[MUD-Dev] [NEC] 2.8: A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy (fwd)

[Michael Tresca]

From: Jeff Cole [mailto:jeff.cole at mindspring.com]

> Governments have the coercive force of the state.

Hmm.  Coercive force?  That coercive force can't be leveraged in a
MMORPG?

What is "coercive force"?  Harm to the character?  Guards?  Arrests?
Fines?

All of that already exists.

> Businesses have the leverage of firing the employee.

Games have the leverage of banning the player.  They do it all the
time.  In game, players can be kicked out of guilds, restricted from
using certain channels of communication, etc. Just about anything
players do, there's the possibility of restricting them from doing
it.

> Perhaps you are so integral to your company that you can more or
> less resist such leverage but for the vast majority of employees,
> that is not the case.

Heh. I wish.  :)

I'm not sure where you're going here -- I wasn't arguing about
"resisting" leverage.  I was arguing that businesses have the
leverage to modify and influence social development.  In fact,
anyone who has witnessed the entropy of social groups will realize
they HAVE to do it to keep their game functional in the long term.
Sure, a game can technically run just fine -- but it won't draw the
same user base over time because a certain (negative) group takes
over that discourages other players.

> However, in the MMO*, the customers are paying to play.  To a
> large extent, the point of games are to escape the "structure"
> imposed by the "real world."

Fallacious.  Not everyone is an anarchist online.  Oooh, that was
punny!

> As a developer, the only leverage you can exert is that of the
> dealer over the junkie.

Oversimplification.  Banish one player and the fact that all his
other friends play there can do far more harm than the "I need a
fix" reaction of a player to a game.  Those friends may pressure him
to conform or never talk to him again.

> You would implement the structure to resist, regulate, or repair
> the natural tendency of the population to degrade.  So, any
> in-game structure analogous to business- state-imposed structures
> can be only weakly imposed, if at all.

Mostly it's not so much a structure as actual attention, energy, and
effort expended to shape and retain the players the developer wants
to play the game.  Of course, that means the developer identified
the target audience in the first place.  As opposed to "anybody who
will pay with a credit card."

> And what about those few (or more) who buck the structure?
> Haven't we repeatedly seen their disproportionate effect on the
> population?

What about them?  What does this have to do with developers having a
responsibility to have a structure in the first place?

Mike "Talien" Tresca
RetroMUD Administrator
http://michael.tresca.net
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