[MUD-Dev] When Will Player-Avatar Integrity Be a Feature of Persistent Worlds?

[Martin Bassie]

vladimir cole wrote:

-<-Snipped a lot->-

> And when will people feel that it's the right thing to do MORALLY
> to behave in these worlds in the same way that they behave outside
> of virtual worlds? Right now, I'm seeing quotes from players that
> they feel completely absolve them of all responsibility towards
> their fellow players. Here's a pretty typical sentiment. The
> quote's only been edited to remove profanity:

> --<cut>--
>   News Flash...Its a game. The reason people buy the games and
>   play them is to relax and have a break from
>   responsibility. People dont pick up the latest game so they can
>   add another job to their plate. Sorry, never ever should a game
>   make you feel like you "have to" do anything other than play the
>   game when you want to...end of story.
> --<cut>--

> Problem is, the person that wrote that promised his guild that
> he'd play for two months AFTER the date that he looted a
> particular item. He played for two more days after the transaction
> before ebaying. He felt no remorse for this broken promise and he
> felt no need to be consistent with it.

> Are virtual worlds doomed to this level of disconnection forever?

Relative anonymity tends to do that to people. I think you'll also
find that players are much crueller to one another than they'd be if
they had a real-life encounter. The larger the community, the larger
a person's relative anonymity, and the less likely they are to
behave with consistent integrity.

I'm not sure disconnection from a game is necessarily a *bad* thing,
and I'm not sure if there *is* a decent fix for this. At best, you
can change the environment so that people are less likely to behave
in an asocial manner. I don't think this should involve a 'credit
rating' or other type of central database recording a person's
behaviour. Such a database would be a legal quagmire, because you'd
like it to be global, and you'd like the information in it to be
available to 'anyone'. Call me oldfashioned, but it's nobody's
business what games I play, and what my style of play is in any of
those games.

It's not a flaw in these games - although it's more concentrated in
them. It's a flaw in the way the Internet works. I'm anonymous, and
I can do whatever I want with few repercussions. IRC, IM services,
forums, file sharing networks; they all have a 'society'. The
biggest threat to me are other users doing the same, or my ISP
taking action. And this is where games companies have to step in. If
a person is clearly ruining gameplay, why *don't* you take action?
That's why there're cheat reports, right?

You can't enforce morality. It's a game, and I should be able to
stop playing whenever I want. If I can't, maybe it's *not* my fault,
but a flaw in the game's design?


-M
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