But Aikao, your fooling yourself if you think the player vs admin mentality is going anywhere, it will always be here on some level. Expecting it to stop is like expecting teenagers to get along with their parents all of the time.
I'll quote them here for posterity.
Anonymity and in-game admins
The in-game admin faces a bizarre problem. He is exercising power that the ordinary virtual citizen cannot. And he is looked to in many ways to provide a certain atmosphere and level of civility in the environment. Yet the fact remains that no matter how scrupulously honest he is, no matter how just he shows himself to be, no matter how committed to the welfare of the virtual space he may prove himself, people will hate his guts. They will mistrust him precisely because he has power, and they can never know him. There will be false accusations galore, many insinuations of nefarious motives, and former friends will turn against him. It may be that the old saying about power and absolute power is just too ingrained in the psyche of most people; whatever the reasons, there has never been an online game whose admins could say with a straight face that all their players really trusted them (and by the way, it gets worse once you take money!).
Rewards
The longer your game runs, the less often you get kudos for your efforts.
It was also interesting to note that there were quite a few social rules which we fell into the sterotype of.
Mike Sellers' Hypothesis
"The more persistence a game tries to have; the longer it is set up to last; the greater number (and broader variety) of people it tries to attract; and in general the more immersive a game/world it set out to be–then the more breadth and depth of human experience it needs to support to be successful for more than say, 12-24 months. If you try to create a deeply immersive, broadly appealing, long-lasting world that does not adequately provide for human tendencies such as violence, acquisition, justice, family, community, exploration, etc (and I would contend we are nowhere close to doing this), you will see two results: first, individuals in the population will begin to display a wide range of fairly predictable socially pathological behaviors (including general malaise, complaining, excessive bullying and/or PKing, harassment, territoriality, inappropriate aggression, and open rebellion against those who run the game); and second, people will eventually vote with their feet--but only after having passionately cast 'a pox on both your houses.' In essence, if you set people up for an experience they deeply crave (and mostly cannot find in real life) and then don't deliver, they will become like spurned lovers--somebecome [sic] sullen and aggressive or neurotic, and eventually almost all leave." [Kevlar's note: I don't think we need to mention names here…]
And some design laws which we reconize almost intuitively:
Koster's Law (Mike Sellers was actually the one to dub it thus)
The quality of roleplaying is inversely proportional to the number of people playing. [Kevlar's note: Which we've demonstrated time and time again, and why we turn away thoes who arn't equiped to play a game like Sindome]
Hyrup's Counter-observation
The higher the fee, the better the roleplayers. (And of course, the smaller the playerbase.) [Kevlar's note: This is one we intuitively reconize, but struggle with because it goes against the basic principle on which the game is founded]
Enforcing roleplaying
A roleplay-mandated world is essentially going to have to be a fascist state. Whether or not this accords with your goals in making such a world is a decision you yourself will have to make. [Kevlar's note: This is one I wish more people would come to grips with]
There was a comment about RP vs. Hack and Slash which I found interesting:
Baron's Design Dichotomy
According to Jonathan Baron, there are two kinds of online games: Achievement Oriented, and Cumulative Character. In the former, the players who "win" do so because they they are the best at whatever the game offers. Their glory is achieved by shaming other players. In the latter, anyone can reach the pinnacle of achievement by mere persistence; the game is driven by sheer unadulterated capitalism.
All in all a very insightful piece.
-Kevlar
(Edited by Kevlar at 12:05 pm on Feb. 10, 2004)
[Moderation mode: Use BgBB names, not IC names, damnit!]
(Edited by Kevlar at 12:06 pm on Feb. 10, 2004)
Good stuff indeed, thx Ike.
