![](\"http:\/\/cyber.law.harvard.edu\/blogs\/static\/dowbrigade\/sims.jpg\")
Alphaville’s
\n a tough town, the sort of place where even the street-smart are rarely
\n safe and newcomers are often eaten alive. You can call the
\n cops, but they usually don’t arrive in time. That’s why so many Alphaville
\n residents seek justice by hiring guys like Jeremy Chase.<\/p>\n
He runs a
\n band of thugs who’ll gladly deal out ugly punishments for the right
\n price. Chase, a 26-year-old resident of Sacramento, runs the Sim Mafia
\n (thesimmafia.com), a gang of digital enforcers for a digital world. They
\n lay down the law inside the Sims Online, a multiplayer computer game
\n run by Electronic Arts. "Our job is to basically take those complaints
\n from the normal citizens of the game, who can’t go to EA because EA won’t
\n do anything about it, and do an eye-for-an-eye for them," Chase
\n said.<\/p>\n
If a player feels his character, or Sim, is being ill treated and can
\n get no justice from the game operators at EA, he can arrange to have
\n bad things happen to rival players, by approaching a local Mafia and
\n ponying up some of the game’s currency, called simoleons.<\/p>\n
by Hiawatha Bray in the Boston Globe<\/a><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Alphaville’s a tough town, the sort of place where even the street-smart are rarely safe and newcomers are often eaten alive. You can call the cops, but they usually don’t arrive in time. That’s why so many Alphaville residents seek … Continue reading