task and have to perform it. In this case, they should use the tractor to plough the land or pick corn or something and after a certain amount of work is done they will be teleported back to the real world. People can always just sit around and wait to be unbanned in a game, but giving them some kind of boring chore to perform to teach them a lesson would be nice. I hope to see something like this in more MMORPGs.
    • "but giving them some kind of boring chore to perform to teach them a lesson would be nice."

      You mean like levelling up?
    • Kind of like Mr. Reset in Animal Crossing?
    • Or like moving a dirt pile using a pair of tweezers?

      I have got to stop reading...

    • After seeing what this guy did I think permanently banning the account is in order. While some violations may not deserve banning this one is too extreme not to deserve it.

      Most games already have alternatives to outright banning, from warnings to account suspensions. It is the fear of banning is what keeps most people in line who would otherwise be trouble makers. Unfortunately people use the anonyminity of game worlds to act out their aggressions. Just as we cannot accept this behaviour in the real wor

      • Re:Ban them. (Score:3, Interesting)

        by QuantumG ( 50515 )
        It amazes me how much power players are willing to give to people who have no sense of due process. If you've ever been banned from a MMORPG you would know that typically you are not given any access to the evidence against you, the right to confront your accuser, or the chance to respond. Once banned or suspended no-one in the game gets the opportunity to communicate with you. The only way to stay in touch with people who have been banned is via out-of-band messages that typically require giving the ano

        • Re:Ban them. (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Havenwar ( 867124 )
          Hmmm, yes... and when criminals are put in prison or have to pay fines it damages the entire community... wife, kids, relatives, and so on.

          But the damage of letting the crime go unpunished is larger, and I think the same is valid in this virtual case. If he needs to reconnect with his friends he should have other means to contact them with... if they havent exchanged emails at leats by then, they are probably not that tight. So the damage to the society is what... a few guys going "oh noes, my friend did so
          • If they've been suspended (and I think that should always be the case, banning is just too extreme) why not give them access to an area where other players can come visit them? They'll start to learn how important treating other people nicely is to the game and, when their suspension is up, reintegrate into society better.
    • People can always just sit around and wait to be unbanned in a game, but giving them some kind of boring chore to perform to teach them a lesson would be nice. I hope to see something like this in more MMORPGs.

      Please correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that the point of moast MMORPGSs? To do the same basically boring task alot of times to get either experience or cash?
  • I'm guessing this is a clever reference to where Anthony's horrific creations go in the TZ episode "It's a Good Life," which I saw again over the New Year break. http://tzone.the-croc.com/tzeplist/goodlife.html [the-croc.com]
    • Though if the allusion is correct, wouldn't that mean that the people running the game want you to fear them? Anthony was oppressive and everyone in Peaksville lived in fear of him.

      BTW, UPN's version of The Twilight Zone included a sequel to that episode called "It's Still A Good Life" [twilightzonetv.com]. Anthony (reprised by Bill Mumy) still rules Peaksville and has a daughter who also has the power.
      • UPN's version of The Twilight Zone included a sequel to that episode called "It's Still A Good Life". Anthony (reprised by Bill Mumy) still rules Peaksville and has a daughter who also has the power.

        I hope he had at least started to voluntarily bathe.

        -Eric

  • Dealing with rule breakers is a chore (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Banner ( 17158 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2006 @09:38PM (#14397471) Journal
    And a truely painful one. They never realize they're wrong and always want to be an exception to the rule. Look at this guy, what did he do after he was banned? Immediately tried to destroy the system!

    Then he writes all about it in an attempt to get further attention (like most rule breakers, he's an attention whore and just wants everyone to notice him). I doubt they were laughing at him, they probably didn't care and were just hoping he'd leave and never come back.

    Personally if I worked at Second life, after reading this article I'd perm ban the guy. People like this never learn, until the judge sentences them to life in prison. And policing them is a boring and thankless job, with lots of abuse thrown in.
    • While your points may be true in this situation (about getting attention), it is a good idea for people to be able to relate their stories when they are faced with punishment. If I was arrested and with the sentence came a contract, with no option not to sign, that I had to never speak of my experiences in prison, I would say that that is a very bad government to be living under. Not only does discourse possibly deter crime, it is necessary for a free society, protecting the citizens from being oppressed.

      • Re:Dealing with rule breakers is a chore (Score:1, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        > Prejudice against those who break rules is just as bad as racism.

        No. No, it's not.
        • I'm sure you've never broken a rule in your life. Don't cast the stone.
          • I'm sure you've never broken a rule in your life. Don't cast the stone.

            It seems just as bad to assume that everyone else lives by your christian moral system. There are plenty of folks, both christian-cum-hypocrits and non-christians who have no qualms pointing out the flaws and sins of other folk, without regard to their sins, whether lesser or not.
            • It seems just as bad to assume that everyone else lives by your christian moral system. There are plenty of folks, both christian-cum-hypocrits and non-christians who have no qualms pointing out the flaws and sins of other folk, without regard to their sins, whether lesser or not.

              It seems just as bad to assume that I live by what you percieve as a christian moral system. There are plenty of folks, both christian-cum-hypocrites and non-christians who have qualms when other people point out the flaws and si

          • But we don't whine like a baby when held responsible for our transgressions. Your problem is that you don't want to punish anyone.

            Makes me suspect you are quite the rule breaker yourself. Otherwise why would you defend the indefensible? It's called projection.

            • But we don't whine like a baby when held responsible for our transgressions. Your problem is that you don't want to punish anyone.

              No, that is not my problem. I did not say that, and I do not believe that. I said that prejudice is wrong. To me, prejudice is the same, no matter what context. What is prejudice [reference.com]? It is forming an opinion before you know the facts about something. So saying that someone is a bad person because they broke a law is not being fair to them. If you know the person personally,

        • No. No, it's not.

          If tomorrow you awoke to find watching the news in which a fascist/socialist/communist group overthrew the govnerment with the support of the army and declared that all freedoms we once enjoyed were curtailed would you agree or no? Not only that they have outlawed the religion you believe in (whatever it is even if it is aetheism)

          Now you are the rule breaker... But what if everyone is now prejudice against you because of what you believe in. It is the same as rascism. People don't hate the
      • Not only does discourse possibly deter crime, it is necessary for a free society, protecting the citizens from being oppressed.

        Online games are not a free society. They're a dicatorship, you play by the owner's rules. If you don't like it you can go somewhere else.

        Games are not the equivalent of a country, they're the equivalent of a private property. The owners can throw you out at any time for any reason.
        • Online games are not a free society. They're a dicatorship

          I know this. My post wasn't advocating game makers be more lenient to online troublemakers. My post was about not suppressing and/or dismissing speech when it deals with crime/rules and the punishments that follow.

      • 'prejudice against those who break the rules is just as bad as racism'?

        Sorry, but that has to the the stupidest thing I've heard anyone utter in years.

        And this isn't a government, it's a privately run enterprise.
        • Sorry, but that has to the the stupidest thing I've heard anyone utter in years.

          If this argument was like food, it would be wine with no meat. Delicious.

          And this isn't a government, it's a privately run enterprise.

          You might try reading my post again, I made the distinction. But more importantly, if a corporation is doing things to people who break "their" rules, should you be forced to accept this and never speak of it? Maybe in a contract-happy corporationland (tm), but that isn't anywhere I'd like

    • Personally if I worked at Second life, after reading this article I'd perm ban the guy. People like this never learn, until the judge sentences them to life in prison. And policing them is a boring and thankless job, with lots of abuse thrown in.

      No. People don't learn anything in prison. If nothing more it teaches them more things they need to learn in order to fuck people over when they get out. My room mates brother when to prision for a while for drugs and when he got out he knew more connections and mor

      • Re:Dealing with rule breakers is a chore (Score:5, Informative)

        by jungd ( 223367 ) * on Thursday January 05, 2006 @02:33AM (#14398644)
        >Secondly, you don't even know what he did.

        He repeatedly took down the entire second life grid, disrupting thousands of players and disrupting the many real businesses and other activities (classes etc.) that go on in SL.
        SL allows scripts to be written and attached to objects. He created physics objects that self-replicated and spread over the entire geographic area of SL (which is huge). The replicating objects themselves usually had nasty images or racist taunts attached to them.
        The load of simulating so many physical objects (Newtonian mechanics, collisions etc.) slowed everything to a crawl on each simulator. Due to a bug in the SL Havok code many simulators would crash.
        In addition, the thousands of objects created would use up the object quota of most private land and cause devices that need to dynamically create objects to malfunction (e.g. holographic vendors, games, etc.)
        In the last instance of his attack the SL Grid was taken off-line by Linden Labs for most of a day.
        (it was apparent that they'd implemented some 'fire-lane' like automatic system to take out strips of simulators to try to isolate the objects, but it didn't appear to work)
        • No one repeatedly takes down the SL grid. That's the kind of thing that gets you outright banned, as soon as they discover that it was you. They don't let you do it a handful of times and then decide to maybe send you to a cornfield.

          • > No one repeatedly takes down the SL grid.

            Isn't he a member of w-hat? I though they took it out twice (3 times?). I think the problem is that LL can't always spot the same person if they keep signing up for new accounts with different credits cards from different IP addresses.
            If I'm wrong perhaps I'm confusing him with the guy that was trying to extort Esmay after getting his hands on a JEVN vendor 'emulator' that was created by reverse engineering the comms protocol between vendor and item store, and
        • In that case he should be happy that all he ended up with was a cornfield sentence, they could easily have sued him for computer trespassing.
        • I've always found it wierd that there is no time to live type boundry or something hardcoded into sl so such a task would be impossible?

          I think it would probably take just a few lines of scripts to bring the whole world down if all you had to do was flood it with physics enabled objects?

          There are already a few scripts or discussions about how fast someone can spread 1 object to every simulator on the grid. So what if someone just takes that code, sets a timer, and when everythings all spread over the grid,
        • Wow, Second Life sounds like a really well-designed game.

          I wonder why paying customers don't focus their complaints on the fact that this exploit exists instead of on the people who use it?

          Rob
          • > Wow, Second Life sounds like a really well-designed game.

            yes and no. I think its code-base has a lot of hacks because it was implemented quickly to get first-mover advantage in the market. However, now they're dragging their feet.
            The problem in question with physics is Havok's fault I guess. Their physics code is buggy. If you'd ever played Unreal Tournament you'd probably have seen crashes that result from Havok code (if you'd looked in the crash logs)

            >I wonder why paying customers don't focus
      • Wow, you're an idiot, do you know that?
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • How about punishment through stats/items? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by SamNmaX ( 613567 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2006 @10:10PM (#14397609)
    I'm not sure leaving people in a cornfield is really such a good idea, since as the article suggests this is almost something to look forward to. Instead, it would make sense to punish users with something they would fear: a loss of stats and/or items. If these players are willing to put hundreds of hours towards levelling or getting rare items, they will definately not be happy if you take some of that away.
    • Good to see you did plenty of research before posting this comment. Second Life doesn't have stats.
      • Good to see you did plenty of research before posting this comment. Second Life doesn't have stats.

        I should have specified that I was talking about MMORPGs in general, which generally do have stats and the like. I admit to not knowing much about Second Life, but perhaps the punishment for this game could be monetary in nature (i.e. a fine), or perhaps your properties could be temporarily innaccessable. Whatever the manner of punishment, I think the idea of it fitting within the game's mechanics is an in

    • I'm not sure leaving people in a cornfield is really such a good idea, since as the article suggests this is almost something to look forward to. Instead, it would make sense to punish users with something they would fear: a loss of stats and/or items.

      Punishing people on an online world won't get them to change their behavior.

      We have death penalty for murder, but that doesn't stop murders does it? In online games punishment must be education and not vindication because:

      1.) The player is playing a game. He h
    • punish users with something they would fear: a loss of stats and/or items.

      (sarcasm) they could always push with something worse than that...how about lose of your weapon hand. Then they'd have to go around biting people's knee caps off.

      or is choping hands off to Judochristian? ;)

  • UO (Score:2, Interesting)

    by mduke ( 633755 )
    The idea of sending a player somewhere boring for punishment is nothing new like the article suggests. I remember Ultima Online used to have its own thing where players would be sent to a jail for a certain period instead of just banning them.

    • Re:UO (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Incendiary ( 4637 )
      UO has at least two such places... the jail where players are taken to speak to the GMs and the macro box where folks who are unattended macroing are sent in order to get them out of the way of the regular players. Neither are quite the same as SL's cornfield which is a place where residents are temporarily banished to when they've committed an appropriate infraction.
    • In fact, this has been done in MUDs for decades, but then it appears something's only new and innovative when it has graphics.

      It just proves how the playerbase of MMORPGs are so young and immature that they're all on Slashdot whining about how unfair punishment is, comparing it to the Gulag or Nazi Germany.
      • Egads, MUDs.

        I remember being quite the particular pain in the butt at REALMSMud. And I particularly enjoyed being sent to 'prisons' (rooms with no exits, etc) because I liked the challenge of getting myself out of said rooms. (Using familiars to fetch me items to help me free myself, asking for gates, basically trying to show off to the Wizards/Gods that I was smarter than them.) (didn't always work).

        Penalizing me by taking away a level, or inventory, or temporary banning of the game (1 day, can't log on
        • One of my favourite old MUDs featured a prison affectionally known as "the milk room". It was a prison full of incredibly jubilant spammy songs about milk. It was similar in concept to this [giantitp.com] tried-and-true method of torture.
          • I spent several months in Kobra's prison once.I could have gotten out sooner, but refused to apologize to the dickhead moderator that put me there. It cost me two levels and several months in prison, but I never apologized.

            -Eric

    • Final Fantasy XI has this too--it's called Mordian Gaol. The GMs teleport you there when they decide to take action against you.

      Chris Mattern

  • Whee (Score:3, Funny)

    by obeythefist ( 719316 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2006 @11:43PM (#14398048) Journal
    I'd love to pay money to play an online computer game in which I am put into jail and forbidden to interact with other players. Where do I sign up? The paint I put down last week is completely dry now and I have nothing to do, I would love to be trapped in a corn field very much.
    • "I'd love to pay money to play an online computer game in which I am put into jail and forbidden to interact with other players."

      I'd love to pay money to play a game where people can break the rules without fear of punishment.
    • Except you don't have to pay any money to play Second Life. The first account is free and they give you a couple hundred bucks of currency. You can never spend anything and just play it. If you want to build permanent structures and own land then you have to pay.

  • They Give them a Television? (Score:3, Funny)

    by fm6 ( 162816 ) on Thursday January 05, 2006 @01:48AM (#14398496) Homepage Journal
    Bunch of bleeding heart liberals, coddling the criminals!

  • Reference to the Twilight Zone ? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by file-exists-p ( 681756 ) on Thursday January 05, 2006 @06:37AM (#14399015)

    Isn't this cornfield related to the Twilight Zone episode "It's a Good Life" [the-croc.com] in which a kid with god-like powers send people "in the cornfield" to punish them ? The exact meaning of that "cornfield" is never given in the episode, though.

  • Says he "tried to crash the server" while in prison. Yea, he is exactly the type of player you want back in the game.
  • Hehe, this story reminds me of my first time playing America's Army:

    Before you can play this propaganda game online, you first have to complete a few courses/trainings.
    Those trainings are supervised by an AI General, who, as they seem to do in the Army, shouts your ears off with several commands he wants you to do.
    After about one minute of this guy's shouting, I became fedup with it, and instead of using the weapon I was given on the target range, I decided it was payback time... So I shot the General:

  • Um. It's easy to make fun of a game like this if you're expected to pay for it, but the fact of the matter is that you can play the game free of charge without any hindrances - the only reason to pay is to own land and get a larger weekly in-game allowance (land ownership is overrated unless you're using it to sell something or are renting it out like Anshe Chung does, ;-D - there's even a two-way exchange rate of currency. Evil? Probably. ) Besides, rules are rules in any game; if you break 'em, you suff

  • Wow, all the humorless robots came out for this (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Pluvius ( 734915 ) <pluvius3&gmail,com> on Thursday January 05, 2006 @05:48PM (#14404155) Journal
    Am I the only one who thought that this guy's attempt to get out of the cornfield by crashing the server it was on was clever and amusing? And that if he doesn't solemnly take the punishment in the way it's intended but instead treats it as a joke, that it might not be his fault, but a problem with the punishment itself?

    Sheesh, some of you need to pull the stick out.

    BTW, if it's true that he was responsible for crashing the "Main Grid" servers, then why wasn't he banned outright? Anyone care to explain that?

    Rob

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