When virtual banks fail, seek virtual laws
Virtual acts increasingly have offline consequences--at least in those worlds with permeable borders. I would not like to be planning the next masive EVE Onine scam, or the one after it, or the one after that. For now the comforting strains of "it's just a game" are paying, but some day, some day soon, the weasel will pop.
If the day comes when in-game offences are punishable by out-of-game laws, I quit the internet. Or, at least the MMORPG side of it - not that I've got that much an investment in it anyway.
I mean, sure, some people are making significant real money from play money. There's value in time spent and time saved running the treadmills. But no one should be delusioned to think that there's anything other than a service purchase involved, and the laws of the game world are part of the purchase. If the game world allows a scam, then you bought the fun of an in-game scam along with your rupees or ISK or gold or whatever. Ignorance of that fact is ignorance, but it ain't an excuse.
Someone has to have thought of this: What about forming governments, laws, police, and courts inside EVE? Get scammed once too many times? Don't escape to the meta level and cry for mommy in the outside world. Organize and fend for yourselves. Does the game specifically make this sort of thing impossible? If so, then the game's broken - stop playing it.
Archived Comments
Being a 3-year EvEer I've gotta say, it's quite possible to do such things. Most of the Eve universe is controlled by massive coalitions of player-run corporations. They've got enough control over the local economy to sanction or locally ban people without much difficulty at all.
It's the PvE portion of the universe (probably 1/4 or less) that is pretty much entirely out of the hands of the players as far as market pressure, politics, etc.
The funny part is that the news of the scams actually makes me want to play EvE :) Sounds like a pretty interesting world, at times.
I've been MMOing since MUDs. It's really the only one I've had any inclination to stick with. Sure I miss spells and orcs. But it's just so damn RICH. EvE actually got me back into trading equities, with significant success. (Unfortunately I'm in the industry now, so my hands are kinda tied, SEC and all.) But it's got a whole lot of everything. I really can't recommend it quite highly enough.
Any game that makes it possible in any way to transfer anything between avatars makes ingame enforcement by anyone other than GMs impossible.
Also, EVE is amazing in a lot of ways. It's easily the toughest MMORPG ever made. You can lose 6 months of work in 30 seconds with no recourse if you don't take precautions. Conversely, you can ruin 10 people's day in about an hour or so if you're really good. Many roles in EVE require actual understanding of economics. And EVE's current fanbase is pretty solid in terms of legitimate community. The game actually red-shifts and blue-shifts stuff when you're travelling fast enough -- the level of detail on some things is mind-blowing. Highly recommended, but be aware that often this game is as much work as play. Definitely not for everyone.
These two things seem at odds to me:
"Any game that makes it possible in any way to transfer anything between avatars makes ingame enforcement by anyone other than GMs impossible."
"You can lose 6 months of work in 30 seconds with no recourse if you don’t take precautions. Conversely, you can ruin 10 people’s day in about an hour or so if you’re really good."
Couldn't someone organize a police force that enforces ingame laws by ruining law-breakers' days? :) You might not be able to recover assets, but you can at least introduce consequences.
"Couldn’t someone organize a police force that enforces ingame laws by ruining law-breakers’ days?"
If the law-breakers are in it for real-money profits (rather than enjoyment), then that won't work. As soon as you can exchange game property for real money, a whole different set of motives comes into play. Imagine criminals using MMO enterprises to launder money, or to run 419 scams. Then real-life law enforcement is going to take an interest in what's happening in-game.
You couldn't really enforce something like that in empire space. An act of vilonce against a player (or peaceful NPC) in a policed area to bring down the hellfires of CONCORD (the in-game actual cops.)
Out in low-sec space you could do it just fine, as it's "wild territory" and there's no police force (and no repercussions to popping someone who just "needed killin"). But someone could always retreat to safe space, which is in large supply.
Plus, such a coalition would be in direct competition with the player-run corporations that have laid claim to those otherwise lawless star systems.
It could not operate in "high-sec" where concord is waiting to put the smackdown on anyone who "shoots first" at another player. It would be really tough to do I think.
There may be other ways to get at someone besides popping their ships all the time and podkilling them (long story.) But with 20k+ concurrent players at all times, it'd be really tough to organize.
Still... I like the idea :)