[MUD-Dev] TECH: Trusting Network Clients

[Crosbie Fitch]

Tess Snider wrote:

> Are you at all familiar with the "broken window syndrome"?  Back
> in 1982, sociologists James Wilson and George Kelling wrote an
> article in The Atlantic Monthly describing this phenomenon.  In
> short, if a window in a building is broken and left unrepaired,
> all the rest of the windows will soon be broken, regardless of the
> quality and propsperity of the neighborhood.  It's worth looking
> into, if you're interested in sociology.

Not familiar with it as a 'syndrome' per se, but I'm happy to admit
it as likely to apply to MMOGs.

> In any event, it's not okay for things to be "a tad tainted,"
> because it's just going to get more tainted.  90% clean isn't good
> enough, becuse it doesn't stay 90%.

The point I was trying to make is that even society is a 'tad
tainted', you can see vandalism, graffiti, litter, busy court
houses, overflowing prisons, yet we put up with it and clean it up
in due course (only for more to take its place).

If you can tolerate some, SOME, taint in a game, then that's the
thing. If we can agree on that then we can move forward.

I'm saying (in opposition to your idea that it doesn't stay 90%)
that we can indeed keep it at 90%. We can institute measures
(similar to the verification ideas mentioned elsewhere in this
thread) to detect and remove anti-social participants.

We can't stop crime, but we can detect it and do something about it.

However, this does rely to some extent on most players valuing their
identity. If the game is more fun with say 80% of players
anonymously ganging up on a steady stream of newbies, then there
aren't enough good players with which to police the system. NB I'm
not saying that the players themselves do this policing, but that
their computers do.

> But most people are fundamentally good?  Yeah, so was my friend.
> He was driven to his particular crime by the all-too-human trait
> of curiosity.  Pandora wasn't a bad person, either, you know?

I reckon most people are fundamentally good if that provides
greatest reward in life (real or virtual). When being good seems to
be pointless, then yes, all bets are off. That may be where MMOG
design needs attention, to ensure that players don't get to the
stage where they've exhausted their sense of fair play due to lack
of reward. Exhaustion of fair play is probably less likely to happen
in a free/democratic virtual world than a police state run by the
provider. Where would you rather live? Disneyland or New York?

> Mind your windows.

I don't mind a window getting broken now and then, but if I can
ensure they get repaired fast enough that there's never more than
10% of windows that are broken (well, 5%, 1%, whatever turns out to
be achievable) then I'll be happy.


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