Want to be a murderer? suit yourself Want to restore order? Maybe you should become a cop, or try to form a country with a set of laws. youll need an army of soldiers and war with other hopefuls will probably ensue. Want to sell cheesesticks? go right ahead Want to organise a tournament of nutcases with guns running around an arena trying to kill each other a'la UT? Theres no reason why it couldnt be done without the rules coded into the game. Could an entirely player-driven virtual community "stabilise" - ie order emerge in a situation where there are no hard rules? No online game ive played has come close to achieving this, they are either total chaos, or incredibly strict & limiting rules. In reality, human beings have achieved a sense of stability. . ordered chaos.. But could it be achieved online where death (and life) is given far less value?

While it does have some rules, EVE online is a good example of what you speak of. When I played, the player base mostly regulated itself. Very interesting concepts, the game just seems to drole on too much for my tastes though.

Kraland (a french browser-based MMORPG) succeeds in this: player-run nations develop, elect their representatives or are crushed under tyrants, extract ore and food and turn it into buildings, vehicles, weapons and other things, outlaw certain products, raise tax and pay their armies and bureaucracy. The players themselves can be anything from the classic warrior to a terrorist to a student to a prostitute to a negociator to a drug dealer or a smuggler, and so on.

Of course, given the rules, the game might just as well be utter chaos. However, all the people roleplay (and the forums for that game are truly impressive to behold), and thus the game works as one would expect a real fantasy world to work.

Hey yes I have played EVE - it gets a little closer to what I'm thinking. . but it still has so many rules, etc. restricting gameplay. - corporation structures are dictated by the models they have in place rather than created simply in the minds of the players.

This "Kraland" sounds like its in the right direction too - although I wonder about things like "outlawed" items - how is this controlled? - In my idea, there would be no built-in control, but rather player-enforced control & methods to search goods etc. - Possibly 'programmable' NPCs to perform these tasks for you - ie hired help.

SecondLife is a virtual world thats being created by its users.

A user can actually open shops, design, build, script and sell items, and also buy and rent land.

I wouldn't call it a 'game' though, its more of a 3D chat room. Its quite an achievement though.

To your question:
Could an entirely player-driven virtual community "stabilise" - ie order emerge in a situation where there are no hard rules?

I think its heading that way

Quote:

Original post by nothing void This "Kraland" sounds like its in the right direction too - although I wonder about things like "outlawed" items - how is this controlled?

It's quite simple: you can see what people around you do (depends on your character's perceptiveness). For instance, you would not want to build a bomb or advertise drugs in an inn where many people are present - one of them is bound to report you. IIRC, you can also look at someone's inventory if they accept, and beat them into submission if they don't.

Reality is that gamers don't want to police themselves. There are too many people who realize that there aren't any real repurcussions for doing the wrong thing. In UO it ended up with almost as many people doing the bad things as were trying to stop them, commonly more. Also, the in-game repurcussions aren't "Your character is dead or otherwise permanently out of the picture", it's "go back to your start point". Just not enough reason to not do the wrong thing in MMOGs... other than the fact that nobody wants to play games where griefing has little or no penalty.

There was an escapist magazine issue on griefing. One article dealt with Eve and policing:

Escapist mag issue 19

It's a good read.

[Edited by - Dunam on July 10, 2006 5:22:01 AM]

One game that comes to mind is The World, but that was entirely fictional. There was no objective set, and no real rules of conduct. But a group of players sort of formed their own police group called the Crimson Knights.

I don't know if a game like this could stabilize or not. Like I said, The World is entirely fictional. Even in that story, it got a bit unstable.

That said, if anyone wants to try writing The World, let me know!

I think the danger is that stability tends to be safe, but boring. Computer games are safe in all ways, except that they can cost you time and effort. So the only reason you would want stability is so that it isn't a time/effort waster. For the rest, I think you want to see unstability, havoc, large scale conflict. If it isn't larger than life, I'll settle for life.