You’re advocating show trials for designers for whom you disagree? Who is being the unreasonable Marxist again?

Did you see me write anything like that? Where? Of course not. You’re just saying that to be provocative. You, who run a blog, where people are slayed and skewered in kangaroo courts of tribalist mob rules constantly.

I don’t know where to start with you. But…I do know where to end : )

Ok, no problem Scott, I’ll cool it.

I have seen you refuse to talk RL politics on other sites. You usually would add in a comment about how the people you were speaking to were so beneath you that you wouldn’t grace them. Good to see you’re still a Kameleon though!

I find it odd that while Prokofy is loudly proclaiming that games like WoW are socialist constructs, her son is over on the other computer, playing WoW.

That’s some conviction there. Paying for her son to play a “socialist” game. LOL!

(I don’t usually use “LOL”, but I think maybe speaking the same language as club-wielder-with-thesaurus might help to convey context, in this case.)

On the topic of WoW – Prokofy, running around on your son’s account for an hour or two, doesn’t make you qualified to judge it. I’m sure you will come back with some rubbish about how it does, thats fine, but it won’t change my mind. You know about as much about WoW as George Bush knows about diplomacy. Superficial at best , and likely much of your “understanding” has been gleaned second-hand, from others.

WoW is partially a closed simulation of a capitalist economy. Replete with an Auction House and all. A very heavily used Auction House at that. I wonder if the common people in the Soviet Union were (legally) allowed to sell items they purchased or made, at a mark up?

When someone can gracefully split the difference between skill and economy through game mechanics and implementation

UNPOSSIBLE

because Makaze said so. And of course all Professional game designers will agree, because otherwise it means they’re incompetent.

Please keep using analogies and making broad generalizations about non-relevant subjects everyone; don’t worry you’ll convince them eventually.

People play games to have fun man.

Fear and hatred of RMT is not evil. RMT has a certain place. As someone noted earlier, RMT has no place in say, chess, because who would want to play when some rich ass will buy more queens than you?

“Oh, I get it that people WANT that. But in part it’s because they are induced to think there is something delightful and pastoral about this lovely “level field”. They never get to ask: is there a different kind of level field that is made by THE RULE OF LAW over even the game-gods, rather than game-gods stripping everybody at the gates.”

There’s nothing at all wrong with the game gods stripping you at the door. Usually I want to play a game where I’m on an equal level with the people I’m playing with, it makes it fair, and it makes it MORE FUN.

I know you like RMT because you think your hot shit and make real money out of second life. I bet you feel like you’re more clever than other people. Hell I bet you are, but when real money is tied to the game it’s no longer a game. IT’S A PIXELATED EXTENSION OF REAL LIFE. You aren’t competing with others to have fun. You’re making decisions in the persistent world to make MONEY with some fun on the side. That is why Bartle doesn’t apply to second life. You aren’t being motivated solely by FUN any longer. Sure, I bet you enjoy playing second life, but you have real world economic interests that you need to take care of. In a “game’s” economy, you’re also not motivated SOLELY by fun, but when the gold you’re throwing around isn’t pegged to the dollar, it becomes a lot easier to do as you please with it.
I see GAMES and RMT as two different beasts entirely. Two sides of a spectrum. FUN vs ECONOMY. Gold farming is not an acceptable economic activity in WOW because it messes with the balance. When someone in WOW paid real money to buy that sword, it has affected the players around him. When I bought into playing wow, I bought into a fair and even playing field. A persistent world MMORPG can never to “fair” in the aspect that other people won’t have invested more time to get more items or attribute points, but that’s accepted because you bought into that and still have 1v1 skill. But to tie money to the process perverts it, changes the dynamic too much towards RMT and too much away from game.

“A world where the game god does get to keep fixing his Porsche forever, with your $10 and you never get to buy a Porsche. I don’t think even most people playing games would like real life to turn out that way.”

Hell no I don’t want real life to turn out that way. Hell yes I (mostly) want my games to turn out that way. Second Life is MORE LIKE REAL LIFE than it is a game. Money drives your actions in second life. You may find it fun, just like I find making money as an engineer fun. But it is driven by much larger wheels than that of enjoying yourself. When a game is “strip mined” for its resources as Lum pointed out, its lost its ability to be a “game”.

The only really interesting point you’ve made in this thread, and one I think we as MMORPG fans and RMT fans alike need to walk away with is this quote:

“Nobody ever wants to talk about that dark, hidden place in this Family, of what happens when you Reach the End of a game, when you have all the gold, all the swords of wonderfulness, you beat all the bosses, and you’re done even playing the sort of meta game of going back and ganking noobs or whatever it is you kids do. So..you then move to another game. And…that’s why your worlds always suck, because the only way to fix them is by forced migration. First, forced egalitarianism — which is prepared to punish anybody who goes outside the borders to buy their way in with illegal RMT — then forced equal outcome (no cashing out, except illegal gold-farmers) and then forced migration (a variant of this boredom-forced migration is “if you don’t like it leave,” from forums harpies.”

I’m just saying all this forced egalitarianism, forced stripping of inworld wealth, and forced migration takes it toll on the soul. It has an affect on culture, on relations, on thinking, on real life. I realize it’s not politically correct to say that. But given the enormous toll it *is* taking, it has to be said. And Richard Bartle is in part responsible.”
The reason that is so is because no one has created a good enough MMORPG yet. MMORPG’s are not perfect, the treadmill system is flawed, and endgame consisting of shitty content and “PVP updates” trickled in will not suffice. The reason our games don’t survive is because they are not good enough.
If nothing else, I believe that a MMORPG is an entity that’s stuck between chess (skill) and full blown RMT (economy). Second life is waaay over on the RMT side of the spectrum, while MMORPG’s hover closer to chess. The problem with MMORPGS is it combines the fact that people like to have more skill than other people, but people also like to earn and collect shit, and get rewards. It’s varying shades of grey that are a hell of a lot harder to create than black or white. When someone can gracefully split the difference between skill and economy through game mechanics and implementation, it will truly be a work of art. Until then, I guess we ARE stuck moving on to the next best thing. Hopefully though, game makers keep the balance more toward the GAME side, verse the ECONOMY side, so the switch to something new requires less loss of built wealth in economy.
P.S. You use a lot of artsy metaphors and vast historical knowledge to talk about games and it makes it real hard to figure out what were even arguing about and comes across as mostly needless.

McCarthyism is about political warfare using guilt by association, fear-mongering, falsehoods. All that is well documented and understood. But…are you to say that if someone backed Moscow in the 1930s, and was silent about the show trials and mass murder, and even celebrated the Soviet regime, that if they made movies, that it didn’t matter? that if they had cultural ideas that sprang from their Soviet fellow travelling, that it didn’t matter? Why is that ok? Wagner and Ezra Pound are picked apart for their following of fascism. What, communism is exempt from analysis of cultural influence?

Ezra Pound poetry collections are still sold and Richard Wagner operas are still performed. They may be picked apart, much as everything I worked on professionally would be if I professed an admirement of communism or fascism or the color purple or whatever. That is entirely apart from demanding a loyalty test of people who work on your entertainment. I find it interesting that you actually, as someone noted, agree with and justify the Hollywood Blacklist though. It does put your demand for Bartle’s “are you now, or have you ever been a Marxist” averral in some context.

Somebody’s political views are not, in social media, kept in a jar under the sink. They permeate their game and world design, my God, if that isn’t clear, I don’t know what to do with you, you are obdurately blind.

And you’re free not to patronize them. That would be how free markets work, Ann Coulter is free to write as many books as she likes and I am free to not purchase them. However, insisting that they shouldn’t even be in the game design business or speak at conferences because you disagree with their politics is… well… totalitarian.

And you are just one of the many lieutentants of the game gods purveying this idea of “new and better worlds”. Nobody has demonstrated at all to me or any other libel that they are better. Indeed, we only further document that they are worse, with horrific implications.

I trust you meant liberal, not libel. Maybe you just type the word “libel” too much.

Here’s the thing that you’re willingly not seeing: there is no unanimity on what makes “a new and better world”. There is nothing preventing Second Life, a world with no game systems and no violence not created by its user scripting, from co-existing quite peacefully with World of Warcraft, a world with a very clear path of gameplay and very narrow activity defined within its bounds. If you don’t like “games where you kill things over and over”…. don’t buy them. And if enough people agree with you, they won’t get made. Because that’s how free markets work.

However, demanding that every online world conform to your vision of what is healthy or politically correct is precisely what you accuse “game gods” of advocating. You apparently do not trust the market to reward success. You want everyone to exist in the online world you feel is correct. That is pretty statist, no?

It’s useful also to document what you are saying here about your belief that you are doing good with the hacker ethos. I would hear the same argumentation made by those in countries where mass atrocities have taken place, that the perpetrators believed they were doing good.

You’re equating game design with crimes against humanity? Seriously? You’re advocating show trials for designers for whom you disagree? Who is being the unreasonable Marxist again?

Mira, rant away and make all the attacks you want without redactions *cough*

As I have said, I have a full time job and this blog is not it.

Redacted? What are *you* afraid of?

Personal ad-hominem attacks, from you or others, will no longer be tolerated. Feel free to make them in your own home all you want, they are not welcome in mine. This has already been clearly stated. You are not an idiot and are capable of following simple rules of discourse.

Do as the title says and bury this and never speak of it again please.

I’m glad we’ve flushed this out now, and there is a resounding validation of what I’m saying, even without any fucking clue about the consequences. It’s very, very scary. (Do you have the reference for his speech at this industry conference?)

Code does indeed have consequences. These cultural memes he and all his comrades and you are coding into games and game blogs have consequences. They sure do. And you are just one of the many lieutentants of the game gods purveying this idea of “new and better worlds”. Nobody has demonstrated at all to me or any other libel that they are better. Indeed, we only further document that they are worse, with horrific implications.

Just start with a tiny little thing. How can a world/game that makes you kill everything all the time be right? We’re told WoW makes you “collaborate” better. I hear grown men at the IBM learning summit making this claim about management training of the future occuring in WoW for only $10 a month with this generation. The cheapest after-school management training program in world history! But…collaboration about killing things. And brutally rejecting anybody who lags behind, falters, isn’t skilled enough to make it on the quest.

>This may strike you as horribly collectivist or silly or “literalist” or something (note: dismissing an argument you cannot respond to as “too literalist” is profoundly silly), but to those of us actually familiar with the problems of modern society, it’s actually quite meaningful: the hacker ethos expanded to levels of implementation. (Which, by the way, is libertarian, not collectivist.) We *can* help to reform broken social connections. We *can* aspire to something greater than what we see around us. We *can* help to make a better world.

I find it appallingly scary that you can imagine that you are familiar with the problems of modern society, and I am not. Are you fucking out of your mind?

The hacker ethos pretends to be libertarian, which people think is “liberal” without the “tarian”. It is in fact horridly collectivist in the worst kind of tribal way. We have lived inside the biggest collective coding experiment in modern history, Second Life. We’ve seen the ethos, thank you very much. Nothing “libertarian” about it, if that is to be understood in any kind of positive way. Rather, it’s the most chillingly malicious and conservative machine out there.

You cannot reform broken social connections when in fact your Broken Toys is all about imparting a really destructive and nasty form of socializing amoung people right here on your blog. Surely even you can see this.

It’s useful also to document what you are saying here about your belief that you are doing good with the hacker ethos. I would hear the same argumentation made by those in countries where mass atrocities have taken place, that the perpetrators believed they were doing good.