[MUD-Dev] BIZ: Who owns my sword?

[Crosbie Fitch]

From: Matt Mihaly

> Characters in single player games have minimal value to other
> players.  That's reality. Why should they be different? I don't
> really care.

Just an observation. I'm not saying single player game items are
just as valuable, I'm sugesting that the same risks would seem to
apply - should the situation ever arise where a player (or eBay)
might ascribe a value.

Just as with software, perhaps players don't get to own anything,
they are simply given a lease/privilege to play the game (which
includes exclusive operation of an avatar).

Exchange of virtual items (arranged via eBay) by players should be
ignored.  That co-incidentally, money changes hands in the real
world contingent on exchanges happening in the virtual, should
remain co-incidental and unrelated. If the law decides to treat
virtual items as real property, well, it's bonkers.

Maybe you need a bonkers solution?

Say that all player items are subject to a magical 'puff decay' with
an unknown half-life. This means that without warning, and for no
apparent reason (even coincident with operating bugs or at the whim
of a moderator) virtual items can instantly disappear or
malfunction, sometimes without trace or record.

Say that the player is welcome to pay extra for a special
reinforcement bond that almost completely prevents this, e.g. $10
per day (perhaps also proportionate to the power of the item).

Of course, players hardly ever notice any manifestation of the 'puff
decay', but they know that if they want to sue for damages in the
event that any of their items are lost, unless they've been paying
for the special reinforcement bond, the loss of their items is quite
expected.

As a corollary (on my p2p mission), who do you sue if an mp3 you
shared into a p2p file sharing system (and subsequently removed from
your own) one day becomes unavailable?

> Right, so in other words, you propose that game development
> companies will magically spring into existence with the purpose of
> developing a MMOG that will never make them money. That's a great
> plan.

Nope. Never said that. They will deliberately 'spring into
existence', produce a MMOG (the game aspect - not the platform or
service or CRM or anything else), sell it (for a profit), and then
disband.  A 'common carrier' type will be providing the
infrastructure (charging subscription if not p2p) and another
company the game admin/moderation (charging subscription). The
original developers of the game may reform in some way and act as a
maintenance/enhancement provider/consultancy as necessary (being
paid by the game admins perhaps).

We're seeing the same situation as happened with the
Internet. You've got a few big boys (AOL, Compuserve, et al) like
Microsoft, Sony, Electronic Arts, IBM, etc. trying to establish
themselves as 'big iron' server/infrastructure providers, e.g. your
one-stop shop for all the MMOG entertainment you'll need.

And then out of the blue, they're all on the scrap heap because the
Internet arrived, and it was free (or at least, it was a lot more
equitable). In this case, it'll be p2p based MMOGs that'll wipe the
floor.

> MMOG = mud = MMORPG =
> whatever-other-dumb-acronym-people-come-up-with to me. I just
> prefer mud since it's the simplest.

You know, I'm beginning to think 'MUD' is subliminally limiting the
charter of this mailing list. Still so firmly anchored in legacy MUD
in terms of the RPG mindset, that it feels almost taboo to
conjecture that maybe, MUDs were the first attempts to create
virtual worlds, and not attempts to create MUDs or computer versions
of AD&D.

So, I'm averse to using 'MUD' because of its tendency to bias
perspectives towards its early days and latter day graphical
equivalents, rather than the futuristic aspirations of 'VR' and
'virtual worlds'.

> Yes, they are a fiction, which is why an avatar doesn't own
> anything.  Legal entities own things, not fictional
> ones. Fictional ones only own things in a fictional world.

Hmmmn. I thought an avatar did own things? An avatar is the
fictional character that the player controls, yes?

> And once again, how is the developer going to make money? Selling
> the game will not make enough to justify the investment.

Huh?  How do you know this?

We're talking about a hypothetical game. How do you know how much
it'll sell for compared to the investment it took to produce?

>>> And as for this idea that 'anyone' can fix bugs, who, exactly,
>>> is paying them to do it? How are they paying them? Who decides
>>> what's a bug and what's a feature? Who decides how to fix a bug?
>>> Who decides which bugs get priority in being fixed?

>> The Open Source community may have some pointers to answers to
>> these questions.

> Oh yeah, that's just where I'd turn for successful games. There's
> SUCH a track record of it after all.

I didn't say they had a track record for producing games, or even
that they'd ever produced successful games, just that they're used
to managing the process of producing and maintaining software with a
diverse pool of developers. And they demonstrate that it's possible
to get paid to maintain software that's effectively public domain.

> Don't even compare chemical addiction to Everquest. It's stupid
> and it's offensive.  To you, chemical addicts or Everquest
> players?  The brain generates its own chemicals, so it's not too
> far fetched to consider that there may be some activities that
> become somewhat addictive even without chemical ingestion.

> And many people are having fun in Everquest et al. I know I have a
> huge number of very very fond memories of playing muds of all
> sorts.

A bit of my earlier tongue-in-cheek may have escalated far enough. I
have only the best intentions to strive to make MMOGs as fun as
possible (certainly less mundane).

> Right. All mud players are weak-willed addicts with no social
> lives and no social outlet aside from playing muds. Your attitudes
> are unbelievably disconnected from reality.

Hmmm. I seem to have ventured into the 'he's a lunatic' zone as
opposed to the 'he must be joking' zone that I intended.

No more on addiction.

>> It's the artist you need to protect, because they're the ones
>> that enable true fun. You don't want to stifle their creativity
>> and start warping the game design to reflect commercial/risk
>> considerations.

> Oh come on now. This doesn't even deserve a reply.

A reply is not necessary, but I do lean towards the games-as-art end
of the spectrum as opposed to the
games-as-money-extraction-mechanisms end.

Games are starting to diverge between 'attachment' and 'innovation'.

> Well, I don't know what to tell you except that I think you should
> try to do a project using your 'model'.

I am trying (when I'm not posting to MUD-Dev).

> I think you'd find it to be an education, though your chances of
> getting anyone to fund your short-lived game development is
> approximately 0.

Thanks for the 'approximately', that raises my hopes a bit. ;-)
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