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

[Mike Sellers]

At 11:05 AM 7/1/98 -0700, J C Lawrence wrote:
>On Fri, 26 Jun 1998 18:08:37 -0700=20
>Mike Sellers<mike at bignetwork.com> wrote:
>> 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.

True.  I believe that this is the case primarily because the centralized,
paternalistic structures are a (poor) substitute for all the social
mechanisms we expect to find in everyday life.  Imagine, for example, if no
one had figured out how to do any sort of "give" command -- if every time
you wanted to exchange goods with another player, you had to call in an
admin to handle it for you.  This is an example of something that we expect
to find simply not being present.  What we have now is as basic a problem
as that, if more difficult to categorize and thus resolve. =20

>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=20
>forms ("of course we all believe that...").

You've hit on a very important but perhaps subtle point, but I disagree
with you. :-)  Paternalism, or more generally central control, is not at
all the same thing as consensualism, just as tyranny is not the same as
democracy.  That is, I would contend that communities are limited by the
degree to which their identity, ethics, control, etc., emanates from a
single central source (whether this source is an individual, a small group
of elders or admins, etc) rather than emerging from the consensus of the
group.  The crucial difference is that in the latter case, the group can
decide to change itself, while in the former, the group is at the mercy of
the central controller to make any changes it deems appropriate.  It is as
much the presence of this central control as the absence of other methods
for establishing social norms and dealing with social issues that prevents
online worlds from approaching any sort of stability. =20

>The point remains however: =20
>
>  Can a player base cohesively and effectively enforce ethical lines
>as population scales? =20
>
>Is it possible?  If so, how?  that sould seem to real crux of the
>matter, and the one deserving the most attention.

I believe so, though I have only been able to demonstrate it thus far in
localized cases.  I believe, as Dr. Cat said, that this involves creating
multi-layered social structures.  That is, complex animals are made out of
cells that form tissues, tissues that form organs, and organs that together
form the body (there are even more levels of complexity than that, but that
gives you the idea).  You can't look at a huge group of people and expect
them to form a coherent community any more than you can look at a huge mass
of cells and expect it to form a complex animal.  But -- if the
individuals, like cells, are organized and allowed to grow on their own
into effective structures, larger and larger communities *can* be sustained
with their own ethics, mores, and identities. =20
At least that's what I believe -- and what I hope to have an opportunity to
show is the case.

--

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