Seed, the highly ambitious MMO long in development, was conceived as a high-minded "rebuild society from scratch" planetary colonization sim, with players even able to create their own constitution. (Pioneering Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig helped develop the political framework for them game, the first MMO he's consulted on since advising Linden Lab on Second Life's IP rights policy.) I even consulted briefly on the project for a time, blogging that Seed seemed to be the first interactive, playable version of John Rawls' Theory of Justice:
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.
So I was somewhat surprised to see that an early Seed player community, given the chance to choose their political organization, chose... a benevolent dictatorship.
Watch above, with one player insisting, "It's not as evil as people think it is." Well OK then!
Mundi Vondi, CEO of Seed developer Klang Games, tells me that this isn't necessarily because players want dictatorship per se, except perhaps in this early stage of gameplay:
"I think it's a matter of scale," as Mr. Vondi puts it, grinning emojically. "Dictatorships will serve well now when scales are so small. But with more people and time things are sure to evolve."
Hopefully so! I could actually see less benevolent dictatorships taking over, especially if competing groups begin to fight over planetary resources. Then again, maybe dictatorship is just a fun concept to experiment with in an MMO, because we no longer have to worry about dictators in real life, right?
... Right?
Anyway go here to sign up to join an early play test, but please don't make Rawls roll in his grave. (Neither John and definitely not Lou.)
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