Joining the ranks of the virtual enforcers: Japan

[zhai]

Japan steps up and takes real life judicial action for a virtual crime:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/10/23/international/i063235D45.DTL&tsp=1

A 43-year-old player in a virtual game world became so

Comments

[zhai]

Yeah. I'm unsure of the details here. The 5 year sentence is extreme, but responses to any kind of computer fraud are extreme in most countries, because (as you've experienced) the perpetrators are very difficult to catch. The judicial response to a difficult-to-catch crime is usually to make the penalty so high that even a minute risk of incurring it is enough of a deterrent. But we just don't have enough information based on that very sparse article as to what was going on.

I think most games that have divorce mechanics make them that quick and easy. The often asynchronous nature of play (e.g. a lot of divorce cases arising from one player just ceasing play) means that you incur a lot more customer service issues if you make it hard than if you make it easy. It is interesting what motivated her to "kill" the avatar, though, and whether that will result in a design change. Likely not, but it's interesting from a social design perspective.

And yeah, definitely agreed that games need to be more on top of dealing with things like this, if they don't want the court to do the mediation for them. But maybe they do, in terms of ROI -- it's a hard argument to make. We're about to launch our Player Council with GoPets, which, along with the better EULA, is intended as the seed of a self-policing player government.

Unrelatedly, check out this new Lich King WoW pet. Look at that and tell me that's not Red XIII! ;)