trippenbach
tanith6227
rustedangel
Pale HorseWired magazine recently ran an article on griefing in online games.
trippenbach thought it was pretty good:
“We’re just in it for the LULz”
Games are powerful, and these guys are just reminding people to regain media awareness once in a while. Makes you appreciate it more.
Plus, these guys are wicked. Programming a rain of bouncy pink phalluses? It’s straight out of Snow Crash!
While I agree that an assault by dancing dildos is just the sort of thing that Hiro Protagonist might have to deal with, I feel somewhat differently about the article as a whole.
What I loved was the photograph of the goons that Wired used. You’ve got this band of shit-talking innanet tough guys (”you win by making other people quit”), and then the picture makes them look like the Three Stooges. Awesome.
That said, they really aren’t gaining much in the way of media awareness. They’ve been pulling these shenanigans for years, and yet for the most part, people outside the various game communities have no idea what’s going on. When an article like this comes out, you get a couple of different responses:
1) “These guys are awesome.” Maybe you love their guerilla hacker styles. Maybe you just like the idea of making other people miserable. Either way, the Goons pwn nubs!1!
2) “These guys are monsters.” Maybe you object to people who get their jollies by making others sad. Maybe you have no sense of humour. Regardless, the Goons are cyber thugs who should be dealt with!
3) “Man, video games are so stupid.” People who don’t game, or who don’t really ‘get’ gamers, are most likely to take this view. Dancing phalluses? $10,000 virtual spaceships? Terrorism? It’s all happening inside a game, so what’s the point, much less the big deal?
What you can’t get around is the childishness of the antics. Whether it’s making a Furry Horror Theme Park in Second Life, corpse-camping lowbies in World of Warcraft or lagging the server to get a Titan kill in EvE, what we’re ultimately talking about is the sort of boorish, bullying, unsportsmanlike behaviour that is frowned upon in schools and in the workplace. It’s John Gabriel’s Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory in action. And that doesn’t make games seem more powerful or relevant or worthy of appreciation. It makes them seem like an outlet for bored or angry nerds, a place where the immature can rub shoulders with the socially retarded.
Yes, it’s true that there are many, many stupid games out there. But there is an increasing number of truly inspired and intelligent games out there. EvE is an incredibly deep game that permits a great deal of player freedom, but which doesn’t protect players from the consequences of their actions. Mass Effect asks players to make sometimes difficult choices while offering compelling character interactions. Portal offers excellent fast-paced gameplay and top-notch writing in a single package.
But the only time you hear about this stuff is within the gaming community. Whenever the “larger” media talk about games, it’s to discuss Internet hooligans or talk about how much money Microsoft is spending on testing Halo 3. No one outside the gaming community seems to know, much less care, that Half-Life 2 and Bioshock feature some of the best, most compelling writing in visual entertainment of the last few years. Oh sure, some people like to claim they know what’s going on in games, but by and large the public is clueless and gamers are often made to feel marginalized or embarassed about their hobby. Don’t believe me? Ask your wives or girl/boyfriends what they think of video games. I’ll bet you a dollar that in a majority of cases the answer will be something to the effect that games are foolish/a waste of time/childish. As the median age of gamers is currently hovering in the 25-30 range, that’s a perspective we should be trying to change. The Goons aren’t helping.
Filed under: Games, internet, ranting, raving | Tagged: gaming, Wired, Goons, media
I agree - goons make games look silly. But so do hard-core WoW geeks playing 18-hour days. Neither is good. The medium is maturing, and I think that as it does it’s coming fully into the mainstream. Already in the UK, the statistics I’m seeing indicate that 60% - over half - of all britons of all ages play video games. So it’s not a fringe thing no more . . .
. . . in a way these guys are a symptom of games becoming mainstream, because they’re taking the role of social satirists, pointing out the limitations of the system and making people think about the medium they’re spending so much time in.
I agree - I’d hate getting griefed, it’s annoying - but they only do it because virtual worlds have become something worth subverting.
If you have enemies, it means you’re important. Unimportant things just have hazards.
Double negative! I spot a double negative! -1 Journalist point.
Or is it? Now I have confused myself… -5 logic points for Molotov.
I guess the question then is, are they being social satirists on purpose, or are they just schmucks who enjoy getting a rise out of other people? Is their involvement in the maturation of the medium accidental?
I like the point you made about virtual worlds becoming worth the effort of subverting. Excellent observation.
molotov: Double negative? Unpossible! tanith am bester writist EVAR!
In an attempt at a post with some content:
I have had some interaction with Goonswarm in the context of Eve-online. I have read the accounts of how they sweet-talk players into joining their alliance (The Greater Goon (which is a great name, btw)), only to destroy their capital ships and relieve them of all their assets, which took months or years to accumulate. I believe that what we are really seeing here resembles the actions of a vandal who smashes the windows of the neighbourhood shop, the asshole who pulls the fire alarm in a crowded nightclub, the bully who takes a young boy’s dollar at recess. It is the thrill some people take in the misery of others, plain and simple. Dressing it up and some kind of social commentary is simply misleading.
Human interaction can take many forms, whether it be in the schoolyard, at the workplace or in online video games. Most people play these MMOs to interact with others and to work greater goals as a team than could ever be dreamed of as an individual.
When a self-styled goon comes along and destroys those dreams, they are simply working to destroy social bonds. By undermining trust between individuals, they make the game less fun for everyone in it but themselves. This, to me, is simply the act of a vandal using a medium where there are no repurcussions. There are no police in the virtual world, there are no fines (as such) or prison sentences. What better place to get your lulz by spoiling someone else’s day/month/year.
I guess that puts me somewhere in category two…
Good points, molotov. In truth, I’m more on your side of the fence. While it’s nice to try and excuse this behaviour as a sign that games are growing up, the fact is that griefers are generally just out there to ruin other people’s fun.
Maybe virtual worlds have become worth subverting, but griefing and subverting aren’t usually the same thing.
Making a parade of dicks prance around during a virtual interview could be seen as an act of subversion. The interview can still go on and no one is really hurt by such a prank.
But when actions are taken specifically to deny other people access to the service they pay for, then I think a line has been crossed. If I get corpse-camped for two hours, then that’s two hours of my life I can’t get back. If I join the Goonswarm and then they turn around and pilfer my hangars and blow up my Carrier, that’s months and months of effort thrown down the drain so that a few guys can get a cheap laugh at my expense.
Some people might argue that my time was already wasted because I spent it playing a video game. Obviously, that’s a huge load of crap. The same criticism (probably) wouldn’t be levelled at me if i spent all that time playing floor hockey, and if another player (or another team) went out of their way to try to get me to quit - by breaking my stick, or trying to break my toes or whatever - the general consensus would be that they’re a bunch of thugs who should be excluded from playing. In order to attract as many players as possible, games like EvE excuse this behaviour, to the detriment of many.
Well, I think Tanith has a point here. It’s a question of what kind of practical joke you want to pull. There’s satire, just funny disruption, and then there’s just getting a schadenfreude rush, which is lame.
The EVE example would be jumping into a battle with a dozen battlecruisers named after Snow White’s Dwarfs, or making your Second Life avatar a big sign that says ‘AVATAR 2738499′. Corpse-camping and tricking people out of their capital ships just for shits and giggles is a great way to show you’re a loser.
I think everyone can agree that both greifing and subverting are annoying and, in some cases unacceptable, but when you think about it, the ability to do both these things are critical to the online gaming experience. The reason people play online games is because they offer something that more conventional video games cannot: a human element.
Playing with and against other people makes the game very unpredicatable. On the most basic level, like an online FPS, it can lead to innovation and tactics that you would never even think to use in a game against a computer. On the other hand, it makes it possible to team up in a solo game with another player to get more kills.
As the interaction with others becomes more complex, so do the problems, but it is that very interaction that keeps people coming back to the game. If there was a single-player game out there where you spent 300 hours building up your character/ship/fleet so that you could overcome the final challenge, only to have the whole thing taken away so that you had to start again with the possibility of loosing all your stuff when you got to the same point, nobody would play the game. It is the human interaction that makes the game more exciting, ever evolving, and always different that makes you able to play for 300 hours in a month.
But of course, that excitement carries the possibility of wide-scale treachery, and people who will try to break the rules to their advantage. The WIRED artilce above makes reference to actions that are discouraged in school and the workplace. Schools and employers are constantly changing and evolving regulations and practices to meet new problems. I think that online game providers are quickly learning that they have to do the same. It is a constant balancing act between fairness and fun. Ultimately, the market will decide which companies and games are successful, and which are not. If it is too easy to lag-kill in a particular game, people will simply stop playing.
What we have to remember, is that this is all still very new, and growing very fast. It attracts a lot of attention because of that. As providers work out the kinks, game-breakers will become less and less of a factor. Maybe the answer lies in making a grievences council in these games. Already, there are rules and programing that prevent people from doing certain things. I think that we are going to start hearing less and less about griefers and subverters. In the end, greifers and subverters will suffer a far worse fate than being caught and expelled from the game; they will simply fade into the background as a minor annoyance.
“[T]he ability to do both these things are critical to the online gaming experience. The reason people play online games is because they offer something that more conventional video games cannot: a human element.”
Dakalos, I agree with your second statement, but not the first, because I don’t believe that grief play is a fundamental part of the human element of multiplayer gaming. If you want evidence, just look at any of the dozens (hundreds?) of Halo 3 matches you’ve personally played on LIVE that didn’t have anyone griefing (ie, team-killing) or subverting (exploting terrain, Achievement Whoring, etc..). Would you say that the human element in the (to use a term laden with value judgement) “clean” games was somehow dimished vis-a-vis games where one guy grabbed the rocket launcher and used it to score a Triple Team Kill?
It’s worth noting that “Grievance Councils” already exist in pretty much every MMO out there, in the form of people who work for the people running the game. They are often called Game Masters, and their job is to hear out and act on player concerns, including the behaviour of other players. The problem is that, in order to be fair, GMs usually can’t take any kind of immediate action against an alledged griefer. The act in question has to be considered (is it really griefing?) and then a great deal of research has to be done (going through mountains of logged data) to make sure that something really did happen. And on and on. Multiply this process by hundreds or thousands of reports a day, and it suddenly becomes clear why a company might take the EvE approach and design their game to be the Wild West of MMOs, where almost anything goes.
I did not say that grief play is a critical part of online gaming, I said the ability to do it is critical. The reason for this is because the ability to do sneaky and unforseen things adds to the human element of the game.
I have absolutly seen grief play in Halo: Clans that have non-agression symbols so that they don’t kill each other, weapon and vehicle whoring, spawn camping and the like. The difference is two-fold:
1. The nature of the game is that it only lasts 5 minutes, and no matter what anybody does, they can’t bust me down from captain to recruit in that time. Wheras in EvE, the game lasts forever, and you can lose everything in 5 minutes.
2. The Halo series in particular has improved quite a bit in terms of balancing the game. In Halo 2, it was easy to whore the sword and rocket launcher simply to deny it to others. Wheras it would seem that EvE has given up on trying to clamp down on such behaviour by evolving the game itself with their Wild West approach.
Like you said, it becomes very difficult to deal with hundreds or thousands of reports a day. If so many people are doing this, maybe there is a flaw in the game, or maybe griefing is an effect that the game operators are willing to accept.
Either way, the market will ultimately decide whether the experiment is successful or not. It is entirely possible that if EvE simply becomes a platform for backstabbing and griefing, that many players will simply vote with their feet, at which point the game will either have to change or fold. On the other hand, maybe avoiding such traps will simply become part of the game, and players will love the high-stakes, Wild West feel. Clearly, the makers of EvE are betting that a maximum of human unpredicibility is what will keep the game dynamic and interesting, even if a lot of players get screwed in the process.
quote: “If so many people are doing this, maybe there is a flaw in the game, or maybe griefing is an effect that the game operators are willing to accept.”
Not a flaw in the game, a flaw in the people playing it. By extension, the game is flawed for allowing some humans to act like themselves; ignorant, arrogant cretins who, incapable through lack of either skill or empathy to enjoy the game, arbitrarily decide that if they can’t have fun, no one else should either.
In the real world, this kind of behavior is punished with severe beatings, jail time, social sanctions, or promotion to public office. In many online games, the mechanics do not yet permit broad-scale control of human social behavior through readily enforceable rules. As this becomes more and more the case idiots who view their griefing as some kind of political statement will be (rightly) pigeon-holed as revolutionary fanatics or anarchists. Those who support them intellectually will be labeled insane, and everyone will move on. The line between criminal and freedom fighter will get just as blurry as it is in the real world, and the online environment will, in short, look more and more like the real one. These are just growing pains, analagous to (as someone has already pointed out) the wild west, or some other relatively lawless period.
So… all in favor of extending real-world consequences to online behavior?
I say brain burn ‘em all, and let Sephiroth sort them out.
[...] bookmarks tagged mass effect portal The Internet: Serious Business as Usual? saved by 8 others VanessaHudgens4Zac bookmarked on 02/02/08 | [...]
“I did not say that grief play is a critical part of online gaming, I said the ability to do it is critical. The reason for this is because the ability to do sneaky and unforseen things adds to the human element of the game.”
Again, I disagree. Being sneaky and doing the unexpected is in no way related to griefing. What adds a human element to a game is the presence of other humans, who will quite naturally do sneaky and unexpected things on their own, within the framework of the existing rules and mechanics. It’s part of the competitive nature of human beings that we will also look to gain the maximum advantage. Being able to ruin other people’s day is not, in my opinion, critical to the medium.
[...] In case any of you missed it, here is a pretty complete blog entry about the Anonymous protest outside of the UK Scientology HQ in Blackfriars. Up until this point I assumed that Anonymous were just griefers (and there were related black fax and denial of service attacks going on), but this event seemed like a winner. Worth considering as a follow-up to this post. [...]
Are you guys serious?
You are seriously having this long of a discussion about a group of people that go around in games and fuck shit up for people.
Wow. I am seriously both impressed, and shocked by the utter lack of a social life any of you people seem to have. It’s rather ridiculous. I mean shit, what are you guys, grad students or something?
They do it for one reason, and one reason only. Because people are stupid enough to actually LET them do it to them. They act as the opposite balance to a perfectly harmonious atmosphere. With the rise of massively multi-player games, you will always find a group of people who will defy the ’social norms’. Just like you find people defying social norms here.
A lot of it probably has to do with the actual amount of time and energy most people put into ridiculous and rather silly things like MMORPGs. A little bit of a reality check to snap the wanna-be paladin out of his cyber-coma and remind him that there are better things to do in the world.
I’ve already wasted enough time on this post anyways, but I figured I might as well make it long, since apparently the word ‘concision’ has never crossed your minds. So I’ll leave you with what can sum this whole argument up in a sentence.
There will always be those that go against the grain.
Randy, don’t you think it’s a little bit ironic that you read a long discussion thread all the way to the end, then actually participated, just to say that this is all silly?
Indeed, people like us. In other threads we’re talking about sharia law, crowdsourcing protest movements, combating climate change, and heavy metal. Please join in! We might all learn something.
BTW, how’s the weather in Atlanta?
Ok, I’m not clear; are you insulting the board or trying to participate in the discussion? In the former case, you need to try harder; we were talking better smack than that to each other 15 years ago playing Goldeneye.
In the latter, I’m not sure you really understand what we’re getting at. I mean, “act as the opposite balance to a perfectly harmonious atmosphere?”
The internet is a place full of “harmonious balance?” I don’t know where you’re surfing, but I’d love a link to that - it sounds like a nice place.
So - care to take part in a meeting of minds? Please feel free to post back and participate constructively in a pretty interesting discussion; I’m sure we’re all ready to forgive a bit of trolling. Remember that the atmosphere here is generally not confrontational - you can post your thoughts without prefixing them with insults. Trust us, we’ll get it.
Weather here is pretty nice, actually thank you.
My comments weren’t as much an insult to the members of the community, as it was a sharply worded reflection on the nature and contents of the post. I’d have to actually know you guys if I was to try to definitively insult you.
The way I see it is this. Consider the normal curve (or bell-curve which was popularized way back when). A vast majority of the population is always going to fall within several standard deviations from the mean. Typically 2. However, there will always be outliers, those that fall outside of the typically mainstream thought.
This conjecture can be pretty much assigned to almost any large group setting of roughly over 30 people. The more, of course, the better your approximation is. With massive online communities that contain thousands, if not millions, of players, these outliers will actually compose a significant amount of people.
Their motivations, I believe I stated quite simply above. Social disruption, mere schadenfreude, or just acting stupid on the internet. You typically won’t find the same motivation with every single person in the group.
But really, it’s pretty much a lost cause to attempt to really understand why these people do these things. All you can do is expect them, and react accordingly. You can make educated guesses as to why people have to take game mechanics and social atmospheres and rend them apart. But really, it doesn’t matter because they WILL be there, doing these things in every mass social environment.
It’s like walking down the street at night by yourself. You’re not going to randomly meet up with someone who seems nice, then invite them into your house. While, it may seem to be a logically correct choice, based upon initial instinct (body language etc.), most people do not allow themselves to become quite so vulnerable in such a short amount of time.
The same logic has to apply to virtual worlds. Since you can’t really make the same judgments about a person as you can in the real world, (body language, vocal intonation, facial expressions), you would probably have to take extra measures to ensure that you are not left in a vulnerable position, especially if you have so much capital to lose.
I don’t know… the whole topic seemed rather straightforward to me, I didn’t understand the necessity of a massive debate. Things like Sharia law, and other more pervasive social inquiries seem to be far more fitting for such a scholarly approach.
Well, I agree with much of what you have to say, particularly the lack of both accountability and the social cues required to make good decisions about who is and isn’t a threat online.
The point of the discussion is actually the only thing you’ve said that I do strenuously disagree with:
“it’s pretty much a lost cause to attempt to really understand why these people do these things”
I don’t think this is true at all. You are certainly correct about the inevitability of this sort of thing occuring in general, and correct again in the tactical sense of how gamers, admins and internet-goers in general must respond. In a broader sense, however, I find the motivation of people like this very interesting; it’s a bit of a wild-west - a lot of action and little accountability. Given the increasing importance of digital interaction in most first world nations I believe that a thorough and scholarly approach is justified.
Not merely justified, actually, but necessary, assuming you’re the sort of person who wants to be on the crest instead of back in the wave.
…the other basic reason for the long discussion is that we like talking about this sort of thing. “You seek for knowledge and wisdom, as I once did; and I ardently hope that the gratification of your wishes may not be a serpent to sting you, as mine has been.”
That’s us!
Hi Randy, welcome to O514.
It seems that you fall firmly into the third category I described in my original post: people who don’t see what the Big Deal is. These are just silly video games, right? People who play them should get a life. Ha ha ha!
I happen to agree that getting so invested in a video game that it becomes your only interest or activity is nuts (I actually to work with just such a person). But as people who have been playing games for most of our lives (20 years for me), what goes on in gaming is interesting and important to us. So we tend to discuss it. You may have noticed that for the most part, we all generally agree that griefers detract from the game experience, but that doesn’t mean the discussion is over. As evidenced by our posts, we have different ideas about what constitutes griefing, why people do it, and how it should be handled. I suppose we could all just agree that griefing is stupid and move on, but that doesn’t make for very interesting discussion. Personally, I was delighted to see that this post of mine elicited such a thoughtful response. Even though I know the people who made the posts well, they still managed to surprise me a few times and gave me things to think about that I had not considered before.
Griefing is a weird phenomenon, but the frustrations it causes aren’t limited to those who spend 12 hours a day in their favourite virtual world. The point of griefing is to make people angry, and even the most casual gamer can become upset if their time and effort come to nothing due to the behaviour of others. Let’s take an example: our man Molotov. He works (sometimes long hours) for an important international organization, plays sports a couple of times a week, is a Captain in the Army Reserve and is planning a wedding for this summer. He also tries to play EVE for a few hours each week. Clearly, we’re not talking about a guy in diapers living off hot pockets in his mom’s basement. He isn’t some wannabe space pirate who needs a reality check. He’s just a guy who sometimes plays an MMO. Nevertheless, he will still be upset if he becomes the victim of the kind of griefing described in the Wired article. Why? Because he’s invested his time and effort into the game – how much is entirely irrelevant.
Finally, the growing importance of online interaction makes the exploration and discussion of behaviour like griefing all the more relevant. [I had a bunch more stuff here, but Rusty said it better]
At any rate, the “massive debate” that so offended you was nothing more than a few people sharing their thoughts and feelings on an article that touched on a topic near and dear to them. I’m sorry that our idea of what merits lengthy discussion does not mirror your own, but perhaps you will find some of the other topics that Tripp alluded to more to your taste. I would love to hear your thoughts on Sharia law in the UK, even if it is sort of old news (by Internet standards, anyway).
Lest I come off as some kind of jerk, please accept my thanks for sounding off. You seem like a pretty clever fellow; I hope we’ll hear more from you soon.
First I have to laugh a bit. I feel like I’m coming off as some non-gamer type.
I regularly enjoy video games, typically an hour or so a day. CS:S being my favorite.
The only thing that really got me here was that it seemed as though you were all trying to pinpoint a sort of ’source’ of this phenomena. What drives it, and how does it exactly manifest itself within these digital realms.
I think ‘griefing’, which I tend to refer to as ‘trolling’ or ‘ganking’ (referring to the more reprehensible actions), at least in the realms of video games, probably operates very similarly to what we can see if we simply look outside the window and really observe the interactions and perspectives of people that we interact with on a daily basis.
Microcosms are really interesting tools that can help us better understand the way that we operate within a social construct. What I think this entire thing does is validate the fact that you can create virtual microcosms, rather easily. Perhaps the intensity of the relationships are increasing, perhaps it represents a needed change within certain frameworks of certain MMOs.
——
I have a good friend of mine whose attention I brought to this article. He reacted with glee upon hearing that EVE online had something like that which was going on. To him, griefing is part schadenfreude, part breaking a ’system’/hacking the intended use of a game, and partly about the lack of controls that prevent him from doing so.
He told me of events on Everquest where you could agro guards outside of cities and have them rampage through an entire group of people trading. To me, such a situation would be hilarious, due to its unpredictability and the response of the people suddenly felled.
He’s not a jerk, or some common thug that smashes windows. If anything… well, he’s a weird guy, I won’t put that past him. Loves to toy around with preconceived notions, and really shatter social norms. Other than that, though he’s rather normal. The internet thing just gave him an outlet through which he could employ some creativity and create a spontaneous event.
Thanks for the welcome, I sort of stumbled on to this site, but I may stick around for the more interesting conversations. I apologize if I came off as rude (I was also rather intoxicated when I wrote that, another folly of the internet and relative anonymity). I guess I responded like I would to a friend than someone whom I have never spoken to.
Not a problem. Stay if you like. Split if you don’t.
Anyways, I believe the crux of the argument is this: your friend may just be letting off steam, and probably means nothing by it, but he still might be hurting someone.
I haven’t got a problem with people pushing boundries or breaking rules. Sign me up for sex scenes in video games, movies made by Takashi Miike, or books written by Hank Rollins. That said, you can return your copy of “Ichi The KIller” to the video store if you don’t want to see people getting tortured with meat hooks and tempura batter. If you actually do like EVE, and have invested hours of effort in your avatar, you cannot opt out of being ganked by someone who has come up with a good way to break the game mechanic. That person is hurting you for pleasure, no matter how innocent or quirky their motivation.
In the real world, it’s pretty funny to watch someone on you ball hockey team catch a slap shot in the nuts. Accidental, but amusing. If you swung your stick into his beanbag because you thought watching him squirm would be fun, he could charge you with assault.
Result? You probably won’t do it. Online, however, you might. I still see this as a problem worth analysing… after all, we’ve already had our first real-world murders as a result of grief online. If you read enough Shirow, it’s hard not to see this as yet another form of growing human interaction - which will require policing if we’re all to use it communally and effectively.
Characteristic hospitality, there, Rusty. Randy, nice to hear from you again.
As for the policing . . . This is actually a raging topic of debate elsewhere on teh Interweb. I refer you to the excellent Terra Nova blog, which covers all things Virtual Worldish.
http://terranova.blogs.com/
For instance, this post on collecting evidence in a virtual world . . .
And this post on avatars in court.
There are many more - this is actually a cutting-edge legal topic right now.
+1 links.
Further to Tripp’s post above comes news of the sinister-sounding Reynard Project, an effort by the U.S. intelligence community to detect violent extremists infiltrating online games. The eventual goal is to be able to “automtically detect suspicious behaviour and actions in the virtual world.”
Maybe these guys are new to the Internet?
[...] Posted on 27 February 2008 by trippenbach Tanith originally posted this in a comment, but this warrants its own thread. Wake up, all ye virtual-worlders. Here comes the [...]