06-11-2009, 11:36 AM
Anonymity is one of the hallmarks of online gaming. It allows people to act how they feel without fear of reprisal. Unfortunately, it also allows people to get away with things that hurt other players, or the game itself, and then disappear into the ether.
I am wondering if there is a way to maintain some of the better aspects of anonymity, yet give some sort of accountability for griefing, theft, exploiting, crossrealming and things of that nature.
How about this? A third party gaming website where you register for an account. Let's call it "Thumbprint". This account can then be voluntarily "attached" to all of the games you play. Your thumbprint remains with you from game to game which allows you to build a reputation. This reputation can be based on many different factors. For instance, time spent in each game, number of max level characters, incident free access to high levels of guild or faction administration functions (group money for example), number of infractions (friendly fire, guild money theft, exploiting, etc).
Once a player spends years building a rep they would be much less likely to do anything to ruin that rep. Also, players with little to no reputation would be initially given very limited access to aspects of the game that are susceptible to breaches of trust.
Another aspect could be an option to connect your level of trust to real world assets. Cash. In order to be given extremely high levels of security clearance you may have to sign a contract and put down a cash deposit. If you break the contract you forfeit the deposit. That would of course be limited to very, very high levels of clearance, and would be for situations where there was massive amounts of shared resources involved. I am thinking of the EVE fiasco where some dude made away with 790 billion ISK, which equated to $170,000 in real world cash.
With this type of system you would still protect your real world anonymity, but it would create accountability within the gaming world. An anonymous real world identity, but an accountable gaming identity.
What do you think?
I am wondering if there is a way to maintain some of the better aspects of anonymity, yet give some sort of accountability for griefing, theft, exploiting, crossrealming and things of that nature.
How about this? A third party gaming website where you register for an account. Let's call it "Thumbprint". This account can then be voluntarily "attached" to all of the games you play. Your thumbprint remains with you from game to game which allows you to build a reputation. This reputation can be based on many different factors. For instance, time spent in each game, number of max level characters, incident free access to high levels of guild or faction administration functions (group money for example), number of infractions (friendly fire, guild money theft, exploiting, etc).
Once a player spends years building a rep they would be much less likely to do anything to ruin that rep. Also, players with little to no reputation would be initially given very limited access to aspects of the game that are susceptible to breaches of trust.
Another aspect could be an option to connect your level of trust to real world assets. Cash. In order to be given extremely high levels of security clearance you may have to sign a contract and put down a cash deposit. If you break the contract you forfeit the deposit. That would of course be limited to very, very high levels of clearance, and would be for situations where there was massive amounts of shared resources involved. I am thinking of the EVE fiasco where some dude made away with 790 billion ISK, which equated to $170,000 in real world cash.
With this type of system you would still protect your real world anonymity, but it would create accountability within the gaming world. An anonymous real world identity, but an accountable gaming identity.
What do you think?