Terrific account of scamming other players in EVE, a massively multiplayer game set in space. It’s got everything — innocent fun, bitter disillusionment, vows of revenge, close calls, a dastardly plan, a network of mostly invented collaborators, and an ending that make the whole thing more astonishing still.
This is one of the great first-person narratives of game participation, and touches on several themes we care about here. I’ll write about it later, but for now, I won’t bother commenting, or even quoting from it. It’s long, but it deserves to be read in full.
It’s at http://www.pq5.com/Nightfreeze/, but may still be slashdotted, so check http://freecache.org/http://www.pq5.com/Nightfreeze/ as well. If anyone knows of an alternate and more persistant URL, lemme know.
1. Zbigniew Lukasiak on August 16, 2004 7:51 AM writes...
Just for those that are temptied to read it: a bit too long and lacking suspence.
Permalink to Comment2. Drew on August 16, 2004 9:26 AM writes...
As a counterpoint, I thought it was fascinating. If you're at all interested in the social and community experiences that are MMORPGs, this is a great narrative about what poorly designed systems lead people to do. It's reasonably well written and quite authentic. As someone who's dabbled in many different online communities it's easy to empathize.
Clay, I look forward to hearing your thoughts. MMORPGs strike me as one of the few realms we have for experimenting with community design. Economists are always complaining about their inability to test theory in a vacuum. These games are a chance to do just that - build a community from scratch and explore how the ways in which players are allowed to communicate, interact, and build relationships contribute to the character of the game. Not only that, it seems quite lucrative. Games that can promise an enjoyable social experience as well as an enjoyable gaming experience stand to make a lot of money.
Drew
Permalink to Comment3. paolo on August 16, 2004 11:40 AM writes...
The link in now broken ;-(
In the meantime, I suggest you an article but you probably know it already (maybe I have even got the link from many2many...). It collapses everything in a paper (economy, sociolocy, frauds, fun, ..., life) and it is very very very catching.
Game Theories
Permalink to Commenthttp://www.walrusmagazine.com/04/05/06/1929205.shtml
On-line fantasy games have booming economies and citizens who love their political systems. Are these virtual worlds the best place to study the real one?
4. mac on August 17, 2004 12:36 AM writes...
Google cache is viable for those pages, though it's brutally hard to read. (white on light blue; must select text or "view source" to read.)
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