Create your own libertarian society now... in the Dark Age of Camelot :-)
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: The Development of Political and Legal Systems in MMORPGs
Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2001 17:58:45 -0500
From: "James Tauber" <jtauber@jtauber.com>
To: <fork@xent.com>
References: <185.388f17.293fc1ca@aol.com> <3C0E9682.5050902@enspherics.com>
(I was writing this post when eikeon pointed out [1] so the timing is
interesting.)
I am becoming increasingly convinced that a fascinating thesis topic for
some political science grad student would be the development of political
and legal systems in massively multi-player online role playing games.
I am guildmaster of one of the dominant guilds in Dark Age of Camelot [2].
When I started playing DAoC (the day it came out) I was in a different guild
whose dictatorial leader was a great war-time leader but a poor peace-time
leader. Largely as a result, that guild collapsed and, in its place, many of
the original guild members formed a new guild designed to be a
representative democracy. It was in this guild that I was elected leader.
Over time, as people started complaining about the actions of others, we
found the need to develop rules but that immediately led to questions of
separation of legislature from judiciary, etc. Also some people favoured
more specific rules (thus placing the burden on legislation) and others more
general rules (thus placing the burden on the judiciary and emphasizing
precedence over statute).
One of the elected representatives happens to be my in-game wife [3,4]
(first role-played marriage in the game -- another fascinating topic,
perhaps for another time). This led to accusations that I was just a puppet
and that my "wife" really controlled two votes.
An interested thing has started to happen, though. People are now starting
to call for a return to a dictatorship. They no longer want a council of
elected representatives. They are actually asking me to assume dictatorial
control. This has taken me by surprise.
I find the whole thing fascinating and think the subject area definitely
worthy of a more detailed study.
James
[1] http://www.wired.com/news/holidays/0,1882,48479,00.html
[2] http://www.darkageofcamelot.com/
[3] http://jtauber.com/camelot/foedan/proposal/
[4] http://knights.camelotguild.org/templars/ss/wedding.html
http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat May 11 2002 - 17:44:24 MDT