I am writing and thinking about game definitions now, and a part of that thinking about games and gaming is thinking about griefing. Twixt’s play in CoH has been widely labeled griefing play. It’s been labeled a lot of other things too — very similar to the labels and labeling I’ve discussed before.
I’ve denied all this labeling. Here, there, everywhere. But my arguments tend to be less effective than the simpler ones:
Now the argument here is likely to be that a rule wasn’t broken.. that this was legal play. But that’s a crock of shit and we all know it.
[taken from the comment chain of my good buddies over at Broken Toys]
Instead of just believing what we “know,” let’s look at some ways to define griefing.
The most common are player-based ways. These include intent-to-harm and effect-of-harm. Both are subjective because (unless there is some sort of physical evidence associated with effect-of-harm maybe), they are largely impossible to refute.
I say you intended to harm me, and you say didn’t. Who wins?
You weren’t really harmed, and you say you were. Who knows?
There might be a third category here – potential-to-harm – but that’s equally problematic. Does pvp play, for instance, have a more/less potential-to-harm than pve play? Do games have more/less potential-to-harm than real life? Again, if the common answer is player-based, then that answer can still be considered subjective.
Okay, so if subjective definitions don’t really work, what about objective definitions? [Alas, I have a long and somewhat technical discussion about objective definitions here, but it turned out to be much TOO long – so later sometime]
The third possible sort of definition is somewhere in between the subjective and the objective: not just any old player-based definitions, but EXPERT player-based definitions. This is sort of what we depend on in our legal system, by the way: a judge’s opinion.
So, who would be the best judge/expert in the case of Twixt’s play?
Some suggestions:
1. The players involved. Okay, this trends back dangerously close to the player-based and subjective definitions, but I could see this IF the players involved were REALLY involved (i. e., experts) and not just repeating something they read about on a WoW forum somewhere. Right now, for instance, I would be more than willing to have the FULL RANGE of players in RV adjudicate Twixt’s behavior in RV. What’s happened with Twixt, though, is that there is now this huge outcry of “Off With His Head!” to take into account (e. g., the jury has not been sequestered).
2. Twixt himself. I. e., me. Now, before you scream bloody murder, consider this: I was there. I observed every single bit of Twixt’s behavior. I kept logs. I thought about it. I also have considerable experience within CoH – and, even more importantly, pvp play inside RV – that should help me determine what is and isn’t griefing. No matter what you think of Twixt, he put in the hours, right? My verdict (just so you can scream some more): No griefing. No way.
3. NCsoft. This is probably the expert that matters the most. It’s their game, so really, ultimately, legally, it’s their call. And the conclusions are clearer here than anywhere: There was nothing done outside the rules of play. Nothing outside what might be expected to occur within the pvp zone of RV. All good clean fun (on Twixt’s side at least). No bans. No reprimands. No warnings. No contacts. Nada.
So, if we leave the objective definitions part out for the moment [too bad, cause I think that’s really going to be the best part], then what’s the verdict?
It’s the mob of the moment vs. 14 months of NCsoft monitoring Twixt’s play in RV.
NCsoft wins.
July 10, 2009 at 11:37 am
Are you going to address the actual in game harm your actions caused to the characters you targeted, ie xp debt?
July 10, 2009 at 12:10 pm
Yes, I will, then I will prolly be away for a while.
XP debt results from players in RV being killed by NPC. XP debt doesn’t stop your from continuing to advance your char, it just slows you down. Plus if you have a level 50 char — almost all in RV were lv 50 — then debt doesnt matter at all. Meaningless.
There are equal numbers of NPCs avl for both heroes and villains. They are part of the game design and offer useful strategic options in several ways. Doms build domination; powers that need targets to function can use them to buff/heal, and they can also be used as allies.
They are definitely not — at least when Twixt was playing — “computer-generated death squads.” The Longbow (hero npcs) and the Arachnos (vills npcs) were both very weak compared to the player population. Any level 50 could take on a large group of them no problem.
Points: NPCs are strategic game elements, they are easily avoided — even when you are tp’ed into them, say — and they are easily disengaged if you cannot avoid them for some reason. And, of course, you can ALWAYS avoid them by any number of means, including staying out of RV until you are a level 50.
Now, what is the real penalty of XP debt? I’ve seen a very misleading and almost completely false post say that IF you were killed by an NPC, that meant it would take you 3 hours(!) to earn away the debt. No. If it took you 3 hours to earn away a single death debt, you are the worst CoH player ever. Ten minutes would be about right.
So there you go. If your definition of harm is XP debt, we’ve got a loooooong way to go to get to griefing.
July 10, 2009 at 12:21 pm
Your missing the point Win32767. When he was causing the xp debt he was using a broken game mechanic, but because it was not fixed he feels that it was within the rules of the game. If it was truly wrong why didn’t the devs fix it?
The player base then used their social rules to determine that his tactic was griefing and they got upset with what he was doing. He feels like their anger is misplaced since he is playing the game according to how it was presented to him by the game developers. If they didn’t want him to drone and tp people they why let him do it?
That being said, going into a pvp zone and using a tactic that a majority of the population deems as cheap and then trash talking in broadcast and being surprised at peoples reactions is really silly. Even if it is currently allowed by the game design. Anyone that has ever played any MMO knows there are unwritten rules the game society puts into place to make up for sloppy game design.
I think most people could come to the same conclusions that this article does in years of game play in a short time of play in any online interactive game. There is nothing surprising or new here.
Most people don’t think poor game design is an excuse for acting like a jerk.
But be happy wins32767 that the majority of the player base/society in CoH is great, friendly, helpful, and generally able to know when they are being jerks. Then again, some people don’t know any better.
July 10, 2009 at 12:40 pm
“going into a pvp zone and using a tactic that a majority of the population deems as cheap and then trash talking in broadcast”
This did not occur as stated and “droning” was NOT the single — or even the major — reason for the negative response to Twixt. The major reason was that he played by the rules of the game, of which droning was a very very minor portion. I do not know how many times I have to say this, since they are many and I am few (like one). But that will prolly be the last time for a while.
July 10, 2009 at 12:43 pm
I’ve played CoH off an on for a while. I never paid for it but for a few years they would send me free weekends once a month or so. I managed in that time to get up to level 15. So I have some experience with the game. I’m not an expert though.
I am, however, a grad student doing ethnography in another gaming genre and my phd minor is Anthropology. I wouldn’t say I’m in expert in ethnography either but I do have experience in it.
With this background in mind, when I run into people I’m working with who are using a term in a way I disagree with (For example I once had a person talk to me about liking the story in an online FPS game that was not in any way narrative-based) I have found it more productive to try to understand why they use the term in that way rather than to say “you are wrong.”
So when it comes to the term “griefing” my inclination is to try to understand what it is about the behavior that makes people use the term in this way. The term as I find it usually being used is broadly applied to anyone “causing grief” or causing a strong negative emotional reaction. For this reason I don’t find objective definitions to be of use in this instance — the very experience is subjective. If someone thinks it is griefing then there’s little chance that they will be convinced it is not. As a researcher my goal is not to convince them they are wrong but to try to understand them and why they feel that and what that reaction means.
July 10, 2009 at 1:05 pm
Either you feel the majority of responders to your little experiment or liars or you are. You TP’d people into NPC mobs causing them debt, you TP’d people into police drones, you posted your own chat logs of you talking trash in broadcast. These are all things that happened and pissed people off. I think we all see how you justify your actions.
You feel like you were playing by the rules of the game as presented to you by the game designers. If using poor game design helps you to justify acting like a jerk then more power to you. It should be obvious to everyone now that you feel what you did was OK.
It is some small comfort though to see that the majority of people see right through your little experiment. At least most of the COH population knows better than to use broken game mechanics as an excuse for acting like a tool.
July 10, 2009 at 2:32 pm
“The most common are player-based ways. These include intent-to-harm and effect-of-harm. Both are subjective because (unless there is some sort of physical evidence associated with effect-of-harm maybe), they are largely impossible to refute.”
Harm in this instance can be the mearsurable debt, or more universal across all games, ‘disruption of fun’.
I’ve always prefered to use the ‘disruption of fun’, because I’ve yet to see a EULA or ToS that does not talk about intention disruption of other players’ fun – and make a point about it being somewhat subjective. This also means that “griefing” is not the same thing as “breaking the written rules”.
If your actions disrupted the fun of players in a way that breached the the socially accepted ways, then it’s quite simple – you were a griefer. The social rules are implicit, since as many people have tried pointing out, the social rules often make up for poor game design.
TPing an avatar to police drones was, according to the social rules, wrong. By repeatedly doing it, you disrupted the fun of other players in a way that was widely accepted by the community as wrong, so again, you were a griefer.
It really isn’t more complicated than that.
“Twixt himself. I. e., me. Now, before you scream bloody murder, consider this: I was there. I observed every single bit of Twixt’s behavior. I kept logs. I thought about it. I also have considerable experience within CoH – and, even more importantly, pvp play inside RV – that should help me determine what is and isn’t griefing.”
The important part you missed was “from my Point of View”.
You’ve made it quite obvious that your chosen definition is not really a definition – its a lack thereof. So you cannot actually say if you were or were not griefing.
So..
“3. NCsoft. This is probably the expert that matters the most. It’s their game, so really, ultimately, legally, it’s their call. And the conclusions are clearer here than anywhere: There was nothing done outside the rules of play. Nothing outside what might be expected to occur within the pvp zone of RV. All good clean fun (on Twixt’s side at least). No bans. No reprimands. No warnings. No contacts. Nada.”
No, griefing is not the same thing as breaking the game’s rules. Your argument has always been, you did not break the rules of the game, therefore you were in the right and not a griefer. The problem is, the devs, and support team, do not determine griefers, they determine rule breakers.
You are simply trying to worm your way out of any accountability by saying that the social rules do not count, and that because you did not break any official rules, you are protected.
The problem is, you did work up the community, you did expoit what is widely seen as a “broken mechanic” in a way that is not considered fair play by that community. This, simply, makes the play style you went by, griefing.
July 12, 2009 at 12:03 am
I don’t know why you’re denying yourself the label “griefer”. There’s nothing wrong with it. There’s nothing wrong with the way you played. It’s perfectly fine to play the game to win, regardless of any sadsack broken hearts you may cause along the way. Griefing makes people tougher and makes them fight better. Why not crow about being a griefer? Why not admit that you’re laughing at all these noobs? You worked hard for it. You earned it, bud.
July 12, 2009 at 9:11 pm
‘what is widely seen as a “broken mechanic”’
I am saying there is ojective evidence that this and other aspects of the RV design were NOT broken mechanics. The evidence = Twixt.
August 6, 2009 at 10:01 pm
I came across the story of Twixt around the time the paper was published, but it was only until now that I really paid any attention to what the commotion was all about.
My major contention with the arguments at hand primarily concern the issues involving the term “griefing” and, to a lesser extent, “intention”.
Let’s look at the Wikipedia definition (yes, I’m quite aware that it’s not a “citable” resource, but the term is hardly a concrete academic term to begin with):
1) “A griefer is a player who plays a computer game in order to irritate and harass other players, rather than in pursuit of game objectives.”
2) “… A person who uses the internet to cause distress to others as a prank.”
The first definition quite clearly doesn’t apply in this situation. The answer as to why is addressed in Myers’s paper and in other sources. Most people, even those who disagree with Myers’s research and/or findings agree that what he did wasn’t outside the game’s boundaries; they were, as specified, directly in concordance with them, actually.
The second definition is where people like to set up the grounds for dispute. That’s because most people are arguing for the side of intent, something that cannot be so easily proven but can be so easily asserted, which is of course where the argument gets flimsy. People like to assert the true intentions of Myers’s research. They like to make stories about what kind of person Myers is and what agenda he had in doing his experiment. In this manner, they have constructed a straw man argument about how his actions were socially offensive. The fact of the matter is, nobody knows what the real agenda is or was. Only Myers knows. He could, of course, be lying about the intentions of his actions (and created an intricate detail of logs, blog posts, analyses, and a publication just to back that up… whether or not you find the justification behind that as silly or not is up to you), but in the end, the fact, again, is that you don’t know what the intentions are. At best you are only guessing. And most people like to guess on the side that most aligns with their sense of comfortability. The people who were actually there, who conversed with Twixt himself and were caught up in his actions, obviously know more than those who knew about this from other publications or media sources, such as myself, so the only thing you can rightfully argue for are the hard results of Myers’s research. Most of you seem to be caught up in Myers’s “surprise” of the aggression turned to him and seem to think that his paper was about that. It isn’t. It’s about social groups, deviance and normalcy, and rules and constructs of rules, within the context of a video game.
There also seems to be an assertion that Myers was a jerk. Or that his actions were jerk-like. How you’ve come to this perspective is incredibly subjective, and the fact that some of you are using it as the crux of your argument is fairly ridiculous. That Myers was a “jerk” because he abused game mechanics that were socially taboo (a virtual game where “bad game design” can be coded away, I might add) is your disposition, but that’s a leap in logic that not everyone, especially the logical, will make.
A player plays the game. A player is under no obligation to follow any further rules that distort or impede the official rules of the game. The moment a player decides to do so, he is, to put it in Sirlin’s words, no longer playing the same game, but instead a “home-made variant” of it. The advocation for these soft social rules comes from a person’s uncomfortability in dealing with potentially foreign activity that may disrupt or impede one’s habitual nature or desires, given the relatively larger size of opportunity when comparing any construct with an identical construct with additional limitations (societal ones in this circumstance). The people of the PvP area didn’t want to give up a good spot for doing whatever they were doing, simple as that. It shouldn’t have been baffling that they got mad when their activities were disrupted, but that doesn’t make the immature responses any more justified.
If Myers was Tping people and then trash talking with no purpose except to feel good about himself, then sure, I suppose people have a reciprocal right to trash talk back. But that’s not the objective argument being made, the argument being made is that Myers had no right to carry out his activities because a subset of the player base made up a rule that had no official or formal backing. The masses do not always know what is best for them, nor do they always understand what promotes growth or sportsmanship. History is a big indicator of this. In these cases, the rulings should always be left in the hands most responsible and most capable: the authorities, the governing body, God, or, say, the developers of the game.
August 21, 2009 at 11:34 am
I’ve just come across this debate and this seems like the best place to comment.
To me, as someone who has not played CoX, but has played other MMOs (not WoW) it looks like griefing and feels like griefing. But why?
Obviously there are lots of analogies, but I’d like to use playground football to illustrate my point.
In Britain, kids play football–soccer for heathens
–in the park or playground. The rules are different to proper football, because there is no referee. This has a particular relevance to the offside rule http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offside_(association_football) , because without a referee, it can’t be enforced properly. What tends to happen then is that you get ‘goal-hangers’ – kids hanging around the opposition goal. This can make the game very dull because all that has to be done is to kick the ball over the opposition’s heads to the goal-hanger, who then scores. It’s dull. It’s the reason why the offside rule exists in proper football. So kids who often play together usually come to some arrangement not to goal-hang, because it makes the game boring for all of them. If one kid decides he’s going to goal-hang anyway, then the other kids can decide to exclude him from their game, or, if that’s not possible, use other methods like intimidation or bullying. I’ve seen some instances where the majority of kids will just stop, and find something else to do. I would characterise the persistent goalhanger as a griefer in this instance, as he is stopping other people playing the game.
I think its this element of ‘making the game boring for other players’ which applies in the Twixt case, and the fact that Myers is adducing assertions from other players that he did not make it boring shows that he is orienting towards this point of dispute. What separates MMOs from most other games is the multiplicity of goals for players to achieve: raiding, PvPing, roleplaying, exploring, discovering hidden content. Although his stated goal was to play by the rules, I think Myers has failed to draw a distinction between game mechanics and game rules. As I’ve said, MMOs do not have objectives in the way other games do, and therefore while the PvP zone may have one objective–to capture all the flags–it is not the only objective eg collection of items for quests. In fact Myers acknowledges this obliquely in his attack on ‘farmers’, or ‘fight-clubbers:
‘“mean” is used to label any sort of play that interrupted farming, RMT, leveling characters for sale, or practices so similar as to be identical. The players who did these sorts of things were not — are not — stupid. They were/are perfectly willing to hide their activities under whatever politically correct shield is available to them.’
All of these gamers are playing within the mechanic set out by the game developer, but not all are playing within the game rules. Although Myers continually asserts that he played within the rules, and points to the fact that he was petitioned and not banned, and the game mechanics he used were not ‘fixed’, that does not necessarily mean that his ‘droning’ technique (for example) was something the developers had intended or condoned. Game mechanics are not always easy to change, and one change can have a serious impact to ‘break’ other parts of the game. Even if changes were possible and desired, developers have competing financial demands and ‘fixing’ may have been a low priority. Finally there is a potential political element–if Myers positioned his activities to NCSoft as an anti-RMT crusade, the company may have been prepared to view his activities more leniently. Certainly the absence of action by NCSoft in this case is not the same as an endorsement, which Myers has not produced.
This leads me to what appears to be a fundamental flaw in Myers’s inquiry, that games have objective ruleset which can be separated from players and their behaviour.
There is some evidence that it is not as simple as he asserts, in Myers’s construction of what is part of the game and what is not. His paper states that he wanted to see what would happen if he ‘played by the objective rules’. He does not explicitly state what the rules are in the paper, other than to capture the zone. Later, he goes on to implicitly criticise his opponents for using ’supra-game tactics’ against him.
This seems to betray a fundamental misunderstanding on the nature of games. All games and sports feature behaviour which is acknowledged as part of gameplay. From ’sledging’ in cricket, to ‘trash-talking’ in US sports, to chess players kicking each other under the table, ‘gamesmanship’ is seen as an important element of gameplay, and is even covered in some rulesets which talk about the ’spirit of the game’. There is a continuum of behaviour in these cases. Talking to an opposition player to put him off his game can take forms which seem obviously ‘unfair’, such as talking about his wife’s sexual behaviour, or which can be innocuous and difficult to complain about, such as simply commenting on their style of play (‘look how he’s holding his bat’) to disrupt the opponent’s concentration. Filling up your opponent’s chatbox to prevent easy communication with allies could quite easily be seen in this context. The point is that each game, be it sport or MMO, is an interaction between the game mechanics (what is physically possible), the game rules (what the game’s administrators say is legal), and the negotiations between players of how they will play. MMOs have an extra dimension to the third element of negotiation, as I have argued above, in that player goals can be completely separate, and this means that the negotiation dimension is even more important than in other games.
It seems to me that Myers sought to cut out the third element of game play in his experiment because he seems to have refused to negotiate on his own goal where it conflicted with those of other players. It’s the refusal to negotiate with someone else to allow them to play their own game, in a context where there is a multiplicity of goals, that is the element of griefing in Myers’s behaviour.
August 21, 2009 at 5:20 pm
re Dale Cynwyn
Just a brief comment on the analogy matter (since I’ve addressed this at more length elsewhere): Twixt got on the bus, and refused to move to the back of the bus when he was told to do so. He was harassed as a result.
http://dmyersloyola.wordpress.com/2009/07/24/analogies-are-tricky/
http://dmyersloyola.wordpress.com/2009/07/25/while-we-are-on-this-analogy-thing/
*
Elsewhere, your assumption seems to be that Twixt’s play made the game boring.
False assumption.
I’ve addressed that elsewhere.
http://dmyersloyola.wordpress.com/2009/07/10/was-twixts-play-positive-play/
The game was much more fun the way Twixt played it than the way he was told to “play” it by those who would bully him. But since “fun,” like “griefing,” is subject to subjectivity (and the ambiguity of analogy), consider this: Twixt’s play retained the GAME. The “rules” of those who would bully Twixt were not GAME rules — they were “rules” that ignored (or, even worse) destroyed the game.
This seems to be a common source of Twixt criticism: that “social rules” are somehow equivalent to game rules. This criticism takes place without ever determining what those “social rules” are, how those “social rules” originate, or the consequences (in game and beyond) of those “social rules.” Aside from all that, however, social rules such as those that were used to bully Twixt are simply not game rules. I’ve addressed the peculiar and important characteristics of game rules elsewhere.
http://dmyersloyola.wordpress.com/2009/07/30/have-we-progressed/
It is this exceedingly common assumption — that players are justified in changing game rules whenever and however they please — that seems, to me at least, an indication that game designers, particularly MMO game designers, don’t know how to or don’t care to design games any longer. Their focus is increasingly on monthly subscribers, not game players. To justify that shift in focus, there is then the accompanying assumption that there is no difference between game rules and other sorts of rules.
This latter is then the claim of what I would call “the relativist.” I think there are important questions to ask the relativist (which never seem to get either asked or answered when monthly subscriptions are at risk). I have addressed this elsewhere too, as I have the phenomenon of trash-talking, the degree to which the game context requires an “anti-social” contract, and several other issues that you raise.
http://dmyersloyola.wordpress.com/2009/08/02/four-types-of-game-related-bloggers/
I find no new argument here, merely the re-assertion of what the CoH game designers “intended” or “thought” or what “should” have happened during CoH play. These sorts of assertions allow arguments such as yours to be advanced without any reference to what actually happened, how the game was actually played, or what the game rules actually are. I continue to believe all those things are important.
August 21, 2009 at 7:17 pm
Re: analogies.
People use analogies for their explanatory power, and the arguments they advance. Far from addressing the points contained in mine, you’ve simply used two analogies yourself.
#
On boredom: I’m not assuming anything. Your behaviour appears to have been criticised for being boring–if it wasn’t, then why did you orient towards that by reproducing a list of posts defending yourself from the criticism? In fact, most appear to be what you’d call ’supra-game’ related, about how good the forum argument is about your presence in the game, rather than specific praise of your play-style in the PvP zone. One or two of those posts seem to support your assertion, but that is not a great many, and you haven’t included in that blog post any criticism of your play style. So forgive me for not giving much weight to your assertion that you were not boring or annoying other players. If there is any more evidence, please show me.
I also do not, in my argument, make any claims as to what NCsoft designers intended (you state that I do). I don’t know. But you have not produced any evidence that shows you do either. You state that because they did not take action, your behaviour did not break any game rules. I gave a few possible alternative explanations as to why their inaction did not amount to an endorsement of your playstyle. If you have any evidence that they did endorse it, I’m happy to have a look at it.
As far as the interaction between game mechanics, game rules and inter-player negotiations (or what you call social rules) is concerned, you again seem to be ignoring the argument that all games, not just MMOs, contain ‘unwritten’ rules about social behaviour, even at the highest levels, and breaches of these rules result in the ‘offender’ being placed under social pressure that is sometimes very intense.
When a player falls down injured in an English Premier League football match, it has become customary to kick the ball out of play so he can receive treatment. When the opposition takes the throw in, the ball is returned to the side previously in possession.
http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football-fa-right-to-follow-wengers-lead-1070957.html
In 1999, Arsenal broke this unwritten rule and scored a goal as a result. The outcry was such that the club asked for the tie to be replayed, and the governing body agreed to this. Is this ‘poor game design’? Is this simply players deciding to change the rules? Would you argue that Marc Overmars was the victim of bullying, or would you accept his club’s admission that he made a mistake? My argument is that while game mechanics (how you kick a ball), game rules (FIFA rules) and player negotiations (on-pitch behaviour) are not the same, they are inextricably linked, and have an interactive effect.
To reiterate this point, I made no assumption that game rules are the same as social rules, as per your straw man – far from it, for why then would I draw the distinction between game rules, game mechanics and player negotiation? My point is that no game is played between humans without a social context, and your attempts to remove the social context from your gameplay had a predictable result.
There’s a logical fallacy in your argument which is that you played by the game rules, therefore any criticism of you for breaking social norms was invalid. You then extend that fallacy by claiming that responses to you from other players amount to bullying because they breach the NCsoft EULA.
I’m saying that you breached the social rules which are an essential component of any game, and therefore people used social methods to attempt to change your behaviour. ‘Griefing’ is not a breach of a game mechanic or a game rule, it is a breach of a social norm.
The bullying that you were subjected to could not really be fully addressed by the EULA any more than chants about Victoria Beckham by Liverpool fans could be properly dealt with using the law of harassment in England and Wales. (By the way, the law relating to harassment has it that if A makes a complaint against B of harassment, and the complaint is accepted by police, B is given three warnings to stop the harassing behaviour or face prosecution. So the definition of what constitutes harassment is negotiated between all three parties.)
My first post was prompted because I was trying to explore why I felt that the descriptions I have read of your in-game behaviour amounted to griefing. You seemed to struggle with your three attempts at defining it in your blog post, and you haven’t made much progress in your replies. I think my explanation gets a bit closer to it.
August 21, 2009 at 11:53 pm
re Dale
“you’ve simply used two analogies yourself”
You should either play the game to be able to better judge the relevance of the analogies used, or, alternatively, read and consider — as I’ve asked — what I’ve already written: “The point is that you can make up your analogy and I can make up mine” [fr here: http://dmyersloyola.wordpress.com/2009/07/24/analogies-are-tricky/#comment-515
“Your behaviour appears to have been criticised for being boring–if it wasn’t, then why did you orient towards that by reproducing a list of posts defending yourself from the criticism?”
I’ve tried to be as honest as I can. Criticisms are cheap and easy. Such criticisms are, I daresay, much like your own: hit-and-run hearsay — similar to the tactics I describe in the paper. I try to point to objective evidence, but that evidence, I have found, is of little concern to those whose opinions are more securely formed and delivered without reference to it.
“If there is any more evidence, please show me.”
What good would that do, when the evidence I have already provided is ignored? And, importantly, would you respond to the same request I might make of you?
However, please refer to the links I left earlier, where I outline the objective consequences of Twixt’s play in terms of opponents defeated, etc., AND where I list comments from those who played with Twixt and who enjoyed and desired that play.
Another suggestion: give me a formal definition of “boring” play — as I have given you, for instance, regarding the definition of a game. Calling someone boring is much the same as calling someone ugly or mean or evil, don’t you think? It really doesn’t advance the argument in any significant way, whether anyone said it before you or not.
“I also do not, in my argument, make any claims as to what NCsoft designers intended (you state that I do)”
Here is what you said, Dale: “that does not necessarily mean that his ‘droning’ technique (for example) was something the developers had intended or condoned.” I can only conclude from this that you believe the devs did not condone droning/tping into npcs. Now, once again, please read something for me. Try this: http://www.masscomm.loyno.edu/~dmyers/temp/CuppaJoDefGriefing.gif
You can find the above linked in this post: http://dmyersloyola.wordpress.com/2009/07/14/just-some-twixt-related-links/
The EPL. Analogy. Sigh.
We can generalize this to a “timeout,” no? Obviously, many games have such an understanding. The further understanding is that the timeout is temporary and does not interfere with the rules of the game. In fact, in your epl analogy (sigh), the referee adds on time to make any timeouts immaterial, no? The “social rule” governing the timeout, and similar circumstances, is this: no outside-the-game matter (injury, etc.) is allowed to intervene and interfere with the rules of the game. This is, after all, the whole purpose of the referee. Should one player — or one team — take on the role of the referee, surely you can see how that has the potential to interfere with the rules of the game. This potential is increased when the player/team taking on the role of the referee is willing to make decisions based on something other than the rules of the game (rumor, hearsay, personal benefit, and such).
If “player negotiation” intervenes and interferes with the rules of the game, there is no longer play, there is instead politics. Once again, you fail to address (or read, I must assume) what I think must be addressed: “Here are some important questions for the relativist: What are the rules of society? Which (of many) societies are these the rules of? Who decides the rules of society — and how do they decide them? When players, as the makers of the rules, disagree about the rules of society, how is that disagreement resolved (i. e., are there rules for the rules of society)?” [fr here: http://dmyersloyola.wordpress.com/2009/08/02/four-types-of-game-related-bloggers/
If you had read my earlier posts, you would find that Twixt used only the game mechanics that were explicitly allowed to be used by the game rules, as those rules were interpreted by the game developers. Twixt’s opponents, on the other hand, frequently used game mechanics outside the boundaries of the rules (what I would call exploits). Do you defend that behavior? I can only imagine. I still do not know how you distinguish between what is and is not an exploit. Are you using a formal definition of some sort?
“There’s a logical fallacy in your argument which is that you played by the game rules, therefore any criticism of you for breaking social norms was invalid.”
How so? Tell me, please, what the social norms were. Were there competing social norms? Was there a social norm that said, if “my” social norm is not THE social norm, then I will harass the hell out of you until it is THE social norm? What percentage of players constitutes the “social”? What principle gives a portion of players authority over another portion? What principle gives a portion of players authority over the game designers’ interpretation of the game rules? What principle gives those players authority over the game? I’m sorry if I am missing something on this, but, once again, as I said earlier, you seem (as do many others) to defend the concept of social norms without any sort of reason for doing so other than a simple assertion. As I argue in the paper, that assertion is a dangerous one; it is particularly harmful, for instance, to the concept of a “game.”
“I’m saying that you breached the social rules which are an essential component of any game”
Dale, I have addressed this in some depth, in the link I provided to you earlier. Please note the “anti-social” contract, I mention here: http://dmyersloyola.wordpress.com/2009/07/30/have-we-progressed/
Again, I grow weary of the repetition.
August 22, 2009 at 8:44 am
[i]The point is that you can make up your analogy and I can make up mine[/i]
Indeed. And you ignored my analogy, used to illustrate the point I was making, and ignored my arguments. What you wrote in http://dmyersloyola.wordpress.com/2009/07/24/analogies-are-tricky/#comment-515 appears to mean that analogies are worthless. I addressed that: People use analogies for their explanatory power, and the arguments they advance. Far from addressing the points contained in mine, you’ve simply used two analogies yourself.
[i]Such criticisms are, I daresay, much like your own: hit-and-run hearsay — similar to the tactics I describe in the paper[/i]
How is this ‘hit and run hearsay’? I’m trying to explore the point that you reject the accusation of griefing and yet lots of people seem to disagree, including people not involved in your dispute. The question I’m asking is: Why? Obliquely accusing me of bullying you is rather hyperbolic, and your sighs are a teenager’s playground tactic.
[i]What good would that do, when the evidence I have already provided is ignored? And, importantly, would you respond to the same request I might make of you? However, please refer to the links I left earlier[/i]
Please read my post again. Or at all. I engaged with your evidence and found it rather lightweight. If there’s any evidence you want from me, please ask, and I’ll see what I can do.
[i]Here is what you said, Dale: “that does not necessarily mean that his ‘droning’ technique (for example) was something the developers had intended or condoned.” I can only conclude from this that you believe the devs did not condone droning/tping into npcs.[/i]
If you can only conclude that the absence of evidence means there is evidence of absence then you’re not reading closely enough, and I developed that point further in my second post, so your response here seems rather petty.
However, your gif image is useful and disposes of my argument here, thank you for that.
I’m not sure any of the disagreements above this point are useful. Let’s concentrate on the meat of the argument below:
[i]The EPL. Analogy. Sigh.
We can generalize this to a “timeout,” no? Obviously, many games have such an understanding. The further understanding is that the timeout is temporary and does not interfere with the rules of the game. In fact, in your epl analogy (sigh), the referee adds on time to make any timeouts immaterial, no?[/i]
Well, no, we can’t. It depends what you mean by ‘timeout’ — if you’re referring to timeouts in American football or basketball, it’s not the same thing. I think you’ve misunderstood me here. Injuries are dealt with under the game rules in the way you describe. The referee can, and does, stop play to deal with injured players. However, players have decided, for whatever reason, that referees do not stop play enough. So:
[i]Should one player — or one team — take on the role of the referee, surely you can see how that has the potential to interfere with the rules of the game. [/i]
And this is precisely what is happening, every Saturday, in the Premier League and the other professional leagues. The link I gave illustrates an example where this social rule trumped the official game rules, through the process of negotiation between players, club, and officials. The legitimate result was set aside and the game replayed, because this social rule was breached. If you read the Indie piece I linked to, you’ll see a very clear exposition of the practice and the negotiation, as well as a call for the practice to be enshrined as an official game rule (which has not happened in the last 10 years).
I could give many other examples, from other sports and other games, but I don’t want you to hyperventilate from the sighs.
[i]If “player negotiation” intervenes and interferes with the rules of the game, there is no longer play, there is instead politics. [/i]
I disagree. This is the fundamental point of my argument, that game mechanics, game rules and social rules interact with each other in the course of playing the game. Without all of these elements, gameplay breaks down.
[i]Once again, you fail to address (or read, I must assume) what I think must be addressed: “Here are some important questions for the relativist: What are the rules of society? Which (of many) societies are these the rules of? Who decides the rules of society — and how do they decide them? When players, as the makers of the rules, disagree about the rules of society, how is that disagreement resolved (i. e., are there rules for the rules of society)?” [/i]
To be honest, I struggled to see the relevance of this to the discussion and your use of the term ‘relativist’ seemed to be an attempt to label me, a tactic you decry in others. The short answer is that the rules of society are a combination of formal laws—made by parliament and judges and interpreted by police—and social norms—the implicit or explicit rules that a group uses for appropriate and inappropriate values, beliefs, attitudes and behaviours.
[i]If you had read my earlier posts, you would find that Twixt used only the game mechanics that were explicitly allowed to be used by the game rules, as those rules were interpreted by the game developers. [/i]
And if you had read my posts, you would discover that I use this point as a platform for my argument: that your attempt to ignore the social dimension of gameplay in this instance had predictable consequences.
[i]Twixt’s opponents, on the other hand, frequently used game mechanics outside the boundaries of the rules (what I would call exploits). Do you defend that behavior? I can only imagine. I still do not know how you distinguish between what is and is not an exploit. Are you using a formal definition of some sort? [/i]
Why would you imagine that I’m defending exploits? This is the first time on this thread the word has been mentioned, and it’s not relevant to whether or not you were griefing.
[i]How so? Tell me, please, what the social norms were. Were there competing social norms? Was there a social norm that said, if “my” social norm is not THE social norm, then I will harass the hell out of you until it is THE social norm? What percentage of players constitutes the “social”? What principle gives a portion of players authority over another portion? What principle gives a portion of players authority over the game designers’ interpretation of the game rules? What principle gives those players authority over the game? I’m sorry if I am missing something on this, but, once again, as I said earlier, you seem (as do many others) to defend the concept of social norms without any sort of reason for doing so other than a simple assertion. As I argue in the paper, that assertion is a dangerous one; it is particularly harmful, for instance, to the concept of a “game.”[/i]
I recall from reading your paper yesterday (has it been removed from your website?) that you anticipated some reaction from other players about your behaviour, just not the extent of the reaction you received, therefore you were aware of the existence of some behavioural norms relating to CoX PvP gameplay. Possibly the best way of describing the norm would be that if A asks B not to interfere with A’s activity, then B stops. If A’s activity interferes with B’s, then there is a second norm, that A and B would attempt to come to an arrangement so that both A and B can both peform their activities. I’ll develop this point further on.
From http://dmyersloyola.wordpress.com/2009/07/30/have-we-progressed/ you state:
[i]If you break the latter, the more contextual rules — by failing to adopt a “lusory attitude” (Suits) — then you are a spoilsport. Both of these break an important social — yes, social — contract that all games require between one game player and another.
This is a very important social contract in competitive games in particular, because, in competitive games, things can get out of hand. If competitive game players aren’t properly cooperating, if they aren’t following the same set of rules, then there are hard feelings.
…
In effect, the social contract of the game requires that all other social norms and expectations — those outside the game — become null and void.[/i]
This is really the crux of our disagreement. In the example I used of the Arsenal FA cup match, it’s quite clear that one broader social norm — that one ought to help someone in distress — has trumped the game rule — that play continues until the referee blows his whistle. The point you go on to make about the ‘anti-social contract’ conradicts this evidence. Although I believe you are correct to say that [i]‘games get away with stuff, that, if that stuff were judged according to social norms and expectations, would not be gotten away with’,[/i] it does not follow that all social norms outside the game become void.
The fact that you do not believe there can be broader social norms active within game play is contributing to the logical fallacy of your argument, which I don’t mind repeating: that you played by the game rules, therefore any criticism of you for breaking social norms was invalid. You demonstrate this fallacy in your other post by saying
[i]I assumed — rightfully, I think — that when Twixt zoned into RV, there was a social contract there. … What mattered was the pvp game, the rules of the pvp game, and voluntary acceptance of the rules of the pvp game.[/i]
What also mattered was the interplayer negotiation (or social contract) that deals with the A and B social norm I outlined above. Your social contract — I prefer to say negotiation because your metaphor implies a permanently fixed state rather than on-going dialogue — was not limited to the idea that playing in a PvP zone involves a capture the flag game. Other players had other valid objectives for using the zone. It was your refusal, as I understand it, to negotiate ways for other players to play a different game that breached the second part of the social norm/social contract, that I outlined above. That is why people believe you were being a spoilsport, or griefer.
August 22, 2009 at 9:11 am
I found your paper again.
I’m slightly perplexed, having looked at your section on Garfinkeling. You seem to have set out to conduct a ‘breaching experiment’ but then object when people point out the fact that you breached social norms and behavioural expectations.
Perhaps you should revisit your assumption that:
For instance, what if the rules governing behavior in large organizations are objective and measurable and, most importantly, uniform? While this is not necessarily a natural state, it is a common state in online role-playing games, which are constructed as rules-bound systems and, as such, represent organizations in which the sort of social system reifications posed by Parsons and other functionalists are, at least in part, justified.
The idea that MMORPGs have uniform rules governing behaviour doesn’t really work. You only have to look at the enormous fuss created on ‘roleplaying’ servers to discover this.
You would have been better off looking at a simpler system, such as TF2 or BH, where there are no issues with competing game goals.
August 22, 2009 at 9:22 am
re Dale
Yes, we appear to disagree regarding the extent to which social negotiation is either allowed or beneficial in respect to game rules. We appear to disagree about this in general but most specifically regarding the implementation of pvp rules within the RV section of CoH, which are the rules here in question, not their analogies. I have written elsewhere, in some length and, I hope, with some depth, about how game rules are transformed during game play — “recursive contextualization,” I call it. This phenomenon is quite common. Simultaneously, I have consistently distinguished between what is and is not a game, and what are and are not game rules; I continue to consider these very important and profound distinctions. As best I can discern, you do not assign any distinction or importance to games or game rules at all.
Yes, I would label those who would circumvent game rules through politics as politicians. Politicians, I notice, tend to ramble on.
In a game, game rules adjudicate disagreements. However, if we choose politics — “social negotiations” — over game play (it is our choice, after all), then the rambling on becomes incessant.
I will close comments here since those comments have become repetitive.