[MUD-Dev] UO rants

[John Buehler]

> Dan Merillat
> Sent: Saturday, August 26, 2000 6:52 AM

> > So just as a virtual game establishes no community and there are
> no real life
> > consequences, this mailing list has no real life consequences
> such as getting
> > you insensed at my apparent naievete.
>
> Does it?  Does it mean you'll no longer be my friend?   Will I no-longer
> have someone to have lunch with?  In the end, neither you nor I know
> each other at all.  Hardly a "community"  in any definable sense.

You'll no longer be interested in the interactions that we DO have.  In the
confined context of a mailing list, that's an exchange of ideas.  In the
rather more robust environment of a virtual game where we both have
characters, we have many more ways to interact.  We'll have the ability to
have lunch in the virtual world - it probably won't hold our interest very
much however, as lunch usually highlights smells and taste and texture.  None
of those things carry forward in our current virtual environments.

> You missed the point. I'm not saying your game is designed to be
> Feudal lords battling each other, I'm saying that your players, sans
> RL concequences, are going to act in the same manner as the feudal lords
> of old.  Some will respect others, many (most?) will use their untouchable
> status to abuse everyone else for personal gain.  That's really an incurable
> problem, since you have enforced anonymity, and even if you did find out
> who they were, you can't exactly go to their house and beat reason into
> them.  Aside from the other reasons, plane fare would get expensive.

Oh, you're talking about the lack of conscience in player characters.  No
argument there.  This is why I believe that the network anonymity problem
needs to be addressed.  Letting people into an environment that simulates
reality without any aspect of responsibility is a very dangerous thing.  It
only gets worse as the fidelity of the environment keeps improving.

JB





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