[MUD-Dev] Article: Korea, Lineage..

[Marc Fielding]

Savant said:

> There's a great article at Time.com about Lineage and Korea - It's
> got everything from brawls, to extortion, to corruption at NCSoft.

>   http://www.time.com/time/interactive/entertainment/gangs_np.html

It's an interesting social experiment in the making. A small,
"conformist" (as per the article) nation has a somewhat significant
minority (a little over 4%) playing a single MMORPG. And what
happens? Human instincts simply migrate into the new medium.

Not really unexpected, though. The Internet went through its own
similar eras:

  - Creation and use by a small number of technically literate
  people (scientists and military)

  - More involvement by a greater number of technically literate
  individuals (universities, students, etc.)

  - Initiation of real mass market awareness (popularization of the
  Web)

  - Mass-market acceptance achieved (domain name speculation,
  proliferation of email spam, pedophiles in chatrooms, AOL ;)


When a medium is new, the small number of early adopters give it a
very intimate feel. As popularity and the userbase increases, the
"old timers" are stripped of their influence, and the medium
gradually takes on the flavor of the society at large.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
Marc Fielding
marcfielding at earthlink.net

Current Research: The creation of group minds via involuntary
                  holarchic subsumption. >=)


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