A Hypothesis on Civility

The Harsher the penalties for incivility, the more civil the community will be. That’s a little observation I’ve made while playing MafiaMatrix (a free multiplayer web game), and it’s probably the most civil online game I’ve ever played (though, admittedly, it can also be the most frightening). Why? You are punished for incivility. Harshly.

You can mug people, hack their bank accounts, steal their vehicles, break into their homes, etc. For most of those, people will do them then immediately transfer the amount of money/whatever they stole to you. If they don’t, bad things may happen.

You can also do bodily harm to people, which permanently reduces their max health. You can even kill them. Permanently. If you do it without authorization from the city leaders and other powerful figures, you’ll probably be killed yourself, not to mention all their friends will come after you and make your life hell.

One of the most interesting pieces of this is that you don’t know if you were caught in the act. They may have seen you and found out your name. They may have seen part of your name. Someone else may have seen it. You have no idea.

In fact, very little information is revealed at all. You know what someone’s profession is, a general estimate of how much money they have (rich, poor, etc.), and how many messages have been sent to them. That’s pretty much what you use to determine how powerful they are, and you might find yourself dead if you mess with the wrong person.

Anyway, I think the harsher the punishment there is for inappropriate behavior, the less likely people will be to behave inappropriately. When stated like that it seems natural–punish someone for something and they won’t do it. It’s interesting, though, because this game is far more civil than, say, World of Warcraft.

There are surely other factors at work, though. The mystery of not knowing quite how strong others are or if you were caught in the act are both strong deterrents (and you don’t even know exactly how strong you are).

Would a game like Ultima Online (in its original form) have been more civil if there were such massive potential consequences? You could do a lot of the same things in that game as MafiaMatrix. You could steal from people, from their homes, kill them, take their stuff, etc. But, you’d usually get away with it.

If someone could come and permanently kill you for doing it or permanently reduce your stats and such, there would be far fewer random crimes. But it would be a heck of a lot more frustrating to be the victim in those situations as well.

While MafiaMatrix is quite civil in general, you have to obey all of the rules of the game–not those set forth by the creators of the game, but those set forth by the players themselves. You can’t join the police department without approval, for example, or you’ll find yourself fired or even killed.

And, any game that’s so harsh is destined to be niche. It’s way too “hardcore” in a lot of ways to have mass appeal, so it may be best left to the domain of web games. Not that I wouldn’t love to take on the challenge of making a graphical mafia/gangster game–it could surely be compelling with all of the strategic elements, so I’m looking forward to trying games like APB.

If you’re interested in playing MafiaMatrix, check it out. It’s free, and I’m not just pimping it to try to get referral credits (though clicking that link or entering 14325 into the referral thing does potentially benefit me if you play long enough). Shameless plug at the end there, huh?