I am looking forward to the NextGen of graphics, but there is a strong argument for jump points, multiple difficulty levels and a KI that lowers requirements when it sees you're not up for it. And if I get a different ending or less goodies: so what? At least I got one...
-Andreas
To the Editor: I would like to comment on "Real World Grief" by Allen Varney in issue 19. The first sentence runs: "Individualist anarchism, a political philosophy hundreds of years old, has now been conclusively discredited by massively multiplayer online games."
In my mind, it is more feasible to have it run like this: "Individualist anarchism, a political philosophy hundreds of years old, has until now been conclusively found to not work in current massively multiplayer online games." I agree that the new sentence is a bit awkward, but it helps me in identifying the main components, which stop anarchism from working in current games.
The first ingredient to the tincture is the players itself. Human beings are a curious mix of genes and upbringing, and science is not certain so far which one has the greater effect. A mind brought up on violence and having learned to associate violence with pleasure, will crave that form of gratification, and not another. So, when we talk about people not being able to live in an anarchistic, peaceful, self governed, mutual respect governed society, we need to keep in mind that we are talking about current people.
The second ingredient of our analysis is the games themselves. If you look at the current assortment of games, most are built on competition, which is no wonder as they are built within the boundaries of our current culture. Their rules, their environment, their system of rewarding and punishing the player is not built on anarchist principles, so it is not much wonder that anarchism will plainly not work.
Additionally, the virtual world also has some specifics, the real world lacks, namely a higher degree of anonymity, a higher predominance of short term goals and needs, and a lack of data from sensory channels. The visual channel is available, but only gives us substitute images, which programmers and artist put into the game. You cannot see that someone is lying to you from the face of his avatar, you often can see it in real life. Or maybe not see, maybe hear ... or maybe sense it. Studies show that a validity of someone's communication is determined by nonverbal behavior by 90%, which means that when presented with contradicting meanings we rely on our senses and not on the content of the message which is presented to us for evaluating.
-Maxim
