Droit naturel et jeux vidéo

[MrBozo]

Dans les jeux multi-joueurs on distingue souvent 2 types de règles: les règles du jeu, implémentées par les créateurs du jeu, impossibles à violer, et les règles sociales plus ou moins arbitraires que certains membres de la communauté du jeu développent. Par exemple un joueur de Counter Strike qui passe son temps à rester immobile dans un coin du monde avec un fusil sniper sera traité de "sale campouze" ou de "gros noob" par d'autres joueurs: il ne viole aucune règle du jeu mais viole une règle sociale arbitraire "interdit de camper". Les meilleurs jeux multi-joueurs n'ont pas de règle sociale distincte des règles du jeu: chaque joueur joue pour gagner, petit à petit des parades aux techniques "cheap" sont trouvées, et si des vrais problèmes d'équilibre du jeu sont identifiés les développeurs modifient et corrigent les règles du jeu.

Le professeur David Myers de l'université Loyola a joué plusieurs années au MMO "City of Heros/City of Villains", sous le pseudo Twixt. Il y jouait pour gagner, en suivant les règles du jeu. Il s'est vu traiter de tous les noms, clairement rejeté par la communauté. Il a écrit un rapport sur son aventure dans ce monde virtuel. Ci-dessous un extrait intéressant:

Within socially oriented role-playing games, there are embedded rules for game play and in-game behavior determined entirely by the game design; these rules exist prior to and apart from those social rules that later emerge among players. Twixt’s behavior, for instance, was purposefully governed and guided by the rules of the game; and, most players’ negative and critical reactions to Twixt’s behavior were peripheral to and, in many cases contrary to those same rules. In a sense – i. e., in the reification of game rules as “natural” law -- Twixt’s behavior was non-deviant, conforming to an absolute and essential set of values. In a similar sense, negative and critical reactions to Twixt’s behavior can be seen as non-conforming and “deviant” in prioritizing a limited set of players’ interests and concerns.

In real-world environments, “natural” laws governing social relationships, if they exist at all, are part of the same social system in which they operate and, for that reason, are difficult to isolate, measure, and confirm. In Twixt’s case, however, two unique sets of rules – one governing the game system, one governing the game society -- offered an opportunity to observe how social rules adapt to system rules (or, more speculatively, how social laws might reproduce natural laws.) And, the clearest answer, based on Twixt’s experience, is that they don’t. Rather, if game rules pose some threat to social order, these rules are simply ignored. And further, if some player -- like Twixt -- decides to explore those rules fully, then that player is shunned, silenced, and, if at all possible, expelled.

As a simulation of real-world society, virtual societies within online games suffer due to the bound and pre-determined nature of their system rules. However, as an experiment investigating the degree to which social orders are capable of revealing and unraveling broader system rules, online games such as CoH/V indicate that socially oriented group play, as a whole, is much more repressive and much less capable of exploring system potentials than individual and idiosyncratic play.

Indeed, the strong, negative, and increasingly emotional reactions to Twixt’s behavior were almost always focused on preserving beneficent social communities and friendships in blatant disregard of game rules. The most important negative consequence of Twixt’s behavior in the eyes of other players, then, was not his failure to achieve game goals – Twixt’s opponents “failed” this test more often than he did -- but his failure to garner and sustain social connections: the most repellant consequence of Twixt’s behavior was that it made him unlikable.

[Randian shithead]

Conclusion, les MMO c'est un truc de scrubs.

[Winston]

Le terme "natrual laws" employé par l'auteur ne doit pas être compris au sens "Droit Naturel".

C'est simplement un ensemble de règles apprarues de manière spontanée (la coutume).

De la même manière on ne doit pas confondre "capacité" et "droit".

Les "règles" du jeu définissent un ensemble de capacités (se déplacer, parler, échanger etc…).

Les coutumes du jeu définissent les droits.

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