6 ms·

Taking lessons from the rise and fall of divinity in online games (2014)

58 points by dnetesn 8y ago

robotsquidward 8y ago
Awesome article. Can't help but think of South Park's infamous WoW episode.
Berunto 8y ago
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- ChrisSD 8y ago
  Amazingly my browser is capable of showing me my reading progress and without sending cookies to anyone.
rlyshw 8y ago
My friend and I were online “gods” back around 2012 when we ran a Minecraft server with a small-but-dedicated player base. Gods in online communities aren’t totally lost, they’ve just reduced in scope to smaller private servers in more niche games.
- pavel_lishin 8y ago
  Godhood just doesn't scale. Even the article notes this: > Community users couldn’t turn to the wizards; they had grown tired of settling social arguments in the large world, and forced players to come to collective agreement before they would mete our justice. Enough players wanted to “toad” Mr. Bungle—a variation on the Finger of Death—to get the superpowers who ran the servers’ attention, and the sentence was meekly carried out.
  - astrobe_ 8y ago
    However the Godhood system is much more educational than programmatically enforcing rules (PK/PvP zones or ToS and ban threars). I have two examples in mind: Riot implemented a player tribunal in League Of Legends. Players would examine chat logs to judge verbal abuse and misconduct cases. Eventually a Riot employee would decide on the punishment (warning or temporary or permanent ban). I don't know if this system is still in place, but at the time they reported good results and players saw it as an improvement. A French high-school is using Minetest (a FOSS Minecraft) to run a student-driven server. The "administrator" chose to let the player-students do their own thing with as little intervention as possible. The admin even created a reward system granting privileges (fly, ban) up to full admin powers (that is, a god). They saw player-students create a laws, then a police and then a tribunal. For sure those kids got a better understanding of the society they live in. In one case, the admin invited his colleagues to introduce them to the tool/game. Those people were clueless and apparently thought that because they were teachers, they were above the rules. The student-players banned them. Games being an entertainment-only device is a severe misconception. Online interaction in an MMO or a MOBA is often a form of social training. One role of games is to allow to experiment with dangerous things safely. The pseudonymous online society allows people to test different behaviors on others, and I believe that some of the "toxicity" comes from that. So Godhood is a way for people to experiment with the exercise of power. And as the article concludes, "it ain't that fun after all". I believe that if more people could have the chance to come to that conclusion, that being able to do anything is not fun, it would be a significant contribution to humanity I believe. Because it seems to me that too many people are driven by the delusion of wealth and power.
    - pavel_lishin 8y ago
      This is excellent. Thanks for sharing! It seems like a very close parallel to the adage of "my kids will wait tables for a living at least once", to teach humility, respect and empathy. I'm super stoked that students ran their own in-game government, where no citizen was above the law. I'm curious what rules the teachers ran afoul of.
pavel_lishin 8y ago
> An admin named Lorry ruled over of the multi-user dungeon MIST in the mid-80s. “I am the law!” he would announce, killing 1 in 10 players on his server in a digital plague. His legendary manifesto preached the virtues of arrogance, ego, and random destruction—and somehow brought his game active converts. Anyone happen to have a copy of this manifesto? The page links to a 404, and archive.org only has a copy from 2016 - which is a 404 as well.
- stromgarde 8y ago
  http://www.lysator.liu.se/mud/mudgod.html http://www.lysator.liu.se/mud/mudgod.html It was quite an inspiration to the admins of the MUDs I played back in the mid to late 90's.
- zimpenfish 8y ago
  > An admin named Lorry [] preached the virtues of arrogance, ego, and random destruction I was wondering if that was the same "Lorry" as the (in)famous UK ISP "Lorry" and, yep, it's him. Looks like the article just missed the trailing 'l' off the URL (linked via his Wikipedia page) -> http://arch-wizard.com/confessions.html http://arch-wizard.com/confessions.html
Steltek 8y ago
The article's "Egor" operated in a world with PvP. If the article is implying that you need a government (society, community) to solve these problems, then you must allow PvP as player governments need state sponsored violence in some form. Humanity hasn't figured out any other way (yet). Except many modern games went the other way: revoking PvP and imposing more rules from above. Early Ultima Online had the makings of the most scalable player-driven/secular solution: karma (reputation). It operated on simple rules to identify good guys and bad guys so it couldn't capture all forms of griefing but it laid out a way for players to identify and police themselves without "Gods" (for the most part). Serial Player Killers (PKs) would earn negative reputation and titles (e.g. Dread Lord). If a PK was spotted near a town, a posse would form to hunt them down. Later versions of UO rolled back this system, unfortunately, and even introduced servers where PvP was not allowed. This had the unfortunate consequence that PvP server users were seen as asking for a fight.
- boomlinde 8y ago
  > Humanity hasn't figured out any other way (yet). Maybe we would if it was physically impossible to use violence. That we haven't figured out a way around it under realistic conditions doesn't mean that it couldn't work under the completely arbitrary conditions that a game imposes.
  - Steltek 8y ago
    Without violence, it's significantly harder to defeat griefing, nonviolent but antisocial behavior. The work required to overcome griefing significantly outweighs the work the griefer puts in. An example would be obstructing someone's path so they don't have freedom of movement or "theft" of assets in the commons that the victim was trying to earn, such as dealing the killing blow for XP after another player did most of the work. I'm using "state sponsoroed violence" in broad strokes. Without PvP in player-governed game worlds, you can't even really enforce simple jail time.
    - JoeAltmaier 8y ago
      There are many ways. I've been planning a MMORPG for some time with rules to ensure player cooperation over griefing, without PVP violence. Using self-control and social pressures.
tontonius 8y ago
Awesome article, and I highly recommend reading the manifesto [1] mentioned. Now the article claims that "gods are almost entirely absent from online worlds" – something I severely doubt. Take for instance this message board: is HN completely anarchistic? Not so likely. Is it meritocratically governed? We'd like to think so. Or do "gods" – those who write exist here as well? When it turns out Spez (Founder and Arch-Wizard of Reddit) has the power to change contents of users' comments on reddit – and exercises this power for his own apparent amusement – is he not a "god in an online world"? When I read Lorry's manifesto, about the hierarchies of essentially mods on his MUD, its difficult not to think of all the mods, supermods and admins on message boards large and small across the Internet. [1] http://arch-wizard.com/confessions.html http://arch-wizard.com/confessions.html
- pavel_lishin 8y ago
  I think the article focused more on RPG-type communities, where direct interaction was possible with more than just words. WoW certainly has Gods, but they are prevented by certain Covenants from manifesting their powers except in limited cases...
brazzy 8y ago
> $14.9 billion in annual revenues, greater than the gross domestic product of Iceland Er... this doesn't sound right.
- iaw 8y ago
  Just did a quick google search, the article was written in 2014 so the annual GDP of Iceland leading up to that period were: $13.3B in 2010 $14.7B in 2011 $14.3B in 2012 $15.6B in 2013 $17.3B in 2014 So presuming the article was written prior to the 2013 GDP figures being released then the statement was indeed correct when made (and may still be barring new information about revenue growth).
  - LyndsySimon 8y ago
    Those numbers don't come close to matching what I find when I search. For instance: https://tradingeconomics.com/ireland/gdp https://tradingeconomics.com/ireland/gdp
    - strig 8y ago
      Iceland not Ireland.
      - LyndsySimon 8y ago
        Well, crap :) Mea culpa.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
- LyndsySimon 8y ago
  You're right. DDG says the 2017 GDP of Ireland was ~$333b.
  - jandrese 8y ago
    Ireland is not Iceland.
mcguire 8y ago
"The man who played under the screen name Egor was a nice guy. His rampages in MUD simple expressed a nascent hacker ethic." I wish to object to these statements.

58 points by dnetesn 8y ago

Awesome article. Can't help but think of South Park's infamous WoW episode.

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ChrisSD 8y ago
Amazingly my browser is capable of showing me my reading progress and without sending cookies to anyone.

rlyshw 8y ago

My friend and I were online “gods” back around 2012 when we ran a Minecraft server with a small-but-dedicated player base. Gods in online communities aren’t totally lost, they’ve just reduced in scope to smaller private servers in more niche games.

pavel_lishin 8y ago
Godhood just doesn't scale. Even the article notes this: > Community users couldn’t turn to the wizards; they had grown tired of settling social arguments in the large world, and forced players to come to collective agreement before they would mete our justice. Enough players wanted to “toad” Mr. Bungle—a variation on the Finger of Death—to get the superpowers who ran the servers’ attention, and the sentence was meekly carried out.
- astrobe_ 8y ago
  However the Godhood system is much more educational than programmatically enforcing rules (PK/PvP zones or ToS and ban threars). I have two examples in mind: Riot implemented a player tribunal in League Of Legends. Players would examine chat logs to judge verbal abuse and misconduct cases. Eventually a Riot employee would decide on the punishment (warning or temporary or permanent ban). I don't know if this system is still in place, but at the time they reported good results and players saw it as an improvement. A French high-school is using Minetest (a FOSS Minecraft) to run a student-driven server. The "administrator" chose to let the player-students do their own thing with as little intervention as possible. The admin even created a reward system granting privileges (fly, ban) up to full admin powers (that is, a god). They saw player-students create a laws, then a police and then a tribunal. For sure those kids got a better understanding of the society they live in. In one case, the admin invited his colleagues to introduce them to the tool/game. Those people were clueless and apparently thought that because they were teachers, they were above the rules. The student-players banned them. Games being an entertainment-only device is a severe misconception. Online interaction in an MMO or a MOBA is often a form of social training. One role of games is to allow to experiment with dangerous things safely. The pseudonymous online society allows people to test different behaviors on others, and I believe that some of the "toxicity" comes from that. So Godhood is a way for people to experiment with the exercise of power. And as the article concludes, "it ain't that fun after all". I believe that if more people could have the chance to come to that conclusion, that being able to do anything is not fun, it would be a significant contribution to humanity I believe. Because it seems to me that too many people are driven by the delusion of wealth and power.
  - pavel_lishin 8y ago
    This is excellent. Thanks for sharing! It seems like a very close parallel to the adage of "my kids will wait tables for a living at least once", to teach humility, respect and empathy. I'm super stoked that students ran their own in-game government, where no citizen was above the law. I'm curious what rules the teachers ran afoul of.

pavel_lishin 8y ago

> An admin named Lorry ruled over of the multi-user dungeon MIST in the mid-80s. “I am the law!” he would announce, killing 1 in 10 players on his server in a digital plague. His legendary manifesto preached the virtues of arrogance, ego, and random destruction—and somehow brought his game active converts. Anyone happen to have a copy of this manifesto? The page links to a 404, and archive.org only has a copy from 2016 - which is a 404 as well.

stromgarde 8y ago
http://www.lysator.liu.se/mud/mudgod.html http://www.lysator.liu.se/mud/mudgod.html It was quite an inspiration to the admins of the MUDs I played back in the mid to late 90's.
zimpenfish 8y ago
> An admin named Lorry [] preached the virtues of arrogance, ego, and random destruction I was wondering if that was the same "Lorry" as the (in)famous UK ISP "Lorry" and, yep, it's him. Looks like the article just missed the trailing 'l' off the URL (linked via his Wikipedia page) -> http://arch-wizard.com/confessions.html http://arch-wizard.com/confessions.html

Steltek 8y ago

The article's "Egor" operated in a world with PvP. If the article is implying that you need a government (society, community) to solve these problems, then you must allow PvP as player governments need state sponsored violence in some form. Humanity hasn't figured out any other way (yet). Except many modern games went the other way: revoking PvP and imposing more rules from above. Early Ultima Online had the makings of the most scalable player-driven/secular solution: karma (reputation). It operated on simple rules to identify good guys and bad guys so it couldn't capture all forms of griefing but it laid out a way for players to identify and police themselves without "Gods" (for the most part). Serial Player Killers (PKs) would earn negative reputation and titles (e.g. Dread Lord). If a PK was spotted near a town, a posse would form to hunt them down. Later versions of UO rolled back this system, unfortunately, and even introduced servers where PvP was not allowed. This had the unfortunate consequence that PvP server users were seen as asking for a fight.

boomlinde 8y ago
> Humanity hasn't figured out any other way (yet). Maybe we would if it was physically impossible to use violence. That we haven't figured out a way around it under realistic conditions doesn't mean that it couldn't work under the completely arbitrary conditions that a game imposes.
- Steltek 8y ago
  Without violence, it's significantly harder to defeat griefing, nonviolent but antisocial behavior. The work required to overcome griefing significantly outweighs the work the griefer puts in. An example would be obstructing someone's path so they don't have freedom of movement or "theft" of assets in the commons that the victim was trying to earn, such as dealing the killing blow for XP after another player did most of the work. I'm using "state sponsoroed violence" in broad strokes. Without PvP in player-governed game worlds, you can't even really enforce simple jail time.
  - JoeAltmaier 8y ago
    There are many ways. I've been planning a MMORPG for some time with rules to ensure player cooperation over griefing, without PVP violence. Using self-control and social pressures.

tontonius 8y ago

Awesome article, and I highly recommend reading the manifesto [1] mentioned. Now the article claims that "gods are almost entirely absent from online worlds" – something I severely doubt. Take for instance this message board: is HN completely anarchistic? Not so likely. Is it meritocratically governed? We'd like to think so. Or do "gods" – those who write exist here as well? When it turns out Spez (Founder and Arch-Wizard of Reddit) has the power to change contents of users' comments on reddit – and exercises this power for his own apparent amusement – is he not a "god in an online world"? When I read Lorry's manifesto, about the hierarchies of essentially mods on his MUD, its difficult not to think of all the mods, supermods and admins on message boards large and small across the Internet. [1] http://arch-wizard.com/confessions.html http://arch-wizard.com/confessions.html

pavel_lishin 8y ago
I think the article focused more on RPG-type communities, where direct interaction was possible with more than just words. WoW certainly has Gods, but they are prevented by certain Covenants from manifesting their powers except in limited cases...

brazzy 8y ago

> $14.9 billion in annual revenues, greater than the gross domestic product of Iceland Er... this doesn't sound right.

iaw 8y ago
Just did a quick google search, the article was written in 2014 so the annual GDP of Iceland leading up to that period were: $13.3B in 2010 $14.7B in 2011 $14.3B in 2012 $15.6B in 2013 $17.3B in 2014 So presuming the article was written prior to the 2013 GDP figures being released then the statement was indeed correct when made (and may still be barring new information about revenue growth).
- LyndsySimon 8y ago
  Those numbers don't come close to matching what I find when I search. For instance: https://tradingeconomics.com/ireland/gdp https://tradingeconomics.com/ireland/gdp
  - strig 8y ago
    Iceland not Ireland.
    - LyndsySimon 8y ago
      Well, crap :) Mea culpa.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
LyndsySimon 8y ago
You're right. DDG says the 2017 GDP of Ireland was ~$333b.
- jandrese 8y ago
  Ireland is not Iceland.

mcguire 8y ago

"The man who played under the screen name Egor was a nice guy. His rampages in MUD simple expressed a nascent hacker ethic." I wish to object to these statements.