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Horses and the user-governed worldMay 24th, 2006 |
Prokofy Neva said, in the Metaverse roadmap discussion thread,
What’s so tangled and complex about “who governs” (or as I put it often, “who develops?”) The game devs develop, and the game devs govern. Their junior partners, in the form of mods or wizards or junior devs or whatever are merely replications.
It’s hard to conceive of how complex governance will really get in a four-walls game world if the players cannot at some point leverage their power as consumers/prosumers/payers for the server into forcing a sharing of power, and a separation of powers, so that not only an overweening executive always prevails.
Well, the tangled bit seems to me to be the issue of not whether the game operators are willing to hand over the power (some will, somewhere) but how they hand over the power. The complicated bits are:
- Until software is perfect, you will still need devs. This is a difference from the real world: privileged operators who can alter “reality.”
- Until hardware is fully distributed, you will still need a server location and server operators. This is also a difference from reality: your universe is dependent upon points of failure; the real world is not.
- Until bandwidth and power and locations are free, you will still need money. This is also a difference; reality goes on whether we do anything or not. Virtual reality demands active contribution on someone’s part.
In theory all of these can be provided communally, but the pieces aren’t yet all in place to do so. I’d argue that governance in the real world is powerfully shaped by the lack of the above. Effectively, having a virtual world exist demands an act of responsibility; it does not suffer neglect. It’s like a garden: it needs to be tended to some degree, or it decays.
Human psychology says that if some select individuals are shouldering a burden of responsibility, they will demand status that goes with it. In fact, it’s a fundamental incentive structure that would quickly arise if we chose not to have it in place.
And in this case, the responsibility carries with it a HUGE amount of power. And power, well… you know what they say about power. User participation in governance of virtual worlds is physically limited to what the administrators grant. The trick is getting them to grant it.
If we had a fully peer to peer world with a widely distributed network that used bandwidth and power off of the donations of thousands of community members, and if all maintenance required was donations to the common good in some fashion (even as money used to pay contracted programmers) — e.g., a network that was all volunteer — we might approach the user governance scenario. But even then, I would expect there to be pockets of traditional administration models, just because certain types of experiences demand it.
This drama is epic, and is central to how the Metaverse will play out. Never in history have the developers been overtaken by the developed to such an extent, and so rapidly. The Medicis, the Soviets, whatever, they all coopted the creative intelligentsia and technocrats and had them serve the regime by exchanging content for privileges, and using defunding or terror to keep the class in line. So now we’ll get to see how this is done with virtual world tools like banning or muting or expelling, I suppose, and see who wins the politics of fighting for feature sets.
I agree it is epic and central. The point Prokofy raises is whether the forces of user income via virtual businesses will effectively force the administration of a world to share power. I really don’t know that this is a lever for the problem to an extent beyond the current status quo.
After all, currently all pay-for-play users have that lever. By paying a sub fee or whatever other fee the service uses, they are providing operating capital and profit to the business. Should they “vote with their wallet,” they are effectively denying funds to the operators.
In the case of the virtual business with real money, perhaps some players have larger wallets to vote with, but fundamentally, it’s still the same tool: denying operating capital to the world.
Picture a couple of guys standing around a horse. The first guy owns the horse, and rents it out. He’s got a gun and can shoot the horse. He’s got the necessary stable. He doesn’t, however, have the money to feed it. The other guy rents it, and if it weren’t for his payments, the horse would starve. He even uses the horse for his business, where he makes his living. Now the renter has a grievance. His power over the horse owner is to simply let the horse starve. And the power the horse owner has is to deny the renter access to the horse, and conceivably even shoot the horse dead.
Essentially, virtual world governance rests on mutually assured destruction. The leverage that the renter has is basically to threaten to kill the horse — end the world.
The horse owner typically doesn’t shoot the horse, although it has happened. The horse named Motor City Online was shot even though it had a few people who liked to ride it. Some horses get shot and then recover (”she ain’t dead yet!”). Sometimes, the owner decides a horse is ready for the glue factory, but gives it to the renter, figuring, “what the heck, maybe it can still trot around a pasture and as long as they can feed it, they can have it, but it’s no good for any work anymore.”
What’s most likely is that the horse owner decides that they will just find another renter.
Until we can break this analogy, there’s no really good reason for administrators to share power. Many administrators will even choose to shoot the horse rather than share it, on the grounds that “it’s in my barn, people associate it with my name. If you do something bad with it, it hurts me.” This is the basis of IP, trademark, and corporate image concerns.
The whole “vote with your wallet” thing has instead resulted in different horse providers setting up shop. This still doesn’t change the power equation that much for the renter. Their power to affect how the horse is cared for is still very limited.
Now, if a bunch of folks who liked horses got together, pooled cash to buy a stable, pooled cash to pay for feed, and declared themselves a nonprofit, maybe.
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Beyond Virtually Assured Destruction
Raph Koster yesterday extended some ideas from the Metaverse Grudge Match that began last week. Raph talks about the kinds of power users and administrators have over the virtual worlds they occupy and run, and the fact that both camps ultimately find …
Original post:Horses and the user-governed world
[...] 3pointD.com picks up on the discussion on horses and governance (alas, without using the horse metaphor!) and offers, The alternative is a distributed metaverse in which a series of online spaces exist not in a contiguous pile but as loosely connected locations on a metaversal web, much as Web sites are connected today. Some of these would be public, some would be private, some would be restricted to a certain group of people. Instead of one administrator, you have thousands or millions. Instead of your inventory and avatar and all that’s associated with it existing in one place, dependent on that place’s back-end, those things exist in portable fashion. Under this model — in which you can host your own corner of the virtual world (or have it hosted for you through a hosting service) — exit costs are radically reduced. If I leave a loosely connected space in the distributed metaverse, all I lose is access to that space. My inventory and identity go with me. The administrator may lose the income associated with my activities there, but small spaces are much less costly to run, so my power over the administrator is reduced (though not eliminated). The people have more power, much as Prok envisions. (If the network is built on an open-source, peer-to-peer architecture, the people have even more power.) [...]
[...] Horses and the user-governed world on Raph Koster Horses and the user-governed world on Raph Koster Quote: [...]
[...] A recent post by Raph Koster got me to thinking about why is it that MMOs never really seem to find the right mix of entertainment that would hook me as a player for more than a few months. I think its safe to say that I’m in total disagreement about a player governed virtual world as presented by the OP that Raph was responding to. The primary reason being that the ‘players’ who would end up governing are most likely not people I would trust my long term entertainment prospects to. [...]
[...] Horses and the user-governed world [...]
[...] Here’s a bit of synthesis and opinion following several recent blog posts on the subject of Metaverse 2.0 (thanks, Stefan). Start off with these three (Raph’s Koster & 3pointD & OgleEarth).First, for those who want to see Metaverse 2.0 (from here on, M2) as an open unrestricted peer to peer world, I’ll argue that custom worlds/apps like SecondLife and WoW will always exist, much as AOL continues to exist (and I don’t mean to insult anyone with the stigma of AOL users) despite or perhaps because of the wide open web. There’s a reason people choose MySpace vs. any number of free homepage hosting services. These private virtual worlds can and will continue to grow with time. [...]
[...] It’s interesting that, aside from game design, one of the common topics you are likely to always see in any game discussion are complaints about the attitude and behaviors of certain players. Players complaining about players. The Guardian last week had an article regarding griefers and interviewed Lum and Richard Bartle. Similarly, in a post last week on his personal blog, Chris Bateman felt compelled to defend himself from a drive-by flaming. We also had on GO last week Geldonyetich’s thread about forums users and their impact. These aren’t references to people complaining, but instead these are examples in one week of a growing concern for the state of behaviors apparent in online gaming. I don’t think this is a moral issue. It’s not about censuring people or driving out the newbs or whatever. I think this is an interesting problem for a couple of reasons: 1) Learned Behavior The average gamer age in 2005, according to the ESA, is 33. A fact I found startling was that only 31% of players surveyed were under 18, leading to the speculation of an average age and a further breakdown that 44% of players are 18-49 years and 25% are 50+ years. This seems large, but the point is still meaningful whatever the data; namely, that there’s a majority of players out there who should know how to act with others. If the adults are the ones acting badly on average, what is this going to teach new entrants to genres and gaming in general? This isn’t an appeal to morals, it’s common sense. More experienced and more mature players should know how to govern themselves better and how to encourage better behaviors. Otherwise, there’s no guarantee things won’t be worse in the future — the future being tonight or whenever you’ll be playing next. 2) Growing Market With the story breaking from f13 and Sir Bruce the other day, we know that Blizzard has reached worldwide 6M users and is probably planning to expand its other successful titles to the MMO genre. Aside from that, we also all know from watching planned releases and industry buzz that there’s a sizable amount of investment going on by other providers looking to match Blizzard. The market is growing and so are the tactics and reach for demographics so far unmined for online games. Maybe it’s like the late 1990’s AOL example of a sudden surge of newbies to the Internet, but we’re going to see more new gamers from probably different cultures and backgrounds to MMO’s. How are these people going to react, and how will they behave based on some of the common griefing we all know about? They’ll probably reciprocate, since a lot of bad behaviors aren’t curbed. And in some cases, like with RMT farming, they’re rewarded. 3) New Designs If poor behaviors continue in a game and get enough visibility or provider concern, the provider usually has to respond. It’s more cost effective for them to prevent any common problems than to work at resolving individual user issues. This is why we see some providers rolling back innovative designs and launching new titles with much thinner and/or restrictive feature sets. For example, if enough people keep having negative experiences in PvP, then of course we’ll see some providers launch MMO’s without it. If combat imbalances and skewed economies from duping or whatever are a worry, then we’ll get MMO’s without any player crafting at all. Whether you’re aching for innovation or just a game with a different mix of common themes, if there are endemic bad player behaviors with those themes, that’s likely to scare away any designer from taking any chances. The designer will redeploy the feature or build it in a future title with a lot of extra oversight or curbs. Whatever you care about (e.g. socialization, PvP, trading, crafting), it’s likely you’ll be affected in the future by some new or existing title if there’s already seems to be a lot of griefing in your favorite design — or just a lot less enthusiasm to experiment. 4) External Governance There’s been lots of examples, but it’s proof enough that politicians and the people who service them are starting to find online gaming an area to exploit. It’s in the best interest of any provider to avoid bad publicity, but it’s really beneficial to avoid the kind of Hot Coffee press, because that brings a level of scrutiny and persistence to an issue that tags a provider for years. Forgetting about ESRB ratings and Jack Thompson for a minute, if politicians and their handlers (including the media) feel that griefing in online games is a tasty issue, it will chill innovation and probably affect directly the kind of play we’ve become used to. We can’t be nave about this or issues like net neutrality. 5) Costs It’s not always acknowledged, but the cost to maintain an online service’s code of conduct is probably significant. Usually, any phone call, email or customer “touch” has an n+$1 cost to a provider. Anytime human involvement is required to inform or resolve a situation it is a substantial cost for an online gaming company. Substantial, because they could otherwise just depend on a EULA or TOS or FAQ to govern player activities. And that’s money that could have been spent on infrastructure, new development, defect correction, new artwork, new design, etc. The more a community spirals out of control, the less flexibility a provider has to budget money aside for new things, or for items already promised or needed. It’s not just the costs of human CSR’s, it’s also the effort and hardware costs to build new CSR tools, to correct exploits, to provide and update documentation and more. Defects always have a cost, but when people exploit them, I expect the costs are exponential, since they have a rippling effect requiring CSR involvement, documentation, etc. And defects aside, just the costs to remedy individual harassment or whatever has probably a larger cost (since it takes more time to prove and resolve ) than just helping a player who is stuck in the geometry. So bad behaviors do cost and do take away from innovation or new releases. I think those are good reasons for us to take bad behaviors seriously in games and on their official forums (which are just an extension of the game itself). Enough developers have tried to comment on why things like forums and player governance are problematic, and how forum fires start . It seems to me enough people just aren’t getting it. Or else there are further problems, maybe from design or things like RMT, that increase the problem. Regardless, griefing and deliberate negativity have a bad affect, and gamers may be starting to realize these costs more.Let us know how you really feel _uacct = “UA-389212-1″; urchinTracker(); [...]
I think those are good reasons for us to take bad behaviors seriously in games and on their official forums (which are just an extension of the game itself). Enough developers have tried to comment on why things like forums andplayer governance are problematic, and how forum fires start . It seems to me enough people just aren’t getting it. Or else there are further problems, maybe from design or things like RMT, that increase the problem. Regardless, griefing and deliberate negativity have a bad affect, and
[...] Player Governance in an MMO Dangerous Commoner Joined: 21 Apr 2006 Posts: 14 Location: UK 281 XP 0 0 0 268 0 View Inventory Posted: Fri May 26, 2006 9:07 am Post subject: Player Governance in an MMO I am fascinated by the idea of player governance in an MMO, which Ryan mentions in his article on the end game. It would not interest everyone, but then many people live in the real world without paying attention to politics; despite the impact that it has on their daily lives. For the sake of this post, I am going to assume an MMO with several city states as a basis for the examples. The same questions would arise if players controlled planets in a far distant galaxy, or nations across an entire globe. If the rules controlling participation in the governing of a city are in the hands of the government, will there be a trend to open up that government or concentrate power in the hands of a single ruler or clique. Will cities have any sort of independent judiciary, or will justice be administered by the government. Will there be any non-republican democracies, by which I mean cities in which decisions are reached by the people directly and not through their representatives. Will those in government use that participation to enrich themselves either through direct use of tax revenues or by accepting donations to make decisions favourable to the paying player? How will the tax versus expenditure balance play out. If tax revenues can pay for things that make the city better for players, will there be support for higher taxes that bring tangible benefits to the citizens? If a government is unpopular, will it be possible for a group of players to attempt a coup? If low taxes have left the city guard underpaid, will they turn on the government? In the real world there are substantial impediments to moving to a new country, such as distance from family, moving property, language and cultural differences. In an MMO these are less of a factor, therefore we could see people moving between cities seeking a place with the tax regime, political stability, or governmental system they wanted. Would states attempt to restrict people leaving? Would states put barriers in the way of incoming immigration? The MMO that provided for this sort of political development, would be a world in which players had an influence on how cities grew and shrunk. A world that did not reset itself every each server reboot. If NPC monsters tended to move away from well populated, well guarded cities, then we could see players in search of adventure moving, even if not permanently to a city in a less secure area. All of these questions intrigue me. I do not know if the same lower restraints compared to r/l on anti-social behaviour that are seen in existing MMO would make such a game impossible, but I would certainly be interested in trying to find out._________________Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both. garvity Vassal Joined: 21 Apr 2006 Posts: 35 879 XP 0 0 0 618 0 View Inventory Posted: Fri May 26, 2006 12:44 pm Post subject: A Tale in the Desert has a really interesting player government system. Players can collect signatures from other players and then submit their proposals up for a server-wide vote. Players can create and vote on laws (game rules) and game features. Of course, in the end it’s up to the devs to implement the changes (or not), but that veto power isn’t used very often. There is also another aspect that involves nationwide elections for a "Demi-Pharaoh." A player elected to that position has the power to permanently ban a limited number of players. The power can be used to deal with griefers or for other less virtuous purposes. Needless to say, it’s a very interesting virtual political environment. Raph also wrote on this topic earlier this week: Horses and the user-governed world_________________MMOz.com Glazius Page Joined: 08 May 2006 Posts: 104 1623 XP 0 0 0 99 1 View Inventory Posted: Tue May 30, 2006 7:40 am Post subject: Player governance would work better in SWG than in WoW. Or rather, it _won’t_ work in anything with a raid-based "endgame", because all you need is one guild to drop a prohibitive "toll road" on the way to the next boss in the raid chain and your server drama asplode. Informal player governance is working in EVE. Powerful corporations can lay claim to certain areas of space and set up things like guardbots and repair stations. But ultimately, the price of liberty is eternal vigilance, or something like that. Player governance will only take off if people don’t have to carve their own niches out of someone else’s hide. –GF Giblet Serf Joined: 01 Jun 2006 Posts: 3 Location: I dunno, but it smells really bad. 140 XP 0 0 0 95 0 View Inventory Posted: Thu Jun 01, 2006 10:00 am Post subject: Player run instanced cities might work for this. Lets say for example in eq2 a guild that has done quest X to acheive the rights to build a city gets its own instance where certain guild ranks can move and edit certain features of the city. Lower merchant costs for items but at the same time require a minimum weekly fee of coin and status to maintain the city so that merchant costs cannot be abused below the standard. Employ guards that will attack certain other guilds if they are foolish enough to entire your city. Or perhaps those guards will crumble beneath the might of unwelcome guests. Earn "city coin" based on the sales made by your city merchants and from the rent costs from anyone who lives in your city, so more popular cities can earn "city coin" and purchase upgrades for your town. Grow from a small village to a small town to a thriving walled metropolis to fend off the legions of orcs and packs of gnolls that attack daily. Omg, I think I just reinvented sim city The real fun will be the quests that can be obtained only via player owned cites. Npc’s should frequent towns at will and perhaps if your city is large enough some important member of a distant land will come seeking aid from the guild of your city…………just some ideas, i think i could be somthing really cool and offer the opportunity to add the "surprises" we all look for._________________Just stop thinking…Trust me it will be fun. Darniaq Serf Joined: 21 Jun 2006 Posts: 2 0 XP 0 0 0 0 0 View Inventory Posted: Wed Jun 21, 2006 12:38 pm Post subject: Man. Really wish I knew about this place before now As it happens, [u]I agree with you on the concept of Player Politicians. The problem with implementation, in my mind, is two fold: A lot of development effort spent on features relatively few would care about. This includes those interested in running large groups (few) and those interested in the goings-on of those running large groups (few+). The guilds I ran and the SWG city I founded and co-ran seemed like full-time jobs for the few people interested and the rest I kept trying to get interested How often do city mayors in SWG truly turn over. I always felt like it was a semi-wasted role, something people did once a week when their votes came in and unlocked new abilites. I often wondered how many city groups just had someone make an alt to be the mayor for the few times the role was needed to be played. [...]
[...] recent blog posts on the subject of Metaverse 2.0 (thanks, Stefan). Start off with these three (Raph’s Koster & 3pointD & OgleEarth).First, for those who want to see Metaverse 2.0 (from here on, M2) as [...]