Virtual Worlds, Real Citizens.
"Players are a constituency, not just an audience. The designers, far from being auteurs, are more like local politicians. The audience doesn't just watch the story. The audience is the story. The players are producing as much as they're consuming - perhaps more."
JC Herz., 50,000,000 Star Warriors Can't Be Wrong, Wired 10.06. 2002
We spend more and more time in online universes, talking with friends, playing, working, creating... Virtual societies are emerging everywhere, and are becoming more important every day. However, most of these universes are controlled by commercial companies, which isn't without causing a number of issues.
Decisions, impacting everyone's virtual life, can be taken against the interest of the world residents. Privacy and individual rights can be (and are!) easily dismissed, as nobody is looking over the shoulder of the local police - the world owners. Transparency and honesty are often a remote dream.
Our mission, as stated in the Social Contract, is to protect our elementary rights; living in a virtual world gives us the status of citizen there, and our rights have to be recognized and enforced.
Who are we...
We're a group of MMORPG professionals, people who enjoy playing in online universes in general and people who advocate the use of Free Software. We strongly believe that virtual worlds should belong to all of their players. Furthermore, we believe that the players, as virtual citizens, should have the right to influence the laws governing the virtual worlds in which they live. Also, any sufficiently motivated developer should be able to realize their own dreams, by starting their own virtual world. This vision should include making all of source code, artwork, documentation and tools available to any developer as Free Software.
In late 2006, our first action was an attempt to buy the MMORPG Ryzom while its first editor went into bankruptcy. A commercial company had its way ahead of us, and got the code. But the campaign was still a success. It made a lot of noise on the Net, it was covered by mainstream medias, and was supported and backed by the Free Software community. In 25 days, 170 K€ of donation pledges have been registered, and – perhaps the most important – we have found we were not alone willing to inhabit our own world.