In a small village there is a Blacksmith. This man is a necessary part of the village because it provides everyone with the tools and weapons they need. However, the Blacksmith is also known to commit petty crimes around the village every now and then.

The kicker: The crimes the guy commits are neither serious enough (murder, rape) to put him in a dungeon for life, nor light enough (stealing a chicken, making lewd comments at the village ladies) to be ignored.

So, what can the village do with the Blacksmith? If he’s allowed to continue with his crimes, the village keeps enjoying the product of his work, but also has to put up with the irritation of having a criminal around. If he’s put in jail, peace around the village surely improves, but there’s no one around to make tools and weapons anymore. So the village has to make a choice about what it values more: peace and the abiding of its laws, or the material comfort and necessities met his presence provides.

The choice is made easier or harder for the village depending on several factors:

- The size of the community: Smaller villages simply cannot afford to put the Blacksmith in jail no matter what he does because it’s hard (or impossible) for another Blacksmith to step up and replace the criminal. Larger villages do have the option of jailing him and counting on another villager to become a Blacksmith. The village size itself is what gives that buffer and zone of comfort from where to try and see what happens.

- The situation of the village: During normal times, as long as tools don’t break, the village does not need the Blacksmith as much as it does, say, during wartime when there’s a constant need for weapons to be made and fixed.

It goes on, but it translates well to the context of virtual worlds.

A nice followup question: In a game the size of WoW, is the apparent lack of enforcement a direct result of not wanting to go hard after the bad apples because they are so many their revenue becomes significant? Or is the large number of bad apples around a sign that their numbers have grown too large to be effectively dealt with by passive control anymore?

To carry the thought further: What about corruption? Law enforcement agencies, like any other human organizations, include bad apples just as games do. Considering that real criminals don’t pay into the system that hunts them (government, which supports law enforcement through taxes) but virtual troublemakers do (they pay the subscription fee and/or microtransactions like everybody else), would dev-operated enforcement be enthusiastic and consistent?

I think companies already allow more disruptive behavior than they should, only to preserve the profit they gain from those bad apples. Like many retailers, they’ve chosen to be less than dutifully discriminate, instead of inviting customer loyalty through promotion of a friendly environment. There’s peace full of tongue-biting and injustice, and then there’s honest peace. To secure the latter, you have to kick some asses from time to time… including the asses of paying customers.