General Discussion

While attending the 2008 Indie MMO Game Developers Conference, Community Manager Laura Genender had the opportunity to hear Dr. Richard Bartle speak on the relationship between online games and governments; exploring both real life situations and hypothetical outcomes that may be on the horizon.

The first computer game I ever played was Nibbles, the 1991 MS-DOS version of Worm and Hustle published by CLOAD.  In Nibbles, I played a yellow snake that lived in a world of bright blue.  I needed to survive on a meager diet of numbers, overcoming environmental obstacles such as walls and my own body.  If you had told me then, as I eagerly wove my yellow snake toward the delicious number ‘14’, that video game developers would one day be discussing the possibilities of government interference in virtual worlds…well, I would have called you crazy.  What use could kings and presidents have for my lowly number ‘14’?

But this past weekend, I found myself seated at a roughly square shaped table, listening to Dr. Richard Bartle discuss possible scenarios of government regulations and controversies over MMOs.  Bartle, who co-wrote the first MUD back in 1978, has been making games since before Nibbles was a gleam in a developer’s eye.  As a man who’s been at the helm since the birth of persistent online environments, Bartle has a lion’s share of ideas and understandings about how this industry works.

As MMOs gain more popularity, with big-ticket titles like World of Warcraft, the government is starting to notice the issues and possible profits that surround our online worlds.  Bartle first presented a scenario that is not just a “what if”, but a “is happening” across the seas in China.

Read more here.

There is already government interference in online games here in the west.  In Europe players are taxed on incoming data that originates from outside the European Union, which was and is a direct grab at gamers wallets in an attempt to keep Europeans buying from Europe and not from the states or further abroad, as well as nicely rounding off the treasuries of the governments concerned.

Another issue of course is that of people from closed countries being able to converse freely with players from open countries which scares the living crap out of many governments.  With millions of players it becomes almost impossible to keep real-time tabs on them all so you can bet that secret services from here to China are working on it.  God forbid if someone from Tibet for instance sends a private tell to a friend in the west on WoW and gives them the full scoop on what is happening over there, the Chinese government would be and probably are having kittens.  That aside MMO's are the ideal platform for international espionage and the passing of secrets, especially the small and lesser known MMO's.  They are also an ideal platform for terrorists to pass messages to each other and all of this worries governments a great deal.  They have spent billions over the years trying to keep people from the four corners of the world apart and here we are, meeting up daily and discussing everything from international politics to the evenings raid.

Now, the passage above was meant to point out the absolute paranoia that exists in government bodies today as there are much easier ways to pass secrets and much more secure ways than MMO's.  It is still however there and like a mountain attracts climbers just by being there so do MMO's attract the nut jobs in government for the same reason.  Governments aside we are also seeing developers and publishers regulating the web with segregated servers, IP blocks, CC blocks etc. in order to keep players within their own regions and this, although a different discussion altogether is just as bad, it's still censorship of the internet and that is bad for freedom everywhere.

Honestly, I find the fact that MMOs and the government are slowly moving closer together as a bad and scary thing. Governments are extremely immature, paranoid and in most cases, uneducated about MMOs (they're busy running countries, I'd be a bit concerned if they were familiar with what patch X brought to game Y last week!). It's bad enough that our lives are filled with regulations up the wazoo and depression/fear controlling the news. MMOs have always been a way for people to relax and/or escape the bad things in their lives.

At the same time though, players are wanting to step away from the fantasy and get a bit more "reality" in their MMOs. Or at least not as many elves and orcs. So there's a good chance that this trend will continue to bring reality and MMOs closer and closer together until well... I'd guess that either people will start "putting up" with the heavy fantasy or just ignoring the real-life ads/propaganda/etc.

Originally posted by eric1000

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Now, the passage above was meant to point out the absolute paranoia that exists in government bodies today as there are much easier ways to pass secrets and much more secure ways than MMO's.  It is still however there and like a mountain attracts climbers just by being there so do MMO's attract the nut jobs in government for the same reason.  Governments aside we are also seeing developers and publishers regulating the web with segregated servers, IP blocks, CC blocks etc. in order to keep players within their own regions and this, although a different discussion altogether is just as bad, it's still censorship of the internet and that is bad for freedom everywhere.

I dont know about there being easier ways to pass information. While you can,t send documents (as far as I know) in an MMO, with the number of cyber cafes world wide, and the ability to steal accounts, sending a whisper to a foreign agent would be pretty easy.

I think it is rather naive of game developers to think that the government would give them a choice of what political ads to run, when mainstream media is not allowed that choice.  If the media HAD a choice about which ads to run, do you think there ever would have been a Republican candidate for any office in the last 30 years?!

RIP Charleton Heston:  "You can have my gun when you pry it from my cold dead fingers, you damn dirty apes!" or something like that ;)

To me, this brings up one topic that has nagged me for awhile. I am very active at emailing and calling my representatives when I see something that should or should not go through (at least, that is how I feel about it). Governments in a democratic or open society can only do what their people will allow them to do. Put enough political pressure (ie emails, calls, marches, protests) on an official and they will back down, go forward with, or rethink their strategy (depending on what the masses are saying). It seems that across the globe, people feel disenfranchised.

Speak out when you know something is wrong. Tell your officials you will not tolerate it and ask everyone within earshot to talk to their politicians too.

On another note, I am not sure that I care about in game advertising IF it is on a billboard (as NCSoft suggested with CoH) or blended in with the environment (on a wall, glass, whatever).

I love the idea about PSAs.

I'd like a bit of regulation, because I'm sick of the scams, wholesale redesigns, and bait and switch that is in this industry: things that the industry cannot and will not regulate on its own.  With digital distribution, I expect the scams to become worse.

The truth is, the MMORPG publishers have us over a barrel, because the software costs us so much up front, and we have absolutely no rights to the software we own, without access to the service we don't own.  The problem is that the MMORPG publishers can turn the things we own into anything they want; including junk we would never want in the first place.  And since they won't allow us to get our money back from that initial software purchse, they have no real incentive to practice restraint.

Originally posted by Beatnik59

I'd like a bit of regulation, because I'm sick of the scams, wholesale redesigns, and bait and switch that is in this industry: things that the industry cannot and will not regulate on its own.  With digital distribution, I expect the scams to become worse.

The truth is, the MMORPG publishers have us over a barrel, because the software costs us so much up front, and we have absolutely no rights to the software we own, without access to the service we don't own.  The problem is that the MMORPG publishers can turn the things we own into anything they want; including junk we would never want in the first place.  And since they won't allow us to get our money back from that initial software purchse, they have no real incentive to practice restraint.

I agree completely, I just don't think the government should be the one to regulate it. Or at least, IF the government regulates it, they set aside a little bit of money and start up a division of like 5-10 people who monitor it and take complaints and file stuff and such.

Now we just need to find some sort of middle-ground that gives players some legal rights/control over their character/account/etc without leaving the industry open to gold farmers/cheaters/etc who would take advantage of such a system...