SekoETC wrote:It's not impossible to organize a large group to attack at the same time without using OOC communications. It might take a bit of time and it's more difficult to find people who agree that it's okay to attack certain people, unless the target did something that most people consider wrong, but after the like-minded people have been found, it's not all that difficult to coordinate an attack in-game. People of course use what they have available, I wouldn't really consider it abuse if someone drank tea after every attack. Now what people might do is checking outside the game "what if my character asked yours to take part in a massacre, would they join me or rat me to the authorities?" and not ask the question in-game if the other player was negative about it. Or people might only ask characters belonging to players they know outside the game.
And the heartless, soulless people probably stand out more because they make so much noise, big ripples in the water, while all the potato farmers keep a low profile, and happy socializers tend to only affect each other in small circles so outsides might find them annoying or most communications might happen in whispers or while traveling or indoors in buildings.
It wasn't quite like that. My char wasn't soulless or heartless, but joined in after persuasion. There is a lot more to it then I have said or will say now, but I saw no collusion OOC. In fact it was played in game rather well. My char was led down the garden path and fully believed in what she was doing, initially, and as the doubts mounted and were expressed, they were played out extremely well. As a player, I knew otherwise, but still, the build up to this was a long time coming and not surprising at all. This took a lot of planning and manoevering.
Does this incident represent a portion of our society. Yes, it definitely does. In real life, things happen.
Does Cantr as a whole represent society in a statistically meaningful way, with the types of moral vs amoral people? No of course not. Immoral people in real life, however you define it, may play moral chars, but the number of honest, upstanding and good people playing who have chars that lie, steal, kill, cheat etc. must be high. Except for Arenti, the rest of us can probably handle a mixture of chars who start bad or become bad through circumstance. Maybe I lead a sheltered life, but a lot more sex seems to go on in Cantr, then real life. Players have no real consequence for their actions other then losing a character, inhibitions are down, as it is anonymous and a character can really be what you want them to be. If the town your char is in dissaproves, then you can leave. I would never behave in real life like any of my characters, I'm far too shy, inhibited and worried about what people would think.
As far as governments and power bases, maybe it's like real life, I'm not sure. It seems like the power struggles in some work places look a lot like Cantr ones to me, as the personalities conflict and make alliances. Perhaps an evolution to a centrallised government across islands will happen one day.
