Should we keep selling drugs, even though we know they are killing people?
Yes! Yes! Yeees!
_ The Drug Cartel community
I found it amusing that there was a vote on whether the Battle Helper community wanted to keep using the battle helper and automation that helps them win - and surprise surprise - they said they wanted to keep using it.
Amazing!
It is to be expected though, isn't it? People will be people, and if there is a way to take a shortcut, people are going to take it. We see it in every area of our lives. Automation. And we are willing to use it, even if it negatively affects our experience down the track, because the present moment is all that matters, right? The justification for continuing the provision of battle helpers is that the Terms of Service are not updated, so it isn't technically breaking any rules.
Some argue that even if the ToS are updated, it doesn't matter because it will be hard to enforce, and again this is normal human behavior. When people feel they can get away with something, many will. And in the world of digital communities, no one really cares about anyone else, except when their personal experience is negatively affected. The people who love automation, don't actually have to experience the affects themselves, they can remove their engagement. They can also lower their barrier to compete with people who are possibly better than them.
I hope the ToS are updated soon.
It was nice when humans were playing, as while I was winning more, people who had previously been using the various bots were more engaged, talking about their battles together. It has fallen silent again.
Splinterlands struggles for public conversation on Hive, where even in the trending category of the community, there is little engagement. It is a massive opportunity being missed however, as Splinterlands has the chance to build a community around a crypto game, with user-based content and engagement all happening on a Web3 platform, earning from a different token, outside of the Splinterlands economy. There is a chance to make a complete community hub of gaming, content creation, interaction, investment, governance and third-party development in the one place, yet still distributed using decentralized mechanisms. The importance of this in the future is high in my opinion.
But, people are people and just like the rest of the world that the same people think needs some adjustment, they are going to behave exactly the same. This is crypto in general, where crypto "enthusiasts" tend to not be anywhere near that and instead, are just looking to buy themselves a better place in the fiat world. They don't actually care about the future of the tech or the community, except when they think they can help them secure a better position on the traditional economy ladder.
As expected
Updating the ToS is important, because even if it is hard to enforce right now, it means people will have to willingly choose to break them. What that means is that since there is a lot of data available, enforcement could happen somewhere down the track when it is feasible, where for example, reward cards become more expensive to unlock, or they are not unlockable at all and can never be sold individually. After all, they are reward cards for playing the game and once the rules of the game are explicit and people break those rules, it is no longer playing, it is cheating.
Do people want to be cheats?
Much like the opening lines of this article, it all comes down to incentive. When the incentive to cheat is higher than the perceived punishment from cheating, there will be some percentage of people who will take the risk. When it is in an ecosystem of pseudonyms and human anonymity, there aren't the social risks involved either, lowering the bar further.
Personally, I think that this has been one of the problem catalysts on the internet, because there aren't the same consequences as there are in real life. Be a dick in the real world and you will be known as a dick and will face the ramifications. In the digital world, it is possible to hide.
I have always wondered how the people who cheat at games actually feel about themselves as they do it, but I assume they justify it through some kind of need they have. Or some kind of entitlement. They say that "I deserve to because" in the same way that any personal will justify their worst behaviors, even when they know they are in the wrong.
It is a moral question, an ethics question.
Yet, we live in a world where ethics have been eroded, whilst individual satisfaction has been elevated. When people are isolated, there is no reason to be ethical, no reason to think of others, because others are meaningless.
I keep saying the Splinterlands community, but I don't think the community is anywhere near as robust as some people believe it to be. When people are only interested in maximizing their ROI, the community will ultimately collapse. It is inevitable. Well at least, that is what has happened one hundred percent of the time until now.
But, I can't convince anyone to act in a certain way.
I can try to explain why perhaps, but ultimately, we own our own actions, and when things collapse, we are all part of the problem. Some don't even try for better though, they just resign themselves to the outcome, shrugging their shoulders and saying, this is the way it is. Turning a blind eye, justifying it through the laws, is just distancing oneself and taking away agency, as we have seen many times before in the past in much larger, and far more impactful ways than just through a game.
It is all on a spectrum though, isn't it?
It is more convenient not to do the right thing.
Especially when there is money to be gained.
The few days of feeling good playing, were good while they lasted.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]