Interesting article…
I found an interesting article while checking out RPG Watch about how governments would work in an MMORPG world. The article is hosted on CNet’s news site and talks about several different interesting aspects of virtual worlds and how they should be governed.
An actual panel of lawyers got together to discuss the topic of who should govern online games. I don’t know. It sounds kind of weird, actually. I always figured that the governor’s of these online games were the online staff. Aren’t they the ones who come down to smite you if you’ve done something wrong? How would an internal government work without the help of the administrators? Do we even want to have a government system in any of our online games? I certainly don’t want to go to prison for killing another player. That would suck. I want to have the power to kill who I want, since I can’t legally do it in the real world.
Wouldn’t that be sweet though? Well, it’d only be sweet if they could resurrect themselves somehow. Hmmm, someone needs to work on that.
They also talk about taxing players that receive money from other people who buy their services or goods with real cold hard currency. That would piss a lot of eBayers off, wouldn’t it? How else are they going to sell 100 gold in game for $3.95 quick and easy? And how does a person justify selling 100 gold for $3.95? How do you get that kind of end game money? Tell me.
Wait, don’t tell me… I’m sure there’s some type of illegal software that’s being used to get this kind of money and I don’t want to go to a virtual prison, damnit. I have too much to live for on the outside!
One of the panelists in this article mentions that the reason there isn’t any government in our virtual worlds is because putting a government system into a game would be a huge task and what would it lead to? A whole lot of boredom, because government work and politics, quite frankly, is boring as hell.
I hope I didn’t anger any of my politician followers. I swear, I’ll vote for you in our next elections. I’ll even campaign for you if you give me a dancing penguin with a shinny button. That would rule. We would dance the United States together, just me and my penguin friend, winning votes for you in, while winning the hearts of millions with my dashing smile and a pair of tap shoes. Ahhh, those will be good times… Good times indeed.
What does this have to do with adventure gaming? Nothing at all… I just thought it was a cool article… soo… um… Take a look at it. It’s an interesting read and it’ll kill 5 minutes of your day that you could have used working.
