[MUD-Dev] UO rants

[Michael Tresca]

John Buehler wrote on Sunday, August 27, 2000 7:18 PM

> > Um, no, player anonymity is not the source of the problem. It is the
> > enabler of the problem. Murderous dictators such as Stalin were not
> > anonymous at all (in fact 50 years later he is still an extremely
> > recognizeable name and even face!) yet that didn't stop him from killing
> > 20 or 30 million of his own citizens.
>
> Your point is well taken.  Lack of consequences is certainly the root of
the
> problem.  (I assume that's your point)

To be more specific, the problem isn't just player anonymity.  Frankly, if I
as a player didn't have some real level of anonymity, I wouldn't be
interested in playing the game.  I am, after all, playing a role, and if I
want to play an evil guy (not necessarily a pker, but not a nice person)
then I WANT anonymity, especially if I happen to a play a good guy on the
same game.

There's lots of kinds of anonymity, and in this case it's the player's
perception of their own anonymity that's the problem.  Short-term players
have no attachment to their characters, and these are usually the grief
players.  They revel in their ability to cause problems and then leave --
they probably don't care about the game very much.

However, long-term players who suddenly become problematic can be impacted
in another way.  Long-term players who play consistently have social and
personal investments in their characters.  When that happens, you can
probably influence them more through threats to their characters than
threats to their person.  That is, they won't care if you post their real
life addresses because they don't fear the consequences, but they do care if
you post a log of the character's failure, an announcement of their
stupidity, and otherwise use the social environment as a means of curbing
their behavior.

This goes back to "enlist the highbies" -- mass disapproval by experienced
players who enjoy your game are far more powerful in controlling negative
behavior for long-term players (or those who want to be long-term).

> Sending a message of cancellation to the owner of the account, along with
> explanation of the events, might be something worth doing today.  Does
anyone
> do that sort of thing?

All the time.  I have tracked ip addresses to high schools and colleges and
notified the institution.  The results are never pleasant, but that tends to
be a final solution because you'll usually end up losing all players from
that school.  It's effective in curbing the behavior, but it usually makes
innocent players suffer.

Michael "Talien" Tresca
RetroMUD Administrator
http://www.retromud.org
telnet://retromud.org 3000





_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
http://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev