October 27, 2002
Declaration of the Rights of Players
Raph Koster's site has some excellent essays including, in regards to the idea of players as "citizens", this declaration of the rights of players, and analysis. (August 27th, 2000)
Declaring the Rights of Players
Do players of virtual worlds have rights?
One of those questions that given my position, I shouldn't write about. No
matter what, any answer I give is bound to be wrong, either from the
perspective of my employers or my customers. Heck, even over on the
non-commercial side of the fence, it's likely to raise some hackles among
hardworking mud admins.
The pesky thing about rights is that they keep coming up. Players keep
claiming that they have them. Admins keep liberally applying the word like
some magic balm ("oh, you have every right to be upset�c"), in every
circumstance except the ones where the players want the notion of rights
taken seriously. Of course, administrators of any virtual space are loathe
to "grant players rights" because it curbs their ability to take action
against people, restricts their ability to walk away from it all, holds
them to standards they may not be able to live up to.
Here's a great example of a mud rights document from IgorMUD that I had to include, well,
because:
>HELP RIGHTS
=============================================================================
Igor has adopted this bill of unalienable player rights, written by
Jacob Hallen aka Tintin:PARAGRAPH 1
Every player has the right to be a frog.PARAGRAPH 2
Should the system the player is on fail to implement the "being frog"
functionality, the player has a right to pretend he/she/it/Garlic is a frog.PARAGRAPH 3
If a player does not exercise the right to be a frog, or to pretend to be one,
other players have a right to pretend it/she/Garlic/he is a frog.
==============================================================================
There's at least one theory of rights which says that rights aren't
"granted" by anyone. They arise because the populace decides to grant them
to themselves. Under this logic, the folks who rose up in France weren't
looking for some king with a soon-to-be-foreshortened head to tell them,
"You've got the right to live your lives freely." They told themselves that
they had that right, and because they had said so, it was so. The flip side
of this is that unless you continually fight to make that claim true, then
it won't stick. The battleground is not a military one: it's a perception
one; as long as everyone is convinced that people have rights, they do.
They're inalienable only as long as only a minority does the, uh, aliening.
And, of course, especially as long as they are enshrined in some sort of
law. In other words, the guys in charge sign away a chunk of power, in
writing, that the populace expects them to sign away.
There's another theory of rights which holds them to be intrinsic to
people. Under this far more rigid standard, all those cultures which fail
to grant them are benighted bastions of savagery. The harder part here is
agreeing on what rights are intrinsic to all people everywhere-cultural
differences tend to make that hard.
Many mud admins are of the belief that their muds are their private
playgrounds. That they have discretion on how enters and who gets to stay.
That they can choose to eject someone on any grounds whatsoever, can delete
a character at a whim, can play favorites and choose to grant
administrative favors to their friends. Even in pay-for-play circles, it is
always made very clear who owns the data, who has to sign Terms of Service,
etc. There's a bunch of this that is antithetical to the notion of rights.
Now, it's pretty clear that there are some rights which leak over from the
real world into the virtual. If your local pay-for-play mud operator isn't
providing adequate service, you can report them to the Better Business
Bureau; there are probably sexual discrimination laws and harassment laws
and slander laws that apply equally well in both kinds of space. But rights
(and much less legislation) have not caught up to the notion of virtual
spaces very well. Which makes for an interesting thought experiment.
What if we declared the rights of avatars?
I've based what follows on a couple of seminal documents: The
"http://members.aol.com/agentmess/frenchrev/mancitizen.html">Declaration of
the Rights of Man and of the Citizen approved by the National Assembly
of France on August 26 of 1789; and
the first ten amendments to the
Constitution of the United States, perhaps better known as
the Bill of Rights. This is, perhaps, not the best basis from which to
begin a stab at this hypothetical exercise, given our multicultural world
today; some have suggested that a better starting point might be the
United Nations
Charter of Rights and Freedoms. I admit that one reason for choosing
the version I did was its language, not its content per se.
So let's give it a whirl. This is all still hypothetical, OK?
When a time comes that new modes and venues exist for communities, and said
modes are different enough from the existing ones that question arises as
to the applicability of past custom and law; and when said venues have
become a forum for interaction and society for the general public
regardless of the intent of the creators of said venue; and at a time when
said communities and spaces are rising in popularity and are now widely
exploited for commercial gain; it behooves those involved in said
communities and venues to affirm and declare the inalienable rights of the
members of said communities. Therefore herein have been set forth those
rights which are inalienable rights of the inhabitants of virtual spaces of
all sorts, in their form henceforth referred to as avatars, in order that
this declaration may continually remind those who hold power over virtual
spaces and the avatars contained therein of their duties and
responsibilities; in order that the forms of administration of a virtual
space may be at any time compared to that of other virtual spaces; and in
order that the grievances of players may hereafter be judged against the
explicit rights set forth, to better govern the virtual space and improve
the general welfare and happiness of all.
Therefore this document holds the following truths to be self-evident: That
avatars are the manifestation of actual people in an online medium, and
that their utterances, actions, thoughts, and emotions should be considered
to be as valid as the utterances, actions, thoughts, and emotions of people
in any other forum, venue, location, or space. That the well-established
rights of man approved by the National Assembly of France on August 26th of
1789 do therefore apply to avatars in full measure saving only the aspects
of said rights that do not pertain in a virtual space or which must be
abrogated in order to ensure the continued existence of the space in
question. That by the act of affirming membership in the community within
the virtual space, the avatars form a social contract with the community,
forming a populace which may and must self-affirm and self-impose rights
and concomitant restrictions upon their behavior. That the nature of
virtual spaces is such that there must, by physical law, always be a higher
power or administrator who maintains the space and has complete power over
all participants, but who is undeniably part of the community formed within
the space and who must therefore take action in accord with that which
benefits the space as well as the participants, and who therefore also has
the rights of avatars and may have other rights as well. That the ease of
moving between virtual spaces and the potential transience of the community
do not limit or reduce the level of emotional and social involvement that
avatars may have with the community, and that therefore the ease of moving
between virtual spaces and the potential transience of the community do not
in any way limit, curtail, or remove these rights from avatars on the
alleged grounds that avatars can always simply leave.
Articles:
- Avatars are created free and equal in rights. Special powers or
privileges shall be founded solely on the common good, and not based on
whim, favoritism, nepotism, or the caprice of those who hold power. Those
who act as ordinary avatars within the space shall all have only the rights
of normal avatars.
- The aim of virtual communities is the common good of its citizenry, from
which arise the rights of avatars. Foremost among these rights is the right
to be treated as people and not as disembodied, meaningless, soulless
puppets. Inherent in this right are therefore the natural and inalienable
rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance
to oppression.
- The principle of all sovereignty in a virtual space resides in the
inalterable fact that somewhere there resides an individual who controls
the hardware on which the virtual space is running, and the software with
which it is created, and the database which makes up its existence.
However, the body populace has the right to know and demand the enforcement
of the standards by which this individual uses this power over the
community, as authority must proceed from the community; a community that
does not know the standards by which the administrators use their power is
a community which permits its administrators to have no standards, and is
therefore a community abetting in tyranny.
- Liberty consists of the freedom to do anything which injures no one else
including the weal of the community as a whole and as an entity
instantiated on hardware and by software; the exercise of the natural
rights of avatars are therefore limited solely by the rights of other
avatars sharing the same space and participating in the same community.
These limits can only be determined by a clear code of conduct.
- The code of conduct can only prohibit those actions and utterances that
are hurtful to society, inclusive of the harm that may be done to the
fabric of the virtual space via hurt done to the hardware, software, or
data; and likewise inclusive of the harm that may be done to the individual
who maintains said hardware, software, or data, in that harm done to this
individual may result in direct harm done to the community.
- The code of conduct is the expression of the general will of the
community and the will of the individual who maintains the hardware and
software that makes up the virtual space. Every member of the community has
the right to contribute either directly or via representatives in the
shaping of the code of conduct as the culture of the virtual space evolves,
particularly as it evolves in directions that the administrator did not
predict; the ultimate right of the administrator to shape and define the
code of conduct shall not be abrogated, but it is clear that the
administrator therefore has the duty and responsibility to work with the
community to arrive at a code of conduct that is shaped by the input of the
community. As a member of the community himself, the administrator would be
damaging the community itself if he failed in this responsibility, for
abrogation of this right of avatars could result in the loss of population
and therefore damage to the common weal.
- No avatar shall be accused, muzzled, toaded, jailed, banned, or
otherwise punished except in the cases and according to the forms
prescribed by the code of conduct. Any one soliciting, transmitting,
executing, or causing to be executed, any arbitrary order, shall be
punished, even if said individual is one who has been granted special
powers or privileges within the virtual space. But any avatar summoned or
arrested in virtue of the code of conduct shall submit without delay, as
resistance constitutes an offense.
- The code of conduct shall provide for such punishments only as are
strictly and obviously necessary, and no one shall suffer punishment except
it be legally inflicted according to the provisions of a code of conduct
promulgated before the commission of the offense; save in the case where
the offense endangered the continued existence of the virtual space by
attacking the hardware or software that provide the physical existence of
the space.
- As all avatars are held innocent until they shall have been declared
guilty, if detainment, temporary banning, jailing, gluing, freezing, or
toading shall be deemed indispensable, all harshness not essential to the
securing of the prisoner's person shall be severely repressed by the code
of conduct.
- No one shall be disquieted on account of his opinions, provided their
manifestation does not disturb the public order established by the code of
conduct.
- The free communication of ideas and opinions is one of the most
precious of the rights of man. Every avatar may, accordingly, speak, write,
chat, post, and print with freedom, but shall be responsible for such
abuses of this freedom as shall be defined by the code of conduct, most
particularly the abuse of affecting the performance of the space or the
performance of a given avatar's representation of the space.
- The security of the rights of avatars requires the existence of avatars
with special powers and privileges, who are empowered to enforce the
provisions of the code of conduct. These powers and privileges are
therefore granted for the good of all and not for the personal advantage of
those to whom they shall be entrusted. These powers and privileges are also
therefore not an entitlement, and can and should be removed in any instance
where they are no longer used for the good of all, even if the offense is
merely inactivity.
- A common contribution may, at the discretion of the individual who
maintains the hardware, the software, and the data that make up the virtual
space, be required in order to maintain the existence of avatars who
enforce the code of conduct and to maintain the hardware and the software
and the continued existence of the virtual space. Avatars have the right to
know the nature and amount of the contribution in advance, and said
required contribution should be equitably distributed among all the
citizens without regard to their social position; special rights and
privileges shall never pertain to the avatar who contributes more except
insofar as the special powers and privileges require greater resources from
the hardware, software, or data store, and would not be possible save for
the resources obtainable with the contribution; and as long as any and all
avatars are able to make this contribution and therefore gain the powers
and privileges if they so choose; nor shall any articles of this
declaration be contingent upon a contribution being made.
- The community has the right to require of every administrator or
individual with special powers and privileges granted for the purpose of
administration, an account of his administration.
- A virtual community in which the observance of the code of conduct is
not assured and universal, nor the separation of powers defined, has no
constitution at all.
- Since property is an inviolable and sacred right, and the virtual
equivalent is integrity and persistence of data, no one shall be deprived
thereof except where public necessity, legally determined per the code of
conduct, shall clearly demand it, and then only on condition that the
avatar shall have been previously and equitably indemnified, saving only
cases wherein the continued existence of the space is jeopardized by the
existence or integrity of said data.
- The administrators of the virtual space shall not abridge the freedom
of assembly, save to preserve the performance and continued viability of
the virtual space.
- Avatars have the right to be secure in their persons, communications,
designated private spaces, and effects, against unreasonable snooping,
eavesdropping, searching and seizures, no activity pertaining thereto shall
be undertaken by administrators save with probable cause supported by
affirmation, particularly describing the goal of said investigations.
- The enumeration in this document of rights shall not be construed to
deny or disparage others retained by avatars.
- January 26th, 2000
(Yes, I've had this knocking around my desk for that long.)
Lofty, eh? And I don't doubt that there's some folks out there right now seizing
on this as an important document. For all I know, maybe it is.
But there's also some other folks who think that this exercise is plain dangerous.
As an example, let me take a co-worker of mine to whom I showed an early draft. He pointed out that virtual world servers run on somebody's hardware. And that
most declarations of rights give rights over personal property. By declaring that
avatars have rights, we're abrogating that administrator's right to personal property.
Others point out that it's superfluous. After all, if virtual worlds are just
extensions of the real world, then surely all the rights we already have apply?
What about if the virtual space in question is a game? Doesn't it, by its nature,
obviate some of these rights?
And the biggie: what if you don't accept the basic premises in the prefatory
paragraphs?
And that's where it gets interesting: in the details. I basically posted the
document to a mailing list with a collection of the smartest virtual world admins and
designers I know. Here's some of the various
comments from admins from various walks of life, who got to see the original
draft of this document (names hidden to protect the innocent, and remarks vastly
paraphrased, because many of the objections were hypothetical ones).
| A Declaration of the Rights of Avatars |
|
When a time comes that new modes and venues exist for communities, and said modes are different enough from the existing ones that question arises as to the applicability of past custom and law; |
|
| and when said venues have become a forum for interaction and society for the general public regardless of the intent of the creators of said venue; and at a time when said communities and spaces are rising in popularity and are now widely exploited for commercial gain; it behooves those involved in said communities and venues to affirm and declare the inalienable rights of the members of said communities. Therefore herein have been set forth those rights which are inalienable rights of the inhabitants of virtual spaces of all sorts, in their form henceforth referred to as avatars, in order that this declaration may continually remind those who hold power over virtual spaces and the avatars contained therein of their duties and responsibilities; in order that the forms of administration of a virtual space may be at any time compared to that of other virtual spaces; and in order that the grievances of players may hereafter be judged against the explicit rights set forth, to better govern the virtual space and improve the general welfare and happiness of all. |
|
| Therefore this document holds the following truths to be self-evident: That avatars are the manifestation of actual people in an online medium, and that their utterances, actions, thoughts, and emotions should be considered to be as valid as the utterances, actions, thoughts, and emotions of people in any other forum, venue, location, or space. |
|
| That the well-established rights of man approved by the National Assembly of France on August 26th of 1789 do therefore apply to avatars in full measure saving only the aspects of said rights that do not pertain in a virtual space or which must be abrogated in order to ensure the continued existence of the space in question. |
|
| That by the act of affirming membership in the community within the virtual space, the avatars form a social contract with the community, forming a populace which may and must self-affirm and self-impose rights and concomitant restrictions upon their behavior. |
|
| That the nature of virtual spaces is such that there must, by physical law, always be a higher power or administrator who maintains the space and has complete power over all participants, but who is undeniably part of the community formed within the space and who must therefore take action in accord with that which benefits the space as well as the participants, and who therefore also has the rights of avatars and may have other rights as well. |
|
| That the ease of moving between virtual spaces and the potential transience of the community do not limit or reduce the level of emotional and social involvement that avatars may have with the community, and that therefore the ease of moving between virtual spaces and the potential transience of the community do not in any way limit, curtail, or remove these rights from avatars on the alleged grounds that avatars can always simply leave. |
|
Articles: 1. Avatars are created free and equal in rights. Special powers or |
|
2. The aim of virtual communities is the common good of its citizenry, from which arise the rights of avatars. Foremost among these rights is the right to be treated as people and not as disembodied, meaningless, soulless puppets. Inherent in this right are therefore the natural and inalienable rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression. |
|
3. The principle of all sovereignty in a virtual space resides in the inalterable fact that somewhere there resides an individual who controls the hardware on which the virtual space is running, and the software with which it is created, and the database which makes up its existence. However, the body populace has the right to know and demand the enforcement of the standards by which this individual uses this power over the community, as authority must proceed from the community; a community that does not know the standards by which the administrators use their power is a community which permits its administrators to have no standards, and is therefore a community abetting in tyranny. |
|
4. Liberty consists of the freedom to do anything which injures no one else including the weal of the community as a whole and as an entity instantiated on hardware and by software; the exercise of the natural rights of avatars are therefore limited solely by the rights of other avatars sharing the same space and participating in the same community. These limits can only be determined by a clear code of conduct. |
|
5. The code of conduct can only prohibit those actions and utterances that are hurtful to society, inclusive of the harm that may be done to the fabric of the virtual space via hurt done to the hardware, software, or data; and likewise inclusive of the harm that may be done to the individual who maintains said hardware, software, or data, in that harm done to this individual may result in direct harm done to the community. |
|
6. The code of conduct is the expression of the general will of the community and the will of the individual who maintains the hardware and software that makes up the virtual space. Every member of the community has the right to contribute either directly or via representatives in the shaping of the code of conduct as the culture of the virtual space evolves, particularly as it evolves in directions that the administrator did not predict; the ultimate right of the administrator to shape and define the code of conduct shall not be abrogated, but it is clear that the administrator therefore has the duty and responsibility to work with the community to arrive at a code of conduct that is shaped by the input of the community. As a member of the community himself, the administrator would be damaging the community itself if he failed in this responsibility, for abrogation of this right of avatars could result in the loss of population and therefore damage to the common weal. |
|
7. No avatar shall be accused, muzzled, toaded, jailed, banned, or otherwise punished except in the cases and according to the forms prescribed by the code of conduct. Any one soliciting, transmitting, executing, or causing to be executed, any arbitrary order, shall be punished, even if said individual is one who has been granted special powers or privileges within the virtual space. But any avatar summoned or arrested in virtue of the code of conduct shall submit without delay, as resistance constitutes an offense. |
|
8. The code of conduct shall provide for such punishments only as are strictly and obviously necessary, and no one shall suffer punishment except it be legally inflicted according to the provisions of a code of conduct promulgated before the commission of the offense; save in the case where the offense endangered the continued existence of the virtual space by attacking the hardware or software that provide the physical existence of the space. |
|
9. As all avatars are held innocent until they shall have been declared guilty, if detainment, temporary banning, jailing, gluing, freezing, or toading shall be deemed indispensable, all harshness not essential to the securing of the prisoner's person shall be severely repressed by the code of conduct. |
|
10. No one shall be disquieted on account of his opinions, provided their manifestation does not disturb the public order established by the code of conduct. |
|
11. The free communication of ideas and opinions is one of the most precious of the rights of man. Every avatar may, accordingly, speak, write, chat, post, and print with freedom, but shall be responsible for such abuses of this freedom as shall be defined by the code of conduct, most particularly the abuse of affecting the performance of the space or the performance of a given avatar's representation of the space. |
|
12. The security of the rights of avatars requires the existence of avatars with special powers and privileges, who are empowered to enforce the provisions of the code of conduct. These powers and privileges are therefore granted for the good of all and not for the personal advantage of those to whom they shall be entrusted. These powers and privileges are also therefore not an entitlement, and can and should be removed in any instance where they are no longer used for the good of all, even if the offense is merely inactivity. |
|
13. A common contribution may, at the discretion of the individual who maintains the hardware, the software, and the data that make up the virtual space, be required in order to maintain the existence of avatars who enforce the code of conduct and to maintain the hardware and the software and the continued existence of the virtual space. Avatars have the right to know the nature and amount of the contribution in advance, and said required contribution should be equitably distributed among all the citizens without regard to their social position; special rights and privileges shall never pertain to the avatar who contributes more except insofar as the special powers and privileges require greater resources from the hardware, software, or data store, and would not be possible save for the resources obtainable with the contribution; and as long as any and all avatars are able to make this contribution and therefore gain the powers and privileges if they so choose; nor shall any articles of this declaration be contingent upon a contribution being made. |
|
14. The community has the right to require of every administrator or individual with special powers and privileges granted for the purpose of administration, an account of his administration. |
|
15. A virtual community in which the observance of the code of conduct is not assured and universal, nor the separation of powers defined, has no constitution at all. |
|
16. Since property is an inviolable and sacred right, and the virtual equivalent is integrity and persistence of data, no one shall be deprived thereof except where public necessity, legally determined per the code of conduct, shall clearly demand it, and then only on condition that the avatar shall have been previously and equitably indemnified, saving only cases wherein the continued existence of the space is jeopardized by the existence or integrity of said data. |
|
17. The administrators of the virtual space shall not abridge the freedom of assembly, save to preserve the performance and continued viability of the virtual space. |
|
18. Avatars have the right to be secure in their persons, communications, designated private spaces, and effects, against unreasonable snooping, eavesdropping, searching and seizures, no activity pertaining thereto shall be undertaken by administrators save with probable cause supported by affirmation, particularly describing the goal of said investigations. |
|
19. The enumeration in this document of rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by avatars. |
|
And a final comment, because it's priceless:
"If I were the United States Secretary of Virtual Worlds and I were
shopping around for an administration policy for USMud I would start with
something like this. If I were Joe Businessman, I might pay lip-service to
to this, but I sure as heck wouldn't put it in my user contract and leave
myself open to lawsuits."
There are a lot of interesting points raised above. One of the most interesting is, why should an admin feel bound by the fact that others have made an emotional investment in their work?
A sense of responsibility?
A coworker and I got into a argument over this. Let's say you publicly say,
"Hey, my empty lot is now open to the public, anyone can squat there!" In
the real world, you can actually get in trouble for not providing adequate
sanitation. You'd certainly be reviled as an insensitive slob for kicking
the squatters off. The sense here is that by making the invitation, you are
entering into a social contract with the people who may or may not come by
and use the empty lot.
We can argue endlessly whether this is fair or not. It's not, in my opinion (but what is?). But it's
still the case. If I personally invite people to squat in my empty lot and
then some of them die because I failed to cover the open mineshaft, well,
I'd feel a sense of responsibility. It'd sure be nice not to, but I will
because I have developed a certain level of personal ethics that entail
feeling that way.
Plenty of mud admins do not have this particular ethic--nor am I arguing
that they must. But I think arguing whether they should is a good debate to
have.
I would argue that if your goal is to have a thriving empty lot that
develops into a small town, then you probably want to feel this sense of
responsibility, because the squatters are not likely to thrive unless
someone with authority over the lot does have that personal ethic.
In the real world, we actually go further than that--we can be held responsible
for things that happen to trespassers on our property.
Now, you may have different intent for your virtual space--or your property.
You may have just invited people there for the evening. So shutting down (as long
as you announced it in advance) is still fine. There was an expectation established,
after all.
It's also been pointed out by my panel of mud-cum-rights experts that
technically, the property is intangible, which means we're actually in the realm
of Group Intellectual Property Law, which is a nebulous construct even in the
real world, much less the virtual. Here there be dragons.
On the point that the document as a whole restricts admins too much in managing
the virtual spaces, I'd point out that having a clear code of conduct for both
players and admins has been shown to make running the space go much smoother
overall. Some argue that having unposted rules, or relying purely on community
norms, helps curb the idiots or anarchists who find ways to skirt the posted rules.
But we can reference the Minnie case (and the Finn case come to think of it) described in My
Tiny Life for what can happen if unwritten rules are used against such a person
and then others start to fear that it could be used against them with less
cause. It's a very slippery slope.
Of course, having good tracking of patterns of behavior will mean that these
people will likely get taken care of anyway. People who break any given rule
repeatedly tend to break several of them repeatedly. So concrete advice to
admins is, have a history of infractions for every avatar. It doesn't
say anything in the document about not keeping records, establishing more severe penalties
for repeated infractions, curtailing the freedoms of players with long admin
records, etc. Presumably someone who has a long admin record isn't going to
be considered a "good customer" anymore, right?
In a commercial endeavor, it makes sense to include money as a factor. Good
customers may well get permitted more infractions, because the definition of
an admin record is "things that cost us money (via admin time spent)." As
long as this is in the code of conduct, and applies equally well to two
different good customers who have paid the same amount, then you're
fulfilling the letter of the article.
I'd submit that the enhanced recordkeeping alone from doing that
would probably streamline your costs and make for better business decisions
when the time comes to punish someone.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about all the admin commentary on the
document is that the biggest concerns boil down to just a few things:
- I don't want to surrender control. I hate the notion of "rights" for players.
- I may not be making this sort of virtual world. Maybe it's a game. (Which is
largely easily answered by saying, "these rights apply out of character, not
in character, of course.")
- By the way, I really don't want to surrender control.
The second is interesting. What about virtual meeting places for businesses,
or online universities. I'd argue that the need for rights applies even more
in such environments. But it is clear that there's a sliding scale of applicability
here. It raises the question of what a mud is for, and what lifecycle it
has. Common wisdom has it that "a mud must grow, or stagnate and die." If
so, then the common good means anything that works against increasing the
population of a mud. However, a mud that grows into something which all of
its members despise is not developing towards the common good. So a better
definition might be, the common good is that which increases the population
of a mud without surrendering core social tenets or mores. But that word
"stagnate" is in that bit o' common wisdom too. So it may be good for a mud
to evolve its core social tenets in order to adapt to the changing
population. Free immigration means that this will be accelerated--note that
nowhere does the document say that you can't simply not accept people into
the mud who aren't aligned with the mud's key social tenets.
Then there are the mud admins who don't give a flip about population growth...
When all is said and done, though, I am clearly defending something completely implausible on one key level:
- as a document for players, it's a waste of time. They may trumpet it, but
who cares? They have zero power, and the document actually states that
several times over.
- as a document for admins, however, it's pretty much all common sense. Whether or not you believe in any of the principles that lead to calling these articles rights, or whether or not you believe in rights at all, I'd bet that you probably subscribe to most of these. In many cases, out of sheer, ruthless practicality and business horse sense.
What happens if we remove the word rights, and in fact remove all the high-flown
language? If we just phrase this as suggestions instead? If we just phrase it in
modern English? I'll present just the plain language version this time.
Mud players are people. They don't stop being people when they log on.
Therefore they deserve to be treated like people. This means they have the
rights of people. By joining a mud, they join a community of people. Rights
arise from the community. But there's always someone with their finger on
the power switch. But he's part of the community too, and should use his
powers for the common good and the survival of the community. The fact that
you can easily move to another mud doesn't mean that these rights go away.
Articles:
- All mud players get the same rights. Special powers on the mud are given
out for the good of the mud, not because some guy is the friend of a wizard.
- Mud players are people, and therefore they have the rights of people:
liberty, property, security, and freedom from oppression.
- Somewhere, there's a guy with his finger on the power button. What he
says ultimately goes. The mud players have the right to know the code of
conduct he is going to enforce over them, and what rules and standards he's
going to use when he makes a decision. Otherwise, they are suckers and
deserve what mistreatment they get.
- You can do whatever you want as long as it doesn't hurt others. "Hurting
others" needs to be defined in the code of conduct.
- The code of conduct shouldn't be capricious and arbitrary. The rules
should be based on what is good for the mud (and for the good of the mud's
hardware, software, and data).
- The code of conduct should evolve based on the way the mud culture
evolves, and players should get a say in how it evolves. The mud admins get
to write it however they want, but they have an obligation to listen or else
the players might leave.
- You can't punish someone for something that isn't the code of conduct.
Abusing your wiz powers is a serious crime. If you are caught in a violation
of the code of conduct, fess up.
- You can't punish someone in a way not in the code of conduct, and you the
admin don't get to rewrite the code of conduct after the fact to make it
legal. The only exception is action taken to keep the mud from going "poof."
- Players are innocent until proven guilty. Treat them decently until guilt
is proven.
- As long as they aren't spamming or breaking the code of conduct, players
should be free to believe whatever they want.
- As long as they aren't spamming or breaking the code of conduct, players
should be free to yell, chat, gossip, post, or otherwise say whatever they
want.
- You're probably going to want admins. Admins get special powers for the
good of the mud, not to make them feel cool. They aren't an entitlement
because the imp is your cousin, and if you're not using them for the good of
all (which includes not using them at all and shirking your admin duties)
they should get yanked.
- Players might have to pay to keep the mud running. They should know how
much they will have to pay beforehand. You shouldn't have different pay
scales for different players unless those other players actually involve
more costs. If you do let people buy greater privileges, then you should
allow ANY player to buy these privileges, and not bar some people from it
because you don't like them. Also, payment doesn't mean they get to have
godlike powers to fry other people with--they still have to obey these
rights.
- Players have a right to know why the admins did things the way they did,
like why they playerwiped or moved an area or whatever. In particular, why a
given immort banned one guy for spamming but let the other off the hook.
(Note that given the circumstances, you may not be able to do for legal reasons).
- No exceptions to the code of conduct--it applies to everyone.
- Don't playerwipe/data wipe unless the mud can't survive unless you do.
If you do have to wipe someone, make it up to them somehow.
- Let people hang out wherever they want with whoever they want in the
mud, unless it's causing mud slowdowsns or something.
- Players have a right to privacy. Don't snoop them or spy on them or
rifle through their mail unless you are investigating a code of conduct
violation.
- There's probably stuff missing in this doc.
The interesting thing is that mud admins find the second doc much more palatable. Phrased in this way, it's not an abrogation of their power. It's concrete advice that will help you retain your playerbase. In fact, some even said they'd be willing to sign to it as a "declaration" because it would make them look good as admins to adhere to such a standard. There are damn few justifiable reasons to deny any of the things in the above version--and if you did, likely you'd be considered a jerk for doing it--or a power-hungry admin with a god complex (is there a difference?).
If admins see themselves as above the community, do they have any
responsibilities towards the community whatsoever?
If they do, can they be articulated?
If they can be articulated and generally agreed upon, are they players'
rights or are they merely good ethics on the part of a mud administrator?
One camp is going to argue that it's their mud, by god, and therefore they
have the right to do whatever they want with it (and with the people in it).
Some might temper this by saying that they don't have the right to violate
RL law in the process, but I think a sizable faction would argue that even
that doesn't curtail their power in any way.
Another camp is going to argue that with great power comes great
responsibility, a la Spiderman. And that clear guidelines and the rule of
law is the only way to handle a responsibility of such magnitude.
Both sides will agree that they still have their finger on the power button,
and that this changes the landscape of "rights" considerably. And if you do
feel that you are ethically bound to act responsibly, then you may have to
violate some of your ethical principles in order to keep the mud running.
And if it's a commercial environment:
- Is it bad business to be a part of the community?
- Is it bad business NOT to be?
This is one of the self-contradictions built into the document. The
logic goes like this:
- Of paramount importance is the survival of the community.
- Somebody who has his finger on the power switch can make the community go
poof.
- Ergo, keeping this guy happy is of paramount importance.
- But if keeping him happy means letting him psychologically torture you,
well, that means the community isn't likely to survive.
- And survival of the community is of paramount importance...
The logical answer is for the community to move wholesale--in essence,
picking another guy with a power switch who hopefully is made happy by other
sorts of pleasures. Virtual communities often do this, as we have seen. And
they always seem to feel that they were betrayed by the previous
admin--which indicates the self-assignation of a right by the community.
The irony is that it's all probably moot. The reason why players hold admins to this
standard is because they have assumed that this standard is what should be there
regardless. In other words, the advice works because it's what players expect and
say they want. Which is no different from self-affirmed rights. This is probably why
players scream that their rights have been violated when one of the above articles
is violated (even if the admins are not signatories to any such document).
So the real point of a document like this would be to see how many admins
would sign, not how many players. As an admin, yes, I'd probably sign, in the sense
that I'd agree that these are solid administrative principles in terms of
practical effect.
The question then becomes, if we subscribe in terms of practical effect, and
as long as there are sufficient loopholes present that we can exercise power
when we need to, who cares whether players think these are rights, laws,
doohickeys, or power fantasies? (Welcome to the Machiavellian world of player
relations!)
Why do you want freedom to do things that are bad admin or business
practice? (even considering that "freedom" and so on are total mirages in
this whole situation...)
Especially since "rights" in the real world already have zero power?
(Note that I am not suggesting that all the muds or commercial endeavors should run
out and implement this list of "rights," nor am I suggesting that if they don't
that they are run by power-hungry maniacs. This is too complex an issue to reduce
to that level.)
The last step that would be required to actually make such a document into a
Bill of Rights for players would be for it to be codified into "law," (which is
probablt a Code of Conduct or Terms of Service agreement signed by all players,
account holders, and admins) and thus be something that admins would be bound
to. Admins are, by and large, not going to do this, even though some of the
commercial MMORPG companies do require their game masters to sign
documents saying that they will behave in a manner surprisingly similar to what
the document espouses. But there's an interesting forward-thinking
pie-in-the-sky reason for admins to contemplate doing so someday...
Someday there won't be any admins. Someday it's gonna be your bank
records and your grocery shopping and your credit report and yes, your virtual
homepage with data that exists nowhere else. Someday it's gonna be Snow
Crash and Neuromancer and Otherland all wrapped up into one,
and it may be a little harder to write to Customer Service. Your avatar profile
might be your credit record and your resume and your academic transcript, as
well as your XP earned.
On the day that happens, I bet we'll all wish we had a few more rights in the
face of a very large, distributed server, anarchic, virtual world where it might
be very very hard to move to a different service provider. Heck, I would
bet that those folks who plan to play Bioware's forthcoming Neverwinter Nights
might very well want their admins to sign such a doc. The future is already almost
here.
So in the end, all the Declaration of the Rights of Avatars is, is a useful tool
for players and admins alike: admins who don't know what they are doing can use
it as a blueprint, and players can use it to evaluate mud administrations in
search of one they like.
So yeah. I'm not seriously proposing that we declare the rights of avatars. The
doc is, as has been shown, riddled with gotchas and logical holes. It's a
hypothetical exercise.
For now.
This essay could not have been written without the help of:
and most especially:
- Geoffrey A. MacDougall
- Jon A. Lambert
- Matt Mihaly
- Jeff Freeman
- Travis S. Casey
- Jame Scholl
and extra especially Kristen Koster, who helped draft the original version of the Declaration.
The original thread on Declaring the Rights of Avatars can be found at
the MUD-Dev Archives.
- Raph Koster
August 27th, 2000
BlackSnow versus Mythic
Blacksnow was a company formed by MMORPG veterans, essentially for "full-time farming" ("farming" being the activity of playing a game to get valuable items to sell offline). Mythic, developers of the successful second-generation MMORPG Dark Age of Camelot (published by Universal/Vivendi) were taking steps to prevent the sale and trade of in-game items. Blacksnow sued Mythic in California District Court: "The plaintiffs charge those actions constitute an unfair business practice and interfere with 'prospective economic advantage' to the plaintiffs. BlackSnow sells game currency and characters at a fixed price on its CamelotExchange site and also sells in-game items through eBay. Along with unspecified punitive and compensatory damages, the suit seeks a court order declaring that the sale of items and accounts outside the game does not infringe on Mythic's copyrights." (CNet: Game exchange dispute goes to court).
That suit was settled by the summer of 2002 in favor of Mythic. UnknownPlayer.com has the most extensive coverage of the Case.
Remarkably, this fan site comes out in favor of the game developers/publishers, because according to evidence they gathered, Blacksnow was acting in bad faith. They were not playing these games legitimately, they were not a collective of users trying to sell their characters after long hard work gaming, but rather they were people who cheated the game to make good money. There's some use they might have served as bug-trackers for online games, but their tactics seemed mercenary and over-aggressive, judging from information attained by UnknownPlayer.com.
But the killer are the ICQ Logs given to us by BlackSnow's Lee Caldwell...within this set of logs is some stunning information, but seemingly more harmful to BlackSnow than to FunCom. In it, not only does Lee admit that BlackSnow has hacked, macroed and duped their way to their $60,000 a month income, but he offers Adam Young $7000 to "leave us alone and protect us, and we will always tell you the exploits as they come out and that is undoubtedly a win win for funcom and us."from March 2002, Problem with Exploiters, Part 1.
Jessica Mulligan has a piece exploring players and property in regards to this case, "I 0Wn Y0o, d00d" and "I 0Wn Y0u, d0Od! Part Deux," she's pretty firmly on the side of the game developers and publishers as well. Much of her argument centers around the notion that these MMOGs are more of a service than a product:
...persistent, online-only games are both a product *and* a service; they are inextricably linked. You can't use one without the other; without both working in tandem and simultaneously, you have nothing. You can't provide a derivative service without using both the unique property in the game and the unique service associated within it. The unique product(s) are suitable for use *only* within that service, not on the street or in other games by other vendors. You can't sell your 3rd party service without providing someone else's unique, controllable intellectual property through their unique, controllable service and store front.
RolePlay and Intellectual Property
From the OtherWorld Express: RolePlay and Intellectual Propterty is a heartfelt essay by a role-player from Everquest, Nepenthia, posted in response to the fallout from evil elf backstory controversy. She (?) oberves in herself and in other players the feeling that role-playing requires storytelling, but if these online games are going to take such a strong stance on owning and policing users's content then players can not feel like they are a part of the project.
Sadly, already some fan-sites are suspending publication simply because they feel it is not worth sharing their role-play stories with others if it means that they might be prevented from playing at all. Also and equally sadly, players are deciding to remove their characters from Everquest because they feel that the invitation to role-play there has, in essence, been rescinded or weighted with such restrictions and tonalities of possible censorship that it makes playing there an ethically untenable position. Role-players are perceiving that the activities traditionally associated with their gaming, if used in a virtual world created for profit, may endanger their ability to play in that world. They are also finding that, in fact, the expression of the creativity that is the mark of excellent role-playing may actually become a barrier excluding them seeing themselves as a part of a game community. As the famed bard Jythri stated in his goodbye message, "It's clear to me now that it is 'your world'. I will never be able to call it mine."
ISSUE # 144
October 7th - October 13th, 2000
ROLEPLAY AND INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
If I started this essay writing in character as Nepenthia, it's quite likely I'd describe her as frequenting an inn in Freeport, or searching for scrolls about Tunare, or perhaps even (as set out last week in that rather silly poem about dresses) as initiating a quest to marry Aradune. It would seem entirely natural to place Nep in Norrath, using the possibilities of that huge and fascinating world for her stories because that is where Nep now spends her time, meets her friends and experiences adventures. Even though Nep wasn't born in Norrath, the place of her birth actually having been a ship that sailed far, far away and long, long ago, she has traveled through a variety of realms on her way there. In each of the places she has inhabited, and currently in Everquest, it has always seemed natural to find her practicing her bardic craft using the images, history, geography and characters she has found. How else could she connect her ongoing history with others of the citizens in the communities? How else could she grow and find a life and personality of her own if not from the worlds she experienced and the relationships she formed within them?
As seen above, Neppie is obviously a role-playing character, developed to allow her creator to participate in role-playing MUDs and games. However, the recent banning from Everquest of a role-player who wrote background stories as a means of trying to fully develop his characters, brings up some major issues about where and when and how I (or others with their own role-play characters) can role-play and/or publish stories or poems about Nepenthia and the world she finds herself in right now, Norrath. After all, I, as the creator of Nep, am in Norrath because Verant developed a role-playing game. They opened the doors to the realms, inviting me and thousands of others to purchase their Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game software and to come into their world and role-play.
While it is true that Verant partly enabled me to introduce Nep to Everquest by using the computer code to decide on Nep's looks, her gender, her stats, her race, her class and her religion, that really is only a limited start to developing a character. In order to role-play my character, it is necessary to flesh her out . Beyond the effects given by the software code, it's up to me to figure out what to do with her. Of course, I could choose to narrow my definition of role-play to simply the creation of the figure, Nep, and I could choose to run her around Norrath focused on accumulating in-game computer-generated rewards. The computer will actually accomplish that goal for me as long as I press the right keys. What the computer will not and cannot do though is create a role for Nep set in the Norrathian history and geography, nor can it give her personality, speech, connections and relationships. I am her creator and it is both my play and pleasure to develop those aspects for her in game and to more thoroughly solidify her existence through the use of the traditional role-play tools of background stories, current tales of adventures, art, poems, etc., possibly published on non-Everquest-owned sites like this one. However, the moment I write or draw anything that connects Nep with her current role-play environment, i.e., Norrath, even if it is not posted on a Verant or Sony site, I am potentially in danger of being found in violation of the EULA and the Terms of Conduct (which maintain a contractual relationship between me as a player and Verant/Sony as the game software provider) and copyright or other intellectual property laws. I, as her creator, could suffer the repercussions of this even though she is being role-played in a world created solely for the purpose of inducing me and others to purchase entry into it to play our characters and even though any publications I make (such as the ones here on EQ Express) are not on any Sony-owned sites as specified in the Terms of Conduct.
As matters stand, it seems like role-players must either have a sophisticated understanding of both intellectual property law and contract law in order to publish any works about their characters and stay in good standing in Everquest, or they must have reliable, clear and legal guidelines within which they may choose to work. If they do not have either, then they must face the possibility that anything they create that links their character with the world of Everquest, whether by a few words or by many, might get them banned from play or worse. Sadly, already some fan-sites are suspending publication simply because they feel it is not worth sharing their role-play stories with others if it means that they might be prevented from playing at all. Also and equally sadly, players are deciding to remove their characters from Everquest because they feel that the invitation to role-play there has, in essence, been rescinded or weighted with such restrictions and tonalities of possible censorship that it makes playing there an ethically untenable position. Role-players are perceiving that the activities traditionally associated with their gaming, if used in a virtual world created for profit, may endanger their ability to play in that world. They are also finding that, in fact, the expression of the creativity that is the mark of excellent role-playing may actually become a barrier excluding them seeing themselves as a part of a game community. As the famed bard Jythri stated in his goodbye message, "It's clear to me now that it is 'your world'. I will never be able to call it mine."
Beyond the uniquely personal issues that role-players may experience from identifying with the author's dilemma, the banning has raised a complexity of issues, some of which are new to the courts as they arise out of what is an at-times "extra-legal" environment on the internet. This incident began when a person published a role-playing story, using a scant few references to Everquest content, several months ago on a third-party server. At the time of publication, the site did not object to the story's content, nor did they ever receive any communication from Verant or Sony about it. Much later, apparently on the basis of the story's content and then, later, on the basis of infringement of intellectual property, the author through his player account was banned from Everquest without notice. Out of this situation have arisen several major issues and several difficult questions. The issues identified by player posts so far include the following: breach of contract between Verant/Sony and the player (governed by contract law in the civil courts); intellectual property disputes applying both to this matter and to all those who write EQ related articles or stories or who maintain EQ related websites (especially focused on copyright law and the, as yet, unsettled position of fan fiction); discrimination of a business against the content of writing by only one person while allowing others unhindered publication (possibly laws controlling the ability of a business to discriminate); and harassment (as in using the severing of a contractual relationship as a means to retaliate against someone a company disagrees with or doesn't like). There are questions too. Can a corporation face legal challenges to its policing actions beyond its domain? Can a player's behavior beyond the domain of Sony be grounds for ending a contractual business relationship founded on a license to use software? Can Verant legally set guidelines for or censor fan-fiction or even end it? Can Verant set rules for acceptable ways to role-play when not in its domain? Can EQ fan fiction published outside of Everquest/Sony sites be grounds for ending the contractual software use relationship between it and the writer if the writer is a customer of Sony? Should responses to reactions (such as a parent's) to a third-party site publication that may invoke the world of Norrath be policed by Sony even if Sony has no actual ability or legal responsibility to do so.
As anyone might guess, I don't have answers to all these questions, nor does Nep. In fact, she would prefer to retire to a nice soft bed about now to dream sweetly and she isn't too fussy about what fantasy city the inn is in. I intend to sleep on it too and think about it some more, hoping to get a clearer view of whether or not it is safe for me to write about Nepenthia or other characters and still remain a player in Norrath. In the meantime, if Jythri has indeed left Everquest, I'd like to simply say thanks for the role-playing, the Soerbaird and the products of his creativity. He has made my life richer and I deeply appreciate it.
As a final note, there are some very helpful sites on the net to help each of us try to muddle through the maze of legalities and fan-fiction problems. Oghma has kindly furnished several site addresses for me and I pass them along to you. Especially helpful were
http://users.erols.com/tushnet/law/fanficarticle.html,
http://www.whoosh.org/issue25/lee1.html,
http://members.aol.com/olwynm/fanfic.htm, and
http://www.inkspot.com/amanda/fanfic.html
Article by Nepenthia
"MMORPG Cafe"
MMORPG Cafe is a news site that includes a large sidebar (looks up-to-date, fall 2002) listing MMORPGs with links to brief summaries and relevant links.
Bite the Hand: Jessica Mulligan
Jessica Mulligan has experience designing, playing and writing about online games, and since April 1997, she's had a column about MMOGs: "Bite the Hand." Archives of the column start on a site called "GamerGals" (no longer in existance) then BTH moved to GameBytes , Happy Puppy, and now continue on Skotos.net. Her old material seems to be a good place for some insider analysis as these games became increasingly popular.
Interesting footnote on her career - she helped build the original online NeverWinter Nights - on AOL: "1988 - Jessica Mulligan, now a Quantum Computer Services [later AOL] employee, writes a white paper on the gaming industry and recommends that Quantum license the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons game from TSR, Inc. It does so, and AD&D: NeverWinter Nights is born, based on SSI's Gold Box series of AD&D games. Once launched, NeverWinter Nights will run continuously for several years, even though the technology of the graphics interface is hopelessly outdated. In it's last year of existence as a for-pay game, 1996, it will rake in an estimated $5 million dollars. " (from her History of Online Games.
She's now President of The Themis Group, a consultancy to companies building MMORPGs, helping them with customer support and game architecture issues, as well as publishing expensive MMORPG industry overviews.
It's My Time and I'll Sell if I Want To
March 2002: It's My Time and I'll Sell if I Want To by Gavin Carter
A fan response to auction controversy surrounding Dark Age of Camelot: "I have no formal legal training, however, and will not make an exhaustive review of the lawsuit's legal issues. Instead, I want to put forth reasons why it would be beneficial for Mythic to allow out-of-game sales of characters and other properties to continue instead of restricting them, as they have done with Blacksnow."
How much is your time worth? Who owns your time? Currently, the massively multiplayer gaming scene is grappling with similar questions. Just last month, Blacksnow Interactive, a company specializing in the sale of Dark Age of Camelot and Anarchy Online items for real world money, sued Camelot creator Mythic Entertainment over alleged attempts to stop out-of-game item sales using real-world currency. Blacksnow claims Mythic is engaging in monopolistic practices that violate federal antitrust statutes by blocking their company�fs activities. After Blacksnow announced the suit, online communities flared in heated debates. Everyone has an opinion, yet Mythic remains intent on running their virtual world with an iron fist. Despite this, MMOG players largely seem to be vilifying Blacksnow, blaming them for almost every problem the massively multiplayer scene has ever had. Their anger should be directed elsewhere. Gamers should take Mythic and other MMOG producers to task for forcing strict play standards on supposedly free-form products and engaging in practices that ultimately harm both the community and their own bottom line.
First, a disclaimer: Since Blacksnow initiated legal action against Mythic, this issue is no longer another opinion war, such as the discussions about class or race balance that routinely appear on both Sony and Mythic�fs forums. Blacksnow has charged Mythic with committing a crime, and as long as they pursue the issue, only the legal wrangling of courts and lawyers will bring about a conclusion. I have no formal legal training, however, and will not make an exhaustive review of the lawsuit�fs legal issues. Instead, I want to put forth reasons why it would be beneficial for Mythic to allow out-of-game sales of characters and other properties to continue instead of restricting them, as they have done with Blacksnow.
Blacksnow is a small California-based company made up of hardcore MMOG fans. In the early days of Ultima Online and EverQuest, the first two widely accepted massively multiplayer titles, eBay and other online auction sites were regularly filled with items and accounts from both. In fact, eBay is still filled with auctions covering every major MMOG. Many of the items being offered are rare or extremely high-powered, and sell for grand sums of money. A personal friend once sold his level 50 EverQuest ranger -- the highest obtainable level at the time -- for $1,500. Blacksnow saw a business opportunity in these dealings. Upon the release of Camelot, they set up a website where players could pay for a particular item using a credit card, and a Blacksnow representative would meet them online to deliver it. In effect, the customer was trading money for time. Most of the items people are willing to pay for require hours of in-game activities, such as camping, where a player sits in one spot awaiting a specific creature or event. Paying for the item circumvents the wait. Mythic perceived a problem and intervened with a cease and desist order for Blacksnow, halting their sales.
But why shouldn�ft a person be allowed to sell the products of his or her time? It happens all around us every day. Two elements determine the price of any product: the cost of the materials and the charge for the labor required to create it. When viewed in this fashion, outlawing the sale of non-illegal products of a person's time does not make sense. Mythic wants you to believe they own your character and all of his or her items simply because your avatar exists on their servers. As a player who cherishes free-form gameplay, I�fm not keen on the notion that someone is laying legal claim to what I do with my time. I purchased Camelot from Mythic and have put considerable time into my character; if I wish to earn a profit, they should not seek to stop me. Mythic cannot claim ownership of my time.
At the center of this debate is the question of ownership of property, items and characters in MMOGs. Too often, the meaning of ownership is misconstrued. By moving to stop secondary sales, Mythic is claiming your virtual property legally belongs to them. Consequently, they can force you to use the property however they see fit. Their justification is that you are paying your monthly fee to "rent" the property. This bizarre argument baffles me. For starters, players have already paid their one-time fee to acquire the install disc, which for most titles costs as much as standard commercial releases. Secondly, the issue of ownership is immaterial. Whether players like it or not, Mythic exerts dominion over the characters and items of Camelot�fs world, meaning the developers can alter or delete anything. Thus, when selling an item outside of the game world, one is merely transferring the right to use the particular object or character to another person. Mythic still retains ownership -- and absolute power -- over their virtual world and everything in it no matter who�fs paying the monthly rental fee. This is a case about rights, not ownership. Mythic is trampling our rights as gamers, and so far we are allowing it, and even welcoming it in some cases.
The debate over gamers' rights to virtual property can be looked at from two perspectives. First, Mythic believes the practice is wrong, as evidenced by their attempts to halt it. The publisher takes this view because it runs a business based on the time other people invest in them. The longer people play Camelot, the more money Mythic earns. Purchasing an item second-hand represents a circumvention of the time-based system, and ostensibly costs Mythic revenue. The second way of looking at this issue is through the eyes of gamers who purchase secondhand items. Casual users rarely enjoy MMOGs, as a substantial amount of time is spent leveling up characters. The best EverQuest players take a full month of playing time to get their characters from start to level 50 and higher. That�fs not a month of eight-hour workdays, either; it�fs literally a month of 24-hour days logged into the world of Norrath. Who�fs right? The gamer, because everyone has a right to use their time and money as they see fit.
Sales of virtual property doesn't harm Mythic as much as they would claim. By taking a narrow approach to the issue, Mythic is ignoring the potential benefits of allowing character and item sales. The most obvious is the economic benefit of a continued account. Assume a girl wants to quit Camelot. Before Mythic began halting player auctions, she had two choices. First, she could uninstall Camelot, cancel her subscription and put the disc on her shelf to collect dust. A more attractive option would be to put the character she has poured time into up for public auction or sale. Doing so would continue to generate revenue for Mythic. Mythic would surely rather keep on earning an account�fs monthly fee than see it canceled. Some say the sale of an account dodges the cost of buying the installation CD, a practice in which all MMOGs currently engage. Yet Mythic earns more from the 100,000+ checks coming in every month than from the one-time revenue generated by CD sales.
Another reason Mythic should allow secondhand sales is how they benefit purchasers. Most current massively multiplayer online titles are grounded in the principle that gamers want to feel powerful and see cool stuff; thus, they start you off weak and tell you to go forth and kill to become more powerful. Soon, new weapons, spells, exotic locations and meaner monsters become available. The problem is people have different amounts of time to devote to playing online. A working mother who�fs an EverQuest fan is going to spend less time online than a seventh grader out of school for summer. To ensure all subscribers have the incentive to keep their monthly checks flowing, progress is quick in the beginning, but slows down exponentially in the middle before coming to a near standstill once the player reaches the highest echelons of advancement. The slowdown is seemingly made bearable by the promise of seeing more cool stuff in the future, but in reality, that slowdown kills off many players. Those who can only devote a few hours each week to playing find the day-to-day gameplay monotonous during the midsection. Furthermore, they also find those who spend entire days online easily eclipse them in terms of power and experience. These players see all the cool stuff in screenshots posted on spoiler sites, hear tales from those with more time and often cancel their subscription in discouragement.
The discrepancy between users with and without time can potentially harm more than the subscription base; the game�fs social structures also can be damaged. MMOGs offer benefits, frequently in the form of quicker advancement, for players who form guilds. Many guilds consist of groups of real-life friends who wish to adventure together. Oftentimes, a player with less time than the others in his group can fall behind, making it more difficult for him to effectively play with his guild. The guild doesn't want to spend its time worrying about lower level characters, so the player becomes a burden. Usually, he either quits or becomes an antisocial solo player who�fs not above kill-stealing and engaging in other practices that offer quicker advancement, but negatively impact the rest of the server population. I have personal experience in this area. My EverQuest guild was rocketing past me, lessening the enjoyment I got out of playing. Although I purchased EverQuest to play with my friends in our guild, our sessions were spent leveling me up so I could participate. It never happened; I cancelled my subscription. Then I sold my character for $50 on eBay.
Allowing out-of-game sales both helps players who want a good experience, but don�ft have an endless reservoir of free time, and resolves potential threats to the title�fs social structure. Users without a lot of time can circumvent the leveling process and immediately jump to the cool stuff that would otherwise elude them. Players who fall behind their guild can augment themselves by purchasing potent items or even a more powerful character. In the end, subscribers would retain more accounts, resulting in higher user satisfaction and a stronger social structure for guild actions like realm vs. realm combat in Camelot. Therefore, out-of-game sales provide a better experience for both the customer and the software company. I will now address the most obvious counter-arguments to the issue at hand.
The rebuttal most often used to defend Mythic is that the activities of Blacksnow are illegal because they�fre forbidden in Camelot�fs End User License Agreement (EULA), which players must accept before installing the title. Mythic's supporters claim the EULA is a binding legal contract that Blacksnow violated by selling items for financial gain. To say the least, the legality of EULAs is a gray area. If you take every statement in every EULA as gospel, then you believe Microsoft should have full access to your computer. You also have never played a game in a cyber-café or other LAN center, since that violates the EULAs of most entertainment software. A EULA could stipulate that a software product can only be used while standing on one�fs head and chewing bubble gum, and a number of people would not only do so, but also point a finger at those who refused. Former AVault writer Bruce Rolston wrote an exhaustive article detailing the questionable practices of game developers using EULAs to strip consumers of their rights. While the basic tenants of most EULAs have good intentions such as combating piracy, software companies refuse to stop there, using EULAs as a way of shielding themselves from any liability. License agreements have been successfully challenged in court; thus Mythic and its supporters should not so readily wave around Camelot�fs agreement.
Another argument against the sale of items and characters is that it inspires anti-social behavior. Those seeking powerful items and quick leveling are not above kill-stealing, Mythic's supporters say. While this may be true, mischievous actions can only be indirectly linked to sales of virtual property. People of all kinds play MMOGs, and many who wish to make a profit surely would steal a few kills from friendlier players to advance their goals. However, it's just as plausible that a kill-stealer is being anti-social for personal advancement; it can't be assumed that everyone who steals other people�fs kills does so for financial gain. The practice of taking what is rightfully someone else�fs has existed long before arguments over online property rights cropped up. In addition, the practice of kill-stealing can be addressed by innovative programming techniques on the part of the developers. In fact, Mythic has some of the most unique ways of dealing with kill-stealing, including distributing quest items to everyone in a group and other methods of reward balancing.
Those who maintain a ruling in Blacksnow's favor would create numerous imitator companies are ignoring the economics. A recent Associated Press article [read it] quoted a 16-year-old who sold his EverQuest character for $600 on eBay. He estimated he spent a total of 27 days working on his character. Assuming he�fs referring to the in-game clock that tracks the time spent with characters, that�fs 648 hours. Dividing his payoff by the number of hours he spent nurturing his character results in an earnings ratio of less than 93 cents an hour. Even if we assume he only worked on his character for four hours on each of those 27 days, the earnings ratio comes out to $5.56 per hour, which is little more than minimum wage. These aren�ft numbers on which to build a successful business. Perhaps it would work as a side project in spare time, but minimum wage is generally not a sum people are going to squabble over so much it becomes a problem for the larger server population. Perhaps the strongest argument in Blacksnow's favor is that virtual property sales continue to rise for nearly every MMOG on the market, and not a single major incident has risen from the activity before this lawsuit reared its head.
Reports emerged not long ago alleging members of Blacksnow used cheats and hacks to further their financial schemes. Mythic�fs supporters have seized on this, saying involving real-world money in Camelot�fs economic system encourages rampant cheating. I�fm not advocating cheating nor taking the side of Blacksnow. If they cheated or hacked, the offending members should be rooted out and banned from the game, and legal action should be pursued against them. Admittedly, out-of-game sales do provide an incentive for cheaters and hackers. Conversely, it isn�ft a good reason to justify total banishment of such transactions. Much like anti-social behavior, cheating will happen regardless of any financial gain involved. Software developers must take every precaution to prevent cheaters, whether it involves extending development time, hiring dedicated anti-cheating staff or other practices. Insofar as their public relations representatives can be believed, MMOG developers have an excellent track record at catching cheaters. Many developers believe cheating is a problem that can be detected and solved. Swedish-based developer MindArk is so confident they can defeat cheaters in their upcoming title, Project Entropia, they�fre basing part of the game�fs economic system on real-world money. This means you are free to, and even encouraged to, buy and sell items with your own hard earned cash through MindArk�fs official channels. MindArk is devoting enormous development resources to preventing cheats and hacks, and plans to have full-time staff on the same task even after the game is released. Cheat prevention can happen, and must happen, whether or not out-of-game sales are allowed to continue.
The Firing Squad gaming website once took up the question of EULAs in an editorial calling gamers "spineless" and comparing them to a rattlesnake rendered harmless by a charmer. The metaphor is a perfect fit. Mythic has charmed its customers into submission through brute force tactics, and very few have stood up to complain. Gamers should be concerned that Mythic is seeking to undermine the consumer's right to their own time. Blacksnow's case is not just about the right to sell virtual property for real money; it�fs also about how companies can dictate the way you spend your time. As Blacksnow's director of sales, Lee Caldwell, puts it, �gWhat it comes down to is, does a player have rights to his time, or does Mythic own that player�fs time?�h Accepting this behavior from Mythic and other MMOG developers simply opens the door for more restrictive and inequitable practices on the part of software publishers. Don't take this sitting down. Stand up, be counted, and show Mythic and other companies that they can't placidly walk all over your rights without a fight.
Intellectual Property Rights in community based video games
"In this paper I argue that it is inappropriate to use property law to settle disputes over player-characters in MMORPGs as there is neither the legal nor philosophical basis to support that view that player-characters are property. Moreover there is a strong argument to suggest that a player-character is an extension of self, thus it is human rights that should be extended to cover them and thus by implication any other instantiation of self within a virtual environment. This paper is fully referenced and covers contemporary intellectual property law as well and an application of Locke's theory of property to virtual worlds."
A paper the author, Ren Reynolds, submitted to a conference. Sounds like an interesting fellow, someone we might run into again in our studies. This paper is a Word document available for download (I have it - let's print it) or you can view it as HTML (kinda sloppy) through Google.
Game Auctions
Online auctions of in-game items and characters is one area where MMOGs and real-life intersect, controversially. Players who have invested hundreds, thousands of hours into developing their characters want a chance to recoup their investment. Newbie players or people without enough time to play fully want a chance to leap ahead with bought items. Meanwhile, the game companies want to keep control over the content and economics of their games. Included below are links to articles about game-auction controversies.
The first instance of an auction ban seems to be here:
CNet: April 2000: Sony to ban sale of online characters from its popular gaming sites
On the site's chat board, most players cheered the sales ban."The farming is way out of hand, and I agree to that all the way," said a player whose nom de guerre is Talonstromgard. "I can't get a fishbone earring because the same guy has been camping (waiting for a special item to be dropped into the game) Hadden for two weeks."
Players can bypass hundreds of playing hours by plunking down thousands of dollars on a more powerful character or heavier body armor.
"It takes a long time to build one of these puppies up," said Jupiter Communications analyst Billy Pidgeon, referring to the game's characters. "Succeeding at this game is vital to a lot of these people, and the temptation to cheat is very real."
That's one reason for the ban, Smedley said. Sony and Verant want to create a level playing field. Another is that buyers paying big money for a character or weapon that doesn't live up to the seller's description usually go to Verant for justice, Smedley said, and the company doesn't want to be involved in that.
Smedley said that the sales are hotbeds for hucksters. Earlier this year, one player sold a top character to three others and is now being prosecuted.
Last year, an employee at a gaming site started creating highly sought after game items and was selling them on eBay until the company found out and fired him, Pidgeon said.
So these are user-friendly arguments in favor of the ban, sort of neatly skirting intellectual property issues. If I have worked for 100 hours to earn this character, don't I have the right to sell it off as I see fit?
(According to News.com: eBay, Yahoo crack down on fantasy sales, the ban on those sites took effect January 2001.)
"EverQuest" items and characters continue to be sold on smaller auction sites, however. Edward Castronova, associate professor of economics at California State University at Fullerton, recently completed a study of the "EverQuest" economy.Based on a review of thousands of completed auctions for "EverQuest" items and in-game currency, he concluded that players collectively produce annual gross "exports" of more than $5 million. If the game's fictional universe of Norrath were a country, its per-capita gross national product would be $2,266--making it the 77th richest country on Earth and ranking it between Russia and Bulgaria.
Castronova said the trading outside the game is inevitable because prices set in the in-game barter system don't match players' expectations, resulting in high "transaction costs" that spur players to look elsewhere. The upshot is a Cuban-style system where a moribund official economy is overshadowed by a vigorous underground economy based on U.S. dollars.
"It's absolutely supply and demand at work," Castronova said. "I don't think they (Sony representatives) realize they're confronting the same problems that have confronted real-world policy makers for years. When the government becomes so powerful it can control an entire economic system, how do you do that fairly?"
That is quoted from:
News.com: February 2002:
Game exchange dispute goes to court
A specialty barter site has sued the creator of a popular online game over the right to swap virtual items from the game, setting the grounds for a decision that could have far-reaching copyright implications for the game industry.The founders of BlackSnow Interactive, which runs the CamelotExchange Web site, filed the suit Tuesday in the U.S. Court for the Central District of California against Mythic Entertainment, developer of the game "Dark Age of Camelot" (DAOC).
Citizenry in MMOGs?
Massively multiplayer online role-playing games call into question the notion of "citizenry." It's as if paying taxes was all it took to belong to a country - but what rights does paying taxes get you? What does citizenry mean in online multiplayer worlds? What are the rights and responsibilities of citizenship in these virtual spaces?
Massively multiplayer online role-playing games call into question the notion of "citizenry" as if paying taxes was all it took to belong to a country - but what rights does paying taxes get you? What does citizenry mean in online multiplayer worlds? What are the rights and responsibilities for citizenship in these virtual spaces?
Citizenship is a natural metaphor since each game avatar is tied to a specific player (or at least has been, so far, in the MMOGs to date). For the Internet at large, authentication is key for regulation. When you can say, this person is a man/woman, from Minnesota, you can prevent certain forms of Internet traffic (ie, they should not be allowed to gamble here). You can set up zones, exclusion based on identity. Identity is possible with encryption and digital IDs, adopted by people as means of convenience, urged on them by commerce companies. Government regulates these commerce companies as a means of regulating both net and consumers.
In the case of MMOGs, the world is set up by commerce, each citizen is a subscriber. MMOGs eliminate software piracy this way. They solve one problem - authentication of ID, by certifying that that is definitely the only case of "John DoPe" logging in. But is John DoPe a man or a woman or a dog? The game is designed to allow you to play with that.
And so the question emerges - in online worlds if you wanted to set up areas that excluded based on gender, for example, would you exclude based on gender of the people playing, or the characters they play? There is no easy answer - as a woman playing a man might act more masculine than a man playing a woman. And requiring digital ID signatures signifying degrees masculinity and femininity is not yet possible.
The problem extends as well to language - if you set up "shards" or role-playing areas based on country of origin, you can't use "country of origin" necessarily as a basis for common communication. Similarly, if you ask someone to choose a language when they enter the game, it ignores the fact that they might be able to communicate bilingually. Sure they may have a preferred language, but is that system binary? This is not a choice with as much impact as some others, still it shows that a system of real world identification (I am Justin, in Tokyo) might have flaws when it translates into online variables.
Play is in a sense fluidity, and digital signatures are decidedly not fluid. So in essence, players are giving their real identities, and real credit card numbers, to the MMOG companies in exchange for the right to remove those outfits. Perhaps now we pay in order to have the freedom online we had in 1995 before authentication and reputation permeated.
Or another way to look at it, digital citizenry in one game is fluid, but across games, it is fixed. Question: what will make governments care what happens in MMOGs?
(Note - a good place to look to think about conditions of citizenship in online spaces would be the User Agreements for the major online games).
October 24, 2002
On Virtual Economies
On Virtual Economies by Edward Castronova (July 2002) is a promising, academic study of MMORPGs and their impact on society and politics. 383kb download PDF, 44 pages long - something to print out at the Press Club!
(Update 2/27/03) Also see: Virtual Worlds: A First-Hand Account of Market and Society on the Cyberian Frontier
Several million people currently have accounts in massively multi-player online games, places in cyberspace that are effectively large-scale shared virtual reality environments. The population of these virtual worlds has grown rapidly since their inception in 1996; significantly, each world also seems to grow its own economy, with production, assets, and trade with Earth economies. This paper explores two questions about these developments. First, will these economies grow in importance? Second, if they do grow, how will that affect real-world economies and governments? To shed light on the first question, the paper presents a brief history of these games along with a simple choice model of the demand for game time. The history suggests that the desire to live in a game world is deep-rooted and driven by game technology. The model reveals a certain puzzle about puzzles and games: in the demand for these kinds of interactive entertainment goods, people reveal that they are willing to pay money to be constrained. Still, the nature of games as a produced good suggests that technological advances, and heavy competition, will drive the future development of virtual worlds. If virtual worlds do become a large part of the daily life of humans, their development may have an impact on the macroeconomies of Earth. It will also raise certain constitutional issues, since it is not clear, today, exactly who has jurisdiction over these new economies.
October 22, 2002
Lessig Essay: The Laws of Cyberspace
April 3, 1998. He frames some important and thought-provocative questions in this essay, which is something of a general overview - and prescient, too.
Unfortunately it is in PDF. Maybe I'll be able to track down an electronic text version of it sometime.
Excerpt:
Behavior in the real world - this world, the world in which I am now speaking - is regulated by four sorts of constraints. Law is just one of those four constraints. Law regulates by sanctions imposed ex post - fail to pay your taxes, and you are likely to go to jail. Law is the prominent of regulators. But it is just one of four.Social norms are a second. They also regulate. Social norms - understandings or expectations about how I ought to behave, enforced not through some centralized norm enforcer, but rather through the understandings and expectations of just about everyone in a prticular community - direct and constrain my behavior in a far wider array of contexts than any law. Norms say what clothes I will wear - a suit, not a dress; they tell you to sit quietly, and politely, for at least forty minutes while I speak; they organize how we will interact after this talk is over. Norms guide behavior; in this sense, they function as a second regulatory constraint.
The market is a third constraint. It regulates by price. The market limits the amount I can spend on clothes; or the amount I can make from public speeches; it says I can command less from my writing than Madonna, or less from my singing than Pavarotti. Through the device of price, the market sets my opportunities, and through this range of opportunities, it regulates.
And finally, there is the constraint of what some might call nature, but which I want to call "architecture". This is the constraint of of the world as I find it, even if this world as I find it is a world that others have made.
October 21, 2002
Japan's Lost Generation
Japan's Lost Generation
In a world filled with virtual reality, the country's youth can't deal with the real thing
By RYU MURAKAMI
05.01.2000
Hikikomori has become a major issue in Japan. Loosely translated as "social withdrawal, "hikikomori refers to the state of anomie into which an increasing number of young Japanese seem to fall these days. Socially withdrawn kids typically lock themselves in their bedrooms and refuse to have any contact with the outside world. They live in reverse: they sleep all day, wake up in the evening and stay up all night watching television or playing video games. Some own computers or mobile phones, but most have few or no friends. Their funk can last for months, even years in extreme cases. No official statistics are available, but it is estimated that more than 1 million young Japanese suffer from the affliction. One such young man was the protagonist of my latest novel, Symbiosis Worm.
Hikikomori is a consequence of the phenomenal growth of the Japanese economy during the latter half of the 20th century and the tremendous technological progress the country made during that time. Japanese youth could not afford to be socially withdrawn if their parents were not affluent enough to provide them a home, meals and extras that have come to be thought of as basics-audio and video equipment, software, mobile phones, computers. And there are plenty of newer technological devices for these youths to pursue.
Great changes in a country's social structure have always caused stresses. These, in turn, can create new forms of neurosis. In 19th-century Europe, doctors often diagnosed "hysteria" as a neurosis (almost always applied to women) that indicated a suppressed desire for social fulfillment. Once it became common for women to leave the home and take up positions in society, this "hysteria" became a rarity.
So maybe Japan's socially withdrawn kids are a harbinger of a new way of life, one forged by the vast changes the country has undergone in recent years. Japanese society is caught in a paradox: it is concerned with the increase of socially withdrawn kids, while at the same time it applauds gizmos like the new Sony PlayStation, which comes equipped with an Internet terminal and a DVD player. Technology like that has made it possible to produce animated movies and graphics, as well as conduct commercial transactions, without ever stepping out of the house. It inevitably fixes people in their individual space. In this information society, none of us can be free from being somewhat socially withdrawn
Miscommunication prevails throughout our society: in the family, in the community, between management and employees, between the financial world and the Ministry of Finance, between the government and the people. Yet this malfunctioning of communication has nothing to do with Japan's "uniqueness," some essence inherent in its history or tradition that sets it apart from other nations.
The cause of the malfunctioning is more simple. It is the fact that, by the 1970s, we had already achieved the national goal. We had worked hard to restore the country from the ruins of World War II, develop the economy and build a modern technological state. When that great goal was attained, we lost much of the motivating force that had knit the nation so tightly together. Affluent Japanese do not know what kind of lifestyle to take up now. That uncertainty has pulled people further apart and caused a whole raft of social problems. Hikikomori is naturally one of them.
"Socially withdrawn" people find it extremely painful to communicate with the outside world, and thus they turn to the tools that bring virtual reality into their closed rooms. Japan, on the other hand, must face reality itself. The country has to accept that World War II ended long ago-and so did the glory days of national restoration and economic growth. We don't need the state to come up with an alternative national goal. Instead Japan should develop into a society in which each member is able to set his or her own aims. That's not easy, but nor is it impossible. If the culture cannot adjust and drowns in a tsunami of technology, Japan will end up sinking even deeper into a labyrinth of confusion.
Japanese novelist and film director Ryu Murakami won one of the country's top literary prizes in 1976 for his first novel Almost Transparent Blue. His other works include Coin Locker Babies and In the Miso Soup.
Political education or ideological indoctrination?
Let's also think about, as part of social order/social behavior, the potential of games to educate - historically, politically, socially, etc.
Today has indeed been a day of political games - from UnderAsh to Tropical America. Do these games say anything about social online behaviors? They are not multiplayer, you don't interact with anyone, but it might inform a discussion of, say, America's Army. And feed our ideas of what games mean in larger social contexts.
Personal Space: Who Controls the Story
From an event at USC, a GameSpy report on the Interactive Age Conference includes some coverage of storytelling and player control in online games.
Personal Space: Who Controls the Story
Massively multiplayer RPG game designers discuss story creation and how they want to impact the player.
When creating a game, who should control the story? Should it be the game designer, or should players be given the freedom to create the story. This was the key question behind several talks at the second day of the Entertainment for the Interactive Age conference at the University of Southern California. As Geoffrey Zatkin, a Senior Game Designer for EverQuest, put it, the "more authorship you give the player, the less designers can narrate. You must determine where you want to set the bar."
Zatkin's talk revolved around the concept of self-authorship, where the participants create the story. For instance, in a chat room, the conversations people hold in the room determines its character and their enjoyment of that space. Permitting self-authorship in a game "shares some part of the creation process with the player and it's a collaboration between the designer and the player."
Although games like Deus Ex allow you "to decide how to get through the story, the design is limited by how much you are allowed to do." Games in which the player controls a party of characters makes creating stories easier because overcomes is that fact that it is "hard to have a relationship when there is no one to have a relationship with". However, Zatkin feels the "true test of self-authorship" is the massively multiplayer online roleplaying game (MMORPG).
EverQuest
In those games, the "player is not the center of the universe, merely a participant in it and everyone has to be a member of the universe with about equal priority." This is challenging, as you are "not designing the game around the actions or what you think will happen with one person," unlike a single-player game, which tends to have a main character. Thus, the purpose of the designer of a MMORPG is to create the framework--basically a "huge, chat room world"--although Zatkin believes that the type of "world is basically irrelevant."
"What keeps them there is interacting with other people when they can start roleplaying to make their own stories." Because they are creating the stories themselves, the players automatically become emotionally attached to their characters and the world they live in. Another key idea Zelkin mentioned is that the game's design should permit people to show off their stories or interact with them as "very few people create stories just for themselves, the majority want to share it or develop them."
Matthew Ford, Producer for Asheron's Call at Microsoft, continued this theme as he discussed "roleplaying as a form of self-authorship." He felt that acceptance of roleplaying as a form of expression has grown out of interactive and improvisational theatre, Dungeons & Dragons--a kind of improvisational theatre where you "think about your setting and work within it"--and game conventions and Renaissance fairs. He felt using "thee's and thou's" was unnecessary for roleplaying in the fantasy genre as long as player's stayed in character, limiting their knowledge to that which the character would have.
He estimated that only 5% of Asheron's Call's players were dedicated roleplayers, but felt that "a little goes a long way" as "being around a roleplayer, even if you are not one yourself, is kind of entertaining and you find yourself being drawn into it. You'll start responding in character and [this will] draw you out." Other players, however, were more interested in building their character's statistics or feeling contemptuous towards the roleplayers. Basically, "whatever works, as long as they are customers and it makes them happy."
One unique feature of Asheron's Call is the monthly world-shaping events that guide the overall story of the game. The current plot has centered on the shadow forces trying to escape and free the evil Bael'Zharon. These events are normally designed 6-8 weeks prior to when it happens and the interests of the fans, such as expressed on the message boards, play an important part in these designs. For instance, he indicated that the next major plot would revolve around the Virindi race.
He also noted that players really enjoyed the superficial changes that accompanied these events, like the sky color (blood red for one of the events), seasonal changes in leaf color, etc. because it affects all players and "they want something they can enjoy." To involve more people in the epic events, they purposely design them with a "pyramid-style organization so you feel you contribute even if not the hero." This inclusion in the large events facilitates the player's ability to develop their personal story and be part of the world.
Also speaking at the conference was the eloquent Raph Koster (Ultima Online, Star Wars Galaxies) on the topic of the space in which the story is told. The two ends of the spectrum are impositional space, where the game designer basically imposes their story, characters or desired behaviours on the player, and expressive space, where the designer provides the tools for the players to express themselves. In both cases, the developers still provide the setting through the artwork, however, who controls the stories are very different. Koster doesn't "think one is better than the other. I'm just glad I created the space," and doesn't "care who the hell wrote" the stories, be it the designer or player.
This contrasted with the view of Tim Schafer, the creator of adventure games like Grim Fandago, who "wants to sit back and experience it" finding that "sometimes picking a save game name is enough expression for me." Unlike the MMORPG model, he "tries to impose story and make it more interactive as opposed to starting with an interactive world and adding a story."
Asheron's Call
Ken Lobb of Nintendo then proclaimed boldly "we don't really care about storytelling." Instead, he explained that gameplay, not art, is what makes Nintendo fun and has been the basic design philosophy from the days of Donkey Kong to the forthcoming GameCube games. The steps their games normally take are prototyping the game controls, adding a set of "gimmicks" or challenges and balancing where they should be learned in the game, and then finally handing it off to the artists to create the world.
Warren Spector of ION Storm also entered this discussion feeling there was a third type of space, so-called possibility space. His goal with Deus Ex was to create a "dialogue between an author and an audience, where the audience could actually drive the creation." The "plot belonged to me, but between plot points players had 'complete' control of the minute-to-minute gameplay." Thus, he was "giving the player the opportunity to express him or herself in whatever way is meaningful to him and her, not in ways that are meaningful to me, the creator of the game."
During a discussion session, an audience member questioned Geoffrey Zatkin about the recent clamping down by Verant on the sale of EverQuest characters and items at sites like eBay. Zatkin responded that the company "doesn't like characters being sold because it ruins the player experience. And we're about selling the game experience." He indicated that the player character levels were designed so that the player continually learns how to master the new skills as they gain levels. Thus, he felt that someone buying a higher level character would be unprepared to play such a character and gave an example in which a kid that had received a 50th level promptly ended up at 37th level because of many deaths. He quickly became a pariah as people that were depending on him in this community-oriented game were getting hurt as well.
The other major reason was that all these sales were creating excessive customer service issues like item sale scams, and the inability of people that had purchased high-level characters to use them. He did concede that if they could find a secure way that would mitigate these customer service issues, they would possibly allow it. In contrast, although these sales are clearly "not supported, not legal, against the terms of service, and [they] could choose to enforce" them, Ford explained that Asheron's Call has so far had a "laissez faire" attitude towards this practice.
PlanetSide - MMO FPS
E3 2002: GameSpy provides a Preview of / Update on PlanetSide, Sony/Verant's attempt to develop an online, multiplayer first-person shooter.
Sony Online Entertainment's PlanetSide made huge strides over the demo we played at last year's show, and it's becoming apparent that Sony might be able to figure out action gaming as well as they tackled online RPGs. The premise is short but sweet: PlanetSide is a first-person shooter set in a persistent world, where virtual armies of players will do battle in various terrains with various vehicles. Imagine Tribes II but on a global scale. Imagine a 24 hour war raging on the Internet, where your teammates will get to know you and where your achievements can allow you to command armies and more. It's an idea that others have tried (World War II Online leaps to mind), but PlanetSide might just turn the idea into a runaway hit.
Building the Perfect Soldier
When you join the massive game, character creation is a simple matter: you simply select which of the three warring factions you wish to belong to. It's like joining a massive team, one that you'll stick with permanently. From there, it's all a matter of skillz. As Creative Director Kevin McCann explained, "The actual player skill is never replaced by roleplaying skills." In other words, you'll be able to gain rank as you fight, but how straight you can shoot and how good you can aim will always be based on your own abilities, not some RPG convention. This is an action game at heart, not an RPG.
That being said, the persistence of the world will still allow you to earn bonuses for good play. As you help your team by killing the enemy or capturing installations, you get "vocation points" that you can apply to specific development areas. Think of them as licenses to use special armor and equipment. These will allow your character to specialize -- only players with lots of development points spent for healing will be able to carry medical packs to heal teammates. Similarly, only players with piloting licenses will be able to fly the warships. Of course, even at the highest levels, you'll never be able to master everything; you'll have to specialize your character and work closely with other players.
But PlanetSide never locks the player into a certain path. If you decide you're tired of certain specialties, you can de-allocate the points you've earned and allocate them elsewhere without penalty. "You never take a step back," McCann claimed. The same is true of player death; you don't lose any experience, you only lose the equipment you were carrying, which is easily replaced (there are no unique or rare items). The other penalty for dying is that you have to respawn at the last base you tied yourself to, which may mean you're removed from the front lines until you can find a way back.
A Massive World for a Massive Game
The world of PlanetSide is divided into enormous "continents," the largest of which are 8 kilometers by 8 kilometers large. Each continent is seamless with no load time for any area within the continent. Terrain varies from landmass to landmass and within each landmass itself -- they've got desert, forest, grassland, arctic and even lava terrains to explore (among others.) Terrain plays an important role. For instance, some forests are too thick to effectively drive vehicles through, meaning infantry will have to go in alone. The designers are using effects like these to really sculpt the maps -- for example, certain fortresses will be surrounded by forests, meaning only infantry will be fighting there.
The aforementioned fortresses are scattered among the terrain and they're the focus of much of the combat. Each fortress is a large affair with indoor and outdoor rooms as well as defense towers and turrets (turrets are automated, although players can man the turrets to increase their aim and effectiveness.) Each base is "owned" by a specific team, and the colors of the base reflect ownership. By infiltrating a base and holding the control room, players can conquer it. This will allow them use that base as a respawn point. More importantly, each base has its own unique "bonus" to offer the team in charge: Faster respawn time, or ability to build a powerful vehicle, for instance.
Groups of players can get together to liberate one base after another, conferring benefits to their teammates and glory to themselves. Viva le red people! Down with ... the blue people! Keep in mind that the game is persistent, though. So you may go to bed having taken over half a continent, only to find that it's been retaken by the enemy while you slept.
Graphically the areas are simply gorgeous. Random ground clutter such as waving grass is present, of course. But more stunning is the huge architecture or terrain features. The forest I mentioned above was as thick as something you'd see on the moon of Endor. Soldiers popped out from behind enormous trees that filled the view from foreground to horizon. Shooter fanatics are in for some hardcore action, no doubt. The teleporter gates that link one continent to another are also enormous affairs, large enough that a hundred men could simultaneously walk through each one. These towering metal structures arc toward the heavens, dwarfing the men and vehicles that may come pouring through them at any time.
The vehicles are rendered with just as much love as the environment. About 15 vehicles are planned for the final version, everything from nimble dune buggies to massive tanks to VTOL fighter jets and more. The largest vehicle is the dropship, which can carry a pilot (who has to first earn his license) and up to 12 passengers. Many heavy vehicles require separate gunners, so teamplay is an absolute must. "The community aspect is very important," agreed McCann.
Will You Have What It Takes?
Although the game emphasizes skill, you won't need to be a first-person shooter God to enjoy the experience. There are plenty of support positions that can contribute to the overall team effort. Manning a base turret is easy and fun, given the firepower at your disposal. Also, a medic doesn't have to be a good shot to be a key part of the assault. Medics can heal players and even bring them back to life from a fatal injury to save them the trouble of respawning. You can also gain points as a commander, which will allow you to stay in the base and issue order to your squads -- you'll get credit for their accomplishments. You can even just pilot a small fighter around on patrol and report the locations of incoming enemies. "We don't want to limit the game to twitch gamers or good gunners," McCann said. "We're not just catering to hardcore players." Because the game encourages intense teamwork, good players and good team leaders will begin to stand out and squads of friends will hopefully start to work together on a regular basis. As McCann describes, "We're giving players a lot of control as to how they want to attack these continents."
If all goes well, you can expect to see PlanetSide hitting retail sometime around March or April of 2003. A minimum system spec of a Pentium 3 running at 1-GHz with a GeForce 2 is recommended, given the amount of on-screen action.
PlanetSide is massive in every way: massive in scope, massive in players, and massive in potential. Will it be the next wave in action gaming? Our only regret is that we'll have to wait until 2003 to find out!
Some new types of RPGs
"New Types of MMORPGs" from About.com. It's undated and the language is cheesy - altogether a bad sign. But I want to look into these games he mentions below: A New Type of MMORPGThe massively multiplayer on-line role playing game (MMORPG), several years in its evolution, has hit a series of milestones. Dawn, an upcoming MMORPG from Glitchless, promises the ability to not only participate in a world of mind-boggling size and complexity, but also to create the civilization aspect of the world.
Taking a quantum leap in interactivity, developer Jeff Friedman has a plethora of surprises in store for the MMORPG user accustomed to a flat on-line universe where the sole power to create and organize is entrusted to a series of game masters and developers. Friedman recently offered an enticing glimpse into his ideal on-line role playing design in an interview with IGN.com. Interested role players can sign up for the beta test.
Dawn is not the only recent divergence from the myriad of existing, but similar MMORPGs. Eve, unlike Dawn, separates itself from the standard MMORPG not in gameplay, but in game situation. Leaving the common fantasy setting of Medieval Europe (or a rough approximation thereof), Eve, a Crowd Control Productions development, charts new territory in the void of space. Playing as a trader or a member of an expansive space empire, players of Eve will spend most of their time on-ship, hurtling through the deadness of the galaxy. Thorolfur Beck of CCP explained the galaxy of Eve in an interview with RPG Planet. Further details on Eve can be found at the game's site.
For the gamer not entirely satisfied with the human race itself, World Fusion has a treat for you, a new MMORPG named Atriarch. Set on the completely alien world of Atriana, Atriarch offers a complete divergence from all of its competitors. Like Dawn, Atriarch uses a new way of spawning characters. In Dawn, characters begin as infants, raised by a family. Death is permanent. Atriarch, on the other hand, spawns characters also as offspring, but the ability to restart a character as an offspring of the original character offers a bit more continuity. IGN's RPG Vault offers a sneak preview, as does the Atriarch home page.
With the variety of next-generation MMORPGs emerging in an increasingly competitive on-line role playing market, the gamer should have no trouble finding a game that suits his or her tastes. Only time will tell what formula will lead to success
From Ultima Online to Lineage
December 2001: Salon.com: The return of Lord British
Banished from his own Ultima domains, game designer Richard Garriott is making a comeback, via Korea.
By Wagner James Au
Dec. 3, 2001 | SAN FRANCISCO-- Lord British, immortal sovereign of all Britannia, is sitting on a squeaky chair in my apartment, sipping a glass of water. He's about to lead me through the domains of his new realm, one that stretches across continents and oceans -- as soon as his publicist can get a solid connection to AOL on his laptop.
If it's momentarily difficult to separate Lord British, the computer game character who's been around pretty much since the medium existed, from Richard Garriott, the Austin-based game designer who created him, that's because Garriott himself has helped to blur the distinction. Lord British, typically residing on his throne in a jewel-encrusted castle, has been a ubiquitous presence throughout Garriott's line of Ultima fantasy role-playing games, as well as in Ultima Online, the groundbreaking, massively multiplayer role-playing game (or MMRPG) that still enjoys an active membership in the hundreds of thousands.
Lord British was a pseudonym Garriott chose for his own role-playing persona, way back in high school Dungeons & Dragons sessions (shortly before he began creating computer games in his parents' garage), as a nod to his English birth. The pseudonym became a persona he was even willing to play in real life, as his Ultima games grew in popularity.
"I'd often go to trade shows in Lord British attire, signing game boxes as Lord British and Richard Garriott," he tells me a few days before his appearance in San Francisco. "In my first almost 10 games in the computer game industry, most people actually didn't know who Richard Garriott was. The Lord British moniker was so pervasive that it clearly superseded the knowness, or whatever the right word would be there, of who I really am, Richard Garriott."
Even for me, there's a momentary disjunction, trying to square my previous mental image of Richard Garriott -- the guy who seemed to be taking it all just a bit too seriously, dispensing copies of his games while wearing a crown and a robe -- with the guy now in my apartment, a solidly built, blond Texan in light blue denim shirt and jeans. (His only visible connection to the Ultima universe is the silver, serpentine pendant dangling from his neck.)
Today, Lord British is no more, at least in the Ultima fantasy lands, a victim of a corporate takeover and, in Garriott's view, shortsighted management.
It hasn't been easy. "I'm 40 years old right now, so literally half my life has been invested in the creation of that property," he tells me. "So yes, to step away from it is clearly somewhat of a traumatic, big deal for me."
Then again, he says, Ultima and Lord British have also been a creative burden, an economic gold mine that made it difficult for him to do anything apart from that franchise. "Yes, it's sad to have left it behind, but boy am I excited to be finally doing something not called Ultima."
He's talking about the aptly titled Tabula Rasa, an online game currently in development, which he says will draw from the teachings of the Dalai Lama and Plato's "Republic." But that's not why he's in my apartment. At the moment, he's overseeing the American debut of Lineage: The Blood Pledge, an online role-playing game that entertains millions of Asian game players.
Lineage, through a bizarre confluence of addictive gameplay, globalization and international historical grievances, is a huge phenomenon in its native country of Korea. The game is so popular there that its online conflicts often spill out into real-life fistfights. It's also, at first glance, far too foreign to ever make a truly successful crossover title in the United States.
But Lineage is the game Lord British has tied his fate to -- a surreal position to be in, when you consider the kind of astounding tectonic shifts, culturally and financially, that have happened to make that possible.
Garriott's P.R. blitz comes after the end of a one-year noncompete clause in his contract with Electronic Arts, the company to whom he sold Origin, the Austin game studio he founded to develop his Ultima games, in 1992. Now he works out of the Austin offices of NCSoft, just 300 yards or so from his old headquarters.
"The way the hills are structured," says Garriott by phone a week before his visit to San Francisco, "we can't quite see each other, though we can probably shoot water balloons on longer rubber bands back and forth."
Garriott's return to the gaming industry after parting ways with EA in late 2000 was supposed to be at a start-up called Destination Games, a company he planned to run with his brother Robert. But soon after registering the domain, he was offered the opportunity to merge with the Korean-based NCSoft, developers of Lineage: The Blood Pledge, the most popular subscriber-based online game in the world. (As of this writing, Lineage boasts a staggering 3 million-plus players, mostly in Korea, Taiwan and other Asian economic hubs. By contrast, Everquest, the most popular American subscription-based online game, has a mere 400,000 or so subscribers worldwide.)
This reversal of fortune must seem like a vindication for Garriott, who departed Electronic Arts, as he tells it, in protest at the company's intent to shape its online services in a way that wouldn't readily accommodate his world-building talents.
"They thought Ultima Online was just kind of a niche or a fad," Garriott says. Instead, he says EA was trying to steer its content toward casual, nonsubscribing gamers. "Instead of making more epic games like Ultima, they were asking me and our team to participate in the creation of Java applet Web games ... which didn't fit with my vision of either what I liked to do creatively, personally, nor my vision from a business standpoint of what would really be the place to target for revenue generation in this segment."
Since then, the idea of converting casual Web gamers into useful revenue streams has become one more discarded business model. "Electronic Arts is writing off about $250 million of failed strategy last year, and I suspect they have a fair bit more to write off," says Garriott. Among those gone in the shakeout are many of his own former employees at Origin. "Which is perfect for us -- those are all the people who worked with us for the last 20 years. So as they slowly let them go, we slowly hire them."
Electronic Arts disputes Garriott's interpretation of the events leading to his departure.
"EA did not ask Richard to make gamelets," said Jeff Brown, V.P. for corporate communications at Electronic Arts, via e-mail. "We simply wanted him to finish Ultima Online 2, which had languished in development without progress for a considerable time. In the end, we found his product was not commercially viable. Reasons surrounding his separation from EA are confidential." Regarding Garriott's claim that EA's online business strategy has cost the company about $250 million in losses, Brown says: "We have no idea how Richard would come up with something like that -- but it's just not true. Richard's history suggests he's a lot better at creating medieval fantasy than he is at math."
That said, Brown offers his regards for Garriott's new venture with EA's Korean competitor: "We wish him success in his next project and we hope his new partners show patience in directing his creative energies."
In any case, while the competition to capture (and hold) the lucrative fees of subscription-based MMRPG games has grown ever more frenetic, Garriott believes it's still underexploited. "As my noncompete ran out," he says, "I was very pleasantly surprised to find out, no, in fact, EA never did turn that corner in that whole time, Microsoft [Asheron's Call] has yet to focus on this space sufficiently and Sony [Everquest and the upcoming Star Wars Galaxies], which I think is doing the best job of our competitors, frankly has overextended itself."
This opens up a potential berth for Garriott and NCSoft, starting with Lineage, which became available in U.S. stores, game magazines and as a free download at the end of November. It's a Diablo-style, top-down, hack-and-slash game with a mouse-driven interface -- easy to learn, simple to start. But at first glance, Garriott still has his work cut out for him. In terms of visuals and sound, the game seems just slightly more polished than the original 1997 game from Blizzard Entertainment.
And while Garriott says the game is aimed at a more casual, younger demographic (15-25, by his estimate, as opposed to the 20-35 that's the more typical segment among MMRPG players), its shortcomings are still conspicuous.
In a genre where the fashion-plate aspect of role playing is such a draw, Lineage characters and their adventure kit are disappointingly inconsistent. (Make your character wield a small dagger, for example, and it suddenly looks like he's dragging a six-foot sword behind him.) Garriott says more appropriate equipment visuals will be patched into the game, in later downloads. What likely won't be changed, however, is the androgynous, Japanese anime quality of the character classes the player has to choose from.
Experimenting with gender roles has always been a powerful appeal of MMRPGs; female gamers often enjoy the casual subversion of embodying a male character, and vice versa. But offered the choice between a knock-kneed blond Elf and a male Warrior who looks about as butch as Michael Jackson during his Captain Eo period, it's hard to imagine that kind of gender hacking will happen here.
"That probably won't be changed," Garriott acknowledges during my house demo. "I think the anime style is a choice that [the Lineage designers] have made and they'll probably stick with it."
But the real area where Lineage shines involves the meta game, a sort of role-playing capture the flag, set against a backdrop that makes the kingdom seem like a mythical Afghanistan. In Lineage, the realm's king has been lost, with many roaming the land claiming to be his true successor. A player can choose to play a prince or a princess, and gather other players to his Blood Pledge, leading them to conquer castles, depose competing princes and gain wide swaths of territory. Succeeding at that, you get to tax the local shopkeepers, generating more revenue to finance even more conquest. The fights over castles are savage, Garriott promises, involving thousands of players at one time, in the same geographic space.
"That will set the stage not for Lord British to enter the game, not to try to claim rulership," Garriott says, "but rather to become a sort of arbitrator -- a very Merlin-like figure -- in the process to determine who the one true king is."
Enthralled by the legend of Lord British, NCSoft sought out Richard Garriott as the man with enough status within the American gaming community to bring Lineage to the States and re-create its success in Asia.
But the original phenomenon of Lineage is a fascinating tale in itself, a fun-house case study of globalism that's intrinsically tied to, of all things, the policies of the International Monetary Fund.
"Right at the time this game launched [in 1997-98] is right after the IMF had kind of cratered the economy," says Garriott. "The Korean currency devalued dramatically. Tons of layoffs occurred, tons of middle managers were out of jobs, and what a lot of them did is they started little PC game rooms."
Due to fractious relations between Japan and Korea, console games (a major Japanese export) are not readily available to Korean consumers. Personal computers were also too pricey for most Koreans -- but they could afford to pay $1 an hour to play PC games, even though at first, these venues were makeshift, "literally people's living rooms and family rooms."
At about the same time, Korean game designer Jake Song created Lineage, with T.J. Kim, NCSoft's CEO, mortgaging his own house to ensure its completion. The game's popularity grew geometrically -- one in 30 South Koreans have played it at least once -- and with it, so have the game rooms, especially in the polluted, vastly overcrowded streets of Seoul, where they've become oases of leisure. Now, says Garriott (recently back from a visit to the city), "They look like miniature casinos, with snack bars, and little couple's couches so you can play with your girlfriend ... these game rooms and Lineage grew up together."
The struggle for castles and territory is so intense that the conflicts often rage offline in brutal melees that resemble something out of a William Gibson novel, with members of competing Pledges rumbling into rivals' game-room turf, out for real blood. The Korean police even have a term for these crimes, instantly recognizable by multiplayer gamers worldwide: "off-line PK" (player killing).
And now that Lineage is growing popular among Japanese players, historical conflicts between Korea and Japan -- World War II occupation, the use of Korean "comfort women" -- are affecting Lineage's gameplay, says Garriott. "The bad blood, so to speak, that exists between Korea and Japan is surprisingly present from the Korean side," he says. Retribution for past grievances goes down online. "The game players in Korea are very well organized, and usually win out over other countries when it comes to castle sieges and other activities, and they take particular vigor in tromping on the Japanese players."
All this makes me wonder if the cultural divide is too yawning for Lineage to work in the West. If the Asian ethos is more geared toward the group dynamic and the strict hierarchy demanded by the game, what will Americans make of it? Garriott acknowledges the challenge. "People in the U.S. are taught to be individuals, and find creative solutions to problems, and a bunch of other things that make the U.S. great in many ways. However, a downside is that it's very difficult for U.S. players to swear fealty or swear their allegiance to some random other person for long periods of time when they generally think of themselves as superior."
Still, he insists, the game's fundamental appeal is universal. "Is it fun to advance your character? Is it fun to quest with friends? Is it fun to join a pledge and fight over the territories of a castle? Is that fun factor and accessibility the same in Korea as it is in the United States? I think that fundamentally the answer to that question is yes."
To spur them on, Garriott is sending out e-mail invitations to the player guilds of Ultima Online and Everquest, among others, to join him in Lineage, and help him overthrow the pretender princes.
Which brings us back to what Garriott's persona actually signifies, for himself and for the games he creates for his near-omnipotent alter ego. "Lord British really is my personal emissary into gaming," he says.
"But what about you does he represent?" I ask.
"The evangelist for specific philosophical objectives within gaming, which I'll call parables. ... Lord British is the promoter of the identifying heroic attributes within individual players -- promoting their true heroism vs. mindless slaughter or mundane behavior."
I point out that Ultima Online was notorious for that very thing, with noxious gamers hell-bent on slaughtering hapless newcomers to the game, while other players sat around catching virtual fish, or sewing leather tunics.
"You're quite correct," Garriott says. "Player killing, as well as what I'll call repetitive, monotonous behavior, are rampant in these online games. ... Even worse than Ultima Online are games like Everquest, which is, despite its popularity, largely based on standing around holding your repeat button down to kill monsters over and over again until you finally level up. ... And I just think that's not the way to create the future of gaming."
Having wasted a few dozen hours on the Everquest gerbil wheel of illusionary progress, myself, I'll subscribe to that. It's a flaw Garriott hopes to address in Tabula Rasa, which is now in development, but about two years away from completion. Among his goals are "finding ways to reward players for the quality of their contributions, not the quantity of monotonous behavior they're willing to endure." While he won't go into particulars, he says this means "a highly scripted series of events, to lead you to the next level of specialness within the world." Linking these is a space shared by all Tabula Rasa players, a compact hub from which to launch off into further adventures.
This sounds suspiciously like Everquest's generic theme park version of a fantasy world, but Garriott insists this ability to leap from one quest to the next will be consistent with the game's internal narrative. "The whole logic as to why the hub space is compact and how you get to these instantiated adventures is of course part of the theme of the whole game ... your accomplishments on those adventures all add up to a grand accomplishment for you and the grand civilization within the hub space."
Linked to this will be an in-game philosophy, to give these accomplishments a deeper meaning. This concern for morality is a recurring theme in Garriott's games. In the Ultima series, he went so far as to invent eight cardinal virtues of good player behavior -- which, to my mind, sometimes came across as presumptuous moralizing, coupled with a vaguely creepy, pseudo-religious feel. (Though, granted, both qualities had the effect of generating a cultish fan base around him and the games.)
But as he tells it, the ethics associated with Tabula Rasa will have far more substance. "In the new game we're actually trying to more closely relate things that we believe are defensible as a truth or fundamental philosophy. ... The Dalai Lama is probably our No. 1 source at the moment." While Garriott's not a Buddhist himself, "I absolutely have much more affinity for Buddhism than for any of the other major religions in the world ... with its philosophy of life where the purpose of life is happiness, and the path to happiness is compassion toward other people."
His team is also drawing upon "The Power of Myth" by Joseph Campbell and the work of Lebanese mystic Khalil Gibran ("Actually, his writings were also very influential for the Ultima series"). Garriott also mentions Greek philosophers, and even puts the phone down to check the current stock of classic references in his NCSoft office. "We've been pulling from 'The Republic,' 'The Iliad' and 'The Odyssey.'" Also Dante's "Inferno", though "less for that sort of inspiration and more for game mechanics ... We do not intend to take it as far as, if you go murder somebody, your character gets sent to character hell and tortured ... however, we do intend for there to be examples of things to see and interact with that might give you that overtone."
After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, the game industry (like Hollywood) went through a brief bout of soul searching, trying to decide what kind of games it can and should develop in this newly resensitized era. So I ask Garriott how recent events might have changed the kind of games we want to create. As with EA's failure to capture the online market, Garriott greets this ethical reorientation with a sense of vindication. "[I] already was on the side of feeling that social responsibility and ethical parables were the right way to go in online gaming ... I just think that role-playing games in particular, where you're creating these virtual realities, and especially to the degree they're played by younger and younger people, do have the innate ability to teach behavior, whether you like it or not."
"In the real world, people role-play all the time. If you think of kids out role playing in the sandbox, that's how they learn the good and bad kinds of social interaction. They learn that when they push each other and they fall down it hurts, and that they cry, or how feelings can be hurt; they learn to not enjoy doing things which take away happiness from the people around them ... And I believe that there is a danger in creating an artificial reality that does not have those social feedback mechanisms in it. Even if it's not a moral imperative to put it in every role-playing game that exists, it is at least an opportunity missed not to."
After the Lineage demo, I walk Lord British and David, his P.R. rep, back to their rental car. About this time last year, San Francisco's Mission district was one of the city's focal points for dot-com excess, crowded with Internet start-ups built on foolhardy business plans, lined with upscale restaurants to serve its employees. Now, money and start-ups gone, it feels like a rougher place than it was before that rush of moneyed hubris came rolling through town. And it occurs to me that Garriott is standing here on 19th and Mission, a street corner caked with garbage and human poo, as one more refugee of that receding tide.
Electronic Arts wanted a way to convert his content into sticky eyeballs, to use last year's gibbering parlance, and instead, for whatever reason, he bolted. That's why he's here, in his new role as a kind of cultural emissary, for his new partners from the Far East. Which provokes another chain of thoughts, rooted in Lineage's provenance.
Summarizing wildly, an Oxford scholar named Tolkien wove Northern European and British folk myth into a fantasy trilogy published in the 1950s that was acclaimed by America's alternative subculture in the '60s, which in turn influenced Gary Gygax's Dungeons & Dragons in the late '70s, which then went on to influence Garriott's Ultima games, beginning in the '80s.
These games became a worldwide phenomenon that eventually inspired a Korean programmer, in the late '90s, to create Lineage, a game acclaimed throughout Asian popular culture, despite (or because of) a European mythology Asians only know fourth- or fifth-hand.
And now Garriott's working for the Korean he inspired. It's not coming full circle, perhaps, but it's close enough. Just one more thumbnail sketch of how far we've come, as a global culture, and how interlocked our imaginations have become, during the journey.
GGA: Animal Crossing
From Game Girl Advance: Animal Crossing
Diablo II: Fashion Show?
Whimsical column as the author expresses his surprise that the play of Diablo II is more about fashion, customization and accessorization - shopping, essentially, and less about quests and destruction.
July 2000: Salon.com: The Diablo II fashion show
The hottest fantasy role-playing game isn't just about gore -- it's a mix-and-match accessorizing extravaganza.
By Andrew Leonard
July 07, 2000 | Some dilemmas catch you unawares. While half the multiplayer gaming world cursed in frustration as Diablo II's online servers repeatedly crashed over the Fourth of July weekend, I was debating a potential fashion faux pas. Did the "Tangerine Chain Boots of Remedy" worn by Bug, my scythe-wielding Barbarian, clash with the "Burgundy Light Belt of the Ox" I was tempted to buy?
Yep -- it's the online gaming secret that dare not speak its name. Diablo II, despite its meticulously rendered dungeons and groovaliciously vile undead, isn't aimed solely at gore-meisters obsessed with the efficient annihilation of Hell-spawn. This state-of-the-art offering from Blizzard -- one of the best game design studios in the business -- is really a cleverly camouflaged forum for clothes shopping and runway stuff strutting. I mean, come on -- when you finally get your hands on the Arctic furs that complete your Arctic-wear ensemble, dealing death and destruction to that bitch-demon Andariel becomes kind of an afterthought.
No wonder Barbie Fashion Designer rocked the gaming world way back in 1996. Dressing up is fun! Even in the original Diablo, a lot of the excitement came from choosing imaginatively and artistically designed war-gaming gear that you could either purchase or find deep within the dungeons -- helmets, full-body armor, weapons that both looked good and had magical properties. Diablo II raises the ante. Never before has an online game offered such a lovely panoply of ready-to-wear battle accessories.
But one does wonder: Do those in a world full of would-be Necromancers, Paladins and Barbarians -- some of whom display a tad more testosterone than is normally considered acceptable in your finer fashion boutiques -- understand that they are plunking down their hard-earned dollars for a chance to hang out at a department store? Let's not even begin to get into the cross-dressing issues associated with gender-bending Amazon and Sorceress role players who are certain that the "Rugged Amulet of Excellence" makes a perfect complement to the "Glimmering Chain Mail of Amelioration."
Clothing retailers and fashion mavens everywhere should take note. Gamers are all too often stigmatized as antisocial, trigger-happy teenagers unhealthily enraptured with murder and mayhem. But if Diablo II's popularity is any guide, the gaming population may also represent a hitherto-untapped market for purses, cowboy boots and opera gloves -- provided these items come adorned with the proper gothic/get-medieval-on-your-ass embroidery.
Blizzard Studios' original Diablo, released in late 1996, was a compelling Tolkienesque evocation of Dungeons & Dragons-style fantasy role-playing that helped online multiplayer gaming come of age. The second offering in an impressive string of Blizzard hits that included the real-time strategy games Warcraft and Starcraft, Diablo made online gaming easy and fun. As a result, Diablo II, long delayed from its supposed 1998 rollout, has been as hotly anticipated by the game-playing public as any new release this side of Quake II.
First-day-sales reports and the huge rush to play the game online -- which Blizzard's Internet-accessible network Battle.net was woefully unprepared to cope with -- suggest that Diablo II is a worthy successor. Without a doubt, it is the hottest game happening in cyberspace at the moment. One gamer noted that the number of players logged in to Everquest servers seemed to have dropped significantly since Diablo first appeared in stores at the end of June.
Such a drop may be temporary. There are few gaming breakthroughs in Diablo II -- the genre is not being revolutionized. Diablo II still doesn't display the kind of in-game narrative creativity that would truly capture the open-ended Dungeons & Dragons feel. And while the nonplayer characters built into the game aren't quite as brain-dead as their counterparts in the first Diablo, they also aren't exactly what one might call paragons of artificial intelligence.
But few gamers seem to care. Diablo II is everything Diablo I was, and more. There are more quests, monsters, dungeons, skills and spells. And best of all, more accouterments!
The original Diablo offered your warrior of choice a vast array of potential weaponry, armor and jewelry. You could either obtain these items as a reward for disemboweling a Balrog or the like or purchase them at a store in town. Helmets, shields, plate mail -- not only did they look fabulous as you tried them on in the special "inventory" interface window, but they also sounded cool. I know I won't soon forget the thrill that coursed through my body the first time I heard the resonant clang that accompanied a beautiful (and expensive) coat of "Splint-Mail" armor. And to cap it all off, a change in armor changed how you looked as you played the game in real time. Fantasy never looked so good.
Diablo II has more items in every category and more categories of items. The choices are so multifarious as to be positively bewildering. In addition to the old standbys of armor and helmets, now you need to find the right gloves, boots and belts as well. You can also festoon selected items with emeralds, rubies and other fine gems -- a jewelry-loving berserker's delight. And not only are there more doodads to buy and trade and find, there are even more retail outlets at which to purchase these commodities, which range in price from a paltry 100 pieces of gold to a whopping 100,000 pieces or more.
But all of the dithering and dallying involved in choosing what to wear ends up burning through quite a bit of time. Playing online over the weekend, I ran into a few bloodthirsty combatants who expressed rather strongly worded sentiments of impatience when their comrades in arms spent too long window-shopping before setting out in search of death and glory. But I could only empathize with the careful shoppers, for I too was lost in a cloud of consumer doubt. Should I wear the furs because they make Bug an unexpectedly ravishing giant thug, or should I be more pragmatic and put on the "Azure Heavy Boots of Pacing" for extra nimbleness?
After reviewing my game-playing priorities, I realized I was devoting almost as many minutes to comparison shopping as I was to killing Diablo's minions. And I was becoming increasingly frustrated with the poor performance of the Battle.net servers. Not because I wanted to kill, kill, kill, but because I still hadn't gotten all my accessories in order. It was as if the freeway to the mall had been closed!
Still, I have no doubt that hardcore gamers will dispute my assertion that Diablo II is a fashion show run amok. Who cares whether the boots are bright orange or sky blue -- they will roar. The only thing true warriors worry about is how much the footwear boosts one's Strength or Dexterity experience points, or whether a 30 percent increase in poison resistance is better than a 25 percent boost in the ability to fend off freezing temperatures.
They may have a point. I will concede that there are times when practical considerations trump fashion concerns. No matter how much I liked the way my "Bone Shield" highlighted my "Beryl Heavy Gloves of the Fox," for example, I have encountered some rather nasty monsters whose dispatching required swinging a two-handed battle-ax while wearing fireball-neutralizing gauntlets. And as I always say, it's best to dress for the situation, and not for the mirror, if you want to live to fight demons another day.
But take a hard look at Battle.net. Note that at the bottom of the screen at which players can create or join Diablo II games, an online, real-time pictorial representation of all the players currently logged in scrolls from left to right. Half-naked Amazons dressed only in leather vie for attention with Necromancers who are jingling with chain-mail everything -- boots, gloves, armor. In this parade, looking good is what it's all about.
Stripping the "Dark" from "Dark Elf" in EQ
For a while Sandy Brundage at Gamers.com was the best reporter about online MMORPGs. She knew MUDs backwards and forwards, and she had sources at all the big companies to compare online experiences. Her news stories on EverQuest from 2001 often broke stories that were later carried elsewhere.
One of these is EverQuest Strips the Dark from 'Dark Elf' pasted below. Basically, a violent backstory written by a player for their character, and hosted on a bulletin board elsewhere, caused some in-game censure by Sony.
Sandy Brundage October 9, 2000 9:57 PM PDT
Last Monday an EverQuest (EQ) veteran known as "Mystere" was cut off without warning from the MMORPG over a story posted in July on Everlore and EQ Vault message boards. The boards were not officially affiliated with Sony Online Entertainment or its Verant Interactive studio.
Mystere said the story was an attempt to explore the dark elves, an evil race Verant chose to place in the EQ world. "At the time, there had been many dark elves who were going `against the grain' and basically turning into nice people. I was interested in returning the dark elves to their origins, that is, reminding people that they aren't portrayed as a nice race in game," he said. "Their origins are from the torture of two high elves by the god of hatred. This torture took 3000 years. The dark elves are steeped in evil." (An overstatement? Consider this tale of torture, written by Verant's official EverQuest team.)
"The idea sprang from the idea of a woman poisoning her lover with the polish on her fingernails. As I sat down to write, I felt I didn't want her to start out as completely evil, but had some major motivation for that. Something so overwhelming that she would never think twice about her killing of others later. When I was in my teens, I knew a few women who had been raped. In talking with them so many years ago, I knew this was the absolute worst torture I know of."
The controversy focused on the age of the character. Mystere said, "Her age I toyed with for quite a while. In medieval times, people were considered adults much younger than they were today. I wanted her to be young, but not overly so. So I came up with 14 `seasons,' giving the impression that this person was just out of adolescence. In the end, the story was supposed to be about an evil person getting what he deserved, and the birth of a dark presence in the world."
Lost in the Eyes of God
On July 11, the story was posted with a warning at the top about the explicit, graphic nature of its content. It stirred up some discussion, but soon disappeared from active topics on the boards. Until two weeks ago. Mystere said, "Some anonymous person(s) started posting on the Everlore Brell Serilis message boards asking about literature and our knowledge of it. Soon after that another anonymous person began to post messages about religion. These topics ranged from denouncing pagan religions to saying that we, as gamers were "lost" to the eyes of God. When this was argued, sections of my old story were dug up by this person as `proof' that gamers were satanic."
At one point the poster referred to the story as "child pornography" and threatened to take the post to various civil and Christian rights groups." Mystere believes this person complained to EverQuest Customer Service about the story. John Smedley, CEO of Verant, acknowledged that someone had complained, saying, "In this case, a parent complained to a lot of anti-child porn watchdog sites and several mainstream media outlets regarding the extremely graphic detail of the story and the fact that it apparently contained violence directed at a child."
On October 4, Mystere was playing EverQuest when his connection was abruptly lost. When he tried to reconnect, he received a message saying that he had been banned for inappropriate behavior. After speaking to two customer service representatives who didn't know what had happened, Mystere then spoke to George Scotto, the head of customer service.
"He told me that I had been banned for a very disturbing story I had written. I was further told that Sony `didn't want my kind of people' playing their game. After attempting to defend myself by saying that it was a roleplay story only, and wasn't even posted on their boards, I was informed that the council had made their decision and it was immutable." (No one contacted about this story knew anything about this council or its members.)
"I think Verant/Sony has every right to not have inappropriate material associated with their name. Personally, I think they were a bit overboard in banning without warning in this case, however. Especially with the connotations that came along with my character when I called," Mystere said.
Andrew Zaffron, legal counsel for Sony Online Entertainment, released a letter that claimed Mystere's fan fiction had violated intellectual property rights. In part, the letter said, "If this story were about Luke Skywalker or Mickey Mouse, you'd certainly expect Lucas or Disney (respectively) to resort to their legal rights to protect their valuable property and good name; this is nothing different."
My Evil is Darker Than Yours
The EQ community erupted. Players accused Verant of shooting first, asking questions later. Indeed, Verant never contacted the moderator of EQ Vault to ask that the offensive story be removed from the message board. Banning Mystere was the first step taken. In protest, players cancelled accounts and shut down fan sites like Safka's Lore. Several players wrote fan fiction that was more violent and graphic than the story Mystere wrote, and demanded that Verant now ban them as well.
The overriding issue was not Mystere's banning, but that a player was banned for posting fan fiction on a non-official site when Verant had no fan fiction policies. The community wondered who was next. We sent a list of questions to Verant on Friday, asking whether the company would post guidelines and what sort of `evil' role-play was acceptable. Verant's public relations firm said we would have the answers on Monday. But over the weekend, John Smedley, CEO of Verant, posted a letter on the official EQ board and on several fan sites. Here's an excerpt:
"Will we be policing the Internet looking for these kinds of stories? No. We won't. In fact, none of us was even aware of this until it was brought to our attention. That doesn't mean if someone crosses the line again and it's pointed out we won't do the same thing.
"The big question is - where's the line? And what right do we have to draw it outside the game? The answer is complicated and extremely subjective, so I'll just have to be honest and say we'll know it when it's over the line. We're going to discuss it in the upcoming few weeks and see if we can make it more clear, but I can't honestly say if we'll get anywhere because none of us wants to stop people from writing awesome fan-fiction about EQ.
"Did we handle this as well as we could have? No - We didn't. And for that, I apologize. In the future, we're going to handle this in a different way."
Smedley then called Mystere to apologize, but the player, while satisfied, won't be returning to EQ. The game will also undergo some changes. "We admit there was a quest in EQ that went a little far and we're taking out that part. It was a mistake and it's being fixed," Smedley said. He is probably referring to Verant's dark elf rogue quest that required the murder of a pregnant halfing woman.
Is EverQuest becoming a kinder, gentler game? Will players no longer see heads skewered on stakes, rotting corpses or skinned goblins? We don't know, because Verant chose to not answer our questions today.
Microsoft's Asheron's Call (AC) and Origin's Ultima Online (UO), the other heavy-hitters in the MMORPG arena, should thank Verant as players continue to defect from EQ. The UO player's guide only defines acceptable in-game behavior. AC public relations representative DeEtte Christie said, "Microsoft is a firm believer in freedom of speech. They do not regulate or restrict outside of the game environment."
Some EverQuest players accepted Smedley's apology. Others won't. A new domain, Boycott Verant, was registered over the weekend. The owner cited hypocrisy and freedom of speech as the issues driving the site forward. "Verant is basically becoming the `Thought Police' by saying that if you mention any words pertaining to their product that it is copyrighted and they'll ban you from the game for it. Playing the game and posting something on a web site NOT under Verant's control are two entirely different issues."
In his apology, Smedley had said, "We aren't going to be looking at every fan site and becoming the Thought Police." But without a solid set of guidelines for fans to follow, though, it's doubtful that these words will speak louder than last week's action.
Selling Characters - Selling Out?
1999: They got game, by Moira Muldoon
Talented players make good money selling characters on eBay. Are they denigrating gaming -- or turning it into a profession?
By Moira Muldoon
"Great Money Maker!" cries one ad. "Ultimate Money Maker account!" enthuses another. EBay is thick with advertisements hawking characters that can earn gamers status in the virtual world -- and some cool, hard cash. For folks who inhabit the worlds of massive multiplayer role-playing games EverQuest or Ultima Online, auctioning talents on eBay has become a fun way to make fast bucks. Build up a character, earn some platinum pieces and sell them all to the highest bidder -- for hundreds, even thousands of dollars.
"Ruekilla" (his gaming handle) is a 24-year-old student who says he "made $1,747 in two weeks by selling platinum, then the next week sold my character for $1,500." He has sold four of his own creations, because he was "getting out of control" and spending too much time playing. "People need to make extra cash somehow," he says. "This is a quick, easy way to do it, and if you earned it, you can sell it."
Earning items like platinum or precious jewels is part of the fun of a role-playing game, or RPG. To play EverQuest or Ultima Online, you first buy the game itself and then establish an account that allows you to enter the online multiplayer world. Then, you choose a character and begin wandering the world. Along the way, you build up experience, gather items like platinum pieces by killing monsters or doing good deeds, forge alliances with other characters and so on. Through such efforts your character can gain new skills (like the ability to craft armor) and magic spells, as well as the ability to move into higher levels of the game. But it can be quite time-consuming to build a high-level character -- which is why some people are opting to buy ready-made accounts instead.
Twenty-one-year old "Jim" (who, like most of the gamers interviewed for this story, prefers to remain anonymous) is an administrator for an Internet service provider -- and an EverQuest fanatic. He says he plays as much as 60 hours a week and claims to have reached level 24 in less than a day -- an extraordinary feat. Jim has played so much and gotten so good, he's now trying his hand at building characters for people who are either too lazy, too impatient or too busy to build their own. And he's charging real-world money for his services.
So far, he estimates that he's made about $2,000. He has "personally built about six [characters] now," but says that more than "20 total have passed through my hands." Three friends pitch in and help when he's too busy. And, he says, there is a waiting list of about 30 people who want him to build characters for them too. Jim is considering taking a vacation from his regular job to concentrate on gaming; he figures he "could easily make $10,000 in a month if I had the time."
Jim wants to build the characters now, while the market -- and his services -- are hot. EverQuest formally launched in March; so it's had time to become popular, but not enough time for most players to fully develop their skills. But Jim expects that before long, "more and more people [will] become experienced and stronger and able to obtain the things they want" all by themselves. So, he's looking at "character building" as a short-term career; he figures three months from now the demand will have dwindled. But, at $10,000 a month, he could put away a chunk of change before the market slows.
Of course, not everyone who offers goods on eBay meets with the success Jim and Ruekilla have found. A powerful character -- a level 31 wizard with all kinds of accouterments -- was listed at a greedy $1,000 a few weeks ago; but even as the auction reached its final hours, not a single bidder had emerged. And seller "oogog" had no luck auctioning a server and domain name, planeteverquest.com, for $20,000; perhaps it was priced a bit high.
Other troubles, too, have beset account auctioners on eBay. Origin, the maker of Ultima Online, said last month it had dismissed one of its employees for taking advantage of his position with the company as a game master -- a staffer paid to play, help newbies, solve problems and generally keep things running smoothly. The industry scuttlebutt is that the game master was selling items on eBay.
Origin declined to elaborate on an announcement it posted on June 28, which said that the company "found reason to believe that this employee was engaging in activities that breached the trust that must exist between a company, its employees, and its customers ... We are grateful to players who bring these incidents to our attention, as these reports are used to ensure that [Origin] representatives are providing the best possible service at all times."
Given that the game master, or GM, is supposed to be in the game to help out -- and that he has far more power in the game and access to items than an ordinary player would, precisely so that he can assist others -- using that power for personal gain is sketchy behavior at best.
"I think firing the GM is too nice," Scott Holmes, co-owner of the EverQuest Guilds fan site, said in an e-mail. "If UO [Ultima Online] has any legal recourse they should take it; that GM has permanently tarnished UO's reputation." He says that among his friends, "UO has come up in conversation five times in the last week, and the conversation always starts with the GM who was selling items on eBay and ends up with 'I'm glad I don't play there.'"
Origin may now be keeping a tight watch on GMs, but it has absolutely no objection to players selling items on eBay: "It's not illegal in Origin's eyes," says spokesman David Swofford. Although Origin obviously prefers that people play the game from start to finish themselves to get the full Ultima Online experience, Swofford says that most of the people buying accounts are already players and may well be buying new characters simply to broaden their experiences in the game, something he thinks is of real value.
As for people creating characters solely for the purpose of selling them and using the game to make money, the Ultima world "is a reflection of the real world," he says; "people are welcome to play the game that way."
But Ultima Online is no longer the prime RPG territory. These days EverQuest, created by 989 Studios and published via Sony's Station Web site, is the hot ticket. And EverQuest's makers are less enthusiastic about the commercialization of their game. An EverQuest spokeswoman said she couldn't comment until her response had been vetted by 989's legal department -- but more than a week after we first spoke, the lawyers had approved no statement.
Meanwhile, eBay -- the site of most of the auctions -- takes a hands-off approach to dealing with the sales of EverQuest and Ultima accounts. All transactions are "between the buyer and seller," according to Kevin Pursglove, eBay's senior director for communications. If a seller were doing something illegal, or if a company complained that intellectual property rights were being infringed upon, eBay would investigate, but otherwise it stays out of all transactions. EBay would neither confirm nor deny receiving complaints regarding Everquest and Ultima.
The RPG community itself is split on its view of the trade in characters and items. More hardcore players seem to be in favor of playing the game through, rather than buying your way in, but so far there have been no protests against the practice. "About half don't like it, and the other half are the ones making money," said one player.
A thread running on the EverQuest Guild message boards right now talks about this very issue -- and there's little to no hostility over it. "If they want to miss out on the fun of building their own character and waste $1,000, then I don't really care," posted "Falpus." Another poster joked, "I wouldn't sell my guy for [$1,000]; someone else's guy -- that's different. Hey, anyone have a level 50 character I can sell?"
EverQuest fan Holmes, however, isn't making any jokes about the auctioning. "I think it undermines the quality of the game. I have played on text MUDs [multi-user domains] for years, and when a character is sold, the rest of the characters resent the character. The new owner did not earn that character or put in the many hours to get it to where it is now. The distrust for the character turns to distrust of the gods [in the game] and the game itself, as it leads to assuming the gods themselves are selling characters and items, and then players leave," he says.
"There are two types of players who make up the RPG community," adds Holmes. "You have the players who want to role-play and have fun, which I would say is about 75 percent of the people, and the other 25 percent who will do whatever it takes to make sure they have the best character possible." Here Holmes is adamant: "No one likes the 25 percent and the 25 percent don't even like each other."
A 19-year-old student named Serge takes a more world-weary view of it all: "I don't have any problems with selling items; I'm not particularly happy with it, but it was obvious people would do it. Buying items ... well, there's a sucker born every minute."
But, Serge figures, players stand to benefit from the market for items and characters. "Once you tire of the game, your time spent playing it isn't a complete waste," he says. Serge figures that in five years, time spent playing the game could be a whole new career; he predicts people will be making big money on gaming.
"Demand [for in-game items and characters] is not an issue after a certain point," he argues in an e-mail. "There are enough new players coming in so that there will always be a 'floor price' for low amounts of platinum. (If your 5,000-platinum auction doesn't get enough, auction off 100 platinum lots and it will.) ... In the next few years, I think you'll see a lot of people making in the $50,000 a year range just playing games."
Ruekilla agrees that making a lot of money is possible. "At level 50, my character made around 5,000 plat a day," he says. "I could sell 35,000 plat a week, selling at about $800 a bundle, so that means $5,600 a week. " He admits that this is only possible "if you're lucky and can find people to buy all that platinum. Making $1,000 a week is totally realistic though," he adds.
The idea of going pro has long been pushed by the Professional Gamers' League (PGL), which was formed in 1997 with the goal of turning gaming into a spectator sport and building a stable of "professional gamers."
Several years ago, Thresh, a master Quake player, was heralded as the first real "star gamer," the Michael Jordan of the PGL. He won Quake developer John Carmack's Ferrari and big prize money in Quake tournaments -- and the hype was hot in both the mainstream and gaming press. But though the PGL is still holding tournaments and awarding prizes (Bon "Kuin" Danan recently won $10,000 in a Quake II tournament), it just hasn't taken off the way some hoped it would -- and the buzz about pro gaming has all but disappeared.
Aren't the young men who think they can make a living playing RPGs and selling characters overly optimistic?
"I seriously doubt that there would be enough of a market to make a living selling RPG items or characters," says John Gray, a computer consultant, who at 31 has racked up 15 years of RPG experience. "Earning the items to be sold would be a very time-intensive process ... If you could make a living doing that, I'm probably in the wrong career!"
It would indeed take a lot of time and energy to earn a living building characters for others and selling items -- enough that the pleasures of gaming might simply be converted into the stresses of work. That's probably why most of the people you are likely to encounter while playing EverQuest are doing just that -- playing.
In fact, a few weeks of probing the gaming community turned up not one soul who is actually succeeding at it. Instead, the waning demand expected by Jim is already noticeable. As recently as three weeks ago, a quick scan of eBay turned up a half-dozen items selling for $800 or more; on Friday, there were no EverQuest-related auctions to be found at such prices. And platinum pieces, which sold for a dollar apiece two months ago, are now often priced at three to the dollar.
What would-be pros would need to stay in business is a constant stream of new RPGs, creating fresh demand for new items and characters. But the major-hype games don't come out every day; the next one expected to be a big deal -- Asheron's Call -- isn't scheduled until this fall. Another approach would be to figure out a way to auction on eBay pieces from other game genres -- like first-person shooters, 3-D action-adventure games, racing games, sims and the whole lot. But that would take a monumental shift in the gaming industry.
It's too early to consider character building a true profession, but that's not stopping the dreamers. Jim, for one, plans to use his formidable gaming skills to supplement his income for as long as he can.
salon.com | July 13, 1999
What is this project?
(10.21.02) Some thoughts on how to approach this project (we talked about this a little last night; here's my recollection of that conversation.)
Last night Lawrence Lessig asked us, how will companies police/control social behavior in online worlds? Will they do so through technology (code, architecture) or through encouraging/monitoring social behavioral norms? or through law? We will write a paper trying to answer the question. What will be some strategies for game designers? for community builders? For players-cum-citizens?
Also we will take up the question of how much policing can/should be done in online virtual gameworlds.
We may present some utopina/distopian scenarios for evolving social behavior in online games.
We should note the differences between persistent and non-persistent, goal-based and internal economy based games, gender, age groups, etc. We may also want to consider in a broader sense culture-making within games and who owns/controls that culture.
Time frame:
November 24: First rough draft/outline
January 5: Second draft?
EverQuest: Virtual Suicide
Someone commits suicide with their EverQuest character, and then turns out to be faking it.
Salon.com: Life, death and Everquest by Janelle Brown
A virtual suicide in the popular online multiplayer game is making some fans queasy about their favorite addiction.
Nov. 21, 2000 | On Nov. 10, a 19-year-old woman named Sheyla Morrison was fired from her position as a volunteer "guide" for the Everquest online role playing game. As an active member of the gaming community, Sheyla was widely known as an unemployed and depressed young mother whose entire life had revolved around the endless hours she spent hanging out in the virtual lands of Everquest. Losing her coveted position as a game guide devastated her.
The day after she lost her job, she committed suicide.
This, at least, was the story according to Sheyla's friend "Kinudin," who posted the tragic news to the popular "Lum the Mad" Everquest fan site. "Sheyla took her own life this past Saturday morning," Kinudin wrote Nov 14. "It seems that being fired as a guide was the final straw. She had a hard life, losing her mother at age 15 and hav[ing] a child at age 16 which was seized by the state because her father had her declared an unfit mother. At the time of her death, she had been trying unsuccessfully for a year to try and get custody of her daughter ... It is obvious that Sheyla took the Everquest world a little too seriously."
The tight-knit community of Everquest fans was shocked. Across the many bulletin boards populated by game players, Sheyla's friends and total strangers alike expressed their sorrow and disbelief, discussing how a tragedy like this could have been prevented and angrily blaming Verant, the company behind Everquest, for mishandling the dismissal of an emotionally unbalanced young woman.
A week later, however, it's beginning to appear that there was, in fact, no suicide -- and that there may not even have been a real Sheyla. Since Verant has refused to discuss the situation, Everquest community members have initiated their own investigation of the "suicide," turning up some perplexing information. Their research has unearthed a hidden drama behind a character that many Everquest players thought they knew well, but apparently didn't know at all.
The hoax has rocked the Everquest fans -- and set in motion yet another wave of doubt and concern over the "addictiveness" of virtual life. Fans of the game jokingly call it "Evercrack" for good reason. While fantasy games dating back at least as far as the paper-and-dice versions of Dungeons & Dragons have often been criticized for encouraging obsessive behavior, the current state of the art of online gaming has taken the quality and depth of virtual experience to new heights. Regardless of whether a young woman truly died, the dialogue sparked by the controversy is forcing a community-wide reassessment of the potential drawbacks to online life.
"It's bringing an underlying problem that had been there to light, and making a lot of people take a step back and take a look at themselves," says Chris Skinner, a two-year game veteran who has been inspired by the Sheyla situation to start a support group called Everquest Escape. "Even if it was a hoax, it was good for the community because people can see how serious this issue is and step forward and get help if they need it."
Stepping into the land of Everquest is like entering a three-dimensional fairy tale kingdom, a world of epic tales, grand quests and dangerous dragons in which you are the main storyteller. Like other popular role playing games (such as Asheron's Call or Ultima Online), this massively multiplayer online realm invites you to re-create yourself as a half-elf, dwarf, gnome or enchantress and embark on a never-ending series of adventures with over 300,000 fellow players. Beautifully rendered to be as realistic-looking as possible, it's much like stepping into the pages of a Tolkien novel.
There is no particular point to the game except, possibly, to move up in levels of character "expertise" -- learning how to become, say, a master warrior, jeweler or hunter. Making it all the way to level 50 and beyond will take you months of playing. In order to grow as a character you'll need to befriend other players, possibly joining a larger group called a "guild," which will join you on your quests, help you hunt gnolls and fire beetles and simply keep you company during some of the more tedious hours of recovering from battle.
With role playing you aren't simply following along someone else's linear storytelling narrative -- you and your newfound friends are the story. "The Everquest world is very real," says Jennifer Powell, a longtime player who often plays with her husband and other friends from the Well. "If you're a sane person, that doesn't affect you too much, but it's kind of stunning how much it's really very real. When I step in I feel like I'm going to another place -- I may see my husband there, but he's another persona inside the game."
By most accounts, the average Everquest player logs in for 15 to 20 hours a week; but more avid players, like Sheyla, will often play for many, many more -- clocking in months of playing time in a year. They'll often log into one of Everquest's many servers every day (in Sheyla's case, this was usually a server called "Quellious") and spend endless hours chatting, instant-message style, with pals from their guilds. Especially close Everquest friendships are often cemented by an online "marriage," an actual wedding ceremony after which the two characters' game assets -- gold, armor, weaponry and the like -- can even be combined into one bank account, if they so desire.
And then there are the fan sites, countless community bulletin boards (for guilds, servers, news sites, plus the "official" Verant boards) and virtual parties that guilds sometimes sponsor. The most avid players often become "guides," unpaid volunteers who on top of playing the game spend up to 10 hours every week offering advice to newbies and assisting players who are struggling.
All said, this makes for some pretty compelling game-playing; the more you play, the better you get, the closer you'll become to your online friends and the more you'll want to play. For the vast majority of players who spend time in Everquest, this is a terrific way to make new friends and use their creative powers to build an alternative world for themselves. But for others, it becomes an obsession; and the bickering, fighting and nastiness often seen in the online communities is a testament to this. Flame wars and feuds erupt, and guilds spontaneously fall apart from the infighting.
"It's such an addictive environment; it's like rats in an overcrowded maze -- they start attacking each other," says Scott Jennings, who manages the popular Lum the Mad gaming news site. "Once you get to a certain high level of player you've got people who have spent literally months of time sitting in front of their machines. And it becomes a really big deal to them, it becomes their life, they become obsessed by it. Anything that threatens them -- someone who threatens their guild standing or something as trivial as someone killing a monster they have their eyes on -- that's the kind of thing that spawns this vitriol and rage. It's tunnel vision, really frightening."
Which is where the story of Sheyla really begins.
By most accounts, Sheyla first appeared in the lands of Everquest in March or April of this year, introducing herself as a 19-year-old woman from Colorado (sometimes Oklahoma) who loved to draw. She joined the "Companions of Light" guild, along with someone who was introduced as her sister Jolena, and quickly made a name for herself as a sensitive but depressed young woman with a quick temper and a tendency to lie. Within a few months, she had logged in so many hours that Verant allowed her to become a guide.
But Sheyla's tenure as a guide was controversial, and she was chided for her occasionally unpleasant interactions with players. Her status as a guide was already endangered when, on Nov. 10, someone using her guide name ("Leza") posted a greeting on an online bulletin board. Verant has very strict rules about "official" communications with the Everquest playing population, and guides are forbidden to post to bulletin boards under their guide names. Soon after "guide Leza's" post, Verant terminated Sheyla's guide account. (The ensuing drama in the bulletin boards led many people to question whether the offending post was actually written by Sheyla herself, especially since it was later amended to include the line "HAHAHAHAHAHA SuXoRs I got her fired!!!!")
The following Monday, people who identified themselves as Sheyla's husband and her foster mother posted to several bulletin boards and mailing lists with the news that Sheyla had taken her own life. They offered few details except the fact that she was a sad young girl who had loved her Everquest friends. The mourning began. "We have our squabbles from time to time but for the most part the players stand together," says one member of the Quellious Quarters community, where Sheyla spent much of her time. "The message boards went quiet for about two days after the first post about Leza's death was posted. I know all of us were in shock and totally stunned by this news."
But as stories about Sheyla came out, the community at large began to doubt whether a suicide had actually taken place -- or if, indeed, the people they had known as Sheyla and her sister Jolena even existed.
Early on, Sheyla's stories often seemed wild, but since no one had ever met her in the flesh the community simply shrugged and took them at face value. William Joseph Seemer, a fellow guild member who eventually became close friends with Sheyla, describes an incident in the spring when Sheyla announced that she had cancer of the aorta. Her guild rallied around her and showered her with support and sympathy as she prepared for medical treatment; but many became suspicious when a mere 12 hours after her supposed open-heart surgery, Sheyla was already back at her computer playing the game.
The "Companions of Light" guild eventually collapsed, but Seemer kept in touch with her -- sending instant messages and the occasional written letter -- on and off until last week, when he came across the bulletin board posts describing Sheyla's suicide. When he heard the news, he was shocked -- and not just by the disturbing news. "I was told by Sheyla that she was pregnant at one time and had a miscarriage and wasn't able to have children; which blatantly contradicted what I read on boards that said she had a 2-year-old child and a husband," he says.
Seemer knew, from the letters they'd exchanged, that Sheyla lived near Oklahoma City; he began scanning the obituaries for the area but found no reports of suicides. He dug up the phone number for Sheyla's sister Jolena, and called -- but when he spoke to Jolena's roommate, the roommate told him that not only had Jolena moved out months earlier, but she didn't even have a sister. "I don't know what to think," he says.
Seemer wasn't the only person investigating. Verant refused to talk to the community about what had happened to Sheyla. The company also refused to comment or speculate to Salon. Instead, Verant began deleting posts regarding Sheyla from the official bulletin boards. The community decided to take matters into its own hands. Administrators from the Quellious Quarters bulletin boards, Scott Jennings of Lum the Mad, and gaming reporters from news and fan sites such as Adrenaline Vault and Gamers.com, as well as several concerned friends, spread out across Oklahoma and Colorado. They called coroners' offices, tracked down IP numbers and e-mail addresses, compared chat logs and account names and talked to Sheyla's ISP.
By Monday, the collective discovery was that Sheyla had, in fact, been a hoax. According to the report by Sandy Brundage of Gamers.com, Sheyla and her "family" -- her sister, husband and foster mother -- were all constructions of one couple who shared an e-mail account and lived in Oklahoma City. Not only did Sheyla not exist, but she was decidedly not dead. While the wife played "Jolena," the husband played "Sheyla."
But the couple had recently broken up. According to Gamers.com, the husband faked the Sheyla suicide as part of an elaborate plan to gain custody of their child. The plan, according to Brundage's report, was to claim that his wife had staged the suicide in order to "bring the story into court as proof of her instability and to gain custody of their daughter."
Not surprisingly, the community that last week was singing eulogies to the sensitive Sheyla -- "She sang. She painted. She cried. She was very attractive, and probably found herself very ugly when she looked at herself in the mirror," wrote one poetic mourner at the time -- is now licking its wounds and remembering the old adage that virtual appearances can often be deceiving.
"If she wanted attention, she certainly got it," notes Jennings wryly.
The Sheyla incident isn't the first time some of the more troubled role-playing-game enthusiasts have resorted to extreme behavior in order to get some kind of attention. Jennings recalls a similar situation in Ultima Online several years ago when another player suicide was faked in order to engender sympathy; other posters to the Lum the Mad bulletin boards have since recollected other suicide hoaxes. Richard Garriot, the creator of Ultima Online, was once visited by a naked fan who pulled out a gun and took a shot at him.
Such incidents involved clearly troubled fans teetering on the edge of sanity and in need of some kind of real psychological help, but such people certainly don't make up the majority of the players of online role playing games. "The large majority of people aren't that eaten up with [gaming], but you get that with everything. The word 'fan' comes from 'fanatic'; you've got this in politics or people who chase rock bands around the country," says Jennings. "But with online gaming it's easier to track because you have an electronic trail."
Regardless of what the man behind "Sheyla" was trying to achieve with his hoax, the controversy has stirred up a strong debate about depressed or otherwise unstable players, and whether immersive role playing games actually encourage troubled people to become "addicted" to the game. Over the course of thousands of posts across myriad gaming bulletin boards in the last week, countless Everquest players have come forth with concerns about how obsessed they are with the game, how it's damaging to their offline relationships and how it's causing them to withdraw from the real world into the virtual one.
Chris Skinner is one player who felt that the Sheyla controversy hit too close to home. A two-year veteran of the game, he came close to dropping out of college and losing his girlfriend because he was spending every waking hour playing the game; he estimates that at least 70 percent of the people he's befriended through Everquest have at one time or another developed an unhealthy obsession with playing the game. "To an outsider it's just like looking at a crack addict -- you don't understand how it is until you've been there," he says. "It really is an addiction." Skinner believes that players who spend all their time in the game lose touch with the real world -- replacing it with a virtual one -- only to discover that when they are having problems their "virtual friends" aren't as supportive as a real-world network might be. In response, he is now organizing an online support group called Everquest Escape -- which he hopes will include chat rooms, bulletin boards, a Web site and perhaps even in-game advisors -- to provide support for players who are feeling alone, depressed or otherwise obsessed with the game. As he puts it, "We can provide a forum for these people to know that there are others out there, we care about them and they are important, and maybe together we can help them work through their situation."
It is clear that role-playing games appeal to people who are otherwise limited in their real lives -- where else in the world could a handicapped man get to live the life of a fleet-footed warrior, or a shy woman become a witty and desirable enchantress, or a minimum-wage grunt play the role of a wealthy king? You can be as good or as evil or as popular as you've always dreamed. It would seem to make sense that troubled or unhappy people would find the worlds of Everquest, Asheron's Call or Ultima Online a welcome escape from the woes of everyday life; and, in turn, escape just a bit too much.
"It's an escape that has these friendships encoded into the game, a kind of companionship is enforced by this game," says one anonymous systems analyst who watched his already failing relationship fall apart as his girlfriend spent all of her spare time developing a virtual boyfriend on Everquest. "You have to be social and interact with people [to succeed in the game] -- for some people, they become surrogates for real life. They've got more 'EQ' friends than 'RL' [real life] friends."
Bulletin boards across Everquest are currently hopping with posts from self-confessed "Evercrack addicts" and spouses who worry that their partners are more involved with their gaming lives -- sometimes even including a virtual wife or husband -- than they are with their real-life families. Carly Staehlin, the producer of Ultima Online, estimates that there are 5,000 "married" couples inside that game, and says, "Players invest an average of 12 hours per week in Ultima Online, and [there are] lots of people who spend a lot more than that. Let's say two hours a day, your evening is going to be spent in the virtual world. If you are married in real life you are not spending that time interacting with your real-life spouse but your virtual spouse." No wonder so many jealous husbands, wives, girlfriends and boyfriends look with consternation at the phenomenon of role-playing marriages.
But that doesn't mean that the game is addicting, and many would disagree vehemently with Skinner's use of the term. The builders of Ultima Online and Everquest, for example, say that their games are no more compelling or addicting than any other pastime. Says Cindy Archuleta, community relations manager for Verant and Everquest, "Our average player plays about 20 hours a week; most of it is just a good sense of community when they are there. You can always find disturbing stories here or there when you do look for them. I have hosted three real-life events where people come to meet each other, and it's been extremely positive."
And it's true that any community or game, online or off, is going to have its more extreme enthusiasts as well as a much larger population of perfectly happy, well-adjusted participants. For every Sheyla, there is probably someone who has used Everquest as a way to reach out to the world and make friends, to learn something about themselves and gain a new perspective on life.
"It doesn't create a void, but it does help fill it," says Ron Hayden, an Everquest enthusiast and founder of the Well Guild. "For some people it's a bad thing because they avoid dealing with their life; for others it's a bridge to self-confidence. It really lets shy people who have a lot of self-confidence issues put on a personality and learn to overcome that in an environment where it's safe." After all, the whole idea of a role-playing game is to re-create reality, to create a world as immersive and entertaining as life itself, that allows players to live out their fullest fantasies -- to be better version of themselves -- in real time. This can be both wonderful, and dangerous, as the "Evercrack" confessions show. And thanks to ever-more-powerful gaming platforms like the Playstation 2 that can render shockingly realistic graphics, games are just going to continue to become more immersive. Jeff Brown, a spokesman for Electronic Arts (the publishers of Ultima Online) brags that "as immersive as these games are today, we are about six months away from them taking a quantum leap in the level of immersion that people will experience."
A dialogue about how to deal with gamers who enjoy the virtual world more than the physical world is an important one to have now -- rather than waiting until more players have resorted to faked suicides or real ones as a cry for help. And for that small epiphany, the Sheyla hoax was probably good for the role-playing community. "This was an important event for the community, it's just something that always needs to be discussed," says "Tweety," who runs an Everquest fan site, and ruminated publicly about the suicide. "She did us a service in some way. I prefer to think of it as Sheyla the idea, rather than Sheyla the person."
Profile of Counter-Strike Creator
from Business 2.0:
Game Development à la Mod
By: Geoff Keighley
Issue: October 2002
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Hacker Minh Le's Counter-Strike is the stuff of media execs' dreams -- an over-the-transom blockbuster.
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Like a lot of college seniors, Minh Le had no idea what he wanted to do with his life. In June 2000, on the verge of graduating with a computer science degree from Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia, the 23-year-old Le really would admit to only one career goal: He didn't want to work in a cubicle. If pushed about his ambitions, though, he might shyly point to a computer game he had built in the basement of his parents' suburban home and given away over the Internet.
Today, Le's homespun project, called Counter-Strike, is the most popular multiplayer action game in the world. Bigger than Quake. Bigger than Unreal. The numbers are staggering: Over 1.7 million players spend more than 2.4 billion minutes a month in the game. (The top-rated TV show Friends generates 2.9 billion viewer minutes a month.) In addition to its free Internet distribution, Counter-Strike has sold 1.3 million shrink-wrapped copies at retail; in 2003 a version for Microsoft's (MSFT) Xbox will hit the stores.
Rail-thin and self-effacing, Le seems largely uninterested in the impact he could have on the gaming industry. At the very least, game hackers activate a form of free viral marketing that can keep a game selling well beyond its expected shelf life. But when the hacker is as talented as Le, the result can be independent versions of games that actually challenge the work of industry titans like Electronic Arts (ERTS) and Activision (ATVI). "The success of a game like Counter-Strike is leveling the field in game development," says Jason Della Rocca, an official of the International Game Developers Assn.
The process starts with an existing game. Le chose the extremely popular Half-Life -- a game he liked to play himself -- about a scientist who must shoot his way out of a government lab invaded by mutants. Downloading the basic programming code from the manufacturer's website, he proceeded to fiddle with its inner workings.
Thousands of gamers with hacking skills and too much time on their hands have done similar things with other popular titles, like Quake and Doom. The results are called modifications, or mods. Usually these underground developers make small changes, such as building new game levels or dropping in new characters. You can download fan-made files that make Gene Simmons of Kiss appear as a Jedi knight in a Star Wars game or let you play Doom as Homer Simpson, complete with an Uzi to blaze away at bloodsucking succubi.
Le, however, didn't just create new characters; he evolved Half-Life into an entirely new game. In mod lingo, it's called total conversion, or TC. While the original featured a fairly conventional run-and-gun experience known as a death match, Le's Counter-Strike has a new theme -- counterterrorists vs. terrorists -- and introduces cooperative team play and a virtual economy in which players earn money to buy better weapons. Le did all the art and most of the sound design himself, and with some programming help from a loose network of unpaid hacker friends, he completed a beta version in six months.
Elsewhere in the entertainment industry, this is the point at which lawyers would come knocking on Le's door. But gamers tend to have a less rigid notion of intellectual property. Not only does Valve, the Kirkland, Wash., software company that makes Half-Life, give away the game's basic programming code for free, but it also releases the software tools needed to hack it.
In fact, according to Gabe Newell, the 39-year-old Microsoft millionaire who is Valve's managing director, Le's interest in Half-Life has been the best thing that could have happened to the game. You see, to play Counter-Strike, you still need to buy Half-Life. "We've actually sold more of the overall Half-Life family of products each year since we shipped back in 1998, which is very unusual in a market typified by three-month shelf lives," Newell says. Counter-Strike developed such a large following of its own that Valve bought the rights to the game. Neither side would disclose the sum, but it is safe to assume that it cost Valve considerably less than the $5 million or more it can take to develop a best-selling PC game. Retail revenues for Le's mod have come to nearly $40 million.
So far, Counter-Strike's runaway commercial success is unique in the mod world, but game companies are now on the lookout for other professional-quality TCs. For example, Valve recently acquired Day of Defeat, a World War II-themed add-on to Half-Life that Newell believes could have some of Counter-Strike's success. Infogrames used a mod of Unreal as the basis for its Tactical Ops. And giant Electronic Arts is encouraging gamers to modify its classic The Sims. So far, more than 30,000 different Sims mods are available, from a Britney Spears character to '50s furniture for your virtual living room. EA even hosted a weeklong "mod university" in Las Vegas to kick-start hacking of its action game Command & Conquer: Renegade.
As for Le, he has been working hard on a Counter-Strike sequel in the basement of his parents' home. But his main goal has been accomplished. In the two and half years since he left college, he hasn't set foot in a cubicle.
LindenWorld
from Red Herring online:
Playing God
In LindenWorld, you are the creator.
By Justin Hibbard
October 17, 2002
Staring at your computer screen, you see green 3D hills that stretch for miles into a sienna sunset. With a few mouse clicks, you start building a chateau on the nearest hillside. The construction will cost you some play money--and several hours of real time. If people visit your chateau often, you'll recoup the cash. But your reward for the hours spent building is simply your own entertainment.
Is that your idea of fun? Linden Lab is betting it is--for the 10 million people the company considers to be potential players of its game, LindenWorld. Founders of the three-year-old startup believe consumers will pay a monthly subscription fee (fees for similar games are around $10) to undertake something usually left to professional developers: creating characters and settings. Other startups, including There and PersistentWorldz, are making the same wager.
Ever since the text-based fantasy games of the early '80s, virtual worlds have fascinated computer gamers. But, as business ventures, most of them have failed. In the mid-'90s, the online-world startups Electric Communities and The Palace burned through a combined $75 million before folding.
Technology and consumer behavior have come a long way since then. The spread of broadband Internet connections and PCs with graphics chips has enabled a realism that earlier online worlds lacked. And as people spend more time on the Internet, they are increasingly living fantasy lives online.
Those advances spurred Philip Rosedale to start Linden Lab in 1999, after he resigned as chief technical officer of the streaming-media software maker RealNetworks. His notions inspired Linden investor Mitch Kapor, a RealNetworks board member and founder of Lotus Development. "There's something about Philip's idea of being able to live another life or live in another universe that just personally struck a chord," says Mr. Kapor, who, along with Catamount Ventures, provided an undisclosed amount of seed funding to Linden Lab.
The idea has struck a chord with major game publishers, too. By year-end, Electronic Arts will introduce an online version of its best-selling PC game, The Sims, which lets players create a neighborhood of simulated people. Mr. Rosedale says the 2D game will whet people's appetites for the 3D graphics of LindenWorld.
Another highly anticipated release is Star Wars Galaxies. Players will explore a world created and continuously updated by Sony Online Entertainment. Mr. Rosedale says LindenWorld's advantage over such games is its user-created content, which frees Linden Lab from ongoing development costs. "We can't get into the content rat race," he says.
But will players prefer their own content to professionals'? Linden Lab designed LindenWorld's economic system to encourage high-quality creations. Players earn play money for creating popular characters and buildings, and they pay taxes on the land that their structures occupy.
Still, the number of people who enjoy creating content is limited. "If you're talking mass market, I don't think your average user would want to do that kind of thing," says Mike Wallace, a video game analyst at UBS Warburg. Online-world enthusiasts will surely flock to LindenWorld. Getting mainstream consumers to follow will be a tougher game to master.
Online Bullies Give Grief to Games
from L.A. Times, September 2, 2002.
Online Bullies Give Grief to Gamers
Internet: Troublemakers play to make their peers cry, driving away customers and profit.
By ALEX PHAM
TIMES STAFF WRITER
September 2 2002
When Kurt Frerichs comes home from a long day of fixing computers, he likes to eat dinner with his family, tuck his 2-year-old daughter into bed and settle in front of his PC with a steaming cup of black coffee to inflict nonstop misery on his fellow man.
The 25-year-old technology consultant relishes the indiscriminate slaughter of other players in online games, heaping scorn on his victims and exploiting programming bugs to his advantage.
Frerichs is what the online world calls a griefer--someone who plays to make others cry. They stalk, hurl insults, extort, form gangs, kill and loot. Although a tiny percentage of the millions who play online games, griefers are prolific in sowing distress and driving away thousands of paying customers.
As a result, the habits of griefers such as Frerichs have become an obsession for Sony Corp., Microsoft Corp. and Electronic Arts Inc. as the companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars building online games they hope will stir up mass-market interest.
To these companies, online games stand as a rare specimen--the profitable Internet business. Titles such as "EverQuest," "Ultima Online" and "Dark Ages of Camelot" may have only a few hundred thousand subscribers each, but they consistently make money.
And the financial stakes are about to become much bigger. U.S. revenues from these games are expected to grow from $300 million to $1.8 billion by 2005.
There are about 1 million online game players in the U.S. and millions more overseas, particularly in South Korea, where there are several million players.
The game makers fear that virtual saboteurs will jeopardize the rise of online games by scaring away customers willing to spend $10 to $14 a month and are devoting significant resources to finding ways to stop the online mayhem.
Called persistent world or massively multiplayer games for their ability to accommodate thousands of simultaneous players, the games started decades ago as simple text-based games. As personal computers grew more powerful, these games acquired graphics that evolved into rich, immersing, fantastical worlds. Players can acquire virtual jobs, adopt pets, marry and own property.
At their genesis, these games were meant to be online Camelots where players adhered to a code of honor, but instead they quickly descended into anarchy. Stealing, killing, taunting and other forms of bad behavior against online characters mushroomed overnight. Experienced players would stalk novice players, called newbies, and kill them repeatedly.
For a griefer, it's not the killing that is fun, because combat is inherent in many of these games. It's the misery it causes other players.
"Griefers feed on the negative reactions of the people they kill," said Frerichs, who savors his evil online persona and saves every nasty e-mail he gets from the people he has antagonized. "There's nothing sweeter than when you kill someone and they spout insults at you for hours. That's when you know you got him. It sounds really cruel, but it's fun."
Frerichs has received messages from parents of players, pleading him to play nice with their children, who are driven to tears by his antics.
Whereas Frerichs is motivated by a desire to role-play an evil persona, most griefers tend to be teenage boys who find it fun to see how far they can push social limits.
"I get off on causing other people grief," said Robert L. Lee, a 16-year-old in Omaha who plays "Ultima Online." "It gives me a feeling that I am on a higher level than they are. I find griefing way more fun than" killing online characters.
Often, the griefers' characters adopt offensive screen names. The griefer's arsenal of annoyance is large and varied.
Lately, "ninja stealing" has become especially rampant. A griefer waits around while another player slays a monster. Once the monster drops dead, it often gives up weapons, coins or other desirable items. Before the player can pick up the spoils, the griefer snatches the items and runs away.
Another common tactic is to lure a batch of monsters toward unsuspecting players. Monsters, which are run by computer programs, are generally instructed to kill the nearest players they see. By brushing past other players, the griefer can essentially trick the monsters into attacking someone else.
Griefers also can form a virtual mafia, blocking access to desirable areas of the game and demanding bribes. They also run cartels by hoarding game components, such as eye of newt or red hair dye, and charging inflated prices.
Often, though, simple mischief is at the root of grief play.
"We once had this roving band of thugs who were all craftsmen," said Richard Garriott, who created "Ultima Online" two decades ago and is now creative director for game developer NCSoft Corp. in Austin, Texas. "They would run up to a player with a supply of lumber, rapidly build large pieces of furniture and drop them all around the player. All these objects prevented them from moving. So it was a sort of trap behavior."
Not all grief play is as harmless.
"There are all kinds of virtual assaults where people are basically confronted in ways they didn't think were possible. Sexual stuff, racial stuff. You name it, and it's happened," said Gordon Walton, who was head of online services for "Ultima Online" and is now executive producer at Electronic Arts for an upcoming game targeted at mainstream players called "The Sims Online."
Walton considers the examples so offensive, "I don't even tell my wife about them. They're beyond obscene."
The anonymity of Internet communication often encourages people to cut loose and say things they wouldn't in real life, said Patricia T. O'Conner, co-author of "You Send Me," a book on online writing.
"Because of the anonymity that online writing affords, people get away with behavior they couldn't in the real world. What's the worst that could happen?" O'Conner said.
Very little, as it turns out. Game developers can hand out warnings, suspend players for a few days or in the most severe cases ban them from playing the game.
As a result, online games are ripe for all manner of antisocial behavior online.
But online games also are mirrors, however distorted, of the real world, where evil coexists with good and every classroom has its bullies. In that sense, griefers are part of an inevitable part of the virtual ecosystem, Garriott said.
There is even a school of thought that griefers play a vital role, sniffing out technical bugs in the game and lending games a sense of flesh-and-blood tension.
"When we get together with old friends from these games, we don't talk about the goody-two-shoes, we talk about the characters who made our lives hell," said Rick Costa, a longtime player of online games who considers himself a "goody-goody." "They're kind of a force of nature, and you remember them."
Most game companies, however, don't make such distinctions between good grief and bad. Now online games have safe zones where players can't be harmed and name filters that reject obscene or graphic names.
But as quickly as developers build fixes, griefers find ingenious ways around them.
The result is an endless cat-and-mouse game that, although fun for griefers, has become tremendously costly for game developers.
Sony's customer service manager, Alan Crosby, estimated that each of his 60 customer support staff members spends an average of one hour out of an eight-hour shift dealing with grief-related activity.
Game developers are trying to attract new players. Microsoft, for example, is building a network to bring players of its Xbox game console online. Sony also is weaning its PlayStation 2 users toward online console games. Electronic Arts is taking its popular computer game franchise, "The Sims," online this holiday season in hopes of introducing casual game players to subscription-based online games. And Lucasfilm Ltd.'s video game subsidiary, LucasArts, is building a "Star Wars" online game called "Galaxies" due out next year.
"These games have the potential to bring in a lot of new players who have never played online games," said Schelley Olhava, a senior analyst with technology consulting group IDC. Olhava estimates that U.S. revenues from online games will reach close to $2 billion over the next three years.
Thus, game developers are working to thwart griefers' pursuits. Microsoft's Xbox Live service, for instance, will give players the ability to shut out people who are offensive, so although the offender can be seen, he or she can't be heard. Other games, such as "The Sims Online," are building rooms where players must have invitations before they can enter.
"We're trying to take a whole new generation of players online who have never been there before," said Cameron Ferroni, director of content services for Microsoft's Xbox. "We want to make sure everyone has a good experience."
Try as they will, though, game companies are likely to find that it is as difficult to eradicate griefers as it is to eliminate crime in the real world.
Said Frerichs, the computer consultant griefer: "Everybody needs a bad guy."
A Rape in Cyberspace
A Rape in Cyberspace is one of the oldest and most-frequently cited articles about behavior in online games, social norms and the possibility of virutal atrocities. Lessig mentioned it briefly during dinner - saying, "Do you know Julian?" the author. I don't think I do, but I've definitely seen this article. Time to re-read it maybe! Concerns characters Mr. Bungle, exu and MoonDreamer playing in LambdaMOO.
A Rape in Cyberspace
(Or TINYSOCIETY, and How to Make One)
Chapter One of My Tiny Life, ©1998
(First published in somewhat different form in The Village Voice.)
By Julian Dibbell
julian@mostly.com
They say he raped them that night. They say he did it with a cunning little doll, fashioned in their image and imbued with the power to make them do whatever he desired. They say that by manipulating the doll he forced them to have sex with him, and with each other, and to do horrible, brutal things to their own bodies. And though I wasn't there that night, I think I can assure you that what they say is true, because it all happened right in the living room -- right there amid the well-stocked bookcases and the sofas and the fireplace -- of a house I came later to think of as my second home.
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Call me Dr. Bombay. A good many months ago -- let's say about halfway between the first time you heard the words information superhighway and the first time you wished you never had -- I found myself tripping now and then down the well-traveled information lane that leads to LambdaMOO, a very large and very busy rustic mansion built entirely of words. On the occasional free evening I'd sit down in my New York City apartment and type the commands that called those words onto my computer screen, dropping me with what seemed a warm electric thud inside the house's darkened coat closet, where I checked my quotidian identity, stepped into the persona and appearance of a minor character from a long- gone television sitcom, and stepped out into the glaring chatter of the crowded living room. Sometimes, when the mood struck me, I emerged as a dolphin instead.
I won't say why I chose to masquerade as Samantha Stephens's outlandish cousin, or as the dolphin, or what first led me into the semifictional digital otherworlds known around the Internet as multi-user dimensions, or MUDs. This isn't quite my story yet. It's the story, for now, of an elusive congeries of flesh and bytes named Mr. Bungle, and of the ghostly sexual violence he committed in the halls of LambdaMOO, and most importantly of the ways his violence and his victims challenged the thousand and more residents of that surreal, magic-infested mansion to become, finally, the community so many of them already believed they were.
That I was myself already known to wander the mansion grounds from time to time has little direct bearing on the story's events. I mention it only as a warning that my own perspective may be, at this late date, too steeped in the surreality and magic of the place to serve as an altogether appropriate guide. For the Bungle Affair raises questions that -- here on the brink of a future in which human existence may find itself as tightly enveloped in digital environments as it is today in the architectural kind -- demand a clear-eyed, sober, and unmystified consideration. It asks us to shut our ears for the time being to techno- utopian ecstasies and look without illusion upon the present possibilities for building, in the on-line spaces of this world, societies more decent and free than those mapped onto dirt and concrete and capital. It asks us to behold the new bodies awaiting us in virtual space undazzled by their phantom powers, and to get to the crucial work of sorting out the socially meaningful differences between those bodies and our physical ones. And perhaps most challengingly it asks us to wrap our late-modern ontologies, epistemologies, sexual ethics, and common sense around the curious notion of rape by voodoo doll -- and to try not to warp them beyond recognition in the process.
In short, the Bungle Affair dares me to explain it to you without resort to dime-store mysticisms, and I fear I may have shape-shifted by the digital moonlight one too many times to be quite up to the task. But I will do what I can, and can do no better than to lead with the facts. For if nothing else about Mr. Bungle's case is unambiguous, the facts at least are crystal clear.
----
The facts begin (as they often do) with a time and a place. The time was a Monday night in March, and the place, as I've said, was the living room -- which, due largely to the centrality of its location and to a certain warmth of decor, is so invariably packed with chitchatters as to be roughly synonymous among LambdaMOOers with a party. So strong, indeed, is the sense of convivial common ground invested in the living room that a cruel mind could hardly imagine a better place in which to stage a violation of LambdaMOO's communal spirit. And there was cruelty enough lurking in the appearance Mr. Bungle presented to the virtual world -- he was at the time a fat, oleaginous, Bisquick-faced clown dressed in cum-stained harlequin garb and girdled with a mistletoe-and-hemlock belt whose buckle bore the quaint inscription KISS ME UNDER THIS, BITCH! But whether cruelty motivated his choice of crime scene is not among the established facts of the case. It is a fact only that he did choose the living room.
The remaining facts tell us a bit more about the inner world of Mr. Bungle, though only perhaps that it wasn't a very cozy place. They tell us that he commenced his assault entirely unprovoked, at or about 10 p.m. Pacific Standard Time. That he began by using his voodoo doll to force one of the room's occupants to sexually service him in a variety of more or less conventional ways. That this victim was exu, a Haitian trickster spirit of indeterminate gender, brown-skinned and wearing an expensive pearl gray suit, top hat, and dark glasses. That exu heaped vicious imprecations on him all the while and that he was soon ejected bodily from the room. That he hid himself away then in his private chambers somewhere on the mansion grounds and continued the attacks without interruption, since the voodoo doll worked just as well at a distance as in proximity. That he turned his attentions now to Moondreamer, a rather pointedly nondescript female character, tall, stout, and brown-haired, forcing her into unwanted liaisons with other individuals present in the room, among them exu, Kropotkin (the well-known radical), and Snugberry (the squirrel). That his actions grew progressively violent. That he made exu eat his/her own pubic hair. That he caused Moondreamer to violate herself with a piece of kitchen cutlery. That his distant laughter echoed evilly in the living room with every successive outrage. That he could not be stopped until at last someone summoned Iggy, a wise and trusted old-timer who brought with him a gun of near wizardly powers, a gun that didn't kill but enveloped its targets in a cage impermeable even to a voodoo doll's powers. That Iggy fired this gun at Mr. Bungle, thwarting the doll at last and silencing the evil, distant laughter.
These particulars, as I said, are unambiguous. But they are far from simple, for the simple reason that every set of facts in virtual reality (or VR, as the locals abbreviate it) is shadowed by a second, complicating set: the "real-life" facts. And while a certain tension invariably buzzes in the gap between the hard, prosaic RL facts and their more fluid, dreamy VR counterparts, the dissonance in the Bungle case is striking. No hideous clowns or trickster spirits appear in the RL version of the incident, no voodoo dolls or wizard guns, indeed no rape at all as any RL court of law has yet defined it. The actors in the drama were university students for the most part, and they sat rather undramatically before computer screens the entire time, their only actions a spidery flitting of fingers across standard QWERTY keyboards. No bodies touched. Whatever physical interaction occurred consisted of a mingling of electronic signals sent from sites spread out between New York City and Melbourne, Australia. Those signals met in LambdaMOO, certainly, just as the hideous clown and the living room party did, but what was LambdaMOO after all? Not an enchanted mansion or anything of the sort -- just a middlingly complex database, maintained for experimental purposes inside a Xerox Corporation research computer in Palo Alto and open to public access via the Internet.
To be more precise about it, LambdaMOO was a MUD. Or to be yet more precise, it was a subspecies of MUD known as a MOO, which is short for "MUD, Object-Oriented." All of which means that it was a kind of database especially designed to give users the vivid impression of moving through a physical space that in reality exists only as words filed away on a hard drive. When users dial into LambdaMOO, for instance, the program immediately presents them with a brief textual description of one of the rooms of the database's fictional mansion (the coat closet, say). If the user wants to leave this room, she can enter a command to move in a particular direction and the database will replace the original description with a new one corresponding to the room located in the direction she chose. When the new description scrolls across the user's screen it lists not only the fixed features of the room but all its contents at that moment -- including things (tools, toys, weapons) and other users (each represented as a "character" over which the user has sole control).
As far as the database program is concerned, all of these entities -- rooms, things, characters -- are just different subprograms that the program allows to interact according to rules very roughly mimicking the laws of the physical world. Characters may not leave a room in a given direction, for instance, unless the room subprogram contains an "exit" at that compass point. And if a character "says" or "does" something (as directed by its user-owner via the say or the emote command), then only the users whose characters are also located in that room will see the output describing the statement or action. Aside from such basic constraints, however, LambdaMOOers are allowed a broad freedom to create -- they can describe their characters any way they like, they can make rooms of their own and decorate them to taste, and they can build new objects almost at will. The combination of all this busy user activity with the hard physics of the database can certainly induce a lucid illusion of presence -- but when all is said and done the only thing you really see when you visit LambdaMOO is a kind of slow-crawling script, lines of dialogue and stage direction creeping steadily up your computer screen.
Which is all just to say that, to the extent that Mr. Bungle's assault happened in real life at all, it happened as a sort of Punch-and-Judy show, in which the puppets and the scenery were made of nothing more substantial than digital code and snippets of creative writing. The puppeteer behind Bungle that night, as it happened, was a young man logging in to the MOO from a New York University computer. He could have been Al Gore's mother-in-law for all any of the others knew, however, and he could have written Bungle's script that night any way he chose. He could have sent a command to print the message Mr._Bungle, smiling a saintly smile, floats angelic near the ceiling of the living room, showering joy and candy kisses down upon the heads of all below -- and everyone then receiving output from the database's subprogram #17 (a/k/a the "living room") would have seen that sentence on their screens.
Instead, he entered sadistic fantasies into the "voodoo doll," a subprogram that served the not-exactly kosher purpose of attributing actions to other characters that their users did not actually write. And thus a woman in Haverford, Pennsylvania, whose account on the MOO attached her to a character she called Moondreamer, was given the unasked-for opportunity to read the words As if against her will, Moondreamer jabs a steak knife up her ass, causing immense joy. You hear Mr._Bungle laughing evilly in the distance. And thus the woman in Seattle who had written herself the character called exu, with a view perhaps to tasting in imagination a deity's freedom from the burdens of the gendered flesh, got to read similarly constructed sentences in which exu, messenger of the gods, lord of crossroads and communications, suffered a brand of degradation all-too-customarily reserved for the embodied female.
-----
"Mostly voodoo dolls are amusing," wrote exu on the evening after Bungle's rampage, posting a public statement to the widely read in-MOO mailing list called *social-issues, a forum for debate on matters of import to the entire populace. "And mostly I tend to think that restrictive measures around here cause more trouble than they prevent. But I also think that Mr. Bungle was being a vicious, vile fuckhead, and I...want his sorry ass scattered from #17 to the Cinder Pile. I'm not calling for policies, trials, or better jails. I'm not sure what I'm calling for. Virtual castration, if I could manage it. Mostly, [this type of thing] doesn't happen here. Mostly, perhaps I thought it wouldn't happen to me. Mostly, I trust people to conduct themselves with some veneer of civility. Mostly, I want his ass."
Months later, the woman in Seattle would confide to me that as she wrote those words posttraumatic tears were streaming down her face -- a real-life fact that should suffice to prove that the words' emotional content was no mere fiction. The precise tenor of that content, however, its mingling of murderous rage and eyeball-rolling annoyance, was a curious amalgam that neither the RL nor the VR facts alone can quite account for. Where virtual reality and its conventions would have us believe that exu and Moondreamer were brutally raped in their own living room, here was the victim exu scolding Mr. Bungle for a breach of "civility." Where real life, on the other hand, insists the incident was only an episode in a free-form version of Dungeons and Dragons, confined to the realm of the symbolic and at no point threatening any player's life, limb, or material well-being, here now was the player exu issuing aggrieved and heartfelt calls for Mr. Bungle's dismemberment. Ludicrously excessive by RL's lights, woefully understated by VR's, the tone of exu's response made sense only in the buzzing, dissonant gap between them.
Which is to say it made the only kind of sense that can be made of MUDly phenomena. For while the facts attached to any event born of a MUD's strange, ethereal universe may march in straight, tandem lines separated neatly into the virtual and the real, its meaning lies always in that gap. You learn this axiom early in your life as a player, and it's of no small relevance to the Bungle case that you often learn it between the sheets, so to speak. Netsex, tinysex, virtual sex -- however you name it, in real-life reality it's nothing more than a 900-line encounter stripped of even the vestigial physicality of the voice. And yet, as many a wide-eyed newbie can tell you, it's possibly the headiest experience the very heady world of MUDs has to offer. Amid flurries of even the most cursorily described caresses, sighs, or penetrations, the glands do engage, and often as throbbingly as they would in a real-life assignation -- sometimes even more so, given the combined power of anonymity and textual suggestiveness to unshackle deep-seated fantasies. And if the virtual setting and the interplayer vibe are right, who knows? The heart may engage as well, stirring up passions as strong as many that bind lovers who observe the formality of trysting in the flesh.
To participate, therefore, in this disembodied enactment of life's most body-centered activity is to risk the realization that when it comes to sex, perhaps the body in question is not the physical one at all, but its psychic double, the bodylike self-representation we carry around in our heads -- and that whether we present that body to another as a meat puppet or a word puppet is not nearly as significant a distinction as one might have thought. I know, I know, you've read Foucault and your mind is not quite blown by the notion that sex is never so much an exchange of fluids as as it is an exchange of signs. But trust your friend Dr. Bombay, it's one thing to grasp the notion intellectually and quite another to feel it coursing through your veins amid the virtual steam of hot netnookie. And it's a whole other mind-blowing trip altogether to encounter it thus as a college frosh, new to the net and still in the grip of hormonal hurricanes and high-school sexual mythologies. The shock can easily reverberate throughout an entire young worldview. Small wonder, then, that a newbie's first taste of MUD sex is often also the first time she or he surrenders wholly to the quirky terms of MUDish ontology, recognizing in a full-bodied way that what happens inside a MUD-made world is neither exactly real nor exactly make-believe, but nonetheless profoundly, compellingly, and emotionally true.
And small wonder indeed that the sexual nature of Mr. Bungle's crime provoked such powerful feelings, and not just in exu (who, be it noted, was in real life a theory-savvy doctoral candidate and a longtime MOOer, but just as baffled and overwhelmed by the force of her own reaction, she later would attest, as any panting undergrad might have been). Even players who had never experienced MUD rape (the vast majority of male-presenting characters, but not as large a majority of the female-presenting as might be hoped) immediately appreciated its gravity and were moved to condemnation of the perp. exu's missive to *social-issues followed a strongly worded one from Iggy ("Well, well," it began, "no matter what else happens on Lambda, I can always be sure that some jerk is going to reinforce my low opinion of humanity") and was itself followed by others from Zakariah, Wereweasel, Crawdaddy, and emmeline. Moondreamer also let her feelings ("pissed") be known. And even Xander, the Clueless Samaritan who had responded to Bungle's cries for help and uncaged him shortly after the incident, expressed his regret once apprised of Bungle's deeds, which he allowed to be "despicable."
A sense was brewing that something needed to be done -- done soon and in something like an organized fashion -- about Mr. Bungle, in particular, and about MUD rape, in general. Regarding the general problem, emmeline, who identified herself as a survivor of both virtual rape ("many times over") and real- life sexual assault, floated a cautious proposal for a MOO-wide powwow on the subject of virtual sex offenses and what mechanisms if any might be put in place to deal with their future occurrence. As for the specific problem, the answer no doubt seemed obvious to many. But it wasn't until the evening of the second day after the incident that exu, finally and rather solemnly, gave it voice:
"I am requesting that Mr. Bungle be toaded for raping Moondreamer and I. I have never done this before, and have thought about it for days. He hurt us both."
That was all. Three simple sentences posted to *social. Reading them, an outsider might never guess that they were an application for a death warrant. Even an outsider familiar with other MUDs might not guess it, since in many of them "toading" still refers to a command that, true to the gameworlds' sword-and-sorcery origins, simply turns a player into a toad, wiping the player's description and attributes and replacing them with those of the slimy amphibian. Bad luck for sure, but not quite as bad as what happens when the same command is invoked in the MOOish strains of MUD: not only are the description and attributes of the toaded player erased, but the account itself goes too. The annihilation of the character, thus, is total.
And nothing less than total annihilation, it seemed, would do to settle LambdaMOO's accounts with Mr. Bungle. Within minutes of the posting of exu's appeal, HortonWho, the Australian Deleuzean, who had witnessed much of the attack from the back room of his suburban Melbourne home, seconded the motion with a brief message crisply entitled "Toad the fukr." HortonWho's posting was seconded almost as quickly by that of Kropotkin, covictim of Mr. Bungle and well-known radical, who in real life happened also to be married to the real-life exu. And over the course of the next 24 hours as many as 50 players made it known, on *social and in a variety of other forms and forums, that they would be pleased to see Mr. Bungle erased from the face of the MOO. And with dissent so far confined to a dozen or so antitoading hardliners, the numbers suggested that the citizenry was indeed moving towards a resolve to have Bungle's virtual head.
There was one small but stubborn obstacle in the way of this resolve, however, and that was a curious state of social affairs known in some quarters of the MOO as the New Direction. It was all very fine, you see, for the LambdaMOO rabble to get it in their heads to liquidate one of their peers, but when the time came to actually do the deed it would require the services of a nobler class of character. It would require a wizard. Master-programmers of the MOO, spelunkers of the database's deepest code-structures and custodians of its day-to-day administrative trivia, wizards are also the only players empowered to issue the toad command, a feature maintained on nearly all MUDs as a quick-and-dirty means of social control. But the wizards of LambdaMOO, after years of adjudicating all manner of interplayer disputes with little to show for it but their own weariness and the smoldering resentment of the general populace, had decided they'd had enough of the social sphere. And so, four months before the Bungle incident, the archwizard Haakon (known in RL as Pavel Curtis, Xerox researcher and LambdaMOO's principal architect) formalized this decision in a document called "LambdaMOO Takes a New Direction," which he placed in the living room for all to see. In it, Haakon announced that the wizards from that day forth were pure technicians. From then on, they would make no decisions affecting the social life of the MOO, but only implement whatever decisions the community as a whole directed them to. From then on, it was decreed, LambdaMOO would just have to grow up and solve its problems on its own.
Faced with the task of inventing its own self-governance from scratch, the LambdaMOO population had so far done what any other loose, amorphous agglomeration of individuals would have done: they'd let it slide. But now the task took on new urgency. Since getting the wizards to toad Mr. Bungle (or to toad the likes of him in the future) required a convincing case that the cry for his head came from the community at large, then the community itself would have to be defined; and if the community was to be convincingly defined, then some form of social organization, no matter how rudimentary, would have to be settled on. And thus, as if against its will, the question of what to do about Mr. Bungle began to shape itself into a sort of referendum on the political future of the MOO. Arguments broke out on *social and elsewhere that had only superficially to do with Bungle (since everyone seemed to agree he was a cad) and everything to do with where the participants stood on LambdaMOO's crazy-quilty political map. Parliamentarian legalist types argued that unfortunately Bungle could not legitimately be toaded at all, since there were no explicit MOO rules against rape, or against just about anything else -- and the sooner such rules were established, they added, and maybe even a full-blown judiciary system complete with elected officials and prisons to enforce those rules, the better. Others, with a royalist streak in them, seemed to feel that Bungle's as-yet-unpunished outrage only proved this New Direction silliness had gone on long enough, and that it was high time the wizardocracy returned to the position of swift and decisive leadership their player class was born to.
And then there were what I'll call the technolibertarians. For them, MUD rapists were of course assholes, but the presence of assholes on the system was a technical inevitability, like noise on a phone line, and best dealt with not through repressive social disciplinary mechanisms but through the timely deployment of defensive software tools. Some asshole blasting violent, graphic language at you? Don't whine to the authorities about it -- hit the @gag command and said asshole's statements will be blocked from your screen (and only yours). It's simple, it's effective, and it censors no one.
But the Bungle case was rather hard on such arguments. For one thing, the extremely public nature of the living room meant that gagging would spare the victims only from witnessing their own violation, but not from having others witness it. You might want to argue that what those victims didn't directly experience couldn't hurt them, but consider how that wisdom would sound to a woman who'd been, say, fondled by strangers while passed out drunk in the middle of a party and you have a rough idea how it might go over with a crowd of hard-core MOOers. Consider, for another thing, that many of the biologically female participants in the Bungle debate had been around long enough to grow lethally weary of the gag-and-get- over-it school of virtual-rape counseling, with its fine line between empowering victims and holding them responsible for their own suffering, and its shrugging indifference to the window of pain between the moment the rape-text starts flowing and the moment a gag shuts it off. From the outset it was clear that the technolibertarians were going to have to tiptoe through this issue with care, and for the most part they did.
Yet no position was trickier to maintain than that of the MOO's resident anarchists. Like the technolibbers, the anarchists didn't care much for punishments or policies or power elites. Like them, they hoped the MOO could be a place where people interacted fulfillingly without the need for such things. But their high hopes were complicated, in general, by a somewhat less thoroughgoing faith in technology (Even if you can't tear down the master's house with the master's tools -- read a slogan written into one anarchist player's self-description -- it is a damned good place to start). And at present they were additionally complicated by the fact that the most vocal anarchists in the discussion were none other than exu, Kropotkin, and HortonWho, who wanted to see Mr. Bungle toaded as badly as anyone did.
Needless to say, a pro-death penalty platform is not an especially comfortable one for an anarchist to sit on, so these particular anarchists were now at great pains to sever the conceptual ties between toading and capital punishment. Toading, they insisted (almost convincingly), was much more closely analogous to banishment; it was a kind of turning of the communal back on the offending party, a collective action which, if carried out properly, was entirely consistent with anarchist models of community. And carrying it out properly meant first and foremost building a consensus around it -- a messy process for which there were no easy technocratic substitutes. It was going to take plenty of good old-fashioned, jawbone-intensive grassroots organizing.
So that when the time came, at 7 p.m. PST on the evening of the third day after the occurrence in the living room, to gather in emmeline's room for her proposed real-time open conclave, Kropotkin and exu were among the first to arrive. But this was hardly to be an anarchist-dominated affair, for the room was crowding rapidly with representatives of all the MOO's political stripes, and even a few wizards. Hagbard showed up, and Aurea and Quanto, Spaff, TomTraceback, Lithium and Bloof, ShermieRocko, Silver Surfer, MaoTseHedgehog, Toothpick -- the names piled up and the discussion gathered momentum under their weight. Arguments multiplied and mingled, players talked past and through each other, the textual clutter of utterances and gestures filled up the screen like thick cigar smoke. Peaking in number at around 30, this was one of the largest crowds that ever gathered in a single LambdaMOO chamber, and while emmeline had given her place a description that made it infinite in expanse and fluid in form, it now seemed anything but roomy. You could almost feel the claustrophobic air of the place, dank and overheated by virtual bodies, pressing against your skin.
I know you could because I too was there, in one of those pivotal accidents of personal history one always wants later to believe were approached with a properly solemn awareness of the moment's portent. Almost as invariably, of course, the truth is that one wanders into such occasions utterly without a clue, and so it was with me that night. Completely ignorant of any of the goings-on that had led to the meeting, I showed up mainly to see what the crowd was about, and though I observed the proceedings for a good while, I confess I found it hard to grasp what was going on. I was still the rankest of newbies then, my MOO legs still too unsteady to make the leaps of faith, logic, and empathy required to meet the spectacle on its own terms. I was fascinated by the concept of virtual rape, but I was even more so by the notion that anyone could take it altogether seriously.
In this, though, I found myself in a small and mostly silent minority, for the discussion that raged around me was of an almost unrelieved earnestness, bent it seemed on examining every last aspect and implication of Mr. Bungle's crime. There were the central questions, of course: thumbs up or down on Bungle's virtual existence? And if down, how then to insure that his toading was not just some isolated lynching but a first step toward shaping LambdaMOO into a legitimate community? Surrounding these, however, a tangle of weighty side issues proliferated. What, some wondered, was the real-life legal status of the offense? Could Bungle's university administrators punish him for sexual harassment? Could he be prosecuted under California state laws against obscene phone calls? Little enthusiasm was shown for pursuing either of these lines of action, which testifies both to the uniqueness of the crime and to the nimbleness with which the discussants were negotiating its idiosyncracies. Many were the casual references to Bungle's deed as simply "rape," but these in no way implied that the players had lost sight of all distinctions between the virtual and physical versions, or that they believed Bungle should be dealt with in the same way a real-life criminal would. He had committed a MOO crime, and his punishment, if any, would be meted out via the MOO.
On the other hand, little patience was shown toward any attempts to downplay the seriousness of what Mr. Bungle had done. When the affable HerkieCosmo proposed, more in the way of an hypothesis than an assertion, that "perhaps it's better to release...violent tendencies in a virtual environment rather than in real life," he was tut-tutted so swiftly and relentlessly that he withdrew the hypothesis altogether, apologizing humbly as he did so. Not that the assembly was averse to putting matters into a more philosophical perspective. "Where does the body end and the mind begin?" young Quastro asked, amid recurring attempts to fine-tune the differences between real and virtual violence. "Is not the mind a part of the body?" "In MOO, the body IS the mind," offered HerkieCosmo gamely, and not at all implausibly, demonstrating the ease with which very knotty metaphysical conundrums come undone in VR. The not- so-aptly named Obvious seemed to agree, arriving after sufficient consideration of the nature of Bungle's crime at the hardly novel yet now somehow newly resonant conjecture that "all reality might consist of ideas, who knows."
On these and other matters the anarchists, the libertarians, the legalists, the wizardists -- and the wizards - - all had their thoughtful say. But as the evening wore on and the talk grew more heated and more heady, it seemed increasingly clear that the vigorous intelligence being brought to bear on this swarm of issues wasn't going to result in anything remotely like resolution. The perspectives were just too varied, the meme-scape just too slippery. Again and again, arguments that looked at first to be heading in a decisive direction ended up chasing their own tails; and slowly, depressingly, a dusty haze of irrelevance gathered over the proceedings.
It was almost a relief, therefore, when midway through the evening Mr. Bungle himself, the living, breathing cause of all this talk, teleported into the room. Not that it was much of a surprise. Oddly enough, in the three days since his release from Iggy's cage, Bungle had returned more than once to wander the public spaces of LambdaMOO, walking willingly into one of the fiercest storms of ill will and invective ever to rain down on a player. He'd been taking it all with a curious and mostly silent passivity, and when challenged face to virtual face by both exu and the genderless elder statescharacter PatSoftly to defend himself on *social, he'd demurred, mumbling something about Christ and expiation. He was equally quiet now, and his reception was still uniformly cool. exu fixed an arctic stare on him -- no hate, no anger, no interest at all. Just...watching. Others were more actively unfriendly. "Asshole," spat Karl Porcupine, "creep." But the harshest of the MOO's hostility toward him had already been vented, and the attention he drew now was motivated more, it seemed, by the opportunity to probe the rapist's mind, to find out what made it tick and if possible how to get it to tick differently. In short, they wanted to know why he'd done it. So they asked him.
And Mr. Bungle thought about it. And as eddies of discussion and debate continued to swirl around him, he thought about it some more. And then he said this:
"I engaged in a bit of a psychological device that is called thought-polarization, the fact that this is not RL simply added to heighten the affect of the device. It was purely a sequence of events with no consequence on my RL existence."
They might have known. Stilted though its diction was, the gist of the answer was simple, and something many in the room had probably already surmised: Mr. Bungle was a psycho. Not, perhaps, in real life -- but then in real life it's possible for reasonable people to assume, as Bungle clearly did, that what transpires between word-costumed characters within the boundaries of a make-believe world is, if not mere play, then at most some kind of emotional laboratory experiment. Inside the MOO, however, such thinking marked a person as one of two basically subcompetent types. The first was the newbie, in which case the confusion was understandable, since there were few MOOers who had not, upon their first visits as anonymous "guest" characters, mistaken the place for a vast playpen in which they might act out their wildest fantasies without fear of censure. Only with time and the acquisition of a fixed character do players tend to make the critical passage from anonymity to pseudonymity, developing the concern for their character's reputation that marks the attainment of virtual adulthood. But while Mr. Bungle hadn't been around as long as most MOOers, he'd been around long enough to leave his newbie status behind, and his delusional statement therefore placed him among the second type: the sociopath.
And as there is but small percentage in arguing with a head case, the room's attention gradually abandoned Mr. Bungle and returned to the discussions that had previously occupied it. But if the debate had been edging toward ineffectuality before, Bungle's anticlimactic appearance had evidently robbed it of any forward motion whatsoever. What's more, from his lonely corner of the room Mr. Bungle kept issuing periodic expressions of a prickly sort of remorse, interlaced with sarcasm and belligerence, and though it was hard to tell if he wasn't still just conducting his experiments, some people thought his regret genuine enough that maybe he didn't deserve to be toaded after all. Logically, of course, discussion of the principal issues at hand didn't require unanimous belief that Bungle was an irredeemable bastard, but now that cracks were showing in that unanimity, the last of the meeting's fervor seemed to be draining out through them.
People started drifting away. Mr. Bungle left first, then others followed -- one by one, in twos and threes, hugging friends and waving goodnight. By 9:45 only a handful remained, and the great debate had wound down into casual conversation, the melancholy remains of another fruitless good idea. The arguments had been well-honed, certainly, and perhaps might prove useful in some as-yet-unclear long run. But at this point what seemed clear was that emmeline's meeting had died, at last, and without any practical results to mark its passing.
It was also at this point, most likely, that TomTraceback reached his decision. TomTraceback was a wizard, a taciturn sort of fellow who'd sat brooding on the sidelines all evening. He hadn't said a lot, but what he had said, there and elsewhere, indicated that he took the crime committed against exu and Moondreamer very seriously, and that he felt no particular compassion towards the character who had committed it. But on the other hand he had made it equally plain that he took the elimination of a fellow player just as seriously, and moreover that he had no desire to return to the days of wizardly intervention. It must have been difficult, therefore, to reconcile the conflicting impulses churning within him at that moment. In fact, it was probably impossible, for though he did tend to believe that the consensus on *social was sufficient proof of the MOO's desire to see capital justice done in the Bungle case, he was also well aware that under the present order of things nothing but his own conscience could tell him, ultimately, whether to ratify that consensus or not. As much as he would have liked to make himself an instrument of the MOO's collective will, therefore, there was no escaping the fact that he must in the final analysis either act alone or not act at all.
So TomTraceback acted alone.
He told the lingering few players in the room that he had to go, and then he went. It was a minute or two before ten. He did it quietly and he did it privately, but all anyone had to do to know he'd done it was to type the @who command, which was normally what you typed if you wanted to know a player's present location and the time he last logged in. But if you had run a @who on Mr. Bungle not too long after TomTraceback left emmeline's room, the database would have told you something different.
Mr. Bungle, it would have said, is not the name of any player.
The date, as it happened, was April Fool's Day, but this was no joke: Mr. Bungle was truly dead and truly gone.
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They say that LambdaMOO wasn't really the same after Mr. Bungle's toading. They say as well that nothing really changed. And though it skirts the fuzziest of dream-logics to say that both these statements are true, the MOO is just the sort of fuzzy, dreamlike place in which such contradictions thrive.
Certainly the Bungle Affair marked the end of LambdaMOO's brief epoch of rudderless social drift. The rash of public-spiritedness engendered by the events might alone have led in time to some more formal system of communal self-definition, but in the end it was the archwizard Haakon who made sure of it. Away on business for the duration of the episode, Haakon returned to find its wreckage strewn across the tiny universe he'd set in motion. The death of a player, the trauma of several others, and the nerve- wracked complaints of his colleague TomTraceback presented themselves to his concerned and astonished attention, and he resolved to see if he couldn't learn some lesson from it all. For the better part of a day he puzzled over the record of events and arguments left in *social, then he sat pondering the chaotically evolving shape of his creation, and at the day's end he descended once again into the social arena of the MOO with another history-altering proclamation.
It was to be his last, for what he now decreed was the final, missing piece of the New Direction. In a few days, Haakon announced, he would build into the database a system of petitions and ballots whereby anyone could put to popular vote any social scheme requiring wizardly powers for its implementation, with the results of the vote to be binding on the wizards. At last and for good, the awkward gap between the will of the players and the efficacy of the technicians would be closed. And though some anarchists grumbled about the irony of Haakon's dictatorially imposing universal suffrage on an unconsulted populace, in general the citizens of LambdaMOO seemed to find it hard to fault a system more purely democratic than any that could ever exist in real life. A few months and a dozen ballot measures later, widespread participation in the new regime had already produced a small arsenal of mechanisms for dealing with the types of violence that called the system into being. MOO residents now had access to a @boot command, for instance, with which to summarily eject berserker "guest" characters. And players could bring suit against one another through an ad hoc mediation system in which mutually agreed-upon judges had at their disposition the full range of wizardly punishments -- up to and including the capital.
Yet the continued dependence on extermination as the ultimate keeper of the peace suggested that this new MOO order was perhaps not built on the most solid of foundations. For if life on LambdaMOO began to acquire more coherence in the wake of the toading, death retained all the fuzziness of pre-Bungle days. This truth was rather dramatically borne out, not too many days after Bungle departed, by the arrival of a strange new character named Dr. Jest. There was a forceful eccentricity to the newcomer's manner, but the oddest thing about his style was its striking yet unnameable familiarity. And when he developed the annoying habit of stuffing fellow players into a jar containing a tiny simulacrum of a certain deceased rapist, the source of this familiarity became obvious:
Mr. Bungle had risen from the grave.
In itself, Bungle's reincarnation as Dr. Jest was a remarkable turn of events, but perhaps even more remarkable was the utter lack of amazement with which the LambdaMOO public took note of it. To be sure, many residents were appalled by the brazenness of Bungle's return. In fact, one of the first petitions circulated under the new voting system was a request for Dr. Jest's toading that almost immediately gathered several dozen signatures (but failed in the end to reach ballot status). Yet few were unaware of the ease with which the toad proscription could be circumvented -- all the toadee had to do (all the ur- Bungle at NYU presumably had done) was to go to the minor hassle of acquiring a new Internet account, and LambdaMOO's character registration program would then simply treat the known felon as an entirely new and innocent person. Nor was this ease necessarily understood to represent a failure of toading's social disciplinary function. On the contrary, it only underlined the truism (repeated many times throughout the debate over Mr. Bungle's fate) that his punishment, ultimately, had been no more or less symbolic than his crime.
What was surprising, however, was that Mr. Bungle/Dr. Jest appeared to have taken the symbolism to heart. Dark themes still obsessed him -- the objects he created gave off wafts of Nazi imagery and medical torture -- but he no longer radiated the aggressively antisocial vibes he had before. He was a lot less unpleasant to look at (the outrageously seedy clown description had been replaced by that of a mildly creepy but actually rather natty young man, with blue eyes...suggestive of conspiracy, untamed eroticism and perhaps a sense of understanding of the future), and aside from the occasional jar-stuffing incident, he was also a lot less dangerous to be around. It seemed obvious, at least to me, that he'd undergone some sort of personal transformation in the days since I'd first glimpsed him back in emmeline's crowded room -- nothing radical maybe, but powerful nonetheless, and resonant enough with my own experience, I felt, that it might be more than professionally interesting to talk with him, and perhaps compare notes.
For I too was undergoing a transformation in the aftermath of that night in emmeline's -- and was increasingly uncertain what to make of it. As I pursued my runaway fascination with the discussion I had heard there, as I pored over the *social debate and got to know exu and some of the other victims and witnesses, I could feel my newbie consciousness falling away from me. Where before I'd found it hard to take virtual rape seriously, I now was finding it difficult to remember how I could ever not have taken it seriously. I was proud to have arrived at this perspective -- it felt like an exotic sort of achievement, and it definitely made my ongoing experience of the MOO a richer one.
But it was also having some unsettling effects on the way I looked at the rest of the world. Sometimes, for instance, it grew difficult for me to understand why RL society classifies RL rape alongside crimes against person or property. Since rape can occur without any physical pain or damage, I found myself reasoning, then it must be classed as a crime against the mind -- more intimately and deeply hurtful, to be sure, than cross burnings, wolf whistles, and virtual rape, but undeniably located on the same conceptual continuum. I did not, however, conclude as a result that rapists were protected in any fashion by the First Amendment. Quite the opposite, in fact: the more seriously I took the notion of virtual rape, the less seriously I was able to take the tidy division of the world into the symbolic and the real that underlies the very notion of freedom of speech.
Let me assure you, though, that I did not at the time adopt these thoughts as full-fledged arguments, nor am I now presenting them as such. I offer them, rather, as a picture of the sort of mind-set that my initial encounters with a virtual world inspired in me. I offer them also, therefore, as a kind of prophecy. For whatever else these thoughts were telling me, I have come to hear in them an announcement of the final stages of our decades-long passage into the Information Age, a paradigm shift that the classic liberal firewall between word and deed (itself a product of an earlier paradigm shift commonly known as the Enlightenment) is not likely to survive intact. After all, anyone the least bit familiar with the workings of the new era's definitive technology, the computer, knows that it operates on a principle impracticably difficult to distinguish from the pre-Enlightenment principle of the magic word: the commands you type into a computer are a kind of speech that doesn't so much communicate as make things happen, directly and ineluctably, the same way pulling a trigger does. They are incantations, in other words, and anyone at all attuned to the technosocial megatrends of the moment -- from the growing dependence of economies on the global flow of intensely fetishized words and numbers to the burgeoning ability of bioengineers to speak the spells written in the four-letter text of DNA -- knows that the logic of the incantation is rapidly permeating the fabric of our lives.
And it was precisely this logic, I was beginning to understand, that provided whatever real magic LambdaMOO had to offer -- not the fictive trappings of voodoo and shapeshifting and wizardry, but the conflation of speech and act that's inevitable in any computer-mediated world, be it Lambda or the increasingly wired world at large. This was dangerous magic, to be sure, a potential threat -- if misconstrued or misapplied -- to our always precarious freedoms of expression, and as someone who lives by his words I dared not take the threat lightly. And yet, on the other hand, I could no longer convince myself that our wishful insulation of language from the realm of action had ever been anything but a valuable kludge, a philosophically imperfect stopgap against oppression that would just have to do till something truer and more elegant came along.
Was I wrong to think this truer, more elegant thing might be found on LambdaMOO? I did not know. I continued, in my now and then visits, to seek it there, sensing its presence just below the surface of every interaction, yet increasingly I sensed as well that if I really wanted to see what lay beneath those surfaces -- to glimpse unveiled whatever there was of genuine historical novelty in VR's slippery social and philosophical dynamics -- I was going to have to radically deepen my acquaintance with the MOO somehow.
For a time I considered the possibility, as I said, that discussing with Dr. Jest our shared experience of the workings of the place might be a step towards just such a breakthrough. But when that notion first occurred to me, I still felt somewhat intimidated by his lingering criminal aura, and I hemmed and hawed a good long time before finally resolving to drop him MOO-mail suggesting we get together. By then it appeared to be too late. For reasons known only to himself, Dr. Jest had stopped logging in. Maybe he'd grown bored with the MOO. Maybe the loneliness of ostracism had gotten to him. Maybe a psycho whim had carried him far away or maybe he'd quietly acquired a third character and started life over with a cleaner slate.
Wherever he'd gone, though, he left behind the room he'd created for himself -- a treehouse tastefully decorated with rare-book shelves, an operating table, and a life-size William S. Burroughs doll -- and he left it unlocked. So I took to checking in there occasionally, heading out of my own cozy nook (inside a TV set inside the little red hotel inside the Monopoly board inside the dining room of LambdaMOO) and teleporting on over to the treehouse, where the room description always told me Dr. Jest was present but asleep, in the conventional depiction for disconnected characters. The not-quite-emptiness of the abandoned room invariably instilled in me an uncomfortable mix of melancholy and the creeps, and I would stick around only on the off chance that Dr. Jest might wake up, say hello, and share his understanding of the future with me.
It happens, in fact, that Dr. Jest did eventually rise again from his epic sleep. But what wisdom he had to offer on that occasion I couldn't tell you, for I had given up the habit of my skittish stakeouts by then. Some final transformation had come over me between visits to that lonely place: the complex magic of the MOO grew gradually to interest me less and less as a way of understanding the future and more and more as a way of living the present, until one day I teleported home from Dr. Jest's treehouse for the last time, determined to wait no longer for a consultation with my fellow doctor to give me what I wanted from the MOO, but to wrest it instead from the very heart of the place. I was resolved now, in other words, to make a life there -- to loosen for a while the RL ties that kept me still a sort of tourist on the MOO and to give in, body and soul, to the same powerful gravity that kept so many other MOOers logged on day after day and for hours at a time.
And in the end that's just what I did, so that for a brief, unforgettable season the buzzing haze of VR came at last to envelop my existence: my small daily dramas were absorbed into the MOO's teeming reservoir of small daily dramas, my labors were directed as much toward the ongoing construction of that virtual world as toward the quotidian maintenance of my stake in the material one, and my days were swept by the same broad currents of MOO history that gave rise to the Bungle Affair and the momentous social changes that followed on it.
That is all quite another story, of course. Yet as I said before, it begins where Mr. Bungle's ends, and there remains now only a very little of his to tell. Dr. Jest did finally reawaken, it's true, one late-December day -- but he didn't even make it to January before he decided, for no apparent reason but old times' sake, to go on a late-night Bungle-grade rampage through the living room, thus all but formally requesting to be hauled before an official mediator and toaded with a vengeance. The new MOO polity promptly obliged, and I, still busily contriving to loosen those RL ties in preparation for my full-time residency, missed by days my last chance to hear the doctor's story from his own virtual mouth.
But this was no great loss, I suppose, for after all what more could I have learned? Dr. Jest's relapse into mindless digital violence, mocking as it did my wishful projection of hard-earned wisdom onto him, was lesson enough, driving home what Bungle's story in its fullest implications should have already taught me by then: that nothing in the MOO was ever quite what one imagined it to be.
I would still have to learn this lesson many times over, of course. I'd learn it again when on the eve of my immersion in VR two separate and credible sources revealed to me that the virtual psychosis of Mr. Bungle had been even starker than anyone guessed: that the Bungle account had been the more or less communal property of an entire NYU dorm floor, that the young man at the keyboard on the evening of the rape had acted not alone but surrounded by fellow students calling out suggestions and encouragement, that conceivably none of those people were speaking for Bungle when he showed up in emmeline's room to answer for the crime, that Dr. Jest himself, thought commonly to have reincarnated the whole Bungle and nothing but the Bungle, in fact embodied just one member of the original mob -- just one scattered piece of a self more irreparably fragmented than any RL multiple personality could ever fear to be.
I don't know exactly how often it occurred to me, in the VR-saturated months to follow, that other such shards of Mr. Bungle's shattered identity might lurk among the ethereal population I moved through on a daily basis. But if they were there they never made themselves known, and I certainly never tried to sniff them out. It was far too late for that: the time had come for me to live in LambdaMOO, and I no longer sought the company of ghosts.