Hey! They made an online game about us!

[vraiblonde]

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Alphaville could have become a socialist utopia, a grand experiment in free-market capitalism or simply a reflection of the allure and the pitfalls of any real Western city.

As it was, Alphaville quickly turned into a hellhole of scam-artists, crime syndicates, mafia extortion artists and teenage girls turning tricks to make ends meet. It became a breeding ground for the very worst in human nature - a benign-sounding granny, for example, who specialised in taking new players into her confidence, then showered them in abuse. Then there was the scam-artist known as Evangeline, who started out equally friendly and then stole new players' money.

Another academic, John Suler, a psychology professor at Rider University, has taken the Sims issue as emblematic of broader lessons to be learned from online gaming and the proclivities of human nature.

He said that online games were an invitation to young people to act out fantasies of bad behaviour - especially if the participants were outsiders in real life, as computer geeks often are. He added: "The more an online game simulates real life, the more the social problems in that game will simulate real life."

"On the other hand, Maxis acts like a classic despot, using its powers to single out individual critics for the dungeons and the firing squads. The usual real-world justification for this kind of arbitrary action is the need for a strong central hand to protect public safety and common welfare. But since Maxis isn't all that good at those aspects, the Herald censorship smacks more of tyranny for its own sake."