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

<snip> 

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...

When something has value, the government finds a way to tax it.  And with SOE and others selling virtual items, they are assigning real world value to virtual property. 

 We are on the slippery side of the slope now, so I hope your sled has hand rails.

Originally posted by streea

 

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...

Now dont get me Wrong things should change but the Devs telling us Fudge you. Your just a Fourm Whore, Youl be gone in a few months anyways (Rusty, FLS, Im looking at you) is total crap.

That said NGE is just as bad as Deleberatly wipeing the srevers after several years and saying it Ballanced it out for New people.

The gaming industry generates more money than the movie industry.  Government regulation is inevitable - UNLESS the game industry starts to regulate itself.

The industry needs to be preemptive.

The posters above citing SOE's shenanigans I can agree with.  Which ties into this quote from near the end of the article:

If developers no longer have an artistic say in the world and experiences they play, they are no longer composers, just musicians, and that’s not what they signed up for.

This works both ways.  The Internet has changed the nature of the audience, and journalists and pundits are feeling the heat as well.  It's no longer a one way conversation, from few to many.  MMOs make it a two way street.  If developers are such prima donnas that they don't realize that the fundamental nature of gaming has change with the MMO, they should get out of the MMO business and go back to designing single player games and forget about MMOs.  Because the nature of the MMO is, as Raph Koster has pointed out before, that when you launch, you have in essence given away your ownership.  You are subject to feedback, and as some developers have discovered (I'm talking to the arrogant assclowns of SWG in particular here) the feeback can be brutal.  The most damaging is when the players you thought were just passive consumers you can bully around hit the cancel button en masse and suddenly you're out of a job.

When you make massive changes to a virtual world, some of the people paying your salary may take umbrage and decide that your game is not what they signed up for and leave you for someone else's vision of online fun.

MMOs are in a real sense a collaboration of the visions of both the developers and the players, and the sooner developers get over the notion that the players should shut up and accept was is given to them, and realize that an MMO world is to an extent a collaboration between stakeholders in the enterpirse, they happier they'll be in the long run.

Bartle may have been one of the first to try to analyze MMOGs in a scholarly manner, but he's no genius.  Most of his theories have not really panned out, and his player-personalities model is just flat-out wrong.

This latest attempt to remain relevant is sad, as is shown by the fact that some of the questions posed in this very thread are far more relevant and realistic than anything he discussed at that conference.

I can see where It may be beneficial for government or other agencies to  have some forum in games

certain news I would like to know about  as in the familiar red banner   warning me of severe weather that may effect me,,  or other  news of critical importance like 911 

in certain games I can even see government agencies having vertual buildings    a vertual white house

or vertual army recruiting center ,  or a presidential  campaign office

and lastly  in many games developers NEED to be forced to listen to players because they start to build games with blinders on and actually make a WORSE product  the first game that comes to mind is  STAR WARS GALAXIES  and their "new game expirence" and space expansion that alienated millions of players

another is SEED  that people were yelling and screaming that the beta game was a wreck and was far from release,, they released it anyway and it was stillborn       was a great premise  but definatly needed more than 15 minutes of development.

personally I think that every company involved in video games(worldwide),be it EA,Acclaim,PunkBuster,GameGuard or any others, should have official goverment rules stating:

1.they are required to ask for detailed players feedback every month.As incentive for players to provide that feedback, each company would be required to pay each player $50/month

2.are required to respond to each and every customer message within 48 hours of receiving this message(weekends included)

3.if any company declares being able to fix all reported bugs within 24-48 hours of the reports, that company is required to fulfill that promise, without any excuses, without any complaints and without arrogance.And also publicly recognize they screwed up in the first place

The above items are specifically addressed to Acclaim and GameGuard

4.all companies are required to provide, every 2 month, on their respective games forums, a complete report of all the issues fixed during that span, of all the customers concerns responded.If for some reason a customer didn't receive a response within the agreed timeframe,provide a full and detailed explanation of the why, and what is done for this delay to never occur

5.if technical problems,game devs are required to provide a complete explanation with a full timeline of those technical problems

Originally posted by SioBabble

The posters above citing SOE's shenanigans I can agree with.  Which ties into this quote from near the end of the article:

If developers no longer have an artistic say in the world and experiences they play, they are no longer composers, just musicians, and that’s not what they signed up for.

This works both ways.  The Internet has changed the nature of the audience, and journalists and pundits are feeling the heat as well.  It's no longer a one way conversation, from few to many.  MMOs make it a two way street.  If developers are such prima donnas that they don't realize that the fundamental nature of gaming has change with the MMO, they should get out of the MMO business and go back to designing single player games and forget about MMOs.  Because the nature of the MMO is, as Raph Koster has pointed out before, that when you launch, you have in essence given away your ownership.  You are subject to feedback, and as some developers have discovered (I'm talking to the arrogant assclowns of SWG in particular here) the feeback can be brutal.  The most damaging is when the players you thought were just passive consumers you can bully around hit the cancel button en masse and suddenly you're out of a job.

When you make massive changes to a virtual world, some of the people paying your salary may take umbrage and decide that your game is not what they signed up for and leave you for someone else's vision of online fun.

MMOs are in a real sense a collaboration of the visions of both the developers and the players, and the sooner developers get over the notion that the players should shut up and accept was is given to them, and realize that an MMO world is to an extent a collaboration between stakeholders in the enterpirse, they happier they'll be in the long run.

But what really caught my attention was that same quote...

"If developers no longer have an artistic say in the world and experiences they play, they are no longer composers, just musicians, and that’s not what they signed up for."

I think it's only fair to remind those developers that we're not just gamers either (or sheep for that matter), but denizens of an online society. Somewhere there has to be some middleground on this subject.

Originally posted by brenth

I can see where It may be beneficial for government or other agencies to  have some forum in games

certain news I would like to know about  as in the familiar red banner   warning me of severe weather that may effect me,,  or other  news of critical importance like 911 

in certain games I can even see government agencies having vertual buildings    a vertual white house

or vertual army recruiting center ,  or a presidential  campaign office

 

and lastly  in many games developers NEED to be forced to listen to players because they start to build games with blinders on and actually make a WORSE product  the first game that comes to mind is  STAR WARS GALAXIES  and their "new game expirence" and space expansion that alienated millions of players

another is SEED  that people were yelling and screaming that the beta game was a wreck and was far from release,, they released it anyway and it was stillborn       was a great premise  but definatly needed more than 15 minutes of development.

While some might consider me a liberal, and therefore just totally with anyone who wants to bring the heavy hand of government down to anyone who has slighted me, the fact is that government regulation should be a last resort.  There are cases where it is clearly needed (see the ongoing financial industry meltdown) but as often as not the way government regulation is set up, the details of it, not the concept, is carefully crafted to give some economic players advantages under the cover of an ideal.  Environmental regulations come to mind as an example of how good, important impulses are switch, surreptitiously in the detail, into something that is only margnially beneficial to the common good and squewed into private gain.

My hope is that the big MMO companies can learn from their mistakes, although that hope is, I'll admit, pretty vain considering how chowderheaded Smedley and his gang of bags of hammers have behaved.

my government doesn't give a toss about the MMO's or the gaming industry.  developers dont get tax cuts here (and have been calling for it for years) and the government barely touches the gaming industry.  one thing that needs to be decided and fast is who controls said virtual world.  no way is some American Government agency gonna ban my account cus i said some things on an EU based game.

The area where government WILL get involved is in the area of virtual property rights, because one of government's principle functions is the demarcation and adjudication of property disputes.  This has already been litigated outside the US and the arguments are compelling that virtual property, when exchanged for real money, become fodder for litigation...or binding arbitration, which is the next best thing.

Once SOE starts selling virtual vorpal swords, then nerfs them, as the asshats always do, they're going to be in a world of hurt because we're dealing with selling particular items for real money, and that attracts attention.

Smedley had better watch his back on this.  He'll find himself not just in civil court, but facing criminal fraud charges if he pulls a stunt like the NGE again that destroys the value of virtual property he's sold to people.

This is my question...

If the government decided that we own our ingame stuff, would it then be against most EULAs to sell it for real cash?  And would they start taxing ingame money?