December 22, 2003
Anarchy, Eutopia, and Green Diamonds

BBCnews is carrying this article summarizing the progress The Sims On-Line has made since its inception. In a nutshell, they seem to be discovering, or rather re-discovering, the universal principle that when given opportunity, people cheat.

What's really remarkable is we get to watch a sophisticated social matrix evolve on the spot. The developers (not just of TSO, but others like Camelot and Everquest) initially start out with a set of overly simple checks and balances on the assumption that the rest will be taken care of with a sort of "honor system."

Unfortunately they all seem to forget that for a small but significant minority successfully cheating a system, any system, is a reward unto itself. When the developers are quick and responsive, what results is an escalation of increasingly sophisticated checks and balances, closing loopholes as fast as they can be opened.

The lessons in civics and the evolution of laws alone are fascinating.

Posted by scott at December 22, 2003 10:45 AM

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Blizzard had the same sort of problems on Battle.net with Diablo II (and to a smaller degree, thier other games.... but DII has been their most sucessful online game until the released Warcraft III... but I digress), so they implemented sweeping "balance" changes and anti-hack upgrades.....

what they suceeded in doing is making the casual user (me... I play online about once a month for like 3 hrs) pissed off and not willing to play because it's 10x harder and I don't have the time to futz around with it and get as "good" as the people they were targeting in the first place.

Posted by: Jim S on December 22, 2003 11:02 AM
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