Anyone that has ever played a multiplayer game knows that a multiplayer game is never just a game. It’s real. An interesting article in the New York Times underscores this fact. Apparently, the administrators of Eve Online, a popular massively multiplayer online game, are going to hold elections to come up with representatives of the players who will oversee the game’s administration and ensure it is fair and transparent. That sounds like good old politics to me. The player Representatives sound like nothing but MP’s or senators. The following says it best:
“Perception is reality, and if a substantial part of our community feels like we are biased, whether it is true or not, it is true to them,” Hilmar Petursson, CCP’s chief executive, said in a telephone interview. “Eve Online is not a computer game. It is an emerging nation, and we have to address it like a nation being accused of corruption.
“A government can’t just keep saying, ‘We are not corrupt.’ No one will believe them. Instead you have to create transparency and robust institutions and oversight in order to maintain the confidence of the population.”
Personally, I knew it was just a matter of time before that which separates virtual and real is obscured to the point that it is unrecognizable. What do you think?
Random Question: Won’t the player representatives now get extra perks from the game administrators to ‘keep them happy’?
Reverse “Toa kitu kidogo” in a game? That’s funny, and scary. People must spend hours and hours in a game to require elections.
I think it’s weird. What ca we expect next? Folowing the wrongful persecution of ‘sex offenders’ at myspace, maybe myspace users should get something similar?
Of course not all Myspace users use their real names during registration. That’s going to cause a lot of problems with identifying sex offenders and candidates.
Very true. lol, but since we’re going virtual now, do we even need real names for the candidates? As long as you know randomgurl24(for example) has your interests at heart, does it matter that in real life he is a burly trucker?