Consequence and punishment are two words that sound interchangeable, however knowing the difference between the two is important to working with your customers and making a more enjoyable environment to play in. To put it short and simple, a consequence is a mixture of positive and negative and a punishment is just negative. Punishments exist to penalize activity that is seen as detrimental to the community while consequences allow for more freedom within the boundaries of restrictions to either increase immersion or keep said activity from being overused.
To start, let’s see some examples of consequence vs punishment. The criminal system present in most sandbox MMOs is a perfect example of consequence. You are free to kill members of your own faction, or just run around killing indiscriminately and play the marauding band of pirates/bandits you always wanted to be. After all, why would you want to sit at a resource node for hours on end or in an area filled with NPCs, when you can just run in, murder the fool who wasted his time, and steal his stuff? It’s so simple that you have to wonder why everyone doesn’t do it. To keep the field balanced, developers institute consequences for criminal behavior. Players may find themselves unable to access certain cities, on the radar for law enforcement, harsher penalties on death, and more. The idea is to keep criminal activity within the bounds of the game’s rules without making it so easy that no one wants to do anything else.
Consequences can refer to virtually any available choice in an MMO, expanded when the developer throws criminal activity into those choices. The consequence of picking the mage as your class means having less access to armor and weapons. Choosing to ally yourself with Saradomin in RuneScape means not having access to rewards available only to Zamorak’s followers. Creating a Horde character on World of Warcraft means not having access to certain factional cities and items. If you buy Pokemon Blue, you need to trade someone who owns Pokemon Red if you want to add Ekans to your Pokedex. And if you choose cole slaw and macaroni salad as the two sides to your barbecue ribs, you can’t have a baked potato unless you pay extra.
Punishments on the other hand are almost solely for disciplinary purposes. The developers don’t approve of what you are doing, and by going against their demands you risk punishment. You can kill someone repeatedly in World of Warcraft, but if you start throwing racial slurs at them you will likely be muted or banned. Jagex rolling back a character for botting in RuneScape is a punishment. Blizzard banning someone for gold farming is a punishment. An MMO that automatically logs you out after several consecutive hours of play with the message “go outside and get some sun,” is punishing. Jagex used to add muted characters into lore as people with their tongues cut out, but that is still punishment.
This distinction is important when designing features for any game, but most important when developing a sandbox MMO, and crucial for a series of articles that I have planned.
MMO Fallout 