【Discuss】Politics in the game
- Thread starter Engineering machine No.1
- Start date
- Tags game design natural state politics in the game
Politics in this game won't be much different from politics in any other game, real life included. The only difference is that the nature of modern media and the intuitive game mechanics will make the entire process much easier to observe.
@Engineering machine No.1
I'm noticing a lot of red flags in your communication which I hope are translation errors. You will greatly offend non-chinese speakers if you don't figure out how to get past the language and cultural barrier better. (I assume you are a chinese speaker, I don't even know which language I am looking at, and because you posted an image instead of text i cannot even copy and paste it into google translate to find out!)
1. You did not make it clear that you were the author of the post you are translating, as you speak in the third person. To English speakers, speaking in the third person is perceived as arrogant or even dishonest. I am aware that in some languages speaking in the third person is perceived as being humble. This is a classic example of a cultural misunderstanding.
2. You copied and pasted an image of the post, not the text of the post, making it difficult to copy and paste text for the purposes of quoting you. You also did not state where the post came from - I assume it comes from your discord, but I can't be sure and the link isn't working for me. This sort of practice - failing to cite your source, and failing to post links to the original source, is academically unprofessional.
3. According to your first three points, you created a faction because you want to be a Philosopher King by studying your minions. This line of reasoning is somewhat worrying for reasons that are hard to explain.
4. You use far too many words. This not only makes translation more difficult, but many westerners perceive "wordiness" as arrogance. It is important to use short and simple sentences that are easy to translate.
5. You mention that Starbase is unique for several reasons, but all of those reasons are true of other MMOs as well - such as Eve Online. If you want to use MMOs as a source of political study, I recommend studying Eve, which has a long and rich history.
6. You discuss Starbase as a good experiment due to controls and variables. This is not good for you, as YOU are not the one in control of those variables. You don't know what will drive players, nor can you control the rewards or punishments they receive. It's hard to run an experiment that you have no control over.
Example: Let say that you assume players are motivated by in game money, "credits". You might assume you can encourage certain behaviors by using credits as a reward.
Let us assume the Dev's make it too easy to earn credits so as to make things easy for new players. Let us assume that the maximum ship size is fairly small, so there isn't even anything expensive to spend credits on. Credits are too easy to get, and worthless to use, so any attempt to use credits to bribe people will be laughed at. It would be like trying to bribe people with dirt.
Instead, the players might be motivated by the attention of twitch streamers, the number of players they have killed in PVP, or the best real estate on the moon. None of these rewards are things you can easily control. If you choose to build your guild for the sake of controlling these resources, it will be the experiment controlling YOU, not you controlling the experiment. This is the opposite of a controlled experiment.
7. I think this sentence is a mistranslation, you should have an English speaking professor look at it.
8. Westerners value people who are very direct. Failing to communicate your motives until after the fact is seen as dishonest.
9. So far, there have been a few mistranslations and cultural misunderstandings, but that's to be expected when dealing with language barriers. Let's see if I can give any useful advice for this last section:
Oh dear, these mistranslations might be a bit more serious than I thought. I recommend visiting a Discord or subreddit that is dedicated to writing and proofreading. Good luck out there.
@Engineering machine No.1
I'm noticing a lot of red flags in your communication which I hope are translation errors. You will greatly offend non-chinese speakers if you don't figure out how to get past the language and cultural barrier better. (I assume you are a chinese speaker, I don't even know which language I am looking at, and because you posted an image instead of text i cannot even copy and paste it into google translate to find out!)
1. You did not make it clear that you were the author of the post you are translating, as you speak in the third person. To English speakers, speaking in the third person is perceived as arrogant or even dishonest. I am aware that in some languages speaking in the third person is perceived as being humble. This is a classic example of a cultural misunderstanding.
2. You copied and pasted an image of the post, not the text of the post, making it difficult to copy and paste text for the purposes of quoting you. You also did not state where the post came from - I assume it comes from your discord, but I can't be sure and the link isn't working for me. This sort of practice - failing to cite your source, and failing to post links to the original source, is academically unprofessional.
3. According to your first three points, you created a faction because you want to be a Philosopher King by studying your minions. This line of reasoning is somewhat worrying for reasons that are hard to explain.
4. You use far too many words. This not only makes translation more difficult, but many westerners perceive "wordiness" as arrogance. It is important to use short and simple sentences that are easy to translate.
5. You mention that Starbase is unique for several reasons, but all of those reasons are true of other MMOs as well - such as Eve Online. If you want to use MMOs as a source of political study, I recommend studying Eve, which has a long and rich history.
6. You discuss Starbase as a good experiment due to controls and variables. This is not good for you, as YOU are not the one in control of those variables. You don't know what will drive players, nor can you control the rewards or punishments they receive. It's hard to run an experiment that you have no control over.
Example: Let say that you assume players are motivated by in game money, "credits". You might assume you can encourage certain behaviors by using credits as a reward.
Let us assume the Dev's make it too easy to earn credits so as to make things easy for new players. Let us assume that the maximum ship size is fairly small, so there isn't even anything expensive to spend credits on. Credits are too easy to get, and worthless to use, so any attempt to use credits to bribe people will be laughed at. It would be like trying to bribe people with dirt.
Instead, the players might be motivated by the attention of twitch streamers, the number of players they have killed in PVP, or the best real estate on the moon. None of these rewards are things you can easily control. If you choose to build your guild for the sake of controlling these resources, it will be the experiment controlling YOU, not you controlling the experiment. This is the opposite of a controlled experiment.
7. I think this sentence is a mistranslation, you should have an English speaking professor look at it.
8. Westerners value people who are very direct. Failing to communicate your motives until after the fact is seen as dishonest.
9. So far, there have been a few mistranslations and cultural misunderstandings, but that's to be expected when dealing with language barriers. Let's see if I can give any useful advice for this last section:
Oh dear, these mistranslations might be a bit more serious than I thought. I recommend visiting a Discord or subreddit that is dedicated to writing and proofreading. Good luck out there.
- Joined
- May 6, 2020
- Messages
- 58
To RedPine: Great post. I speak both Chinese and English. I felt weird when I was reading OP's posts and now I know why. The whole experiment thing just feels very fishy. (Not saying it is actually done with bad intentions, but still)
About 7. there wasn't really any translation error. He meant that since he did not know how a "normal" game clan/faction works, his clan will be operated in such a way that's dedicated to his experiment. IDK how that even works but the Chinese version did say the same thing.
About 9. sadly it's not that much of a mistranslation either as far as I can see. They do get this serious over these things.
About 7. there wasn't really any translation error. He meant that since he did not know how a "normal" game clan/faction works, his clan will be operated in such a way that's dedicated to his experiment. IDK how that even works but the Chinese version did say the same thing.
About 9. sadly it's not that much of a mistranslation either as far as I can see. They do get this serious over these things.
I don't doubt good intentions, but good intentions based on cultural misunderstandings invariably end badly.
7. Oof, in that case he is in for a rough ride. Leadership can only be learned the hard way, no amount of political science or sociology makes it any easier.
9. I know, but I couldn't think of a more polite way to put it. "Cultural barrier", maybe? I honestly want to help him, but he needs professional experience that I simply don't have. The way things are now, the cultural preconceptions he has will attract the exact sort of trolls that will reinforce his preconceptions in a vicious and self perpetuating cycle.
7. Oof, in that case he is in for a rough ride. Leadership can only be learned the hard way, no amount of political science or sociology makes it any easier.
9. I know, but I couldn't think of a more polite way to put it. "Cultural barrier", maybe? I honestly want to help him, but he needs professional experience that I simply don't have. The way things are now, the cultural preconceptions he has will attract the exact sort of trolls that will reinforce his preconceptions in a vicious and self perpetuating cycle.