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

[Paul Schwanz]

Matt Mihaly wrote:
> On Sun, 21 Sep 2003, Michael Chui wrote:

>> In a way, murder IS taking place. The common command for
>> initiating combat is "kill", the target is typically a sentient
>> being, comparable to other humans. And the risk is minimal
>> against an AI, because it's too likely to drive our bloodthirsty
>> players away with a realistic, but inhuman opponent. Kind of
>> like.. looking in the mirror. And beating up a computer isn't
>> quite as much fun as beating up an actual person ("I'm so bad, I
>> beat down a.. program."), even if they're both represented as
>> text on the screen.

> Murder is taking place in the fictional context. I'm talking about
> reality here and in reality (sophomoric, red herring
> epistemelogical arguments aside) murder is not taking place.

Yes, in the same way that rape did not take place in reality in
Dibbell's "A Rape in Cyberspace."  The interesting thing that
Dibbell brought out, however, is that a grey area seems to exist
between reality and fiction.  From an experiential point of view,
the "victim" appears to suffer something between what we'd expect
either for the reality or for the fiction.  From this perspective,
something less than murder may be taking place in an MMORPG where
you "kill" a target, however, something more than mere database
manipulation may be taking place as well.  This may be the case
because ideas and speech, whose freedoms are protected by law, are
not in fact as free of consequences as many would like to believe.

--Phin
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