EMPOWERMENTPrologueYesterday we had a town council meeting about current matters, as we do every week. It prompted me to write again about our game and community philosophy and principles. "Why?" one might ask. "Is the Building module and this and that
enough late already?? Can't you concentrate to get something finished first???"
Well, yes, and no, and the matter is not easy to explain, and even more difficult to grasp if you are not living in it. It is not related, but similar to why the GUI is 1.5 years "late". It is the development paradigm and management/coordination challenge of
open source.
I have done voluntary/atypical/businessman/CEO work almost all my life. Since 2003, I have only twice received an incoming transfer titled "salary" to my bank (and both of them from my 100% family company). So I have experience, and I also have patience. I have had two earlier attempts of setting up a business with fluid/voluntarist job market and freelance/deferred/shares/options/"rank" compensation, with user-defined cash-out schedule and amounts. If this sounds familiar to CK, it is because it is
The earlier things did not outright
fail, but their community was also not so strong as to carry the business to a major success for all involved, and them in the first place.
Monero development is open source and it does not have an inbuilt business/financing model, so the tragedy of commons is strong. BTC is the same. (Tragedy of commons means that everyone is benefitting of the service, but nobody has direct incentive to develop it or pay for it.) Dash and 2.0 coins have premines/ICO's that ensure incentive, but when applied to a coin which is intended to be a "fair and equitable" payment system, it is complicated.
Crypto Kingdom is open source as well. Unlike Monero, we have a
rule-bound, centralised, tax-collecting agency called Town, which can take care of the hosting and development. Being open source and centralised, fits well together. Anyone can fork it at will, but if they do, they will need to get the taxpayers! The game does not host itself - we have 100s of work hours put into it each month! The (gold) owners select the councillors, so there is a mechanism for orderly change of management in place, which many centralised coins and projects either lack, or at least it does not work in practice.
But our model could also work much better in practice! This is why I am taking the time off from doing other people's work, and empowering them to do it themselves, because that is what they both have
authority to do and
possibility to do!
AuthorityThe
right to do something. In a general way, all open source stuff can be used for anything.
In the context of this game, however, we have a few rules about authority to change the game status (changelog):
1. Consent. Trades can be done if one character places a bid/ask, and another fulfils it, or two or more characters otherwise agree on any change that concerns only them.
2. Arbitration. Sometimes there is a discrepancy of game records, or new modules are coming and existing ones need to be fit into them, or items are merged, or other things that do not intend to change the status but nevertheless do it. GM has the final say in this kind of changes and if he sets a court of grievances, good, but most often there is none. The decisions are meant to get a good average result, usually under time constraint, and nobody is specially targeted to gain or lose at the expense of others.
3. GM powers. GM has authority to new and create items or land. Since these decisions are so important, we already have rules and conventions in place to ensure how this is done so as to not rock the boat. Many of these powers are delegated to admins, corporations, etc so that the business can be conducted and the game flourishes.
Anything that does not fall under the three categories above, is free to be done by anyone. For instance, matters that sound lofty but do not require permission from anyone:
1. Issuing tokens in other platforms against a "hard asset" in CK, or even without it, as promises.
2. Issuing tokens in CK against "hard assets" in other ledgers, or anything (or nothing) at all.
3. Building a 3rd party site that uses CK logins and makes transfers between parties in consent (the user and operator typically, such as a casino).
4. Building a new UI for CK to conduct the things allowed by the character based on his permissions, including 3D land visualiser, first-person shooter walkable UI, better market.
5. Using/starting any other things to enrich the gameplay, such as a wiki, chat, BBS, Hall of Fame, blog, twitter or other marketing account.
PossibilityIt matters little to have authority if there is no possibility. The game is mainly concerned to limit the possibility to edit
changelog, because if that is edited without authority, problems come and sorting them out takes admin time. We have 4 permission levels:
1. Superadmin (GM) has access to health, life and death.
2. Senior Admin (~10 exist) have access to all commands that can change anyone's balances, new and create items etc., without limitations.
3. Junior Admin (not in use)
4. Player can use API, batch commands, and many powerful commands such as dividend. Only limitation is that he can only initiate transactions where the source is active_character (himself), not take other people's money and stuff.
Everything (which is a lot!) that does not involve making records in changelog or character stats such as age, health, and wisdom, is possible to be done by anyone.
So we can conclude that everyone has much more
authority than most ever realised, and also the
possibility to do things, is very little if at all limited by the game or me as GM. (If you
need senior admin powers for something, just ask!)
CoordinationSo it boils down to
incentives to do something, and the
initiative to get it done and hosted. Here I will have to raise my hands: The game is so big that I cannot be the "silent enabler" of all new things any more. If you can do it without me, you probably have the authority to do it as well. If you don't, I have the authority to authorise you
If you cannot do it without me, do it with someone else! If I am the mandatory requisite of getting your idea off the ground - sorry: I have enough ideas of my own
"I would do X if someone paid me."
If you need to ask, King is not paying you. Town has some duties, and occasionally does pay for projects and administration. See below. In general, make a project that is paying you back, find a sponsor, or monetise it by selling some shares. Be creative.
Town affairsAnything that the Town does (again, probably more than you thought - many things that I have been seen doing are actually Town domain, just assigned to me for (in)convenience) is authorised by the council, lead by Mayor
SirJacket of North Face. Mayor is a double Chairman-CEO role so I don't even have the
authority to overstep him or the council.
Thank you for this opportunity to empower you! Looking forward to seeing you in chat relaxed