Socialist Gamer Review

Government Forms and the Gaming Guild

By Ravenhawk | December 11, 2007

These days it is finally being seen as important by game developers to allow players to easily form groups. This is something that has been needed since the early online games, and I’m quite glad to see finally becoming a norm. However, I have personally found an issue with the forms of governance allowed by these groups. Most games only have one form of governance: Complete Autocracy.

For many games, this isn’t a problem and it is often the most efficient in order to get a particular action done. However, when a group gets to any reasonable size, a guild leader is going to, at the very least, require delegation of authority. Most of world understands that authocratic governments don’t work. So why is it that game designers feel that it is the only form of government that gamers need?

Now, to be fair, not all games have this great flaw.

Puzzles Pirates has a couple other forms of government, however, the implemented them in such a manner that you’re being sickeningly inefficient to get anything done unless you’re autocratic or have all your members with voting rights on a very regular basis.

Dream of Mirror Online has an interesting system for it’s guilds. In order to create the group you need 5 people over level 20 and like.. 40k. The person who creates the guild is the guild chairman and the others are the elders. Elders have the ability to recruit, etc. So far it’s pretty run-of-the-mill.

However, DOMO also allows you to create smaller, sub-guilds within your main guild. Then, you can set managers for these sub-guilds, which gives them complete control over the sub-guild. This allows not only delegation of power, but the setting up of specialized sub-groups within your guild. For instance, my friend’s guild is called Radical Dreamers. Within this guild he has a subguilds for the following activities: One for teaching new players the ropes of the game, one which runs guild events, one for PVP players, One for merchanting for the guild, and one for resource farming.

While still technically autocratic, the sub-guild system allows for some delegation of power, splitting the hold from the hands of one, to the hands of a small group.

I’m still waiting for a game which finds an efficient way to implement a democratic form of government for the guilds. If I work out exactly how I would see it working, I’ll of course post it here.

Posed Question to the Readers: What do you see as the ideal form of governing a gaming group?