oh please

"Thanks for ruining the game for me. Really."
July 8, 2009 11:28 AM Subscribe
MMORPG Griefing ... for Science! Twixt fought his fellow players in City Of Heroes to win. But he used methods that, despite being legal within the rules of the game, the rest of the community hated. Then the player behind the hero unmasked as Loyola University media professor David Myers, author of "The Sad & Curious Tale of Twixt" (.doc), a sociological study of the unwritten rules in MMORPG's. Not entirely unlike the epic tale of Fansy The Famous Bard.
posted by waraw (194 comments total) 20 users marked this as a favorite

this recently appeared on internet website metafilter.com

i've gamed with MMOs for years, at least 9 i'd say, and i've played a host of them, starting with EQ, EQ2, WoW, with two or three stings, Warhammer for a bit, LoTR for a bit, i havent fucked with DAoC but i pulled out AoC.

so a guy goes and insta kills some other guys using a tool that teleports folks. this can stick you right next to a guard should you choose, which can kill the opposing player instantly.

so folks are bitching because this guy, a sociologist doing a paper on how folks react to folks doing shit against the norm, and its like, fucking rediculous.

firstly, in my opinion, if its coded into a game its ok. i dont give a shit how much of a fucking pansy you are, if the game allows it, its fair game. thats the whole point of that statement. fair game = fair game.

so this guy is going around, killing folks. i guess he's trying to do some paper or whatever. and i guess like, some folks just stand around, use it as like an online chatroom ro whatever. so if you die right? and youve got like, an npc that killed you, you level slow. like you get half xp and shit sucks or whatever. so people are anal about it and try to avoid it. but like, this dude is like, fuck that, and just goes and kills these folks, incurring the debt on their char. and like some guys were just fucking going on about this. like:

I've played around with CoH. There's definitely combat in the PvP zones, but it tends to be consensual, perhaps because there are PvC missions there, too. So I'll be flying along and get a msg inviting me to single combat or the like. Though I've just up and attacked heroes there, too. But if my opponent sent me a msg saying: "Can we do this some other time?" I'd likely back off, because: a) it's a game, and b) I stopped thinking that ruining someone's day was fun when I turned 12.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 12:06 PM on July 8 [6 favorites]

i mean really... fucking rediculous. trying to say shit like that is just... fucking rediculous. the game is fucking designed to allow that shit. if you dont like the deisgn ,its not a player thats at fault. thats simple shit. if you think its cheap, complain to the makers, the keepers, the creators. there's someone out there who types 0s and 1s to make your graphic entertainment, get them onto this, and have them fix it. you cant fix it by having no consequences. the idea that someone can be allowed to do it by a game but then not allowed to do it by player choice is just fucking weird. if you can do it in the game, then fucking expect it. accept CoH as the game where griefers get hand-made tools to do the job. stop fucking whining when it happens to you.

this whole thing just pisses me off. and its the extent of the feedback that i real about this that pisses me off. remember this is one guy, and there are probably hundreds if not thousands of outraged players who are jumping down this guys throat. he is no coder, is just a player just like any of you. there are abilities in the game, should he use them, is he now anything more than just a player? i think not. for anyone to draw a conclusion beyond that is just generally insane. those that qualify for such a distinction cannot generally be trusted to mention anything worth pondering.

again i come to this idea that you can use force to control a players will. should a guy choose to be an ass, he will. perhaps there are punishments, perhaps not. but its not up to the average person to just fucking wage unholy war on every fucktard they come across. leave it to the judicial system, or in this case, the game managers. go ahead, do your petitions, and when heg ets booted, sure, be happy, but come on, dont waste your time just going over and over how much of a twat you think the guy is. really... how hard is it to realize how fun it is to fuck with people. its fucking fun. hellova lot of fun. and in a game, there's no consequences. you fuck a guy? who cares. maybe your rep goes to hell, but you have fun doing it. and there's no need for these calls to oath ethics and shit. if its doable, it will be done. and its the fool who expects them not to be because of ethics. ethics? are you kidding me? its a fucking game. are we all suddenly conservative republicans now or something? did gaming get infiltrate with some of the most fucking babyish fuckers imaginable? i think so.

How do we cut off this guy's funding? You know, for experimental purposes.

This is how we deal with griefers.
posted by Xoebe at 12:31 PM on July 8 [6 favorites]

fucking rediculous. and to think these guys are literally trying to axe a guys livelihood because he's doing experiments on how people react. this is certainly a fucked up situation. and yes, i don't really accept there's much that can be done. but come fucking on. i mean really this guys only guilty of fucking with some graphics on some pc. and we see reactions to this great an extent. i mean come fucking on people. come fucking on.

Suppose I went to the local arcade back in the 1990s* where there was a big line at one of the video games (say, Street Fighter II) and everyone had their quarters lined up saving their place in line. This is not according to any law of the nation, nor an official rule of the arcade, yet it is a pretty strong, well-understood social rule. Now suppose I ignored this rule, skipping in ahead of the next person in line and sticking my quarter in the game. If the people there were very nice, they might tell me of my faux pas and either pushing me to the back of the line or letting me get away with it once. If I then proceeded to deliberately break this rule, distracting someone who was second in line at just the right moment and skipping in ahead of them, they'd probably get really pissed off very quickly.

Or maybe I use outside-of-the-game tactics like shouting in people's ears or using a flash camera in their faces at critical moments as distraction. I keep winning the game through these tactics, so I keep that coveted spot, and everyone who comes through has to play with me if they want to play the game. They try to use insults and other obnoxious behavior to get rid of me because the management won't do anything about it.

How long do you think this would go on before somebody physically assaults me? And he's surprised that he gets threats online?

example after example about how this guy is apparently SO WRONG. come the fuck on people. what the fuck is he doing thats so fuckign different from anyone else? this guy tries to liken the experience to standing in line at an arcade. its not the same at all. an arcade is more like a google bar or a start desktop. the line and shit, thats just your access port. once youre in, the game itself is the game. fucking with peoples access will definately peeve people off. this guy didnt do that. he accessed his own game, just as they did theirs. he got on, played as he could, like they did too. they chose to sit around and chat like lame fucks, as the game allows, he chose to gank the fuckers and have some fun, as the game allows. wake the fuck up you nerdy ass twats. its like people dont seem to get that these games are not your little social gathering spots. this is a fucking battlefield, not a hand holding competition. why the fuck are we constantly reminded how we need to give a fuck about your social ins and outs. we dont give a fuck. we play the game for amusement. some of you are people, others are computers. it makes it more interesting. period.

jesus folks, wake the fuck up and realize that you can't just fucking sit there and bitch about people playing a game the way it was designed, you have certain things, you have tools, those tools are built into the game, perhaps others are available to you elsewhere. let there be better police, better things that keep folks from participating. if youre bitching about third parties, bitch to your companies. if you want better regulation, have them invest their capital into systems that support that. otherwise, you wont get it, and in the meanwhile dont bitch at the players who are trying to do just the thing you are attempting yourself: have fun. fucking rediculous people. seriously. i wouldn't expect this from like, metafilter. but thats what i'm getting.

but one is harmless dumb fun.

Sure, if you're a sociopath. How is ruining everyone else's fun "harmless"?
posted by Justinian at 10:17 PM on July 8 [8 favorites]

and it goes on... "ruining fun". PLEASE. if people are having their fun ruined, then its not this guys fault. whats in the game is essentially there. you cant just sit and choose which you want to and not want to use. its a fucking onlnie game. you can do that gay asshattery in your own home with some special dnd rules you cookedup alst night because it makes you 'feel better' but this is a fuckign mmo, whats there is there, you deal with it, and play. thinking players can take such ownership of a more or less public game is fucking rediculous. you can't sit there and fucking try and dictate the play of a foreign player and think you'll demand any such legitamacy for it.