He Died For Our Griefing

Via f13, I see that the historical MMOG Roma Victor, now in beta testing, has come up with a unique punishment for griefing: crucifixion.

You have to admire the move just as a public relations strategy for drawing attention to the game (which seems likely to be one of several upcoming MMOGs set in historically 'realistic' rather than fantasy settings, a topic I should turn to soon here at TN).

In terms of MMOG tradition, the basic concept is an idea that's been around for a long time (cue the keepers of the sacred flame of MUD-DEV to remind us of just how long): forms of public shaming or in-game imprisonment of avatars who engage in griefing behaviors. Moreover, as the Roma Victor press release notes, this is just an in-game "skin" for the common game-managerial strategy of banning or suspending characters or accounts for TOS violations.

The question of griefing, it seems to me, become thoroughly a part of the background consciousness of MMOG development and within player culture. It also helps a good deal that there has been some systematic research and writing on griefing within game studies: we just know more about it at this point, and are likely to know more still in the future.

What I like about Roma Victor's concept isn't really what it does or does not do to griefing. I don't expect it to be more or less successful than any other kind of GM suspension or banning.

What I like is that it's a very good example of how I think developer sovereignty might more meaningfully manifest within the terms of a given MMOG's fictional framework. With a game like World of Warcraft, what the GMs do to players for various infractions is entirely outside the framework of the otherwise very well-developed setting of the game. The policing of players (which Blizzard does fairly actively in relation to some other live management teams) always breaks the magic circle. Moreover, because it does so, Blizzard is always under pressure to systematize and make explicit the precise formulations under which its sovereign interest in the gameworld will become active, because that's what we expect in the real world from institutional actors, that they will precisely delineate violations that will trigger intervention.

Roma Victor, on the other hand, by manifesting itself as a Roman sovereign within the game and using punishments which reinforce the game's metafiction, is actually opening up a space for it to conform its sovereignity to the gameworld itself. Being a Roman sovereign actually opens up room both for being bound by a form of law and for certain forms of arbitrary or unequal action towards the players. Hitching the developer sovereignity to the gameworld's fictions is potentially not just a way to make the magic circle more powerful, but even to help the developer understand when to intervene and when not to intervene, to provide a kind of path-dependent constraint.

Comments

[Bart Stewart]

1.

I noticed Roma Victor recently, too. Nick Witcher, Communications Director for developer Redbedlam, has said some things about it that make it sound as though conscious thought has been given to the world as well as to the gameplay. Interesting.

But about the developers driving gameplay as in-game actors -- this reminds me of the distinction made between different "voices" of the GM in the Paranoia RPG.

GMs were explicitly advised to know when to switch between:

NPC: Provide spoken and behavioral responses to player actions. "You want body armor, I gotta have paperwork. In triplicate. Come back after lunch."

GM: Provide impartial meta-information. "No one answers when you bang on the door."

The Computer: Provide direction in an in-context way. "DID YOU SEE WHO DEFACED DOOR U238-P, CITIZEN?"

The big difference was between speaking as GM and speaking as The Computer. As GM, you were expected to be fair, impartial, and (reasonably) honest, standing somewhat outside the game as an omniscient observer communicating about the events within the game.

But as The Computer, you were speaking from completely within the game; your voice was that of an all-powerful actor within the game world. As The Computer, you could be as utterly arbitrary and unfair as you liked. If you wanted to hose the players (and who wouldn't?), you could be incredibly abusive as The Computer and the players would accept it because it protected your GM voice as fair and impartial.

Of course if players think about it for a moment, they know perfectly well that the GM and the in-game authority figure are one and the same. And yet it's fascinating to see how willing people are in tabletop RPGs to pretend that the GM's in-game and out-of-game personae are completely different speakers, and how ready they are to tolerate radically different behaviors from each voice.

So should this work in MMORPGs as well? Does it make any difference that the GM is a physically present, real person in a tabletop RPG, but a disembodied corporate presence in a MMORPG?

--Bart

2.

IF:
1) The game allows PK'ing (aka ganking)
2) The in-game GM/police/caesar/whatever is consistent about punishing gankers

THEN:
1) They are going to need to build a lot of crosses.

[Jessica Mulligan]

3.

The only thing that has worked in the past is permanent bans for repeat offenders, especially for cheaters and/or griefers. Griefers are looking for attention and to cause frustration; a crucifixtion in game, while inventive, just martyrs them.

[Kerry Fraser-Robinson]

4.

Sure it martyrs them. But I have to say that there's much more to the system than this single punishment/ban. There are in-game reputation mechanisms that provide much more of a deterrent. New characters will have a hard time griefing anyone. More advanced characters will only be able to completely shake off a bad reputation by restarting another character from scratch.

IMHO, the problem all too often has been twofold. Firstly that we as developers did not proactively get sufficiently involved in the world, as Timothy's original article pointed out. And secondly that our various communities very rarely got to see the results of our 'policing' actions and therefore could be forgiven for getting the impression that not enough was being done. Hello all by the way.

-KFR

[RickR]

5.

Similar to the Cornfield, would a crucifixtion not serve to encourage griefers, just so they could lay claim to having been crucified? Also, crucifixtion has come to often take on the popular meaning of being severely yet unjustly punished. I'm certain this is not the impression Roma Victor's enforcers would like to encourage. While I applaud their efforts in trying to maintain immersion, I think a punishment *other* that the one widely seen as unjustly meted out to a major Christian religious figure, and the event that granted him Everlasting Life, would be more appropriate.

[Timothy Burke]

6.

I think this is one of the things I get from an emphasis on sovereignty. Policing players is not just a matter of quiet community management: it's a political act, a way that the developer-sovereign manifests in the virtual world and defines the character of the "public interest". So I agree with Kerry: when this kind of manifestation is always and invariably private, hidden, silent, it's very easy for players to come to believe that it doesn't happen at all. Community standards arise from the consequence of private conviction and public performance. There is a legitimate good derived from some public demonstrations of what the good and bad values of a community are.

I'd also say that Jessica's argument stems from a one-size-fits-all understanding of griefers as attention-seekers. At this point, I think it's pretty clear that griefing is a fairly heterogenous thing, and that different griefers may be deterred by different responses (or not deterred by ANY response).

Looking at Roma Victor's design, I would also say that they're really as close to pre-Trammel UO as anything has been to date: the cities are intended to be safe, the far hinterlands are intended to be anything goes. That's a conception of gamespace which liberates the developer from certain kinds of policing altogether--that the only griefing that can take place in some spaces would be the kind that takes illegitimate advantage of bugs or exploits to produce results that "break the magic circle". In this context, even more effective than crucifixion would just be making sure that NPCs and environments reliably perform the functions promised of them in relationship to location. If I repeatedly get ganked by bandits a mile from Rome, I'm going to have some reason to say, "This is not working properly" and to want some kind of response to that. If I get ganked repeatedly in northern Germania, that's clearly working-as-intended.

[Jessica Mulligan]

7.

Welcome, Kerry!

In-Game reputation systems are meaningless to the lawless, as you are about to find out, :D. Soon, you'll discover your first griefer who has four accounts under different names and credit cards specifically for that purpose. He knows you have rules; he enjoys breaking them, because he is Oh! so much smarter than you and he is just *aching* to prove it. So, you'll be spinning your wheels trying to deal with these issues (and they will take up a lot of man-hours, trust me), when you could be using that time to, well, develop, which is what developers do.

And developers used to get intimately involved in their own worlds, back in the day, interacting in real-time with the players. It has been, without exception, an unmitigated disaster every single time, because developers, as a group, are generally the last people you want interacting with your customers in-game. The reasons are legion; we could go on all night on that subject alone. Suffice it say here that watching the results of developers interact with gamers in-game is the reason why we started hiring and training professionals to deal with these issues.

As for not seeing the results of "policing;" I don't think it matters to the average gamer one whit. By the time you;ve gotten to the policing part, the damage has already been done and the victim doesn't care what you do to the griefer (he just expects you to ban him); he wants to know what you're ging to do for *him* to make it right.

Welcome to my world, :D.

-Jess

[skirt]

8.

So Griefing``

So a good people.

[Jessica Mulligan]

9.

Timothy said:
"I'd also say that Jessica's argument stems from a one-size-fits-all understanding of griefers as attention-seekers. At this point, I think it's pretty clear that griefing is a fairly heterogenous thing, and that different griefers may be deterred by different responses (or not deterred by ANY response)."

Well, actually, Timothy, I base my comments on 20 years of experience of dealing with griefers, and it isn't clear to me that griefing is heterogenous. What *is* clear to me is that griefers really don't care about your rules or your in-game reputation systems. Given a second chance, an intentional griefer is almost always a recidivist and you almost always have to permanently ban him or her... and then spend another 10 ro 12 man-hours trying to find all their accounts and ban them, too. and watch your forums for the banned person to start a shit-storm, just because they can.

To be fair, you have to give them a 2nd chance, even though you know it will probably fail and, in the process, you'll probably lose one or more good customers who fell victim to the griefer. And that's what really cranks me: losing a good customer because he got griefed and nothing you can do can make it right for him.

Griefers don't only cost you in team stress, man-hours and resources; they drive money away directly by driving out good customers, and creating bad word-of-mouth about your game that prevent other people from coming in and trying it.

[Ralph]

10.

If you remove the element of requisite fairness from the equation by isolating the consequences to be meted out by the game world rather than the developer, wouldn't you result in the situation that Bart Stewart described previous?

I have found that players are much more willing to take something in stride when it comes from an in-game actor rather than deus ex machina style in my personal experiences, but I also come from a background that views playerkilling, corpse looting, and permanent death as a must-have that is sorely lacking from the current popular crop of virtual gameworlds so I admit my logic is the product of a severely skewed dataset.

Also, what if it is the expected norm that murderous intent is the root of all 'wilderness' encounters with other players, and there is sufficient depth of play experience available in the city zones to allow for 'safe' gameplay experience?

It really comes down to the amount of power you let an individual character accumulate, I think. Things like not letting the most veteran of characters kill a newbie in a safe zone before the guards dispatch or apprehend the veteran really make the difference in these types of environments, I think, and is largely why they have failed in the past -- people tried to apply these villainous roles to systems whose game mechanics and game worlds simply did not account for this kind of interaction being a staple of their gameplay.

It seems a great deal of future success may hinge on embracing the griefer mindset in harmony with your casual players...

[Technocrat]

11.

I totally agree with Jessica when she said...

"The only thing that has worked in the past is permanent bans for repeat offenders, especially for cheaters and/or griefers. Griefers are looking for attention and to cause frustration; a crucifixtion in game, while inventive, just martyrs them."

and with RickR when he says...

"Also, crucifixtion has come to often take on the popular meaning of being severely yet unjustly punished."

Griefers couldn't be happier than when their flaunting your rules. Heck, greifers might even consider crucifixtion a laudable acheivement! I've always thought that levying real money fines would be a highly effective way of punishing these dreadful little creatures.

I'd still be interested in the results of this pending innovation.

[Timothy Burke]

12.

What I mean, Jessica, is that the term griefing seems to me to include a much wider range of behaviors than just the hard-core recidivist attention-seeking griefer that you understandably are focused on, because it's that kind of person who ends up occupying almost all the energies of live management teams. I agree that it's been clear for some years that the hardcore, dedicated griefer isn't deterred by anything at all, and that there isn't much a developer can do besides boot them as expeditiously as possible. But there are a lot of behaviors that are more affected by various forms of incentives that get variably perceived as being "griefing" of some sort or another--being a nuisance in chat, using an exploit, going on a momentary newbie-killing rampage, and so on.

There's a lot of anecdotal and systematic evidence that there are players who will situationally engage in such behaviors, but not habitually so, and that one of the situational triggers has to do with the perceived willingness of the developer to act and the perceived common ethical standards of the community. Asheron's Call 1 had problems that differentiated its community from comparable virtual worlds that in my view stemmed from their variant official stance on exploits and macroing.

[Warren Grant]

13.

I applaud Roma Victor for trying to make public examples of those who break the rules. Having been the victim of many a griefer in the various games I have played, I would be overjoyed to see a public display of an individual being punished. All to often this takes place in the background, out of view and its not clear when someone has been punished. I think that this public display will serve a useful purpose - although you will have people who are inveterate griefers who try to compete to spend the most time crucified no doubt.

Sadly there isn't much of a solution for players who *enjoy* annoying other players by deliberately ruining their gameplay. The only long term solution would be to ban them completely. I wish I could think of an effective means for various companies to maintain a blacklist of offending players without compromising the rules of privacy, but I don't think thats possible.

[Franek]

14.

Jessica, can up point us to, or even post here, what you belive are the current best practices for dealing with griefing?

[Kerry Fraser-Robinson]

15.

With regard to the idea that griefers might actively seek crucifiction as some kind of trophy - let 'em! I think we'd be foolish not expect an element of that. But they are not much trouble once they're on the cross. If your game design is such that new characters can be significant griefers then change the design. Players with more advanced characters are much less likely to risk the ban-stick, the public humiliation or even the reputation hits. And if they're going to purchase a new account every time they want to see a crucifixion animation, we'll not stand in their way. ;-)

My own 20 years of experience with griefers has also taught me that griefing itself is both unstoppable and inevitable. It is like real life crime in that respect. But what you can do is try to deter it, manage it, control the damage and offer support to the victims.

We'd probably get a lot more personal stress if we intended to police the whole world ourselves but the world is divided up into areas that are largely controlled by player-elected players. The tolerance levels in different areas can vary broadly. In-game conflicts are, by and large, resolved in-game. Only when one of these pseudo-elected players starts to tag someone as a troublemaker, do our monitoring tools begin to take an interest. And when the monitoring tools confirm that this individual's activities warrant further investigation then our own more human resources get involved - and by then it's usually an open-and-shut case since we're just as logfile-happy as the best of 'em. ;-)

We really don't care too much what the griefers themselves make of things - they're a constant and we can only deal with the variables. But you're much less likely to lose good customers that have fallen prey to foul practises if they can at least see that the chain works and that their host takes these things seriously.

Since we're on the subject, I think we're sometimes in danger of treating virtual worlds like they're something special. Like somehow between our collective wisdom we'll come up with vaccines and cures for problems in virtual worlds when we haven't yet discovered the corresponding real life solutions. Virtual worlds are just worlds - in some cases they can be unfair and even corrupt but hey, that's life - virtual or otherwise. In any ordered society the vast majority will not encounter the unfairness or corruption first-hand. And if those that do can easily recognise that fact and be offered the appropriate support, then even they can be happy with their misfortune.

-KFR

[Cael]

16.

There are no "best practises" for griefing.

However, Roma Victor's method is certainly the best to date. I'm even attempting something similar within Faith (article) although i'd be the first to admit that this won't work for everyone since it relies on AI being able to actually comprehend text-based speech and make allowances for typos.

However, it is, i feel essential not to break the Magic Circle. The dev team should be invisible. The in-game authorities should be feared.

So far of the live games, only EVE has managed this semi-effectively and even there, griefers are punished silently by the game mechanics should they break out of their low-sec cages.

Congratulations, Kerry! I bought your preorder weeks ago, and wish every success.

[Ralph Tice]

17.

I'll try not to belabor this too much, but if your game turns away hardcore griefers over casual players, you are doing your business a disservice -- they will inevitably spend as much as they can in order to gain as much competitive edge against the casual player, which includes multiple subscriptions and any sort of RMT the game publisher may provide. It's my belief that 'serial griefers' are one of the primary sources of emergent gameplay within virtual worlds as well as the greatest source of per capita income, and I can say this with full confidence as a result of travelling through various games in the company of serial griefer style players. These players, in my experience, are of the same mold as the guild leaders and the "dozens of max level characters" players alike.

I can certainly respect the feelings of individuals who 'hate' griefers and griefing, but can you put aside your personal feelings long enough to envision a game environment that accepts griefing as a valid gameplay style?

It's certainly valid to point towards the number of players an individual griefer can 'drive away' from a game world through their actions as far outweighing the additional revenue they individually contribute, but this is the product of demonizing an entire gameplay style by the devs! If it is not enjoyable for both players to compete, this is certainly addressable by the developers in question.

I have to say, KFR, between your posts so far and the website, I am quite intrigued and will definately be checking out Roma Victor.

[Chas York]

18.

Warren Grant> I applaud Roma Victor for trying to make public examples of those who break the rules.

I'm suprised this wasn't brought up before. I'd just found the "second life" police blotter, which deftly dances around privacy policy issues by listing the time and date of an offense, and the punishment metered out, but not the offender's name.

This, to me, fits nicely with many criminology theories on general deterrance.

Look at the "normal" approach. An event happens and is reported. The GM's don't get the report till it's long over, and when they act (ban/suspend/whatever) it's an "invisible hand." The complainant isn't informed that action has been taken (would violate the privacy policy) and witnesses don't know that the GM's did ANYTHING.

Everyone's left asking, "did action get taken on the jerk, or have I just been lucky enough to avoid him?"

Under such uncertainty, the complainant (often the "victim") has no closure to ease the anxiety. Witnesses are left with the assumption that no action was taken, and potential griefers are left thinking that such action will not be acted against.

Now... make public the fact that action was taken, like the police blotter or "crucifixion." Names can be hidden, but times, places, and actions are made clear.

The victim has closure.
The witnesses see "justice" was done.
Potential copycats see that there will be action.

Will some do it for attention? Sure... particularly if the punishment is trivial enough (even banning is trivial- I've known idiots that decide to quit the game and see getting banned as "going out in style.")

Don't underestimate the value of some form of public notice that punishment was meted out. In one incident on SWG, the forums exploded over an issue of "emoted rape" on an incapacitated character. The community outcry was HUGE, but SOE couldn't acknowledge that any action was taken on any one account, so the explosive situation didn't have an easy way to defuse.

[Joe Yound]

19.

I'm just waiting for the T-Shirt: "Jesus was a Griefer"

[Cael]

20.

I'll try not to belabor this too much, but if your game turns away hardcore griefers over casual players, you are doing your business a disservice -- they will inevitably spend as much as they can in order to gain as much competitive edge against the casual player, which includes multiple subscriptions and any sort of RMT the game publisher may provide.

I'd wonder about that. The hardcore griefer will be using your resources for every available second and generally causing you to spend money on database, bandwidth and CS. The casual player's subscription costs exactly the same but has far less impact.

Catering to the hardcore is economically dumb.

[Young Freud]

21.

1) They are going to need to build a lot of crosses.

I forsee the roads to Londinium looking like the end of Spartacus.

[Ralph Tice]

22.

If your gameworld is negatively impacted by any player spending undue amounts of time within your gameworld, it doesn't really matter if they're a griefer or not, does it? The issue then becomes about the hardcore playerbase vs the casual playerbase, and I think you (Cael) discount the value of their gameworld interaction far too readily.

Discouraging people from spending more time within your gameworld sounds counterproductive to me, but it does raise an interesting question -- given the choice, would you rather operate a game world with 250,000 full-time inhabitants, or 1,000,000 part time inhabitants at 25% peak concurrency? It seems intuitively easier to cater to people who experience your gameworld rather than live it, but is this more or less successful?

I'd personally rather see game worlds fully capable of replacing our own, ala Tad Williams' Otherland...

[Technocrat]

23.

IMO, griefers can, in lieu of a decent AI, add a bit of spice (i.e. fear, anger, exhilaration, etc.) to the VW. Moreover, griefers often provide some unique, albeit underunappreciated, content opportunities for "good guy" gamers, the would-be champions of the VW. Unfortunately, griefers always go too far and people get their feelings hurt or worse, lose a valued item.

At any rate, the whole idea of public humiliation AND banning may be just what the doctor ordered. The idea is growing on me!

BTW Kelly, are the offenders "naked" on the cross, err what? Hehe, nuttin' worse than everybody seein' your tiny lil' weenie...Ouch!

24.

Kerry>Sure it martyrs them. But I have to say that there's much more to the system than this single punishment/ban. There are in-game reputation mechanisms that provide much more of a deterrent. New characters will have a hard time griefing anyone. More advanced characters will only be able to completely shake off a bad reputation by restarting another character from scratch.<

Nice idea. It will be interesting to see how it goes. One thing I didn't get from a quick pass of your site was your attitude to twinking. As Jessica points outs, its a common griefer tactic to have a white hat, rich account to twink back their black hat account to a useful power level. Would a new character be powerless, even with a "rich uncle"?

[Matt Mihaly]

25.

Bart Stewart wrote:

So should this work in MMORPGs as well? Does it make any difference that the GM is a physically present, real person in a tabletop RPG, but a disembodied corporate presence in a MMORPG?
Yes, it [distinction between in-role and out-of-role admin actions) works in MMORPGs. MMORPGs have been doing it since at least 1989, in fact. It is one of the single most important factors in the success of our four MMORPGs, for instance.

I think the question you want to ask is, "Does this practice scale to of users?" As you raise that number, it becomes harder to do, until I believe it probably becomes impossible on a practical level. I'm not sure where that number is. It's certainly higher than the size of our MMORPGs, but it's certainly not as high as WoW's population size.

--matt

[Matt MIhaly]

26.

My god Typepad is bad software. I hope, this fixes the italics problem. It also omitted a phrase "number of users" that would be between a less than and an equal than sign (not sure if it'll omit it again). The sentence "Does this practice scale to of users?" would have read, "Does this practice scale to (less than symbol)Number of Users(greater than symbol)?" had the software not remove it.

--matt
P.S. Random thought: Typepad was designed by people who have never considered that people may wish to grief a blog.

[Richard Bartle]

27.

Technocrat>I've always thought that levying real money fines would be a highly effective way of punishing these dreadful little creatures.

Actually, RV can kinda do this because its business model involves paying real money for game money. If a crucified character suffers loss or damage, then getting it back to the state it was beforehand could be expensive.

Richard

[Michael Chui]

28.

Does this fix the italics problem?

[Jessica Mulligan]

29.

Posted by: Franek | Mar 23, 2006 3:51:03 PM

Jessica, can up point us to, or even post here, what you belive are the current best practices for dealing with griefing?

There is a chapter in the book I co-authored about it, and some advice from other experienced people, as well. Sorry if that seems self-serving, :D.

Best practice? The three-strike rule has worked best in the past, at least for me. First strike is a warning, (which also gives the player a chance to explain or point out if you've made a mistake) second strike is a temp ban of some period of days and third strike is a permanent ban. In some cases, such as sexual harrassment, racial epithets and the like, you accelerate immediately to strike 2 or 3.

Frankly, it is a judgement call. A reasonable and responsible person knows when to ban and when to warn, and when more investigation is warranted. The problem is, this kind of thing usually doesn't scale with a growing customer base, as Matt pointed out. A simple investigation can easily take 2 to 4 man-hours; do the math and you can see that it takes lots of man-hours to investigate even a few mal-actors.

[Chas York]

30.

Jessica- good book, by the way. One of the lines in there, related to griefers (aka "barbarians") has had me thinking:

"[b]Reroute them[/b] or get them out of the game. It's that simple."

When I first taught at a community college, I had my classroom "griefers" - the kids that were bored, tired, and often irritated at the less tech-savvy students that were holding the class back. Many of these kids had been tossed out of other classes for their conduct

I'd once worked at a school for juvenile delinquents, and I put every trick I learned there into redirecting that energy. I take great pride in making most (but not all) of these troublesome twerps into the best corps of student-volunteers and most active "computer club" members in the school.

Of course, those same techniques won't work online, and none will ELIMINATE the griefer personality- but has anyone found SOME gameplay elements that work to segregate griefers from others or somehow harness their energies positively? Or... does the cost in attempting to harness their volatile energies exceed the benefit?

[Steve]

31.

>P.S. Random thought: Typepad was designed by people who have never considered that people may wish to grief a blog.<

Banzzored!

[Jason]

32.

I'd definately say that this could work as long as crucifixion equals account banning or permanent character death. If its something the character can survive, then it will become a badge of honor for the griefer.

[Timothy Burke]

33.

I actually like the idea of reserving crucifixion for accounts that have been banned, and only for characters above a certain level (e.g., low level griefers you just quietly delete). I'd even say that when you ban an account and try to ban all associated accounts, crucify them all at once, together.

[Kanoth]

34.

Lets remember, griefer dont not equal every time PKer. There will be many in RV that will take the route of being a PKer. Warbands, Legions, Aux, lone wolves..etc. This punishment was handed out because Cyne took advantage of knowlege of the only Roman spawn point in testing (release will natually have many more). He and his band would stand there, kill a person logging in, then wait for them to come back from Elysium and rinse and repeat. This is why he was put up, for taking advantage of the game, not for just killing. Many have killed in testing and are in no danger of being crucified.

[Endie]

35.

It's a great punishment, and works within the fiction, but I am suspicious that there is a very large pre-launch PR element that might see it prove a touch rare.

If you go to the Computer and Video Games site and look at the story, then browse back to an earlier story, the crucifixee Cynewulf appears in an earlier, PR screenshot:

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/openpic.php?nid=151648&article_id=130816

[greglas]

36.

First, this is OT -- but Tim's title is "He Died for Our Griefing" I get the title joke, Tim, but I also don't get it. The word you're substituting for here is "sins," but the idea in this case is that the community does NOT grief, and the victim did. I suppose I should realize that I'm not going to get very much traction or sympathy here arguing that you should be careful about the structural consistency of religious punning in blog post titles.

Anyhoo -- Joe's "Jesus was a Griefer" t-shirt might be right, but it might go to prove a point -- and to prove Tim's original point, trying to get past what Jessica has turned it into, a matter of optimal game company social efficiency (How Roman of you, Jess!):

Sometimes people need to be griefed! Or, to simply restate Tim's less ambitious point: Sometimes we can all have more fun when not everybody gets along, if we let them not get along and do so in ways that are consonant with the game fiction. MMOGs are not freaking basketball! That is what you were saying, wasn't it Tim?

(The Spartacus comment is good too, at a few levels.)

[Endie]

37.

May this will work. if not, I'll give up and wait for Michael Chui to come along...

[Kerry Fraser-Robinson]

38.

That's a little cynical isn't it? Cynewulf has been testing with us for over a year and is a prominent member of the community. He's an arena champion of some repute and his name is feared and recognised by almost all of our testers. He got the hang of our real-time combat system right from the start. On this particular occasion however he overstepped the mark, which he has acknowledged and accepted. Once his term has been served we'll be glad to welcome him back into the community and hope that we will be able to reserve this punishment for more serious offenders in the future. We did however have to start somewhere and I challenge anyone to crucify one of their players without their marketing types screaming for a press release to be issued. ;-)

-KFR

[greglas]

39.

To clarify a bit -- I think 1) Tim is right that this is sort of cool (and if you look at his narrative nudge paper, you can see why Tim would say this is cool) and 2) that Jess is right that as you scale and really want to deal with, say, illicit gold-farmers and hard-core grief behavior, this won't work.

Tim and Jess are both right -- they're just framing the questions differently.

[Dee Lacey]

40.

"If it is not enjoyable for both players to compete, this is certainly addressable by the developers in question."

I don't think game developers will be able to address the mismatch between what different players enjoy. I find the story of griefers bothering my friends annoys me with a game, even if I myself never encountered them. Taunts and personalized conflicts make me unhappy; when I see them in any game I find myself turning it off and reading a book for a few hours instead. Not that this is a bad thing, but any game that wants monthly payments from me ought to make it as infrequent as possible.

It only comes down to, which players does the game more wish to keep: those who eschew the purposeful infliction of emotional pain on fellow players, or those who embrace it? Player versus player combat does not need any element of griefing to be fun. Teamwork, good sportsmanship, and healthy respect for an opponent's skill, is a lot better in my opinion.

Griefing doesn't need to have anything to do with permadeath, either. All you need to make permadeath fun is a game whose beginning is extremely replayable. I loved Nethack :) But it's better reserved for single player with current technology. Otherwise too many exploitable issues with lag/disconnection.

It would be nice if everyone who finds their fun in name-calling, exploiting, and spitballing would play some game I don't :)

[Phondos]

41.

Crucifiction is too good for your hard core griefer. Strip them of their items and money (fines). Brand them (permaflag). Cripple them (debuffs). Cut out their tongues (no more chat). Send them weak and vulnerable back into the community against which they've transgressed. They will then learn valuable lessons about how to be decent members of a society.

[Wanderer]

42.

With regard to the supposed privacy issue of reporting on punishments of characters, etc.:

I fail to see why there is one in the first place. It's not like they're saying "Joe Blow, of 123 Main St., Yokelville CA, was banned for life from NeverCrack." If "Wanderer" gets banned from this blog, feel free to announce it far and wide; my avatar is not my identity. The information that my character was banned is no more "private" than the information that he is level 99 or has half a million realm points or is High Warlord this week.

Personally, I doubt that "privacy" has anything to do with it at all. I think that many game admins feel that if they don't say anything, if they just "disappear" players who break the rules, that the rest of us will be cowed by fear of the unknown. In my opinion, when a game company feels it necessary to rule by fear and treat their players as their mortal enemies, not their valued customers, the company/customer relationship has broken down badly, perhaps fatally. Moreover, it doesn't work. I watched a small game switch from publicly announcing bannings, etc., to secretly "disappearing" people. Over the time that system was in place, the player morale plummeted, the community shifted from friendly to toxic, the level of griefing skyrocketed, and during a time of explosive growth in MMOGs, the player count in this one plummeted. Not all due to that one policy, of course; that was just one part of some very bad overall player relations. But that was certainly one of the flagship aspects of the company's attempt at ruling by fear rather than law and respect.

The problem is, of course, that nobody really notices a disappearing troublemaker. People vanish from MMOGs all the time without notice ... they just don't renew some month and they're gone. Troublemakers in particular switch accounts, characters, identities, all the time. If JoeAsshat isn't spamming general chat with script-generated Chuck Norris jokes 24/7 I'm more likely to think he got bored with it, or found some new way to annoy people, than assume he got banned. This pretty much destroys the deterrent value of any action taken against troublemakers. And, while nothing can deter a true hardcore griefer, they're a fairly small minority; the bigger problem may be the people who tend to follow the crowd -- if they think antisocial actions are tolerated, they will commit them; if they aren't, they won't. The latter group is amenable to deterrence.

But in any event, wrapping it into the game setting should remove even that concern. "Wanderer was judged guilty of murder by the King and executed" is just as valid a bit of in-game information as "Wanderer was awarded the Sword of Honor by the King in recognition of his many good deeds."

Oh, and as for griefing as "emergent gameplay" or any type of legitimate playstyle: The product a MMOG publisher is selling isn't pixels or bandwidth; it's fun. The game itself is just a fun delivery system. Griefers by definition destroy fun -- griefing is a zero-sum equation, where the griefer has fun if and only if the person he is interacting with does not have fun. In short, griefers are vandalizing the product that the game company is selling. They're no different than someone breaking merchandise in a brick-and-mortar store. Moreover, this zero-sum equation applies to everyone the griefer interacts with, and that is as many people as possible. So it's not just that Greg Griefer has fun and Larry Legit doesn't; instead, Greg will ruin Larry's fun and Nancy Normal's and Carl Casual's and Harry Happy's and as many other players as he can manage to interact with.

Anyone who gets his jollies out of spoiling players' fun in a game is a detriment to that game because he's damaging the product the company is selling just as much as if he was crashing the servers or exploiting the bugs. Both of which, by the way, he will probably do if he can. That kind of oxygen thief needs to get banned on sight.

[Bill O'Neill]

43.

Franek > "Jessica, can up point us to, or even post here, what you belive are the current best practices for dealing with griefing?"

It's not about griefing, but these links might be useful to some folks:

A Systematic Classification of Cheating in Online Games
http://www.research.ibm.com/netgames2005/papers/yan.pdf

Addressing Cheating in Distributed MMOGs
http://www.research.ibm.com/netgames2005/papers/kabus.pdf

Bill