Space game MMOs… A brain dump:

I’ve been inspired to brain dump by a post on the Paragon forum.

To quote:

“Will multiplayer be instanced or MMO style?
If MMO will players be able to transverse to other servers/galaxy’s with their ships,equipment and credits?“

Now, leaving aside the question of what they might mean behind instancing, lets instead think about how a space game like Paragon, not Pioneer note, Paragon might choose to implement an MMO gameplay model.

NB: Paragon is a sort of daughter project to Pioneer. It’s forked from the Pioneer codebase and occasionally pulls in work we do. However Paragon has it’s own developers, development and game specific code, scripting, storyline and art. I’ll be discussing these things from being a Pioneer developers point of view.

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I find the whole PRISM(NSA)/Tempora(GCHQ [1],[2]) thing quite depressing but at least I have “nothing to fear, nothing to hide” right? (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/video/2013/jun/09/data-snooping-law-abiding-citizens-nothing-fear-hague-video)

Only, this has been debunked so frequently in the quite recent past, and in fact was one of the major counter arguments against ID cards (http://www.biometricidentitycards.info/articles/NoHideNoFear.htm), that it really does make you wonder about the people doing the snooping if they’re still naively clinging to it as a defence.

This is the results of just a quick Googl’ing:
– http://theartofprivacy.com/2011/02/02/why-ive-got-nothing-to-hide-is-such-a-fallacy-4/
– http://www.biometricidentitycards.info/articles/NoHideNoFear.htm
– http://chronicle.com/article/Why-Privacy-Matters-Even-if/127461/
– http://www.computerweekly.com/blogs/the-data-trust-blog/2009/02/debunking-a-myth-if-you-have-n.html

That’s all just seconds away from anyone reading, and it’s all true. Example after example, cases from history, ongoing problems around the world etc. It’s such a dumbass defence.

Of course in many of these people minds the “ends justifies the means“, but no-one that I’ve spoken too thinks like that. Most of the commentary I read is outraged that their government really would behave like this, not surprised I note, frequently disappointed but never surprised. Everyone I’ve spoken too actually seems to feel the the “ends” are almost irrelevant and that it’s how we’ve behaved getting to them, the “means“, that actually matters the most.

Perhaps this is because we’ll live the “means” and we all know that the “ends” are like tomorrow, it never comes.

So if we’re going to have to live with the “means” then, since the “ends” are as mythical as world peace and unicorns, shouldn’t they be the only thing that actually matters?

What we seem to have here are two governments, colluding and abetting, the mass spying of their own, each other, and everyone’s citizenry because they think we won’t mind.

Just like we didn’t mind ID cards then?

…

I see no way out of this current mess except eventually leaving … what? The country? And go to another country? That does the same only hasn’t been exposed yet? We really do seem to have reached a point where those in power, or who want to be in power, have nothing in common with those who elect them nor do they understand that they’re meant to be protecting their electorate from these kinds of abuses of power rather than perpetrating them.