It’s always going to be easier if you only have the one god, although even then it still requires an iron will and a lot of soul-searching (40 days and 40 nights worth, I seem to recall).

Richard

Unfortunately, people who care about the impact of issues tend not to crave power and tend not to be media-hookers, so “the people” won’t elect them.

Amen, spot on!

The DIKU game space might be an example of a game space with democratic potential. “I am unhappy with the rulings in this country, I go create my own! Who wanna come with me?”

If you can partition the space (like Usenet) into separate spheres of interest then “democracy” may become a reality.

I like the idea of giving the users more freedom to establish communities for those of similar interests and tastes. Beyond guilds, which in a lot of cases are just an informal recognition of people you group with frequently and have a dedicated chat channel with, there aren’t a lot of tools in many games for community building. Even government styles can vary, some might be democratic and fluid, some may not be. If I’m going to pour my energies into a community, I don’t want people I thought were of the same mind taking over and changing the nature of it, later. If they want something different than what ‘the founders’ built, they can go build their own. That’s not to say I’m unwavering, its just a position I’ve come to after a lot of really bad experiences. People are willing to go to all kinds of lengths to kick over someone elses sand castle. I’d say just as much as I have no right to go around imposing my rules and preferences on others in their space, they shouldn’t ignore the ones in mine.

Now, on the game-wide scale, this issue gets a lot more complicated. Who’s view is the right view? As has been said, if its just a plain popular vote, then the big power guilds and forum personalities get the representation. Big guilds don’t typically represent my interests as a gamer (casual, social, etc.), and some forum personalities can be the worst examples of people you want making policy. I think SWG’s correspondent system was a good model, with few exceptions I found them to be very sincere in their causes of improving their area in the overall goal of improving the game as a whole. Most of them were very involved in testing, feedback, communicating with as many people as possible, helping other people shape ideas into full form, and more. Seek out these types and give them a little recognition. Include a decent range of criticism, don’t just select fanbois, your game will grow in brilliant new ways if you have people willing to think in different directions.

As to the issue of how much power to give these ‘player governments’, I just don’t see the need to give them any more in-game power. I like the idea of some player GMs who can help craft storylines, facilitate events, or so-forth, but giving that kind of power to someone who’s voice could also affect the gameplay itself just leaves too much room for abuse. Forums fill with complaints about devs and all the wild ‘tinfoil hat’ accusations as it is, once the players can start pointing fingers at each other, too…the whole thing falls apart.

You missed the point. Shame on me for assuming you could be talked to like a normal person.

Charles, re: “CCP has let the community question their ethics and ability to manage their own game, and have let the complaints get out of hand.” What is your solution then, that game gods go back to being ruthless and arbitrary?

I don’t think it’s a matter of them actually being ruthless and arbitrary. It’s more a matter of them being respected in their capacity as the developers, operators, and moderators of the game. In my opinion CCP has never been ruthless and arbitrary, and I doubt they will need to be in the future. They simply need to affect the player-base’s opinion away from questioning every decision or statement (or lack thereof), and back to a meaningful discussion of how the game should progress. It would be very difficult for them to work with the community to advance the game in the players’ interests, if the players do not trust anything that CCP says.

Valuable, but what happens is that it becomes privileged — and then becomes the sole input in the game context.

Morgan, you’ve long been known to scorn democracy and take the elitist approach in these debates. I don’t see how institutions created by people through long struggles in real life are something to be waved away as “blather”. And you can’t make a virtual world real; it has no gravity, you fly, you don’t have to eat or sleep, etc.

Your notion of supermarket sales is laughable. Of course shoppers have a direct sale. If they don’t buy the box of Life at the overpriced $5.29 a box and hate the sickly-sweetened wheat, the maager tries putting it out finally at .99 a box and when he still can’t sell them, he gives them to a homeless shelter and never orders them again. Consumers in fact play a vital role in affecting what producers and distributors do. They don’t just “leave” — ah, that typically geek “exit imperative” that is always raised in these arguments — they CHOSE.

Virtual worlds aren’t services. They’re partly that, but they’re worlds, too. They have many intricate relationships. And there’s absolutely nothing under the sun, real or artificial, that says we HAVE to have these models of corporation/customer or service/client. We can also have the same kind of normal governance and democracy and citizens parties and movements and parliaments as we have in RL. Absolutely nothing to stop this. The only thing that does stop it is the desire of game gods for power, and their hanging on to power.’

The idea that if you merely try to go about behaving like RL in a virtual world that you have made it cease being virtual is curious to me. It will always remain mediated and virtual with suspension of some laws of nature and introduction of new ones.

There are many interrim steps on the road to virtual democracy. Certainly a more transparent game-god rule is a start, and I continue to think that an ombudsman, which is elected or acclaimed by the residents, which is on some kind of team or task force with the company, is a start.

Talaen, you’re right that forums only have 2 percent of the players of whom .05 percent post or whatever. However, RL democracy is like that, too, and people don’t wish to forego elections and their right to vote merely because only a minority of “content-makers” (politicians) get to run the gauntlet to “the forums” (the media) and get into the game-god
Olympus of congress.

Charles, re: “CCP has let the community question their ethics and ability to manage their own game, and have let the complaints get out of hand.” What is your solution then, that game gods go back to being ruthless and arbitrary?

Richard, regarding gods who became mortals but retained their god powers, Greek mythology might have many disappointing outcomes but I suggest you look to the New Testament for cheerier results : )

I do keep thinking about what Edward Castronova wrote in his book about synthetic worlds, that people want a “customer-service state” where the game gods do way more and intervene more and are available more, and that’s too hard to scale and maintain, and becomes expensive like RL government, even more so because of people’s dependency on the platform-makers. So in SL the strategy of the game gods has been to free the residents ostensibly more and more to assume responsibility for their own fate. But like the gods that become mortals and run into trouble in Richard’s scenario, when game gods impart god powers in god mode to mortals, they also create troubles (like mass-bans, mega camera zoom, etc.)

The DIKU game space might be an example of a game space with democratic potential. “I am unhappy with the rulings in this country, I go create my own! Who wanna come with me?”

Also remember that a well working democracy depends on having an excellent beuraucracy.

Heh! Well, actually, populists tend be on the right-wing (Reactionary resistance to change, speaking to the ego). People select actors like Arnold and Reagen, not because they are great thinkers. People select people like Berlusconi, Haider (and Hitler), not because they are great humanists. There have been solid conservative politicians, sure (e.g. Bush senior). Few of them have been populists or actors, though. Unfortunately, people who care about the impact of issues tend not to crave power and tend not to be media-hookers, so “the people” won’t elect them.

Want to know more about the playerbase? Stratify the userbase and interview a representative sample.

Who wants to play a game designed by ISO? Who wants to play a game designed by the senate? Who wants to play a game that is desperately seeking to become average???

I hadn’t studied AI when I began on MUD1, so it isn’t actually true that I had in mind to develop them as a means of luring people into an AI project. Really, it was all about freedom.

>ever since first reading that in AI & Computer Games, I’ve always thought “that’s certainly how I’d justify handing in a game as my ‘research’ project

Yes, that sounds like the reason I might want to give that impression, heh heh.

Richard