Examples

My thoughts and ideas are blurring into each other on this topic. Again my idea is that a community can manage itself with proper tool or mechanics provided by a game developer. The community creates the rules, judges, and enforces punishments or rewards players.

Some examples of this system are known in current games today such as GarrysMod, a sandbox game where players can build structures with props or mechanisms, posing tools, etc. Players can create servers with modification to create different game modes like shooters, building modes, role-playing, mini games etc. Specifically these RP servers is where this system exists, players can select jobs to play as, and each job has different pay, prerequisites, or limitations to the number of players in the server with that job. These jobs are not like real jobs where you must clock in and do work, you simply earn money every 10 min or so. These jobs simply give you items or perks that this job only can do. Such as a cook can purchase microwaves where you can purchase food. Players have fun messing around doing weird things in their roles. A player could get a job as a drug dealer and go around whispering at people if they want drugs all while avoiding the cops. Players could mug other players for their cash in alley ways, or rob shop dealers. Players could RP a police officer which enforces the rules that the mayor (another player) creates. This little world can have some crazy fun experiences you may never get any other game, this is due to the players having more freedom, customizing game mechanics, balancing, rules and such. Players don’t like random killings so they created rules and admins to enforce them to prevent this. The player community is capable of managing themselves, they don’t need a developer to create mechanics limiting players because a few players exploit and ruin other players experiences. Although greifing can be entertaining when it happens every so often.

another example, DayZ, a survival game where players simply try to survive as long as they can hording gear and having to collect food and water and medical supplies to sustain injuries. The goal is to survive so when players encounter each other some may kill the other player to take all his gear. This can ruin a players experience if they keep dying too much, but players learn to not trust people so easily and be cautious. The community then established that these players who murder are called bandits, this spurred some players to help other players fight the bandits or provide supplies to new players, this was then named by the community as Hero players. The community reacted to the bandits with heroes, this turned into an interesting game-play element that is apart of the DayZ experience. If developers did not like how these bandits ruin players experiences, they could prevent players from hurting each other, which eliminates the problem but restricts players and eliminated that interesting game-play element that the community created. Give the community the tools to solve problems they see but without restricting players. Players even created modified DayZ servers where bandits have red dots on their wrists, this allows players to recognize bandits, but at the same time players have to get close enough to see the dot, this creates a sense of balance so bandits still have a chance to continue their spree but gives non bandit players the knowledge of an enemy of not. So they know if they should engage a gun fight or avoid them all together. This is to help remedy players who get murdered too much and continue to have a poor experience.

Give the community the tools and they can solve the problem in game and make it an interesting part of the game play experience. The option to break the rules is there but it is deterred enough for the rules not to be broken too often.