[MUD-Dev] Re: WIRED: Kilers have more fun

[J C Lawrence]

On Fri, 26 Jun 1998 18:08:37 -0700 
Mike Sellers<mike at bignetwork.com> wrote:

> Given that, it's not surprising that a bunch of (here I go again)
> young white mostly-unmarried male suburbanite refugee designers
> haven't been able to do it either.  

Partial fit: White, 30's married (hispanic on the wife's side (ha!)),
kids, cosmopolitan (Australia, UK, Holland, US, etc) small town kinda
guy (I dislike living in villages with more than 6,000 people,
Brisbane, where I live now has less than 3,000 despite its being an
incorporated city).  I also spent much of my early life living outside
of society (society was "them", only the family was "us").

> Still, I think it *can* be done -- and frankly it bugs me that
> people place the blame on the consumers (the players) rather than
> the producers of online game-communities.

This would seem a philosophical point:

  Are you responsible for the society you live in?

Many argue that you are not responsible for the society you live in,
but that you inherit and assume structures established previously by
presumably enlightened individuals which we now work with and live
under in our less enlightened and comparitively unable selves, and
that the fact of that automatic inheritance and assumption makes us
not responsible for them.

I, no surprise here, hold the answer to the first question to be,
"Hell yes!" and near axiomatic, with the contention in the above
paragraph being self-defeating on the score that the fact of the
agreement, even if implicit, unstated and or unconcious, to comply by
or assume the prior structures defines and states the acceptance of
responsibility for those structures.

>>> I think a true roleplaying game can survive and thrive--as long as
>>> it is small. But to grow beyond a very elite audience, it will
>>> have to accept the fact that it will need to direct players very
>>> firmly along predetermined ethical lines, it will have to shoulder
>>> much of the burden of organization on either the code or admin
>>> side, and it will have to sacrifice that sense of complete
>>> freedom. A large-scale pure roleplay game would basically have to
>>> be a fascist state. :(

> This is true only if you believe that Stalinist politics was the
> pinnacle of human achievement -- translated to the physical world,
> that's basically what you've described.

There is an equation in Raph's text that the player base cannot
cohesively and effectively enforce the ethical lines once the
population size grows beyond some limit.  Its a common argument, used
by admins in RP or otherwise constrained games (cf Cat's no violence)
all over.  In essence, as Raph has also asserted, it is paternalism.
Papa, in the form of the admin or code, knows best.  This is Papa's
house, so you play by Papa's rules or Papa beats your butt and tosses
you out.

Even intentional communities (which is a damned good model and way to
look at MUD societies and societal engineering in MUD socieities BTW,
as Cat recently alluded to) who claim they're escaping the
paternalisitic overbearing power mechanics of authoritarianism via
<take your pick of concensus forms> do the same damn thing: Papa is
now merely abstracted and authoritarianism is still present in assumed 
forms ("of course we all believe that...").

The point remains however:  

  Can a player base cohesively and effectively enforce ethical lines
as population scales?  

Is it possible?  If so, how?  that sould seem to real crux of the
matter, and the one deserving the most attention.

--
J C Lawrence                               Internet: claw at null.net
(Contractor)                               Internet: coder at ibm.net
---------(*)                     Internet: claw at under.engr.sgi.com
...Honourary Member of Clan McFud -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...