Top Mud Sites Forum - View Single Post - Fighting Back: Exploits, Vulnerabilities, Hackers.

02-16-2005, 09:37 AM

That's right. It's also a very localized perception of how a particular game ought to work by a subset of a game's players, and/or more importantly the admins running them. What constitutes cheating on your game, ain't cheating on my game, and may or may not be cheating on Buffy's game. Furthermore we ought to acknowledge that it is largely bereft on any real world moral value. The players shouting "Hey batter batter! Swing!" to rattle the batter in a baseball game go out on the links and shout "Hey duffer duffer! Swing" and suddenly find themselves to be dirty rotten cheatin' scoundrels at golf. Not so copyright infringement or unauthorized shell access. Those are quite different in my mind than what occurs within our games.

Of course it's only fair to acknowledge those things which we must assert which are beyond our control as well. Regardless of whether we agree, the laws of our country/state on the operation of an internet service, the terms of one's ISP, upstream provider or mud service provider give cause that we must assign and enforce a morality in our games.

And yet people who admin certain muds thoughts on what cheating is or is not, are remarkably similar and can often be shown to be a direct result of being imprisoned in procedures and practices associated with a particularly poorly designed or implemented game. Dare I mention that multi-playing and user scripting are great and wonderful features of muds in a crowded room of Diku admins? I recall reading a post sometime back where a mud admin was lamenting the scoundrels who designed foul clients like Zmud and MushClient that have *gasp* triggers, *gasp* scripting, and *gasp* multi-session capability. What sort of unscrupulous people would give players those powers?! Tut tut.

I'm less interested in admin's rights, but rather the effects. I and every other admin know that we can do pretty much anything we want to players, including breaking our own rules. We can torture, maim, mock, harass, delete, exile, imprison, jail, silence, and ban the buggers for any reason. We can make up the reasons. They don't have to be consistent, they don't have to make sense, they can be ex post facto, and they don't have to be, and rarely if ever are, objective. No it's not our rights, but invoking them every time something goes wrong in our narrow little worlds I find to be sad. I think it's more of a social design principle I'm trying to express:
Big brother really really sucks. The less you have to invoke your rights, the much better off your game and players will be. The more you extend powers to players or enable them to enforce their own rights, the happier both you and they'll be.

I would add that there are plenty of people playing muds who don't want freedom. Not to worry as there is little danger of games and mud admins who view themselves as big brother or sister that treat players like subjects will disappear. :-)

02-16-2005, 09:37 AM	#10
Posts: n/a	That's right. It's also a very localized perception of how a particular game ought to work by a subset of a game's players, and/or more importantly the admins running them. What constitutes cheating on your game, ain't cheating on my game, and may or may not be cheating on Buffy's game. Furthermore we ought to acknowledge that it is largely bereft on any real world moral value. The players shouting "Hey batter batter! Swing!" to rattle the batter in a baseball game go out on the links and shout "Hey duffer duffer! Swing" and suddenly find themselves to be dirty rotten cheatin' scoundrels at golf. Not so copyright infringement or unauthorized shell access. Those are quite different in my mind than what occurs within our games. Of course it's only fair to acknowledge those things which we must assert which are beyond our control as well. Regardless of whether we agree, the laws of our country/state on the operation of an internet service, the terms of one's ISP, upstream provider or mud service provider give cause that we must assign and enforce a morality in our games. And yet people who admin certain muds thoughts on what cheating is or is not, are remarkably similar and can often be shown to be a direct result of being imprisoned in procedures and practices associated with a particularly poorly designed or implemented game. Dare I mention that multi-playing and user scripting are great and wonderful features of muds in a crowded room of Diku admins? I recall reading a post sometime back where a mud admin was lamenting the scoundrels who designed foul clients like Zmud and MushClient that have gasp triggers, gasp scripting, and gasp multi-session capability. What sort of unscrupulous people would give players those powers?! Tut tut. I'm less interested in admin's rights, but rather the effects. I and every other admin know that we can do pretty much anything we want to players, including breaking our own rules. We can torture, maim, mock, harass, delete, exile, imprison, jail, silence, and ban the buggers for any reason. We can make up the reasons. They don't have to be consistent, they don't have to make sense, they can be ex post facto, and they don't have to be, and rarely if ever are, objective. No it's not our rights, but invoking them every time something goes wrong in our narrow little worlds I find to be sad. I think it's more of a social design principle I'm trying to express: Big brother really really sucks. The less you have to invoke your rights, the much better off your game and players will be. The more you extend powers to players or enable them to enforce their own rights, the happier both you and they'll be. I would add that there are plenty of people playing muds who don't want freedom. Not to worry as there is little danger of games and mud admins who view themselves as big brother or sister that treat players like subjects will disappear. :-)