The corporate scam, MMO style

Games
21

Did you notice how that one corporation had a meeting about the investment? That’s because they understood there was a risk involved, and entered into the deal fully conscious of the possible calamity.

If this happened in a game where scamming and misfortune were unintended then I’d be a little bit pissed and have some sympathy. But it’s not so. Pirating and weaseling are a part of the game. Just like completing quests are parts of other games.

Lets all yell at Lokust and TheWombat for looking for finding solutions for quests in online databases, too. Since they’re unfairly not playing the game, and just the game. They’re using outside tools! Bastards.

22

They’re not intentionally fucking over other people, though. And as for the “using outside tools” - come on, man. The guy was trying to leverage his past experiences and friendships with people in order to fuck them over for his own malicious amusement. That’s nothing like using a database resource. He didn’t “play a role” in-game, he concocted a scam and used extensive real-life deception to pull it off, from start to finish. Since he got no actual benefit from it whatsoever, his only goal was to hurt other people, to rob them and destroy their trust and enjoyment of the game because he found it hilarious to do so. And he comes off like a total slimeball in his description - notice how, while he hates the guy who was really suspicious (and sounded like an asshole), he reserves utter contempt for the people who were nicest to him and most trusting. He sounds as if he can’t wait for a chance to plunge in the knife. Why would anybody in a civilized society want to applaud that kind of attitude? He went out of his way to hurt those other people as badly as he could, within the limit of the game, robbing them of everything he could get his hands on, just for a cheap laugh. And what was his justification? The fact that he was victimized by his own stupidity when he tried to play the game fairly?

23

He did it because it’s a game. And MMO’s just happen to be the type of game where the rules are pretty loosely defined. As far as I’m concerned it’s basically just “make an existense for yourself.” And he did.

He won. They lost. He’s a dick, but it’s not like he stole the money from those folks without their knowledge or consent. They handed it to him. He didn’t obtain passwords to their accounts, rob them of all their loot, delete their characters, and etc. I’d be with you calling him an asshat if that was the case.

Swindling people out of their money is part of EVE online IMO. If you’re entering into a game conscious of the fact that thievery and backstabbing are all a part of the ruleset, and then expect people to play by all of the rules except the ones that you deem unvirtous then you’re delirious.

Play Everquest. Play DAoC. Play a game where that kind of behavior is NOT coded into the core mechanics of the system.

It sounds like swindling and the possibility for major pitfalls are not appealing to you quatoria. For me - it’s an enticing feature. I enjoy harsh consequences for my actions.

For reference - I play Diablo II on HardCore mode. I thoroughly enjoyed my time spent in UO (a game, where your house which you spent a month of time slaving for could get stolen from you in mere seconds). My favorite console game is easily Ghouls 'n Ghosts on the Genesis.

The miserable failures you suffer enhance your greatest victories in these types of games. For me at least. Playing UO under the newbie friendly laws, Diablo II on regular mode, or Ghouls 'n Ghosts with infinte continue cheats just makes them feel weightless.

24

So, the IM’s, ICQ messages, phone calls, IRC chats, forum logs, and the bit where he tried to rob his friend who lived next door - that’s all coded into the core mechanics of the system? The only way he was able to pull off this scam was by going completely outside the mechanics of the game. He wasn’t “creating an existence” inside the game, he was creating a ficticious real persona, pretending to have a daughter, a wife, etc. He was swindling people just like any real confidence man, only he ultimately used the mechanics of a game as a part of that swindle, rather than the banking system, or a casino. And importantly, just like any other crook, the things he stole had a tangible monetary value.

Can you guys really not discern the difference between “roleplaying” a bad guy inside a game, and BEING a bad guy in real life, and using a game to aid you in becoming a petty thief?

25

I honestly can not discern the difference in the present situation.

As I said: The use of IRC, forums, and etc all sound exactly like someone else looking up quests in an online database. It’s not inside the game, but it’s just kind of become a part of the game. I don’t necessarily see it as an evil.

I didn’t see real money being lost. Losing game money is acceptable for me. No one’s family will starve because Daddy lost 200 million ISK on sour trade.

The game is designed so that people can get fucked over badly. He fucked them over badly by using all the tools that other honorable players use. I don’t really have any points to further expound upon or new ideas to argue. So take my opinion for what you will.

I think you’re charging at dragons, quatoria. But your dragon looks an awful lot like a simple windmill to me.

26

Okay, fine. If you think he was roleplaying a character, how does his stated intention to give all of the profits from his scam to a brand new character on a new account, in order to avoid reprisals or dealing with any consequences, and then delete the scam character, fit into the “roleplaying”?

I think you’re giving prison blowjobs, Oinkfs. But your allusions are awfully silly.

27

Even though he had all the money he could ever want he didn’t have a character to utilize it, and he was unwilling to invest the time to train his character back up. He hadn’t accounted for that at all.

The lustre of the game was gone, and he quit.

Also, you have a good point. It’s not so much role playing as it is one giant corporate simulation. It sounds hard to fulfill any kind of role in a corporate space simulation.

I don’t know man. I haven’t looked at it at all like a role playing game/scenario. It was just some guy playing a game. I view it differently than you, I suppose.

I have a friend at home here who refuses to cooperate in any game we play. We play co-op rise of nations vs computers, and if he needs to scuttle my nation in order to eliminate enemy forces and increase the greatness of his then he’ll do it. He’ll nuke my base in the blink of an eye if the computer is there, and then send his massive forces into the computers capital for the win. Usually when we look at the score graphs he’ll tell me I got carried, and if I happened to win MVP of the match and he was the one down on his luck then he’ll tell me instead some misfortune befell him and I was lucky. I’m sure you understand that this diminishes the entire experience for me.

At the same time he’s the sole reason I’m employed this summer (he actively went out to find jobs for me before I arrived home). He also works at a day care, and even some days when he isn’t working he will go in just to help out. He’s a good guy to hang around with. He isn’t a saint by any means, he does other dick head things in addition to his virtuous acts, but he isn’t a bastard in real life just because he is one when he plays games.

28

That’s nice. This guy bought shit from a game into real life, basically commited fraud then laughed about it. :roll:

29

I think his scam was ingenious, that doesn’t mean he wasn’t an asshole in the game. But as mentioned previously, the game is in huge part a fucking people over simulator, near everything leads to that end. He just used the very channels people normally use against them. No different than a corporation thief (someone who gains access to guild items then nicks them) posting on the corp forums for a few weeks to gain trust, or someone creating an alternate character to spy on his enemies.

30

I don’t know much about EVE or the style of play that is prevalent. It seems to me that the deals made with the assistance of out-of-game mechanisms (phone calls, ICQ, etc.) are part of the emergent game play mechanics. What this guy pulled is the equivalent of the Nigerian 419 scam. Put out an offer that smells a bit fishy but make the rewards to be so vast that it overwhelms the scam instinct.

31

I understand morality is a grey area, and when you are simulating life and allowing immoral acts (piracy) as part of the game mechanics, it can make it difficult to distinguish between a simulated immoral act and one that is real, but for me the distinction here is reasonably clear. The simulated immorality in the game here is piracy, and it takes place entirely within the game, and is even promoted as a game play mechanic by the developers, as can be seen from their balancing of the trader’s escape mechanism to make it easier for the pirates to operate. What this guy did is an act of immorality that was almost completely outside the game, and thus cannot be described as a simulation, but a real immoral act, where he deprived real people of a commodity with real value, by lying and cheating. He used the game as the subject of his con, and not the vehicle.

I think there is another issue here: if a game is a simulation of something else, it doesn’t make that simulation a moral vacuum. In the Sims Online you have a simulation of real life socialising, where people basically just chat to each other while making their homes pretty. However, if someone were to use that game as a vehicle to satisfy his need to sexually harrass women, or even children, the fact that the act was carried out “in game” in a simulation of “life” would not make the act any less immoral than if he were to do it in real life, over the telephone or by email. You cannot simply excuse an act on the basis of a game being a simulation, if that act itself is immoral enough to be reprehensible. I think you have to judge every act on its own merit.

I think given the very real hurt, and the real financial loss, he caused these people, who did nothing to him at all, I think it is pretty clear he stepped over the line into immorality, even if he is only a small time crook. There’s a big difference between annoying someone for a few minutes, and ruining their total enjoyment of a game. I mean in this situation where would those who defend him consider the line be drawn. If this guy had physically threatened the people in real life, called them on the phone and told them he would hurt their children if they didn’t hand over the credits, would that still be acceptable behaviour in keeping with a game that simulates brutal lawless capitalism?

I think the police might have a clear view on that.

32

Again you’re mixing real world harm with digital harm. If he’d threatened them with physical harm it’d be a crime, if he’d threatened to follow them around in-game killing them constantly (even done so) it’d just be part of the fun. They’re not remotely comparable unless you consider player killing morally equivalent to murder; especially in a game where ripping people off is considered a valid play style.

Also in-game items have no real world value. CCP (Eve developers) could turn off the servers tomorrow, poofing trillions of Isk into the ether and no-one would be owed a penny. I could consider my belly button lint to be worth millions, doesn’t necessarily make it so.

I think there’s two irreconcilable camps here as we’re just repeating the same points over. I’ll leave it at that.

33

I don’t think he’s really mixing up digital harm and real world harm (even though they aren’t really all that seperate in the real world in some cases). In general, what that guy did was really shitty, the harm is very real even though it was done somewhat through a game. It may not be a crime (would be curious about this, don’t know federal law about fraud), but it’s still very very shitty.

As was said, the scammer used a lot of means outside of the game to steal from these people, so it goes beyond just playing by the game’s rules.

34

Lets all yell at Lokust and TheWombat for looking for finding solutions for quests in online databases, too. Since they’re unfairly not playing the game, and just the game. They’re using outside tools! Bastards.

I assure you my parents were married, both at the time of my conception and my birth. I cannot speak for Lokust but I have no reason to assume the same is not true for him.

35

Just a brief aside, all digital property in Eve (and any other MMORPG) belongs to the company behind the game. Otherwise they’d be open to an unimaginable mountain of lawsuits with each nerf, destructive bug or whatever. People selling ‘their’ in-game stuff generally use silly disclaimers about actually selling the time it took to acquire any items and so forth.

36

I think the point, though, is that this guy is a dickhead. It’s not that what he did should be a real-world crime or is comparable to bilking someone out of their real-world money. The problem is that he did something that he knew was going to cause a lot of anguish to the victims, and he did it for no real reason. He didn’t ahve anything against the victims and he didn’t really gain anything for himself, other than whatever thrills he gets from ruining someone else’s week. Why do that? What kind of a person enjoys that sort of thing?

It’s no justification that this sort of thing is possible in the game and everyone is on notice that it might happen. I mean, think about the real world: real world corporations know that any deal they enter might be a con. But if they get conned, it’s not like they go “Whew, we should’ve seen that coming. Our bad. Hey, nice work, con man!”

In other words, yeah, it’s possible. Yeah, the victims know it might happen. Yeah, it’s legal. So is walking up to the next black person you see and saying “Fuck you, nigger.” That doesn’t make it morally okay.

37

Sparky, the point isn’t whether it is legal to sell in-game credits on ebay, but that the in-game credits, unlike your belly-button lint, have real value to people, enough that they would pay significant sums of money for them. The credits have real value because real people put real time into earning them, and are prepared to pay others to save themselves that time. I used the ebay reference to give an idea of the amount of value involved, and to show that this guy had, in effect, ripped people off to the tune of about $500. I don’t know about you, but if someone stole $500 worth of something I owned, be it something virtual, like a website I’d worked on, or a real world piece of furniture, I would be pretty damn pissed off.

I mean if you ran a website for a game that simulated hacking, and some other player hacked your website for real out of spite and ruined weeks of your hard work, wouldn’t you consider that to be the least bit shitty and immoral? Or would you think it fine as it was in keeping with the spirit of the game you were playing?

I’m not mixing real world harm and digital harm, I am mixing real world activities with online personas to show that there is a point at which you break from the game world and enter real crime, even if you are still operating within the context of the game world. In this example a guy has conned real people, in real life, using out of game communications, into handing over in-game credits. In my example I upped the ante to an example where some guy was threatening physical harm (not actual harm just the threat of it) to coerce another player into handing over credits. You are arguing that because it is acceptable to con people in-game, that it is acceptable to do the same out-of-game, but the argument should surely follow for threats too.

It’s also a level of degree. Even though I enjoy tales of griefing, and in the past I have engaged in it myself, I also understand that it is wrong, even if it isn’t as big a deal as some people make it out to be. There has to be a point where griefing becomes a problem, maybe even a criminal offence. If your griefing takes the form of following a girl around in-game and making constant lewd suggestions about cyber-fucking her, then surely this is harrassment as much as it would be in the real world, and would absolutely be criminal if the girl was actually a child. Going up to a character in a game and saying “hey bitch, nice tits” is bad, but nothing to get in a state over. Someone engaging in constant sexual harrassment, however, would be stepping over the line, in my view, and so was this guy.

38

I’m surprised these hasn’t been more comments on how this otherwise “honest” player only became a griefer himself when the devs nerfed the game to make it easier for the other griefers and virtually impossible to be an innocent trader.

That being said, the guy is still a dick, but at least he writes an entertaining story.

39

The developers aren’t responsible. Everyone must be deemed responsible for his own actions. If the game sucked after the nerf, he should have quit, not fucked over other players.

40

Unless, of course, they were Indian. Or women.