Can Rawls' Theory of Justice Help Us Design Fairer MMOs?

John Rawls' Theory of Justice has inspired countless political thinkers and activists, most recently (and notably) Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez -- but can it also help us create fairer MMOs? I explore the topic for Seed, the upcoming new world colonization MMO with a political system designed by Lawrence Lessig. Whereas most MMOs (World of Warcraft, etc.) begin in a world with an already established political hierarchy and clear divisions of wealth and power, Seed takes place on an uninhabited alien planet -- and beyond that, fans of Seed know little about what they can expect:

Although Seed is yet to have an official launch date, the Seed Discord server has attracted a thriving community of members, whose enthusiasm for the game’s progress has left the development team in awe, as would-be players avidly discuss the game features they most want to see, and even join player-created factions with competing plans to colonize the new world, the very moment that they can. All this active debate about a world that doesn’t yet exist eerily resembles the thought experiment described in John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice:

Imagine, Rawls asks us -- long before the first hut is built or the first crops are planted -- a society’s founding members got together, and decided in advance on some basic principles of fairness they all agreed to abide by. Rawls then added an important catch: No one could know what their future status in this society would be -- whether they’d be wealthy or poor, how much talents they’d be blessed with or what flaws they’d have to shoulder. Because if no one knew any of this, Rawls argues, each person would have a vested interest to make sure this new society would be as fair to everyone as it could possibly be.

... The Seed [player] community is the closest thing we have to people in Rawls’ hypothetical Original Position. Players have a very rough idea what the world will be; some probably have vague plans for what they want to do there, once the game is open. But none yet know what strategic and leadership talents they’ll need to succeed, let alone dominate or successfully survive.

What principles of fairness should community members choose now, before they even know how they’ll fare in this new world?

Read the rest here.

Comments

[Summer Haas]

Interesting. I imagine what will happen is the vocal minority will push extremist views and everyone else who doesn't really care will just leave. Then those remaining in the end will claim their political system works great because everyone is happy with it. They should have named the game Echo Chamber Simulator.

[irihapeti]

where I think this will probably go the way of pretty much every other world/game effort to date, is that the starting philosophical premise is fundamentally libertarian

that given a flat earth then people will co-operate, from which a more altruistic society will arise

Second Life, Rust, Fortnite, etc for example, and now Seed are all predicated on this premise. In these games/worlds the enemy is the other players. The environment is set up to induce that.

I think that if the goal of the creators is to create a gameplay mechanism to foster altruism through co-operation then it would be better for the starting environment to be quite tyrannical and orwellian in its design. That the only way to "win" the game is to co-operate with the other players. The more co-operation there is the greater the win rewards

the enemy being the the game and not the other players. Evil empires and all that