[MUD-Dev] Seamlessly Distributed Online Environments

[Pat Ditterline]

From: "Crosbie Fitch" <crosbie at cyberspaceengineers.org>
> From: Adam M

>> In Napster/Kazaa/etc I get no reward for poisoning other people's
>> files. In fact, unless I'm particularly malicious by nature, and
>> into upsetting other people, I probably get almost no benefit at
>> all. ("almost" because I might enjoy the technical challenge, or
>> do

>> it once for a joke, or something).

> Excellent. At last, someone else to help support my argument. :)

> So, if we have a world comprised of files describing wonderful 3D
> scenery, then people will be similarly disinclined to corrupt
> them.

> Making blanket generalisations that the player is the enemy closes
> the mind to a whole new class of solutions.

Not necessarily, for a number of reasons.

  -- Napster/Kazaa/etc are often sharing files illegally, which
  means they are already an "enemy" to someone (RIAA, or whoever
  else).  Since the users want to be able to access files that they
  can't get for free any other way, it is in all of their interests
  to make use it in that way rather than seeking to destroy the
  system.  The system itself in these cases is designed to get
  around the real "system," which is the music industry.  Why
  destroy the workaround?

  -- The more people use a file sharing system, the better their
  ability to collect files, and the better their experience, so it
  makes sense for them not to scare people off.  People in a 3D
  world may not care if 100,000 people are using it versus 10,000.
  They may actually want to decrease the population for their own
  reasons (less resources to share, more power and hunting areas for
  their friends, who knows), and upsetting people may acheive that.
  There certainly isn't anything to lose if they don't care about
  the content, anyway.

  -- A shared 3D world doesn't give you certain expectations.
  You're not looking for Madonna's latest single in a 3D world,
  you're just exploring.  You have no attachment to the worlds or a
  reason to leave them alone.  People don't necessarily know what
  another user's world looks like, and tampering with something and
  watching people experience the results is fun to some people.  On
  a file sharing system you probably won't experience the pain you
  cause by tampering with a file... in a distributed world you might
  be able to watch.

  -- Your presence within the system (as opposed to just taking
  things from it that are useful to you in an untouched, expected
  fashion) might lead you to want to tamper with it, just for fun if
  not explicitly to be malicious.  You didn't exist in a virtual
  napster world; the files are useful to you in an offline state,
  not while using napster.  The fact that the files exist and are
  shared simultaneously by other people is what will drive griefers
  to tamper with the system.

Basically, I don't think you can compare the two that way.  The way
the files are used is different, the content is known in one case
and not another, and one is using a supplied, legal system and one
is using a system to (primarily) illegally share material.  Griefers
often enjoy what they do because they get to witness the pain they
crave so much for whatever reason, and that's more possible in a
shared 3D world than napster.
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