caraig | Politicians as MUCKers

Now, this is a subject that will get the goat of some people, make others say 'It's so true!' or just mildly amuse the majority of people. Or it may disturb people. So take it with a grain of salt, it's not supposed to be entirely serious or anything.

First, for those of you who are unfamiliar with the term, MUCKer refers to someone who plays on a MUCK. A MUCK is form of MUD, which stands for Multi-User Dungeon, an online multiplayer game, using only text, that predates Everquest et al by many years. if you have ever played Zork or another text adventure, then you have a single-player version of a MUD. MUCK itself was developed from MUD; nobody is really sure what MUCK stands for, though the argument can be made that it stands for "MUCK is Unusual, Crazy, and Kooky." Which is probably a reasonably good description. A MUCK is a MUD without statistics, system, or rules. It's basically role-playing without any sort of dice-rolling or conflict resolution system.

You know, I was going to make a huge essay about this but I found it was rambling needlessly as I usually do. So instead I'll make it short and open it up to commentary:

If you look at the majority of politicians from the perspective of kids who are playing characters on a MUCK who are in positions of power and want to keep those positions safe, and keep their friends safe from the assholes in the rest of the game, and do some Cool Stuff, then it all makes a sudden weird kind of sense.

And, no, this is no sort of slam on anyone. Characters come in all types and styles, as do people. Heck, if anything, this is more of a slam on politicians, I imagine. I just found it interesting that, if you think about it, there are similarities between politicians and characters in charge of factions on MUCKs.

Man, I think I'm loosing my gift of gab. Anyway, on to the commentary. Or lack thereof. Pax.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Sadly, since it was the only game with consequences, it ended up, at least on the MUCK I have in mind, being used as a tool to try and hammer people with ... it can be a dangerous thing to bring into a place.

Virtual Reality, real emotions ... something far too many of us forgot.

Brett

Well sometimes "Out of Game" conduct, gives rise to reasons for "out of game" actions, that were not fun, but felt to be necessary. Then politics become a cause, rather than a fun passtime.

Scott

I've always though out-of-game conduct should be responded to with out-of-game actions, which is fair enough.

The problem was too many people taking their out-of-game attitudes and using the in-game politics to attack and try and hurt the people that had annoyed them.

Too many times, the politics system can be turned into a weapon by group A against group B that's trying to carry out an out-of-game argument, in-game, to the detriment of all involved.

I ended up in a situation where I, without realizing it, let somebody use an in-game system I designed to attack somebody for an, admittedly stupid, out-of-game mistake the target had made.

The result was the total destruction of the system in question, and the target leaving the game for good, something I still regret to this day, also my lack of any way to track the target down to apologize to them for allowing it to happen in the first place.

The attacker also left the game later on, but that was as part of a much more messy event that showed out-of-game attacks for out-of-game reasons can also screw things up badly. To be honest, how things went in the earlier event should have helped warn me about potential later behavior, ah well, you live and learn.

Brett

Honestly, it was a combination of factors - folks took things personally instead of taking a moment to chill out and remember 'it's just a game'. Others took things too far, and used politics to beat folks over the head.

It also was a very kludged-together setup. I sometimes wonder how things would have fared if more time/effort had been spent on the underlying structure of politics, instead of keeping things fairly loose, as was done.

And even in the real world, dude, people tend to get *really* emotional about politics. I speak from the position of one who would like election day to get here already, or else I'm going to strangle the far-left democrats/far-right republicans who sit next to me at work and argue incessantly about their respective candidate. :)

As somebody that designed the system we're talking about specifically here, it was kind of a deliberate choice to leave it as casual and loose as we could to prevent people getting too tied up in it. Of course that didn't work very well.

Later on, when it did get more formalized, that just became another way for it to be used against people, tyeing them up in 'rules of conduct' and booting them out from any control over the structure that was being used to attack them.

I let myself get caught up in this ... I hope I've learned enough to not let myself do something that stupid again, though sadly I doubt I've managed to change the base attitudes I had on it.

Trying to let go of old issues is always a hard process ... I'm working on it though.

Brett

Politicians as MUCKers

The Consequences of Poltics

Re: Reasons for Poltics

Re: Reasons for Poltics

Re: The Consequences of Poltics

Re: The Consequences of Poltics