On Fri, 3 Mar 2000, Elijah Meeker wrote:

>
> >Unfortunately, none of the companies have really addressed the
> >full implications of this. You're not playing a game; you're
> >running around in a virtual world. To prevent it from
> >dissolving into the anarchy where every guttersnipe can get
> >away with whatever he wants to do, you need a social support
> >structure - laws, some form of government
>
> The problem is that game mechanics, which are a simple system, can never
> ever hope to address the highly complex organic system that is human
> behavior. It just can't be done. Look at Faction Hits on RZ, it seems
>
> Laws and social systems can't be coded in to a game with more than one
> person playing it, all you can do is code to minimize the effects of those
> who see freedom as lack of consequences for selfishness, after that it is up
> to the players to *make* something out of the tools of their world, and make
> the benefits of what they have created so desirable that people want to
> support it.

That's what I meant - eventually, we're going to need
human-operated laws and enforcement in these things. Step 1
would be empowering the GMs to actually do things based on the
info they have available in these grey areas, instead of
parroting "I'm sorry, there's nothing I can do."

--
John H. Kim
kim@...