Are you going to pause the game while community moderation happens? If it’s an asynchronous, one-move-per-day sort of game, that might be acceptable; if players were hoping to complete a game in a single session, probably not. But if I understand correctly, the game literally can’t continue without at least a provisional decision on whether the contract was broken, and there’s probably no fair way to apply a decision retroactively (without rewinding the entire game-state to that point).
Seems like community moderation would let you ban persistent trouble-makers, but probably not salvage the game in which a dispute occurred.
Also: “recording” contracts has pretty different implications depending on
Whether players just talk about what they want and then agree, vs taking the additional step of converting informal agreements to formal language
Whether that discussion happens via text, voice, or video
If players are discussing in video chat, and you want to be able to record contracts without players needing to push a button that says “we’re going to recite the exact formal agreement now”, then you’re potentially recording a continuous video of every player for the entire length of the game just in case something later becomes a topic for dispute. This probably raises concerns about performance and privacy.
The closest system to how I imagine a face-to-face board game works is probably something like: Everyone has the ability to kill themselves, and players are trusted to use this ability if the group agrees they violated a contract. This has the side-effect that any player can basically unilaterally ruin the game for everyone by refusing to do so. In a face-to-face board game this doesn’t much matter because players already have this ability (you can just physically grab the pieces), but online games often operate in a lower-trust environment where this might be a more serious issue.
The obvious-to-me patch would be to let players kill anyone with a majority vote (and ask them to please only use this ability if a contract is breached). This doesn’t help with 2-player games, and gives the de facto ability for any majority to execute any minority (even if no contract is involved) if players decide to abuse it, but it’s probably good enough to make the game playable.
Another option might be to designate one player the “host” of the game, and give them the power to judge disputes. The right to host public games could be a privilege that you only earn after playing for a while and can be revoked as a punishment? (Hosting invitation-only games could be universally allowed.)
One could also theoretically hire people to act as judges and assign them in shifts to be on stand-by for any disputes that come up, but that’s obviously expensive.
(insight: If it turns out that neither player was specific enough about the contract for a resolution to be possible, and they still took it to arbitration, they can both be subjected to a mild fine)
Presumably a dispute could go to arbitration even if one of the participants admits the contract was ambiguous; is it fair to punish both players in this case? I guess it depends whether you view this as “punishing spurious arbitration requests” or “punishing the creation of ambiguous contracts”.
I don’t expect disputes to be common (among the kinds of people who are interested in learning cooperative bargaining practice)
This probably raises concerns about performance and privacy.
A simple approach would be for the recordings to be kept on the players’ computers for a day (maybe signed by the server during play to make falsification more inconvenient), and they submit them to the server if there’s a dispute. People you talk to online always have the ability to record you (did you not know this) so it’s not a real concern.
Ah, note, most of those cases mention a hopefully reduced need for explicit agreements. In other cases I imagine more constrained tools for coordination; fences, and so on. It might be interesting to build a contract system where players can formally propose ‘trades’ as a set of machines that will actuate when accepted, but it would be fiddly, so good faith verbal law is much more approachable where available.
But in the video game context it might make sense to just get into simulating actual legal systems?
I don’t really want to get into a deep discussion on privacy issues, but this seems frighteningly casual:
People you talk to online always have the ability to record you (did you not know this) so it’s not a real concern.
While that is certainly technologically feasible, IANAL but I believe in many cases that would be illegal (without your consent) due to wiretapping laws.
Ignoring that, people could reasonably feel OK about their conversation partner having a recording while not feeling OK about some third-party game company having a recording.
Even if they are OK in principle with you having a recording they may have nontrivial expectations about how you’re going to safeguard that recording. (Do your employees have the capability to browse these recordings for fun, without receiving an arbitration request? Can players use false arbitration requests to trick you into revealing recordings of other players?)
People might feel OK with the community looking at recordings of their contracts to arbitrate a dispute but not feel OK with the community looking at other stuff that was said during the game.
Some players of your game might be minors and not considered legally competent to consent to stuff.
If you actually made this recording system with the philosophy that “privacy is not a real concern” I think you’d be inviting a scandal and in extremis could maybe even go to jail.
Are you going to pause the game while community moderation happens? If it’s an asynchronous, one-move-per-day sort of game, that might be acceptable; if players were hoping to complete a game in a single session, probably not. But if I understand correctly, the game literally can’t continue without at least a provisional decision on whether the contract was broken, and there’s probably no fair way to apply a decision retroactively (without rewinding the entire game-state to that point).
Seems like community moderation would let you ban persistent trouble-makers, but probably not salvage the game in which a dispute occurred.
Also: “recording” contracts has pretty different implications depending on
Whether players just talk about what they want and then agree, vs taking the additional step of converting informal agreements to formal language
Whether that discussion happens via text, voice, or video
If players are discussing in video chat, and you want to be able to record contracts without players needing to push a button that says “we’re going to recite the exact formal agreement now”, then you’re potentially recording a continuous video of every player for the entire length of the game just in case something later becomes a topic for dispute. This probably raises concerns about performance and privacy.
The closest system to how I imagine a face-to-face board game works is probably something like: Everyone has the ability to kill themselves, and players are trusted to use this ability if the group agrees they violated a contract. This has the side-effect that any player can basically unilaterally ruin the game for everyone by refusing to do so. In a face-to-face board game this doesn’t much matter because players already have this ability (you can just physically grab the pieces), but online games often operate in a lower-trust environment where this might be a more serious issue.
The obvious-to-me patch would be to let players kill anyone with a majority vote (and ask them to please only use this ability if a contract is breached). This doesn’t help with 2-player games, and gives the de facto ability for any majority to execute any minority (even if no contract is involved) if players decide to abuse it, but it’s probably good enough to make the game playable.
Another option might be to designate one player the “host” of the game, and give them the power to judge disputes. The right to host public games could be a privilege that you only earn after playing for a while and can be revoked as a punishment? (Hosting invitation-only games could be universally allowed.)
One could also theoretically hire people to act as judges and assign them in shifts to be on stand-by for any disputes that come up, but that’s obviously expensive.
Presumably a dispute could go to arbitration even if one of the participants admits the contract was ambiguous; is it fair to punish both players in this case? I guess it depends whether you view this as “punishing spurious arbitration requests” or “punishing the creation of ambiguous contracts”.
I don’t expect disputes to be common (among the kinds of people who are interested in learning cooperative bargaining practice)
A simple approach would be for the recordings to be kept on the players’ computers for a day (maybe signed by the server during play to make falsification more inconvenient), and they submit them to the server if there’s a dispute. People you talk to online always have the ability to record you (did you not know this) so it’s not a real concern.
(There’s no need to record video)
I thought you had aspirations to make games like this a popular entertainment rather than just a specialist training tool.
Ah, note, most of those cases mention a hopefully reduced need for explicit agreements. In other cases I imagine more constrained tools for coordination; fences, and so on. It might be interesting to build a contract system where players can formally propose ‘trades’ as a set of machines that will actuate when accepted, but it would be fiddly, so good faith verbal law is much more approachable where available.
But in the video game context it might make sense to just get into simulating actual legal systems?
I don’t really want to get into a deep discussion on privacy issues, but this seems frighteningly casual:
While that is certainly technologically feasible, IANAL but I believe in many cases that would be illegal (without your consent) due to wiretapping laws.
Ignoring that, people could reasonably feel OK about their conversation partner having a recording while not feeling OK about some third-party game company having a recording.
Even if they are OK in principle with you having a recording they may have nontrivial expectations about how you’re going to safeguard that recording. (Do your employees have the capability to browse these recordings for fun, without receiving an arbitration request? Can players use false arbitration requests to trick you into revealing recordings of other players?)
People might feel OK with the community looking at recordings of their contracts to arbitrate a dispute but not feel OK with the community looking at other stuff that was said during the game.
Some players of your game might be minors and not considered legally competent to consent to stuff.
If you actually made this recording system with the philosophy that “privacy is not a real concern” I think you’d be inviting a scandal and in extremis could maybe even go to jail.