Wired on griefers
(Visited 13619 times) Game talk
Jan 252008
Wired has a nice long Jullian Dibbell article entitled “Mutilated Furries, Flying Phalluses: Put the Blame on Griefers, the Sociopaths of the Virtual World” — it’s interesting to me to see how much emphasis is placed on the Something Awful folks as a sort of cultural center of griefing, something which is a relatively recent development.
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I present herewith, and without apology the accumulated bullet points of my fiscal year to date: Published, in the February issue of Wired, Mutilated Furries, Flying Phalluses: Put the Blame on Griefers, the Sociopaths of the Virtual World, an articleadmired by someand reviled by others, which given the subject, sort of figures Gave a talk on virtual economies and ludocapitalism, March 12, at The Game Is Up! arts festival in Ghent, Belgium, where I also hobnobbed with such notables as
I find it interesting that Jullian lumps playstyles that may be perceived as griefing (e.g. kill stealing, corpse campers, and so on) together with organised griefing. The former are typically less-savoury players of the game, whereas the later often features people signing up to the game to join in with a grief event.
Overall, I was actually quite pleased with the tone of the article, which surprised me. The conclusion based around “The internet is serious business” (or rather, its not, which makes it serious) was an excellent way to end the piece, and managed to emphasise the main cited reason by those involved.
This topic very much brings us back to the meta-game discussion that circulated a while back. Griefers are very much hardcore meta-game players, and it is for that reason it is important to distinguish antisocial playstyles from the sort of griefing that Jullian was talking about. Antisocial players are often antisocial not for meta-game reasons, but in order to collect the most gold, XP or other desired game resource. They might be antisocial, but often their focus is on advancing themselves within the rules of the game itself.
The meta-game, however, is a far less defined dialogue game. It is the politics within RP communities, it is the PvPers demanding they be listened to, it is the forum trolling and baiting. Organised griefing is a part of this. Like others who play the meta-game, their goals are not tangible within the terms of the game itself, but rather in terms of community effects and actions. You see this sort of meta-gaming within all human communities, internet based or not, and many countries give it national importance.
This does lead to two interesting design questions. Firstly, how can the effects of the meta-game be taken into account, used or reduced. And secondly, should the meta-game be taken into account at all?
Its funny that they were quick to point out the amount of money and time thier victims spent in game and not the griefers. I feel its all really a part of the same game only changed by the game mechanics on its extent and tolerance. I think its good that games like EVE that have embraced the need for PK are becoming more popular.
I had a great time on Unrest’s Stormhold in EverQuest II with a Something Awful guild member. I was invited to join, but I would have had to register an SA account, which as you know costs a bit of money. Now that I know SA are not fans of Prokofy, I think I might have to revisit that invitation, switching servers in the process. ;p
Personally, I feel that the “goon squad” and other people who take delight in ruining other people’s gameplay are the same kinds of people who took delight in verbal, emotional, and physical abuse during grade school/high school.
Bullies, in other words. Never mind their self-justification of “it’s only a game”… the fact is they’re out to do emotional damage and even financial damage to other people under the cover of anonymity.
Included in there is the same sort of mindset that leads evangelicals to attack people of other faiths. “We’re not taking this game seriously so we’re going to bully you until you log off/quit/join us, eff you!”
Goon Squad in World of Warcraft wasn’t really all that malicious. It was more about gimmick raids and events. There was a Stormwind Picnic where all the higher level Horde characters escorted the lower levels to Stormwind and proceeded to make cozy fires and eat Deviate Delights while dodging guards and angry Alliance in Stormwind’s Fountain district. I almost won the “do laps around the fountain, last person to get killed wins” race!
Then when the GMs disbanded Shacknews’ guild “Giant Communist Robots” (after their many months of existence, it was suddenly called out on being a “real-life reference”) we rallied a huge protest raid for Ironforge that consisted of so many people that it crashed the server already by the time we got halfway there. We eventually made it and the server crashed even worse. There was also an event called “Escort the President” where teams had to protect a level 1 character through a succession of high-level zones. And the PvP Bridge Battle event organized between the Horde and Alliance for level-controlled battles over chosen bridge sites all over Azaroth was talked about for some time, I missed out on that one though.
The Killing Thrall thing caused a whole lot of drama, but not for reasons you would think. The first time Goon Squad tried to kill him they were stopped by the guild Elitist Jerks (which is actually a Goon Squad off-shoot, started by the Closed Beta Goon Squad members) who cited that it was wrong to kill Thrall based on principle (Thrall is cool, k). They basically healed Thrall until GS got bored. This in effect caused a huge riff between members of each guild for quite some time, kind of like the disparity between the two Second Life guilds that mentioned in the article.
The only mean thing I can think of was random members using Mark of Shame to kill auctioneers, but that was just annoying rather than debilitating. Things may have changed/happened since then, I haven’t been in Goon Squad since 2005 and haven’t played much WoW in the past year. Come to think of it there is honestly not many ways that you can horribly grief in WoW. Cover the mailbox with a Kodo, corpse camp, follow someone casting chain heal on them constantly? Minor annoyances. Ninja looting would probably be the worst, but that was taboo. Scamming was a nono too. There was a line that couldn’t be crossed.
EVE is a different monster all together. I can’t speak for those Goons.
Wasn’t there a young girl that committed suicide because of a MySpace incident recently? with real life moral outrage, threats and bricks thrown through windows? and wasn’t there a law passed as a result?
Weren’t the griefers in that case, in the end, doing it for the lulz? I mean, I don’t doubt for a second there was laughter when some of those final messages were sent to that girl.
Maybe they were trying to teach that girl something. Wish I knew because that would seem to make it okay.
Tarek wrote:
I think Julian’s characterization of the SA community and Goon Squad is misrepresentative of their true natures to the extent of being an unfair generalization based on the behavior of a few people.
That’s a bit like saying the KKK is a “benevolent society with a few bad eggs that make it misunderstood” I’m with Tarek.
Tim wrote:
Quite a comparison… That’s the same logic terrorists use to justify murder.
I say nothing about the nature of the Something Awful community. I’m not a member of Something Awful so I have no idea what goes on in their forums nor am I willing to paint their entire community with the broad brush of “it’s all about griefing!”
I’m speaking specifically of those individuals who do play games specifically to ruin other people’s gaming experiences. They are bullies, plain and simple. They’re playing the “bully” metagame, to which the only real reply is the “civil lawsuit” metagame, the “restraining order” metagame and/or the “permanent ban” metagame.
There’s also the “arrest for simple assault” metagame, but enforcing this is virtually impossible, as there’s no police agency in the world who would be willing to devote resources to this over more serious crimes.
What about creating an in-game police force that have the ability to jail avatars? Having a max-number of active avatars per account would stop griefing quite effectively.
The force would be made up of NPC’s, PC’s and moderators.
Have this kind of idea been implemented in any MMO? Isn’t it possible?
goon currency is humor, you make other goons laugh, you’re a richer goon. Sometimes MMO’s and the other people playing them get abused to create that humor, but a goon’s gotta paid humor humor bill yall.
Unfortunatly, the “goon’s” idea of humor isn’t everyone else’s idea of “humor,” and it’s destructive to boot.
If these “goons” were to behave this way in real space, they’d be the ones with cans of spray paint standing at the movie theater painting rude and vulgar symbols over the movie screen.
At sporting events, they’d be the ones instigating riots like hooligans at a soccer game.
In the real world, people like this are the ones who go around to impromptu parties and start wrecking the host’s home just because they can.
In real space, there are consequences for this behavior. But because “it’s just a game,” they can get away with it in virtual worlds.
Tomas, the idea of in-game “police” to stop these people won’t ever work.
They’re acting out impulses that they’d like to do in real space, but won’t because the consequences in real space are too damaging.
To effectively curb this behavior, which is based on meta-game or out of game impulses, you have to engage them out of game with real consequences like legal actions and restraining orders.
Is it worth it? I don’t know. Some people are always going to have that “I’m a jerk, I’m a bully, and I find it fun to cause other people distress” mentality.
Tarek wrote:
“Goon” and “Goon Squad” are terms specific to the Something Awful community. As an SA term, a “Goon” is simply a member of the SA community. A “Goon Squad” is simply a guild of players who are also members of the SA community.
In other terms, a “goon squad” is “[a]n emergency response detail of corrections officers within a penal institution; frequently called upon to put down inmate uprisings or to quell otherwise violent incidents.” Interestingly, the management and members of the SA community take immense pride in putting down trolls and quelling incidents of human stupidity.
It is important to differentiate here between the original core of such
groups, which typically act in a controlled manner (albeit a not kind one), and those who tag onto such groups for the sake of causing mayhem. My experience of SA and the /i boards has been that, typically, there is a degree of moral code and a need for justification. This certainly may not justify their acts, but it does mean that a comparison to football hooligans or puerile movie screen vandals is justified either.
I think everyone will agree that those who simply grief without any thought to anyone but themselves do exist, and are utterly foul. Sadly they often use the actions of dubious vigilantes as cover for committing worse acts still.
It is also worth stating for the record that, from what I know of the high-end EVE game, the actions of the goons was quite typical. Other guilds have also famously infiltrated their competitors to stage strategic character assassinations.
There really is not one kind of grief, but several of increasing severity:
Antisocial gameplay
Ethical stance reasoned attack (some difference in ethical and moral values and actions results in division)
Disagreement attack (“asked for it” but without a moral or ethical influence, often player-run event related)
Anonymous attack (Feeling safe to grief without cause due to not knowing the other side)
Spillover attack (where the grief is not limited to online, but occurs outside the internet also)
The first can be mitigated by game design. We have seen that the trend in PvP has been to prevent communication between opposing sides. By doing this, upset through smacktalk is prevented. The second aspect is something that games, as private forums (technical term rather than internet), can have some control over by the wording of their rules of conduct. This will probably not stop problems, but will allow them to be dealt with more easily. It is for the game administrators themselves to decide how they wish to side. In my experience, number 3, an attack based on disagreements between players or decisions seen as “asking for trouble”, a game can never totally avoid. However some measures can be done, such as encouraging players to consider their safety when designing events (most notably recently, not holding a memorial service in a PvP-allowed area). The problem with griefer type 4 is that they quickly become type 3, using the reaction to the first attack as justification. Perhaps a level of rapid and harsh customer service might be of use, encouraging players to remain calm as they know that any grief will be swiftly dealt with. Finally, the fifth and, in my opinion, the worst type of grief is something that we can do little to directly address. That is something that society as a whole needs to deal with.
This is actually a rather interesting topic. In some ways, definitely in EVE’s case, some of this could actually be seen as part of the gameplay or an emergent form of gameplay. After all, a huge point of EVE is for players to battle each other in space, which entails losing ships.
On the other hand, you have to wonder how long the ‘internet is serious business’ line will remain true. With more attention being paid to online spaces and money passing through them – this can refer to micro transactions like SL deals with, or subscription fees for people who won’t play the game any longer, or even advertising revenue on other sites, etc… – just when will griefing be perceived as verging into more criminal areas more often?
There’s also a colloquial use of the term goon, meaning an unpleasant, intimidating person you really don’t want to meet on a social basis. That’s the definition I was using.
There’s some important lessons in game design to be learned here as well. So many designers don’t seem to be able to get their heads around the idea that just because they take their system seriously, doesn’t mean that everyone else will. Permadeath? Doesn’t mean a thing to a griefer. They don’t believe in the game world, they don’t have an emotional bond with their character. In their game, characters are just disposable tools, and they may be quite happy to spend money on dozens of accounts if necessary.
Bottom line – In games you can’t punish people who you hold no real power over, unless they grant you that power through their belief. And griefers don’t.
that article was disappointingly sympathetic in tone for what are basically a bunch of useless, misanthropic fuckups.
Something Awful’s community doesn’t irk me nearly as much as it used to, these days I get more angst from 4chan ‘/b/’ antics (even though 90% of their ‘humor’ is some recycled pop culture reference like ‘the first rule of /b/ is you will not talk about /b/’….wow, guys….how does it feel to finally reach the age of 4?). I could probably find more to be upset about with regard to Kyanka’s tax filing status than a community he doesn’t really control anyways (he lives in the same state, county, and city I do).
I’m waiting for a system that allows me to be flat out oblivious to the very existence of people in my ignore list. Don’t even bother having the client render their character. Since that probably won’t ever happen (and would end up being abusable one way or another in any sort of PvP system), I’d like to see more user community space controls. I said this in a post a long time ago, just as I don’t have any right to go into someone else’s space and tell them what they should and shouldn’t be doing, I ought to expect a space where I can determine what is promoted and what is discouraged and be given the tools to enforce those preferences. When users have no tools for control of social spaces, then the burden falls on the moderators, and clearly that hasn’t been cutting it.
To quote Sanya:
italics is the important part, I’m in that group that leaves when greifers are basically endorsed by the company through a refusal to enforce posted policies. When folks abuse LoS systems to kill you in neutral towns without getting killed by guards and the CSR tells you ‘we don’t consider that against the rules’, you start to wonder who the hell this game was made for. Really, abusing bugged pathing systems to avoid the aggro gain you should have received upon initiating hostilities isn’t against the rules? Isn’t that covered in the part where it says you can’t abuse game systems to avoid intended consequences? What about the person who has no internal hesitance to do the same, but was worried about what would happen to his account if he did so. After talking to that CSR, one more griefer just joined the fray!
[…] […]
Read my comments under the Wired article. Julian Dibbell is not an honest broker here, and undermines his credibility gained from the wild popularlity of “My Tiny Life” and “A Rape in Cyberspace”. He actually sides with the griefers in the end, and says hortatorily that we “need to learn from” griefers “not to take ourselves too seriously”. So…it’s ok to be victimized by goons and lose real money in Second Life because…it’s all a goofy sort of learning experience, from which Julian Dibbell himself profits handsomely. Ugh.
I, too, think you have to distinguish between the sort of “off rules” pranking and goofing and such that people do in *games* — whether World of Warcraft of even Sims On Line (gloving), using in-game tools like weapons or ratings or banning — and the sort of really heavily creepy and nasty harassment and stalking that happens by the PNs, v/5s and such in Second Life. That’s simply very different. If it occurred in real life, it would be criminal mischief, vandalism or worse. It’s real. And that’s ok to say. You can make a distinction between the horrors of real-life terrorism, or a girl committing suicide for real, and the *similar dynamics and motivations* going on with *simulated virtual* incitement and terrorism.
I totally disagree with this “only a few bad apples” stuff that the Something Awful crowd constantly spouts as a mantra to get themselves and their milieu off the hook. Their website actively, knowingly, deliberately, gleefully, maliciously incites griefing and provides a substrate for recruitment, training, and implementation of griefing actions. You can see it on any number of SL-related threads. The cheerleaders and lurkers and hangers on may not pull the triggers, but they create the climate of celebration for the victory-dancers when they come back and tell their war stories. You never see these people who claim “there are only a few bad apples among us” *condemning* what goes on.
That was always my challenge to old-time W-hatters in SL, who sprang from Something Awful. I would say, if you are cheering, victory dancing, creating a climate for, you are part of it. If you can’t condemn this, then what’s up? What’s especially fake is that they’re all putting out stories now that they have “retired from griefing”. So much of this stuff is all about psy-war and Leninist-style propaganda tactics.