Science Discovers That MMOG Players Are Jerks

[NeutralDrow]

A lot of people here post about how he was a troll and ruining the game. I offer solutions.

1. Go to another pvp server, there's more than one.
2. Go to a pve server, grind, then try again to kill him. He died in-game, so he's not invincible.
3. Play another game. The obvious choice.

...he was playing City of Heroes, not World of Warcraft.

And you're completely missing the point. We're not complaining because he was ruining our playing experience. We're complaining because he's the MMO equivalent of a guy who crashes a party, drinks all the beer, sings too loudly, tries to feel up every woman he sees...and then complains when everyone calls him out for being a douchebag.

In other words, he tried to fit in.

Are you trying to be funny, or are you really that ignorant? I honestly can't tell.

Because he didn't try to fit in. He very deliberately did everything possible not to fit in.

Kudos to him then. Anyone having the balls to stand by their convictions and play in a way that's enjoyable to them rather than doing exactly what that throng of angry nerds who are the hardcore MMO player base say they should be doing, is nothing short of a hero.

If CoH are remotely like any other MMO, as I'm sure it is, it's filled with people who can't wait to find someone who does things in any way differently than the majority, so they can take a giant digital dump on said player.

It's not. I'm fairly certain it has a greater proportion of casual players than WoW, since the game is designed for pickup-and-play teaming to be startlingly easy, my own experiences with the game are overwhelmingly positive, and even the game forums have a smaller percentage of assholes than I've seen in other MMOs.

I say, as if you actually cared. Anyone who can defend a troll for "having balls" is a lost cause.

If you're a representative of the CoH player base, I already feel more certain in my assumptions.

And if you seriously drew that conclusion, my assumption is absolutely confirmed.

OK, Neutral, you do make a valid point, but there's still some holes. He didn't choose to not team, he was forced to not team. Yes his methods were shady, but he wasn't griefing, he was roleplaying, albeit too extreme. Also he was decently known before that, he was in one of the bigger guilds in the game and had lottsa ppl who he played with before the experiment, and just because he was playing a bit differently they booted him and ppl shunned him. Ok, I admit he did go to far on some things, but at the same time, the fact is he got death threats just for disrupting their precious little order. Yea, I wouldn't contribute anything to that game, why would I waste my time on abuncha losers who completely punish and try to get banned and even mass try to kill someone who (while yes, I admit crossed a few social lines) just did things a little differently? Everyone sees things differently, and I respect your right to have your own view too; it was just for me I just saw a really stupid reaction to a minor issue. He didn't even set out to grief, he set out to follow the ingame rules, albeit very strictly. It was the ppl in the game that assumed he was griefing just to be an ass. Yea sure he got no xp or stuff from tping into the npcs, that wasn't his goal. He was trying to win the area like the designers of the game designed the area for, and while yes abeit cheap, was still just using the resources available to him there.

Okay, points...

He does mention that he started to refuse team invitations after a while, since in addition to ostracism, he was starting to be invited to teams with people who tried to get him killed. In other words, the only people after a while who willingly teamed with him did so surreptitiously. If you somehow manage to piss off that many people, including a ton on your own side, it's time to start thinking about your priorities.

If, while one is roleplaying, one deliberately interferes with other peoples' enjoyment of a game with an action that doesn't benefit one in the slightest, even after repeated pleas to stop, that is griefing. Roleplaying a villainous stalker would not excuse him from stalking another player in the zone. Questionable behavior over others' objections just can't be justified like that in a game. He wasn't shunned for "playing differently," any more than an FPS player would be shunned for "playing differently" if they hung out by a spawn point and blew up other players as they appear.

And I agree, death threats were an overreaction. My point is that he wasn't an unjustly persecuted innocent in the matter. He crossed social lines by playing like a jackass.

If he was playing to "win the zone" by trying to drive away all the people playing villains he not only missed the point, he was aiming in an entirely different direction. Using tactics that A) make people angry, B) don't do anything for you, but inconvenience other people C) don't work in "winning the zone," D) are for such a fleeting, inconsequential victory (A winner is you! For five whole minutes!), and E) are against "villains" on the other side, which has pretty much all the same players as the "heroes" on your side...it's a little something I call "taking a game too seriously." Especially that last part; you'd think he thought City of Heroes and City of Villains were like Alliance vs. Horde or something.

<color=white>Line Break!

But that's not the part I'm really upset with. The part I'm upset with is the way he presented his conclusion.

Yes, I'm perfectly aware that CoH/V's PvP system is filled with idiots. They're a bunch of over competitive wankers, and I like the fact that they hang out in the four PvP zones because they're not in everyone else's hair out in the actual game. They're incredibly insular, and all but the most reasonable ones have a problem of driving away the normal players. I won't even set foot in one of the zones unless I'm feeling particularly whimsical and not averse to having my ass beaten from one side of Siren's Call to the next and back again. The reason you have zone farmers in the PvP zones is because there are people who wouldn't normally have anything to do with the places if the PvE rewards weren't great enough to justify it. PvP has slowly gotten better and more balanced in the eight issues since its introduction, but it's still the small, problem child of the game.

Not that you'd naturally draw that conclusion reading the document.

Tell me, if one doesn't play City of Heroes or City of Villains (which are both the same thing, incidentally), would one be more likely to think "Wait, isn't he drawing his conclusions based on a very, very small subset of the game's playerbase, in a single zone, who he did everything in his power not to appease?" or "Wow, the people who play City of Heroes are a bunch of douchebags!"

That's ultimately why I'm so upset, though I'm equally incredulous about the whole "teleporting people into mobs of NPCs so they get straddled with debt, rather than killing them myself, so they don't."

 

[Irandrura]

He crossed social lines

Which is exactly what breaching is, and thus the whole point of his experiment in the first place.

 

[thiosk]

The fellow took the reductionist approach. I would say it is well known that everyone on the internet is jerks, so it follows that mamorpagger players are jers as well.

 

[MMMATT]

The plight of Leeroy Jenkins already taught me that MMOG players are jerks. It wasn't his fault! Poor Leeroy...oh well, at least he has chicken.

 

[NeutralDrow]

He crossed social lines

Which is exactly what breaching is, and thus the whole point of his experiment in the first place.

Then what the hell was the conclusion? "MMO players are human beings after all?" "People with no power make their threats correspondingly bigger?" "Do unto others?" What??

 

[DeathWyrmNexus]

On some level, yes, the people were jerks to treat him like that.

On the other hand... he built a character very explicitly around griefing people, and did so in a very nasty way. I haven't really played CoH, but from my experience in WoW, I can tell you I'd rather be killed in-zone than be somehow teleported to a different zone. Yes, he was using game mechanics, but at the same time it seems as though he would move into high-value zones, park there, and lock the other faction out.

Also, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the players asked him politely to stop, and were ignored. He was playing the game pretty explicitly to piss people off, and while the level of response he received was inappropriate, he shouldn't really have been surprised that he'd be treated as a dick when he was acting like one.

Finally, his actions probably had direct, negative repurcussions on his own side, as well... again, using WoW PvP realms as a baseline, a lot of people who get ganked by a high-level character will respond by hunting down one or several lower-level characters of that faction and ganking them in turn.

Were the people online dicks? Yes. Did he perhaps go out of his way to draw their ire? Definitely.

All this really proved that people don't like a smarmy bastard and will become bigger bastards in return. All I read there was how he was choosing play a group game like it was a solo game with him as the star. Um no, in PVP, if you're a dick and come out of left field, expect to be treated like the ass you are.

It shouldn't have escalated like this but I see no accountability for his actions, small by comparison as they were.

 

[DeathWyrmNexus]

Ya know, I thought of a better way to sum up his paper.

"MMO Players are all assholes and I'm the top of the heap..."

 

[maddawg IAJI]

If I could, I'd buy CoH/CoV and grind up a hero just to be this chaps sidekick.

Same here. The guy played the game it was meant to be played and then brutally punished for it. Those people proably use Coh as an alternative to Myspace or Facebook. In which they just talk with random players. How did that info get out there anyway?Sounds like a federal offense to me. Seems kinda stupid to go to jail just to get revenge. I mean is it really worth it?

 

[maddawg IAJI]

On some level, yes, the people were jerks to treat him like that.

On the other hand... he built a character very explicitly around griefing people, and did so in a very nasty way. I haven't really played CoH, but from my experience in WoW, I can tell you I'd rather be killed in-zone than be somehow teleported to a different zone. Yes, he was using game mechanics, but at the same time it seems as though he would move into high-value zones, park there, and lock the other faction out.

Also, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the players asked him politely to stop, and were ignored. He was playing the game pretty explicitly to piss people off, and while the level of response he received was inappropriate, he shouldn't really have been surprised that he'd be treated as a dick when he was acting like one.

Finally, his actions probably had direct, negative repurcussions on his own side, as well... again, using WoW PvP realms as a baseline, a lot of people who get ganked by a high-level character will respond by hunting down one or several lower-level characters of that faction and ganking them in turn.

Were the people online dicks? Yes. Did he perhaps go out of his way to draw their ire? Definitely.

that still dose not give them the rights to try to find him and his family in real life . its a fucking game.

No one tried to find his family or tried to confront him in real life in any way. It's the internet, remember? An enormous pool of anonymous jerk-offs who just want a little attention every now and again. It was an empty threat, and if he honestly feared for his life, he should get his internet taken away, as he is clearly not ready to handle it. It would be damn near impossible to find his IP and track it to his residence anyway. He acted like a douche, people treated him like a douche. Plain and simple everyday internet dumbfuckery.

While I agree that he did act an a trollish manner that is beyond the mistake of the villans.

If you're gonna play Pvp you gotta expect players to come after you. You can't expect every body on the other faction to be as friendly as the guy next to you. Fact is some people will treat you as the enemy and if you're caught in there gaze then who's at fault here. The guy playing the game the way the manual told him to? Or you. And if you're buddy is a villan but you're a hero then trade in a cape for a Villanous Laugh. You don't make friends with them and break the idea of the game just becuase there cool. Personally easy way to end this make speech diffrences like WoW. One faction cannot understand the other leading to language barriars. Sure there might be the occasional fool around but that create no real bond for the other player and you won't feel anything when a Rouge comes by and implants a dagger into his back.

 

[Irandrura]

Then what the hell was the conclusion? "MMO players are human beings after all?" "People with no power make their threats correspondingly bigger?" "Do unto others?" What??

*sigh* Did you read the paper? He described it quite clearly. I also summed it up here [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.123391?page=6#2550337].

We know that social ostracism is used to punish deviants. That's a 'well, duh' conclusion. The opening paragraphs to the study spell it out: what it is concerned with are the 'details of the social ordering process'. The game was used as a model because it allows a clear and unambiguous distinction between system rules and social rules.

Forgive me if this sounds jerk-ish but, well... this does come down to simple reading comprehension. Academic language is not that hard. The study explains what breaching is, and presents the case of Twixt as an example. He, by his own explicit admission, is 'Garfinkeling', and that means, by his own description, breaking conventional norms and examining the consequences of these breaches in order to better understand the social mechanisms.

Which is what he did, and examined them, and concluded that, if CoH/V is analogous to real life, social rules do not necessarily reflect system rules or grow out of them, and indeed may involve systematically denying system rules. That's a meaningful conclusion.

If there's an ethical dilemma here, it's that Twixt did act like a jerk in-game. It was for academic purposes, but it was essential trolling; in the same sense that breaching experiments in real life are trolling, or the entirety of Sacha Baron Cohen's so-called 'comedy' is trolling. Some do point out that Twixt was unpleasant and abrasive (for example [http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2009/07/loyola_university_professor_be.html#4222901])... but the entire point was to be abrasive. Is jerkishness justified in academic pursuits? (If you ask me, apparently in real life jerkishness is justified in pursuit of comedy, and sociological research is obviously a much better cause than comedy, so, yes, it is.)

But saying 'Twixt acted like a jerk! He shouldn't have done that!' is just missing the point. The CoH/V community was justified in ostracising him, of course. That's not the point either. The only real dilemma here - since apparently no one is interested in discussing the study's actual results in a sociological light - is whether or not the end justifies the means here.

That there has been widespread misunderstanding of the study - even when it was linked to in the opening post/article (though I admit said article is at some fault for misrepresentation itself) - is disheartening but predictable.

 

[TankCopter]

It took a uni professor to determine that many mummorpugger players are jerks? This is a well known phenomenon.

Also: This guy needs an award for Successful Trolling. He pissed everyone off by playing properly, evaded their attempts at stopping him, then wrote a paper on how much he trolled them. What a hero.

 

[NeutralDrow]

Then what the hell was the conclusion? "MMO players are human beings after all?" "People with no power make their threats correspondingly bigger?" "Do unto others?" What??

*snip*

Hm...it seems I did misunderstand, which is pretty embarrassing. I suspect first reading the responses of people who missed the point in the opposite direction - "CoH players are jerks", instead of "Twixit is a jerk" - not to mention the thread title, colored my perceptions (or blinded them, I guess).

I do still think a lot of my counterarguments are valid, they're just somewhat misdirected. The scientist in question was undeserving of scorn, but his misaimed fandom (damn TV Tropes) drawing the other conclusions - social rules are unimportant in the face of simple game mechanics, the overreactions of a few tarnish the reputation of everyone else, etc. - I still feel justified in arguing against.

 

[Erana]

See, this is why I like Fiesta. Yeah, its not the best game out there, but I haven't heard of any other MMORPG in which people +45 in levels consistently go to the newbie area and buff and give out freebies and welcomes.

 

[OniSuika]

I guess I can't compare too much, I only played for a couple of months, but from what I found, everyone I found was very friendly, supportive, and helpful. Kudos to this guy for being such a brilliant troll though.

 

[Grampy_bone]

This reminds me of my Starcraft days where I racked up a large number of wins using rush tactics. Even after they tried to nerf rushing with added build delays and unit costs I still could catch people unaware and beat them before they had a chance to fight back. I was universally despised for this. I guess I always believed that there is no such thing as a "fair fight." I play to win, pure and simple. A skilled opponent could always defeat a rush, so whiners like this just needed to learn the game better.

I'm always amazed when someone uses an unfamiliar tactic or strategy to win a game; I want to play against them more, because you get better at a game by playing against the best. I've never understood the "He's using an effective strategy against us, let's ban him!" mentality.

This carried on into my Counter-Strike days. I played in a small number of LAN circles and we had all developed predictable play styles. Then we invited a new person who had played against a wider variety of opponents into the group and he thoroughly trounced us every time. He played the game in ways we never even dreamed about. The first thought among the players was to kick him out of the group, but I convinced them to let him stay and we all became better as a result.

So maybe the CoV players should have spent more time learning from Twixt's tactics and how to counter them instead of just whining about it. You shouldn't ***** that other players are killing you in the PvP zone, pure and simple.

 

[powell86]

hi irandura,

seems that the whole thread only you and neutraldrow managed to understand what this whole "experiment" is about. I liked ur summary the whole study but sadly i dun think the rest of the forumers are actually reading it. haha think they are more occupied with the whole theme of who is the real "jerk". (*note for those uninitiated, TRIXT was made to be a jerk for this experiment)

anyway, i think the more interesting discussion point is whether system rules (namely country laws, constitutions) or social rules are more important. Most of the time, social rules carry a higher standard than laws. What is deemed lawful usually may not be well received by the community (i.e. lawful to actually take ur own sweet time on a zebra crossing but you'll deft get honked at by drivers *note* not a very good analogy but u guys get the idea) In fact, many pple thrive on the fact that they can get away with jerkish behaviors because the law condones these actions. This is where we get all the legal loopholes, and how some people jus seem to get away with things which are frowned upon by us normal folks even when we call the police or report them to the authorities (i.e. calling 911 to chase away ruffians disturbing ur neighborhood at night never seems to work. they only give them verbal warnings and break them up. but it happens again and again. how we wish we can jail them but alas it's not a jailable offense. But thank goodness these chavs will eventually get called for doing sth more stupid and jailable lol)

seems to me that most normal folks would adhere to social rules. But there will always be the odd one out who breaks social rules but still keep within legal framework. When that happens, we need to ask ourselves who is right? Is the legal structure right or should we follow society pressure (which left unchecked, will deft lead to lynching eventually, which is actually the conlusion of the "research")I am presuming that the researcher just wanted to show that people will still live by their own rules and not the legal framework if left unchecked. Personally i dun think following the law strictly nor exerting social pressures are the best framework of a civilizations. I believe tat in modern societies, authorities (system rules) and people (social rules/norms) have an implicit unspoken agreement of letting things slide as long as it doesn't get too far. Bearing in mind that system rules are written by people, the same people who needs to adhere to social rules/norms, i believe there usually isn't much difference btw system and social rules. It will be highly unlikely to find laws which is off tangent to what society wants. But definitely there'll be the odd case here and there. I mean, laws are constantly changing, just like the mods who did in fact changed the system rules such that exploitation is no longer possible ( most prob not wanting to offend the majority users)

haha i think i have just typed a whole chunk of nonsense which i dun think is entirely coherent. for this i apologize. but please can we stop discussing who is a jerk or who is right cuz that is NOT the whole point of TRIXT. I repeat, TRIXT is here to demonstrate to us the natural divergence between System Laws (authorities) and Society Norms/Cultures/Rules (How to live peacefully with ur neighbours)

the way i see it. society norms tend to have a higher moral code than laws.

peace pple

 

[johnsom]

They are jerks. My experience in wow is its usually people in progressing raiding guilds or people that feel they have nothing to lose by acting like dbags. I think it stems from the anonymity of online gaming. Iam sure the people don't act like this in their day to day lives but maybe they do and that's why they take refuge in a game and spend most of their free time there. There are alot of really friendly people in the game to its not fair to clump all of us into this group.

 

[theshadowiscast]

Such an epiphany. I was just on the horizon of such a conclusion, but worried it would be like Plato's Cave trying to explain it to everyone else.

 

[Kazturkey]

Looks to me like HE was being a dick. Everyone else just wanted to hang out and chat but he decided to be a dickhead and ruin that.

 

[RazielDethAngel]

It eludes my memory but this reminds me of a story of the chap on Everquest that pissed everyone off by being good on the "No rules/evil server." Extreme graciousness to anyone that tells me the name of him.