If you can interact with another player, you can grief them. No amount of policing will ever change human nature. There will never be an anti-grief mechanic that cannot be turned around and used for griefing. There will always be players who whine and call you a griefer when you beat them. The only way to avoid being griefed is to play only with people you know…and even a good friend will occasionally tie your shoelaces together or pull a chair out from under you just for shits and grins.
Sure, but there’s a spectrum between “Well, for the most part I have fun, but occasionally there’s this asshole” and “I quit because I couldn’t do anything fun in between all the assholes messing with me”.
I thought it was pretty apparent that when people talked about “stopping griefing” they meant the former, where some games seem to lean far toward the latter (try reading about Fansy the Bard, who did some mighty creative and funny – so long as you’re not the recipient – griefing, for an example of the latter).
It is all just a game to maladjusted social retards like yourself and McBain, the problem as I mentioned above is its fun to be a dick behind the internet and far away from people’s meaty fists. In real life, you will be arrested or pummeled, or hopefully both, if you take it too far on a personal level.
The dismissive hand wave of “it’s just a game” and “it’s human nature” is complete horseshit. It reminds me quite a bit of some of the scumbags I deal with who say, for example: “I didn’t kill anybody, it was just a car.” Yes, it IS human nature to get one over on the next guy, but there are consequences for doing so and they vary depending on the action you wish to perpetrate.
I have extremely low tolerance for that weak argument about human nature, which makes it great fun that I get to uhh, “interact”, with people who use it often. Kick an old guy down a flight of stairs and take his wallet. Why? The lowest forms of filth will say: It is human nature and because I can. Rationalizing away why you are dysfunctional is quite fun, don’t you think?
Here is my idea, see what you think, I think this is very feasible and workable as a solution to this issue:
I think it would be far beyond hilarious if gaming companies had goon squads on the payroll. And basically, after you had duped your 50th person out of stuff they worked for, or killed your 100th newbie, or <insert socially retarded behavior here>, the following would occur. Since they have your address presumably, they would send some people to your house and as you were walking out the door you would be punched so hard in your face that you would drop your lunchbox and thermos and perhaps a few teeth. Then they would run away before your parents could come help you. Then after that, your “counter” was reset because you paid your debt. But when it racked up again then you’d just get it again. That way only the real l33t g@Ngstas would really be able to compete. Because at some point, someone wants at least a few of their teeth, right?
Seriously, get a grip moron. You really believe that people should have their teeth knocked out because you were stupid enough to let them scam you out of a little bit of virtual money? Sounds like you are the maladjusted social retard to me…
My theory is that MMOGs are basically pre-civilized societies masquerading as civilized societies. If you took out all the anti-griefing mechanisms you would get a period of complete chaos followed by gangs of griefers banding together to subjugate the other players. This has actually happened in the Sims Online.
Effectively what this is is the very earliest forms of government. There is very little difference between a despot and a crime lord. Those with the strength to take and hold power get to impose their will on those weaker than themselves. Protection money is a form of taxation. Over time as the gangs become larger and more organized you will get more rigid structures imposed by the despot to make sure that underlings aren’t overstepping their bounds.
Theoretically, given enough time more complicated social and political systems could arise. But they likely won’t, because the whole point of a game world is that it’s not as rigidly structured as the real world. People want to be able to do things in the game that they can’t do in real life. Nobody want to log on for a six hour shift as a policeman or tax collector, even if those things are necessary to uphold the social order within the game, because it’s not fun.
Effectively, the problem with MMOGs is not the games but the players, and not just the griefers themselves. The players want a world where they are not subjected to abuse by “bad” people but they don’t want the attendant responsibility of maintaining the necessary structures and institutions to prevent such abuse. Thus it falls on the devs to try to maintain a facade of civility over a fundamentally lawless populous, and they don’t have the manpower.
I thought it was funny. Mr. hermit was illustrating the point that this behavior exists precicely because of the anonymity of the system, and that if there were actual (painful) consequences, all of the fun would go out of griefing.
Anti-social behavior is unacceptable regardless of the context, “it’s just a game” doesn’t cut it with me. You don’t get to talk on your cel phone through a movie and defend yourself because “it’s just a movie, geez man, so I cost you some entertainment.” You can and should be kicked out of the theater. Any theater that wants my repeat business had better take care of such behavior, and woe to the theater owner that ignores it because the bad customers will soon drive out the good.
The one thing that you can count on is people being selfish assholes. Knowing that this is the case, any software designer that fails to allow users to deal with griefers is marketing a defective product with little prospect of long-term success.
You people who refuse to see the huge grey area and equate online game griefing with commiting real life crime are totally delirious. There is no doubt that at some point while playing an online game someone else thought of you as a griefer, and surely you deserve to be hung by your balls IRL because of it.
TrodKnee, you are missing the point. I don’t think anyone is seriously advocating “real life” punishment for people who are griefing in-game, they are saying that a rather flippant response of “it’s just a game” is not an acceptable answer. Why should I have to put up with people spoiling my game experience? “It’s just a game” doesn’t make the griefing go away or improve my time in the game. It seems like a defeatist attitude.
I equate online griefing with being an asshole in real life. I’m not saying I draw the correlation of being an asshole online with being an asshole in real life - I’m sure there are truly folks out there who are pious saints in real life and hop online to be assholes so as to take it out on random folks they don’t know. They are, however, still being an asshole. They’ve just suddenly lost whatever restraint it is in real life that keeps them from doing it there. Likely, as has been pointed out, because of the lack of repercussion.
At some point in time, I’m sure in real life someone has considered me an asshole. There’s no doubt it’s happened in game. But being an asshole for a moment due to having a bad day is not equivalent to being an asshole habitually in real life. Similarly, being a griefer for a moment is far different than being a griefer consistently.
Most people aren’t thinking that a magic solution will come along that will make online gaming a happy place with nary a bad happening in the world. We just hope that the flaming assholes get put in the same place online that they do in the real world for no other reason than that they’re flaming assholes.
The way I see it is as the difference between morality and law. Plenty of people view others as being immoral regardless of the fact that they live totally within the law. In online games, if the mechanics allow it then it is legal, regardless of whether you think it is immoral griefing or not. To believe that you can legislate morality is to go sliding down the slippery slope into gaming fascism.
I’ve known plenty of guys in real life who are ultra-competitive assholes that wouldn’t hesitate to screw you over royally if you gave them half a chance. The fact that their tactics may be totally legal doesn’t change the fact that they are selfish pricks. Sure, I would love to punch them in the face, but then I would be the one getting locked up. Even then, I understand that if you threw every selfish prick into jail then we would be living on a prison planet…
I think the big issue with the “griefees” is the total lack of helplessness that they feel when being griefed. For example, corpse camping you have essentially two choices, take it until they tire, or log off. In almost ever real world situation, we have options. Your buddy is a prick, screws you over, then you have considerably more options: punch him in the face, kick him in the balls, slash tires/throat, or just walk away (abandon all ties). Socially retarded people would typically choose one of the first 4 options, but the most powerful option you have is to not associate yourself with your “buddy”. Sometimes walking away is the most powerful solution, while it may not teach him a lesson, you have removed yourself from a problem. Why i know this is oversimplified, i would have to say this would fit the 80/20 rule.
Or maybe if there was a way we could go back to the scarlett letter days, A for asshole. After all, we were talking about early forms of gov’t / policing.
Is it just me, or is that article a prime example of news.com’s editorial and grammatical “standards”?
Even the quotes seem a bit off: The Psychologist using the phrase “stem back”. What the hell does “stem back” mean? I can understand “stem from” or “go back”, but “stem back”?
This seems confusing at first, but it’s actually a rockclimbing term for when you are climbing one face and there’s a face behind you, and you use it for a foothold.
I think that’s what got my goat, the way the owner/operators of these MMORPG’s were just shrugging their shoulders and giving up on the idea of making sure the PAYING CUSTOMERS were actually enjoying their time in the game. I don’t know about y’all but my time is precious to me, and idea of having it wasted by some jerkoff while paying for the privilege pisses me off.
