ABSTRACT
While multiplayer online games are played in real time, they are designed first and played afterward. Even the inevitable gameplay updates for issues such as balancing and levels of difficulty, and the addition of new content, are all designed and tested in advance of implementation. Multiplayer games from World of Warcraft to the multiplayer mode of first-person shooters allow audible chat. Players speak directly to one another. This serves two purposes. The first: orders to fellow players on a team can be delivered much faster, a necessity in boss raids and when battling other teams of human players. The second is trash-talking. Good guilds survive and prosper because it is human nature to seek out leaders, but members want to feel that their voices are heard. Bad guilds (and political regimes) fail when their leaders become totalitarian. Maybe not at first, but history has shown us that discord cannot survive forever.
