[MUD-Dev] MMORPG Cancellations: The sky is falling?

[Sean Howard]

"Mark Mensch" <mark at larping.net> wrote:

> I look at the impacts upon a community and society - including
> that within virtual space.

I do too, and once you reach a critical mass of people, the
communities break down into smaller separate communities. Society
has a self defense mechanism that way. I've lived in a moderately
sized city in Florida, a tiny ass village in Japan, and in LA, quite
a large city, and no matter where I go, I see the same social
trends. There are differences, but people are people. On the
internet, this is still true.

> The advent of the PC was just a little over 2 decades ago...

This is like the third or fourth post which has had something to do
with age. It's like you guys are setting your clocks by it. It's
never to early to break the mould and it's never too late to change
the world.

> So people tended to behave themselves and treat others the way
> they wanted to be treated.

I think you'll find that this is still the case.

> But when the group's numbers go from 100 to the tens of thousands,
> all sorts of personality types collide - and the picture is (often
> entertaining but) rarely pretty.

Not true. You will NEVER have a single community with tens of
thousands of participants. The number of required connections
between each person would be astonomical. It will break down into
smaller, more managable communities.

> This has nothing to do with roleplaying but rather those who find
> validation in their own lives by making others suffer.

It's a simple self esteem issue, which is present in EVERYONE in
middle and high school, and plenty of people beyond that. All you
have to do is make it more work to make others suffer and less work
for them to find constructive and meaningful ways to
contribute. It's kind of like summer camp. Give them some macaroni
and glue.

> Not to mention the grief I have witnessed first hand when they
> have found out that I WASN'T an 18 year old nymphomaniac Japanese
> schoolgirl :)

That's a betrayal of trust. You earn that grief, fair and square.

> The thing was that in your original post you mentioned that there
> has been centuries of history that wouldn't teach us anything new
> about the society and its effects on gaming.

It won't teach you anything you couldn't already have learned. It
may put it in a new perspective. There's still stuff the learn,
ideas to be formed, and the game aspect of MMOGs give us a safe
playground to test these ideas without negatively affecting the
lives and livelihoods of real people. But most of us here are game
enthusists. We only care about community as it affects the
game. Otherwise, we would've gone into sociology and not computer
science.

MMOGs aren't some crystal ball which will unlock something which
can't be found elsewhere. That's kind of the cry of someone who
wants MMOGs to be taken seriously and doesn't have any proof to back
it up. The same thing happens with all technologies. You can bet
that when Betamax recorders came on the scene, there were people
expounding on how they would change our life and how we watched
tv... which, of course, they did, but not in the ways which were
predicted.

Random abstract shouting will get you some positive attention
towards your cause, but that doesn't mean that you are on the right
track. I'm all for positive attention towards one's cause, but in a
group where everyone already takes the cause seriously, you can
focus on the stuff that isn't propaganda.

> Example - CoH I thought had NO WAY of griefing people other than
> some exp/kill "steals" (more like sharing but I digress).  Then
> along comes "Teleport bosses onto newbies" and BLAM!  Or my
> favorite - teleport a wounded teammate high into the air and have
> him smack into the pavement INSIDE a mob of high level creatures.

Oh, come on. That's GENIUS! You've got to give those guys
credit. Yeah, they are ruining the game for others, but in no way
that the implicit and explicit rules for the system say
otherwise. They are working within a system and showing an extreme
amount of ingenuity. I think griefers get a bad wrap.

They push the boundaries of what is possible. When nothing happens,
they push a little further. There are a thousand ways to stop them
before they become a real threat. And these guys are half doing it
to be jerks, but half doing it because they are actively discovering
things aobut the system they live in. They poke and prod in places
you never knew existed.  They are kind of like little, mean game
designers.

- Sean Howard
www.squidi.net
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