StateCraft: Update

Griefing is Good: Freedom of Choice and the Politics of Gameplay

One new MMOG, set to launch on May 2nd, has expanded its gameplay to give players explicit control over the future of the world itself. Seed, a new MMOG from European developers Runestone, puts its players in the roles of new "seedlings" meant to colonize the distant planet of Da Vinci, but find something has gone terribly wrong. It is up to them to repair their underground environment and develop the tools that will allow the colony to survive.

Seed's comic book graphics are compelling, and one of the game's most interesting conceits is to do away with combat and health gauges almost completely. More interesting still is the fact that the society developing on Da Vinci gets to make its own decisions about which of several strategies for survival is best. Should Da Vinci be terraformed? Should an attempt be made to contact distant Earth and send an interstellar S.O.S.?

Should resources be diverted toward implementing an enhanced evolutionary process so the colonists can survive the harsh conditions on the planet's surface? Or should a ship be built that might allow the Da Vincians to escape?

Most of the gameplay at the early stages of the game differs little from other MMOGs, except for the lack of combat. Instead, players gather resources by repairing The Tower, in which the colonists live, taking biomedical samples from other players or performing various types of research. It's all in the service of one of the long-range goals that will hopefully save the colony. But how the Da Vincians decide which of those goals to pursue is the interesting thing about Seed. The Access Points earned in the course of gameplay can be used to vote for player Administrators who control which types of research and manufacture can be performed on The Tower's equipment. In essence, the entire colony makes a collective choice as to which course forward is the best to pursue.

It's exciting to see a game give players so much control over their environment, but the real excitement in Seed will come when players begin to build on top of the software's gameplay mechanics, as they inevitably will. The Administrators who control The Tower's equipment can make their choices based on any criteria, after all. A creative group of Administrators could potentially use their power to control the Da Vinci society itself at a level beyond gameplay. Administrators will inevitably be lobbied to devote resources to terraforming, to genetic experimentation on seedlings, or on other pursuits.

But imagine a group of Administrators who made their choices based not on which technology they preferred, but on social criteria instead, granting access only to those players who followed an emergent set of rules put in place by the Administrators themselves. Administrators might grant access only to players who did not use profanity, to players who logged on every day, to players who paid a certain amount in "taxes" to the Administrators or to some other arbitrarily selected group. Through a bit of creative gameplay, a game designed to bring the greatest number of players into the decision-making process could become one that puts control in the hands of a select few.

Would this be griefing, or would it be gameplay? Would it be player governance, or would it be an exploit of gameplay mechanics? Would it be Heaven, or would it be Hell?

Mark Wallace can be found on the web at Walkering.com. His book with Peter Ludlow, Only A Game: Online Worlds and the Virtual Journalist Who Knew Too Much, will be published by O'Reilly in 2006.

Disclaimer: Runestone, Seed's developer, is a client of TAP Interactive, a division of Themis Group.