Researcher Trolls MMO, Surprised When Players Hate Him

D1gital_Prob3 writes with this excerpt from a story about David Myers, a Loyola professor who spent some time studying superhero MMO City of Heroes/Villains: "... he aimed the pointer at his opponent, the virtual comic book villain 'Syphris.' Myers, 55, flicked the buttons on his mouse and magically transported his opponent to the front of a cartoon robot execution squad. In an instant, the squad pulverized the player. Syphris fired an instant message at Myers moments later. 'If you kill me one more time I will come and kill you for real and I am not kidding.' ... As part of his experiment, Myers decided to play the game by the designers' rules — disregarding any customs set by the players. His character soon became very unpopular. At first, players tried to beat him in the game to make him quit. Myers was too skilled to be run off, however. They then made him an outcast, a World Wide Web pariah that the creator of Syphris — along with hundreds of other faceless gamers — detested."

Comments

Re:Not Research

[Em Emalb]

teleported you to the cartoon robot death squad, did he? ;P

Being an asshole makes people angry, film at 11

[ChaosDiscord]

So, a researcher enters a foreign land. He obeys the strict letter of the law, but ignores the customs and rules of polite behavior. Even more, he specifically sets out to break those customs and rules of polite society. The natives push back, telling him that he is being rude. He continues to break the customs and rules of polite society, offending large numbers of people on a regular basis. The natives seek every legal avenue and socially acceptable method to drive him away. He continues to offend. Some natives start pushing what is social acceptable, and skirting the edges of legality.

Wow, color me surprised. Those nasty natives! How dare they try to keep you down!

Perhaps as followup research he can start referring to people of other ethnicity using racial slurs.

Re:Being an asshole makes people angry, film at 11

[Microlith]

I like your suggestion:

Perhaps as followup research he can start referring to people of other ethnicity using racial slurs.

because it is entirely ridiculous and indicative of what the users (how can you call them players, when they ignore the intent of the game) are doing. Basically, he played the game (actually fighting villains) and was hated for it. Not because he was being vile or crude (indeed, completely contrary to what you suggest) but by violating game defeating "customs." Why the hell have a city full of heroes and villains, if the villains and heroes just idly chat and don't actually fight each other?

And when someone does play the game, the natives get pissy as all get out. Sounds like a bunch of crybabies inhabit those games if you ask me.

Re:Being an asshole makes people angry, film at 11

[coaxial]

So, a researcher enters a foreign land. He obeys the strict letter of the law, but ignores the customs and rules of polite behavior.

He had been playing since the game came out in 2004. He knew the customs, he knew the rules. He played the game as designed. He was a hero who defeated villains in a PvP server. He played the game correctly, while everyone else wasn't.

This is the thing with MMOs and really modern gamers. People lament that you can't actually role play in a computer RPG, but here's a guy doing that, and he's an outcast. Heros don't hang out and chat with villains. They fight. What we have here was people that didn't actually want to play the game. They just wanted to rack up (dubious) "achievements".

The prof did exactly right.

Re:Being an asshole makes people angry, film at 11

[Pyrion]

Except they're not playing games they're standing around chatting it up. It's IRC with graphical avatars.

Re:Being an asshole makes people angry, film at 11

[TOGSolid]

Wow, did this stir up some memories about my Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast days.
The attitude of the CoH community sounds a lot like the Saberists from JK2. They had all these 'rules' for dueling online and would clog up the deathmatch servers, vote kicking anyone that didn't play their way. Rather than actually play the game, they'd just chit chat in the corner and have duels between the players. Never mind the fact that in deathmatch mode there was a duel key that prevented the agreeing duelists from being harmed by outside forces, the Saberists preferred to just completely overtake servers and ruin game after game with their forced upon "honor" (boy I wish I was making that up). Sure you could try and find a different server, but eventually they had run off everyone else and trying to get a real game going was nigh impossible. Anyone that just wanted to play JK2 (and JK: Academy later on) straight and have a good time was hailed as a griefer, a troll and turned into a pariah.
Is what Myers did wrong? Absolutely not, he was playing as any newcomer would. I know my immediate impression would be: "An arena where the forces of good and evil do battle in order to see who's the best? Sounds like a blast! Wait, all they do is talk to each other and have their robots fight? What the fuck?"
Groups such as the CoH arena community, and the Saberists community before them deserve to be screwed with. While community rules for fair play can indeed be an important part of a game (for instance, acknowledging a certain mechanic is broken and not using it until it's fixed just out of good sportsmanship), when they're twisted around as to essentially ruin the intent of the game, then they've gone too far.

Re:Being an asshole makes people angry, film at 11

[Endo13]

It's not that your analogy was too complex... it's that it was just flat wrong. Nowhere does it say he was "insulting" anyone. It's like instead of playing basketball, both teams were just standing there chatting about nothing in particular and hogging the public court. He decided to start shooting some hoops, and some moron got hit on the head by the ball because he didn't move. Or perhaps the moron was standing there holding a public basketball that belongs with the court, and he decided to 'steal' the ball and start actually playing. There's plenty of analogies that would fit. Yours was not one.

Re:Being an asshole makes people angry, film at 11

[Draek]

People lament that you can't actually role play in a computer RPG, but here's a guy doing that, and he's an outcast. Heros don't hang out and chat with villains. They fight.

Err, no they don't. Heroes only fight villians to prevent them from doing evil stuff, that's why they're *heroes* and not 'villians employed by our own side'. And if the villians decided to drop the baby-eating stuff and have a nice chat over coffee, a proper hero would go and join them, not beat them up just because "dude, he's like, a villian".

That's the thing with roleplayers I despise the most, that they all 'roleplay' as genocidal maniacs brainwashed into an "us vs them" ideology. No, just because goblins are part of the 'monster' class doesn't mean you should go and chop them up, and just because some guy was classified as part of the 'villians' faction means you're a hero if you go and kick his ass while he's chatting with a friend.

Which is why I and most people playing online don't "roleplay". Its hard, its usually not that fun, and most people who try fail completely at it and become worse players, in the community sense, than those that play it as a mere game. Like TFA.

Re:Being an asshole makes people angry, film at 11

[amicusNYCL]

Head on out to public park where people play pickup games of basketball, or, heck, chess. Once you're welcomed in, start engaging in the most foul insults you can to distract your opponent. Might I suggest racial epithets?

That's a ridiculous comparison, and doesn't relate to how he was playing in-game. It would be a better comparison if you insisted on calling all fouls, obeying all rules, etc. That's more in line with what he was doing online. He wasn't insulting anyone, he was playing strictly according to the rules. He wasn't going around shouting racial epithets and trying to anger people, he was fighting "villains" as a "hero", or, in other words, exactly what the game is supposed to be.

This isn't IRC with 3d models, it's villains vs. heroes. If you insist on comparing this with something real-world, imagine if you showed up on a basketball court to get a game and everyone was just standing around talking, but you just grabbed the ball and started doing layups. Is that really something to get all butthurt about?

Re:Being an asshole makes people angry, film at 11

[Maestro4k]

because it is entirely ridiculous and indicative of what the users (how can you call them players, when they ignore the intent of the game) are doing. Basically, he played the game (actually fighting villains) and was hated for it. Not because he was being vile or crude (indeed, completely contrary to what you suggest) but by violating game defeating "customs."

Not to defend what the other players were doing (harassing the guy obviously went way too far), but even in real life there are "customs" in societies that disallow certain actions even though said actions are legal. If you're going to be a part of a community, any community, you have to follow the unwritten rules of that community or you're going to be mighty unpopular. Just because it's a game doesn't mean the community can be ignored, and you do so at your own peril. If you read the article it noted that players at first gently informed him that he was breaking custom, and he ignored them and continued to do so. After that the players gradually increased the attacks on him trying to force him to conform.

And when someone does play the game, the natives get pissy as all get out. Sounds like a bunch of crybabies inhabit those games if you ask me.

Just to give a real world comparison, in most places it'd be perfectly legal for me to sit on my front porch and cuss out everyone who happens to walk down the street. But if I do so all my neighbors will begin to hate me and do whatever they can to discourage my behavior. Sound like a bunch of crybabies to you? Or am I being an unrepentant asshole who deserves to be hated by his neighbors? If you don't want to be part of a community, fine, but don't whine about the repercussions. That's what this professor's doing, he ignored the customs of the community he was in, and he faced the consequences and whined about it. He's the crybaby, not the other players.

Re:Being an asshole makes people angry, film at 11

[Saxerman]

I find it interesting you say that he 'played the game correctly' since that was the core part of the argument that I thought the professor completely missed in his paper.

Who gets to define the 'correct' way to play? And if we look at the social dynamic of the game world as being larger than merely a 'game', who gets to define the correct way to live life? Can you really do it wrong? Is there anything interesting about that fact that players were put in an environment were they were suppose to compete against one another, and yet collectively choose to cooperate instead?

Certainly, we could make a compelling argument that the game designers and developers are the ones who get to define the 'correct' way to play the game. But I should think an equally compelling argument could also be made that the players also get to make that decision. Or, even, that it is an entirely subjective and personal choice, and not subject to the tyranny of any majority.

Re:Being an asshole makes people angry, film at 11

[Anonymous Coward]

Through Hitler, obviously!

Re:Being an asshole makes people angry, film at 11

[Arker]

If you RTFA it tells which servers he was on. There were several.

Not trolling

[Anonymous Coward]

This summary seemed very biased, cherry picking out sections that made it seem like the Professor played outside of the intended purposes of the game by saying he avoided 'custom sets'. After reading the article it seems to me he played it exactly how anyone who had purchased that game would expect to play it. He chose a side, in his case hero, and set out to do battle against other people who had chosen the side of villian. I am not familiar with the game, but it would seem to me that would be the obvious way in which to play the game and how it was meant. From the article the professor says both heroes and villians sat around chatting and only going against computer opponents, which would seem to sort of defeat the purpose of a game that lets you choose a side and everyone has this choice. I know if I had picked up this game I would be pretty pissed if I started playing it just to realize I was only there to be buddy buddy with everyone no matter their affiliation and only go after those designated as computer threats.

Re:Not trolling

[Maxo-Texas]

In Everquest, it went like this.

You started a low level character.

You angered one or more bad monsters and dragged it (them) across the entire zone to the lower level area *Most outdoor zones had a 10 to 15 level spread). Then you zoned or died next to them and they got killed.

For bonus points, you then logged on your twink and took the camp.

This happened on p2p AND on pvm servers.

In Warcraft, it consisted of sneaking a high level character to the opposing newbie area and then killing newbies as they spawned... for hours or until you were banned.

For PvP Everquest, it consisted of camping the respawn spot and killing people *repeatedly until they quit trying to log in*. Often, their next action was to cancel their account.

So I agree, it sounds like the person was being a dick and camping them. Not clear why they could not get out of range of the police. Not clear why they couldn't kill the guy's character and camp him.

Re:Not trolling

[Maxo-Texas]

I'm not sure you read the article where it says,

"he aimed the pointer at his opponent, the virtual comic book villain "Syphris." Myers, 55, flicked the buttons on his mouse and magically transported his opponent to the front of a cartoon robot execution squad. In an instant, the squad pulverized the player."

The other player didn't do anything to him first. There was no way to avoid this while this person was in the game. And it is clear from his own quotes that he repeatedly griefed the same player into insta death.

I don't even play CoH and I'm angry at him and think he's an asshole griefer.

Re:Not trolling

[Arker]

Your other post here was incorrect when it said he could do that from anywhere in the game. He could only do that if they had already voluntarily entered the area, which is very clearly marked, and even has a 30 second cool down when you enter it to give you time to leave if you did so accidentally.

Furthermore, his range was quite limited as well. He had to catch them, not just in the zone, but on the right side of it - near where heros come into the zone. Villains enter from the opposite side. So his foes were folks that wandered around the PVP zone without a care in the world, relying on this idiotic custom to protect them, and then whined when he took advantage of their lack of caution to whack em.

I dont play COH, I just got off the phone with a friend that did who explained it a little better than the article. Any errors in comprehension are my own.

Ok, so...

[Tenek]

After being "chilled" by players threatening to kill him, he then goes and publishes his personal information. Brilliant.

That said, I I think Sirlin would have something to say to the scrubs complaining about his tactics.

Carebears

[hardburn]

Myers, who bought "City of Heroes" when it hit store shelves in 2004, quickly learned that players ignored the area's stated purpose. Heroes chatted peacefully with villains in the combat zone. Instead of fighting each other, members of the two factions sparred with computer-controlled enemies..

What kind of silly carebear game is this? Try Eve, where the time it takes to rid yourself of such nonsense is measured in the time it takes to warm up a railgun.

Not a new concept

[ls671]

This is not a new concept, it has been covered in one episode of South Park where some guy kills everybody in WOW and the kids get together to defeat him.

I mean, if it has been covered in South Park, I would guess this occurred in other games before. Still interesting to see the similarities with the South Park episode although....

Technically not trolling.

[mail2345]

If you read the article, it mentioned that he just took a different stlye of battle, instead of the socially accepted standard of sending robots at their robots, he just killed them directly. He did not insult them, just took action different from the normal battle.

Re:Technically not trolling.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you read the article, it mentioned that he just took a different stlye of battle, instead of the socially accepted standard of sending robots at their robots, he just killed them directly. He did not insult them, just took action different from the normal battle.

As a CoH player whom he once publicly called a "piece of shit", I assure you this is not true. Much of his sparring was verbal.

To explain the game mechanics a bit: In the area where he played, there are safe-haven areas at each end of the map, one for each side. If your character gets too close to the opposing faction's base, you'll be killed instantly by their base defenses -- no exceptions. Camping in your own base and teleporting nearby opponents into the automated defenses is generally considered a cheap tactic, but hey, it's part of the game.

"Twixt" did a lot more than employ one cheap tactic, he went out of his way to be an ass.

Re:Technically not trolling.

[Locke2005]

Sounds like the game mechanics are seriously broken. Exploiting a bug in the game implementation is cheating, but it sounds like this guy was exploiting a bad design. If you leave loopholes in the game mechanics big enough to drive a truck through, you shouldn't be surprised when somebody with no social conscience takes advantage. Bitch at the implementers to fix the game, not at the asshole who is demonstrating that the game is broken.

I've always thought MMOs should have a karma system where you can grant others positive karma for helping you out or negative karma for pissing you off. The accumulated karma would then bias your "dice rolls" so that if you pissed too many people off, you would never be able to win a battle. Unfortunately, most games instead reward amoral behavior.

Re:Not Research

[orkybash]

I find the moderation on this comment particularly ironic!

Full Court Press

[nausea_malvarma]

Some of the tactics used by this researcher remind me of the full court press in basketball. The rules of basketball allow a full court press, yet to do so never crosses the mind of most players. Playing one side of the court at a time is convention. The full court press is extremely effective, yet if you use it, the other team will no doubt call your win "cheap".

Still, when you are the underdog, and must win at all costs, the press is your only option. I sympathize with those who use it (and recognize that it isn't easy to pull off either).

If people complain that a tactic is cheap, it's really not the fault of the player, but the fault of the game. Past slashdot postings are full of examples where players exploited loopholes in city of heroes (remember the article about player-created missions?). With this in mind, I think it's obvious that City of Heroes was poorly designed to begin with. Game designers should never assume players will be on their best behavior.

Re:Full Court Press

[PeanutButterBreath]

Some of the tactics used by this researcher remind me of the full court press in basketball. The rules of basketball allow a full court press, yet to do so never crosses the mind of most players. Playing one side of the court at a time is convention. The full court press is extremely effective, yet if you use it, the other team will no doubt call your win "cheap".

Still, when you are the underdog, and must win at all costs, the press is your only option. I sympathize with those who use it (and recognize that it isn't easy to pull off either).

Full court presses are not considered "cheap". They just aren't used all the time because they are only effective under rare circumstances -- either when the offensive team is under a time crunch to move the ball across half court or score, or when weak ball handlers can be trapped and forced into a low-percentage pass.

Otherwise, trying to guard the entire court is not as effective as concentrating your defense in the half where the other team can score points. A full court press is hard because it is basically a man-to-man defence over the entire court, giving the offense plenty of room to maneuver and making it that much harder to double team or switch defensive assignments.

Re:Not Research

[Anonymous Coward]

Your theories are the worst kind of popular tripe, your methods are sloppy, and your conclusions are highly questionable! You are a poor scientist, Dr. Venkman!

Both sides of the mouth..

[Anonymous Coward]

What seems weird is that he was upset that people were punishing behavior "out of the norm" on one hand, and on the other hand was touting that he was merely following the rules. Huh?

The folks in the game creatively and organically decided to set up their own customs opposed to the rules - Twixt seems more like a street preacher who hates everyone because they don't follow the rules like he does.

Is he a cultural anthropologist (probably not, given that anthropologists are trained to work within the social framework of existing cultures as much as possible)? If not, I'd LOVE to see a cultural anthropologist do a write up on what happened here.

Re:Both sides of the mouth..

[tsm_sf]

He's a "media professor".

After reading the article it seems like he was a griefer who wrote a paper to justify being an asshole. He's "dismayed" and "disturbed" by behavior any anthro 101 student could have predicted from the start. Behavior that would seem like a perfectly natural response to his actions in the "real world".

tl;dr version of his paper: "assholes shunned online as in RL. WTF?"

Anti-scoial != Indepedent/Mainstream

[Akoman]

The professor seems surprisingly disappointed by the scorn heaped on his not-mainstream behaviour. He tries to liken it to cliques in high school, but the reality is he didn't just not follow rules, but he actively tried to destroy an existing social fabric and actively molested participants. He tries to paint his behaviour as 'following the rules, but independent' without the most important piece of information 'also, I actively antagonised people.' This is akin to painting himself a geek when really he's a bully (to follow on his high school example)

He gets PAID for this?

[grasshoppa]

So he gets to play MMOs all day and be a cock in them, AND he gets paid for it?

Shit, all this time I've been doing it for free....

Re:If it's within the rules, it's within the rules

[mwvdlee]

A player was being irritating, which is within the rules.
The rest of the players turned him into an outcast, which is also within the rules.
I don't see the problem here.

What an ass...

[WiglyWorm]

Having read the full article, it appears as though the "researcher" did nothing more than hang out in the combat zones in CoH/CoV and teleport the oposing faction in to a line of guards who would instakill anyone who got too close. (making the line "but he was too skilled to be driven off" extra hillarious).

He would then troll the general chat with stuff like (direct quote here):

"Yay, heroes. Go good team. Vills lose again,"

I couldn't make this shit up if I were trying.

His grand conclusion?

in the game's chat box, users like Hunter-Killed responded, "U are a major sh--bird."

Another player added, "I hope your mother gets cancer." Yet another wrote, "EVERYONE HATES YOU."

Myers was stunned by the reaction, since he obeyed the game's rules.

"If you aren't a member of the tribe, you get whacked with a stick," he said. "I look at social groups with dismay."

What's this guy's next "research" project? Going down to the bus station and punching old ladies in the nose?

This guy wasn't doing research, he just wanted a tax write off and a grant to do nothing but sit around and be a dick on the internet.

Re:NCSoft do not make the rules.

[Pyrion]

And yet, what, they still got their asses handed to them? Methinks they need to spend less time chatting and more time playing the fucking game.

This reveals a problem in the game's rules...

[judolphin]

In the sports world, there are many instances of coaches and players using strategies that, although effective, are bad for the game for one reason or another. Sports leagues that deal with this effectively, like the NBA, are doing OK. Leagues that do not, such as the NHL (sorry Canada), are circling the drain. Once upon a time in basketball, teams started holding the ball for minutes at a time as soon as they got a lead. So, the NBA instituted a shot clock forcing the team to shoot the ball within 24 seconds. As players got taller, coaches started camping 7-footers under the basket. So, a 3-second lane was added to forbid any player from standing under the basket for more than 3 seconds at a time. Years later, the 3-point line was introduced to increase the value of long-range shooting and encourage players not to all crowd around the basket. The NHL started going down the tubes when teams like the New Jersey Devils used the horrendously boring "neutral zone trap" and "clutch-and-grab" defense to win Stanley Cups over more skilled and exciting teams. The NHL waited too long to do something about it, and as a result the Stanley Cup finals are now shown on a basic cable bicycle racing channel. If legal play can ruin the game, the rules need to be changed. Pure and simple. You can't trust the players to "be nice."

some more links, since the post itself was sparse

[Bill Wong]

the actual paper (word format, ugh).
the guy's blog

Re:Not Research

[russotto]

Rain on your wedding day isn't ironic without a big stretch, but a free ride when you've already paid could easily be situational irony.

He has no idea what he's playing

[Kelbear]

It sounds like this "professor" really never learned the details about what he's playing.

In this particular game, player vs. player combat is for the most part consensual. The speed of travel in the game is so fast that the only way to kill someone is for them to be willing to slow down and have a fight to the death. The developers go to greath lengths to minimize the ways in which one player can interfere with other players.

Being killed by a player has no penalty in a PvP zone, you're just sent back to the entrance of the zone. However, the computer controlled "cartoon" enemies in the zone will inflict an experience loss(known as "debt") on the players that die by their hand, and this loss takes a considerable amount of time to mitigate. There are players in this zone who are there to defeat the enemies because they give increased experience, they aren't there to fight or interact with enemy players in any way and are left alone instead.

There's no benefit to winning by dropping the enemy into the computer controlled enemies, since the computer takes the credit for killing him. So essentially, he is disrupting the gameplay of the other players, inflicting a loss of time, and for no personal gain aside from schadenfreude. A classic troll.

He's not bucking social norms, he's being a sociopath as far the game world allows. The results are not suprising, interesting, or even insightful. If he wanted to buck social norms, he should play a healer character who focuses only on his weak offensive abilities. That's the game-equivalent of being a social outcast. He's going for the game-equivalent of Charles Manson.

Re:If it's within the rules, it's within the rules

[SanityInAnarchy]

And just as with real-world laws, there's a limit to how much you can specify clearly enough, or how many restrictions you actually want to set.

In fact, I think we'd both agree that it would be a Bad Idea to have all laws be set to match social customs. There is no law against me walking up to your mother and calling her a cunt, and I would not want to live in a place that had such a law -- yet you probably still wouldn't want me to do that, and society in general would probably disapprove.

"Don't be a dick" can't be coded into law, but it's still good advice.

I think this experiment illustrates quite clearly

[al0ha]

one of the reasons why there will never be a true Democracy. The elite in every society tells the commoner and new initiate what to think, and for the most part they fall in line.

Griefer is reviled

[Johnny Mnemonic]

and writes book describing why it's ok to be a Griefer.

More surprising to me was that in CoH/V PvP is not played as described. I play WoW, on both PvP and carebear servers, and boy do I get ganked whenever I'm in the wrong place at the wrong time. There is no such "polite agreement" between Ally and Horde in WoW. How did one get established in CoH/V?

And while it does indeed suck to get griefed and ganked by the opposing forces, esp when I am no threat to them, if it starts bothering me much I just go do something else for awhile. The Alliance can't be roaming Tarren Mill all of the time? Can they? But it seems like I did have to log in in the Early AM Server Time in order to complete some of those quests.

Re:within the rules doesnt mean its within the rul

[pod]

so cut the bullshit about 'its within the rules', and get used to living in a society.

It's not a "society", it's a game.

In real society, people do things you won't like all the time, and they are still "within the rules". Get used to it. YOu don't get to threaten their life.

Correctly?

[Valdrax]

He had been playing since the game came out in 2004. He knew the customs, he knew the rules. He played the game as designed. He was a hero who defeated villains in a PvP server. He played the game correctly, while everyone else wasn't.

How is teleporting people in front of NPC bots designed to enforce a safe zone instead of beating someone up yourself "playing correctly?" Especially when he was attacking people who didn't want to PVP by abusing a mechanism intended to protect people who didn't want to PVP?

The only reason he was "unbeatable" was because he built a character optimized to exploit a cheap trick that didn't rely on his own strength. I mean, he talks himself up as being skilled, but the truth is a little less flattering. Plus, he wasn't as nice and innocently curious of a guy as he pretends to be. An AC below notes that he would taunt people, post bragging kill logs, etc.

He was a griefer who basically bemoans how "haters gotta be hatin'." What a chump.

Re:More of a study of Socialogy than Video Games..

[Anonymous Cowpat]

depends - does the guy who wants to play baseball starting pitching the ball at the sunbathers?

Re:Who makes the "rules" of a community?

[VGPowerlord]

This

It's like people who go 45 MPH in the left lane on a 55 MPH road. Yeah, that's definitely what the laws say you can do, but most people don't, and the presence of a vehicle going a different speed from the flow of traffic creates danger and stress that shouldn't be there. Ignoring custom in favor of only the rules in print is antisocial behavior.

and this

In terms of the game, the people who play City of Heroes have decided as a community what kind of behavior is acceptable. You only get to go PVP with people who have consented, and the arena is a place for people on other sides of the Heroes / Villains game split to be able to chat otherwise. It's a like a dance club where someone has decided that just because he's a man and you're a woman that he gets to bump and grind against you even if you're not interested. ("That's what dance clubs are for! Why is everyone ganging up on poor little me?")

are arguing opposite sides. The developers are the ones who set the speed limits/laws, and not surprisingly, entering a Player vs. Player arena is explicitly saying "I want to PvP."

meaningless statement

[Anonymous Cowpat]

Myers was stunned by the reaction, since he obeyed the game's rules.

That's meaningless, the programmed rules of the game are analagous to the laws of physics. Just because you can punch someone on the nose doesn't mean that you should, or that they should just shrug their shoulders and go "well, physics allows it, so I'm ok with it"

see what you're missing in academia...

[Goldsmith]

Were I faculty at Loyola, I would find the IRB members who approved this and give them a very hard time, as this is not the kind of research I would want to be associated with. If he has done this without IRB support, I would ask that he be removed from the faculty.

I would point to his academic themed blog (linked to in the article), where he seems to go out of his way to belittle and further antagonize the non-academics who are complaining (he had a separate blog "in character" for his research, this is his "serious academic" blog). His response to an inquiry about the ethics of what he has done is to link to a discussion of similar researchers who seem to reach a conclusion that the ethics in MMO social research are complicated and suggests that transparency and respect of the other players is the best policy (in other words, he links to a blog that suggests he has acted unethically). That he is acting "in character" in his academic blog after the conclusion of the research and is not adhering to the "normal" research conduct of his field is, to me, totally unacceptable.

Re:see what you're missing in academia...

[bigbigbison]

From reading his blog post on the matter http://dmyersloyola.wordpress.com/2008/11/21/im-finishing-up-city-of-heroes-today/ he didn't get irb approval. His dismissal of the need for it in the comments makes it seem like he doesn't know much about the ethics of ethnographic research.

I'm also less than impressed with his responses. It doesn't come off as very professional.

Re:see what you're missing in academia...

[digitalloving]

The fact that he is possibly targeting minors, creating risk to them through emotional trauma, and making academic claims about the information he is gathering on online subjects definitely means he should have IRB approval. Any reasonable academic would state that, especially given the risque nature of the study. In fact, given my experience with the IRB, I doubt he would even get approval. It really saddens me that so many graduate students spend their time following the rules just to watch misguided faculty members ignore them. I like the message this sends. Below is a link to their own policy for online research. It does not deviate much from the policies I have seen at the multiple institutions I have attended. To the best of my reading, his research is in flagrant violation of the policies. http://www.luc.edu/ors/irbonlinesurveys2.shtml

Re:If it's within the rules, it's within the rules

[Pantero Blanco]

A player was being irritating, which is within the rules.
The rest of the players turned him into an outcast, which is also within the rules.
I don't see the problem here.

You (and the authors of half the comments I've read so far...) must not have read the article. They went beyond attacking or taunting him in the game. Trying to expose someone's identity and falsely accusing them of being a sex offender is WAY outside the rules.

Also, "being irritating" in this case involved playing the game the way it was meant to be played. He wasn't doing things that were merely "technically" allowed. He wanted to roleplay as a hero, so he attacked villains.

The summary headline is inaccurate and inflammatory; its author needs to go back to Fark.

Is the story the whole story?

[K.os023]

Comments on TFA say that the situation was not exactly as represented in TFA. From here:

I'm actually a CoH player who PvPed both with and against Twixt (I am not any of the players named, and my verbal interactions with Twixt were quite limited). I'd like to clear up a few things that seem to be missing. Note that I am, in no way, discounting the seriousness of death threats, but maybe a little more understanding of what really took place will allow people to relate better to the frustration.

1) Twixt's actions in PvP translated to an investment of time. By teleporting (the action described) villains into a row of firing squad computer-generated enemies, he would give the other character debt. This debt would impede the character's ability to gain experience by cutting it in half for a certain period of time. Thus, anyone who suffered from what Twixt did would pay for it by having their progress cut in half the next time they got the opportunity to play. A full portion of debt could take upwards of 3 hours of nonstop play to be worked off.

Imagine you go play miniature golf. Directly in front of you is a group of 10 children who have no idea what they're doing. You are unable to skip past them, and as is allowed, they refuse to let you pass. Due to this inconvenience, you only get to play 9 holes (or 4, if you're only on a 9-hole course). Would you be frustrated? I sure would be. They didn't break the rules, but they hurt the fun of my outing by specifically robbing me of the time that I had dedicated to accomplishing my goal. It's not much different than traffic, bowling balls getting stuck in the lanes, people talking during a movie, or any other issue that would rob an individual of their free time. The individuals causing your frustration may not be breaking the rules, but they are affecting your enjoyment.

2) Twixt's account of what took place in the PvP zones he visited just plain isn't accurate.

People did chat because many of the players had played together prior to the release of City of Villains (CoH was released in May of 2004 while CoV in October of 2006). Most of us already knew each other. However, that didn't result in a lack of fighting. Many times, Twixt would simply teleport people from battles already in place to his computer-generated death squads. He's presenting the situation as if he was the only one using the zones correctly when, in actuality, he was just the only one manipulating loopholes to allow him to generally be mean to other players. That's the biggest reason why he was despised.

3) Twixt commonly made fun of players he killed.

He did not simply say random hero-supporting things, he oftentimes bragged openly after using his computer-generated helpers to kill someone. Like any other competitive situation, bragging and talking trash will earn people talking back and becoming more upset. He worked to goad individuals into becoming angrier at what he did.

He mentions the forums as a place where people speculated about parts of his life, but he seems to have left out where he posted kill-logs from his time spent in PvP zones. He posted quite frequently on those boards, and he went out of his way to fuel the hate that developed for him. Professional athletes who do such a thing are widely derided by the media and fans. Twixt worked hard to generate hate, he was not simply an innocent victim.

4) Twixt died. A lot.

Twixt perfected his method of generating debt for other players by dying a whole lot along the way. Statements like, "But no one could stay alive long enough to defeat Twixt..." completely misrepresent what happened.

5) Twixt's research plays a role by examining another realm of society, but his results are predictable.

It's not surprising that people get upset when you're mean to them without reason. On an unmarked curb, it's legal for me to park 5 fee

Re:Who makes the "rules" of a community?

[tirefire]

Actually, the driver's handbook my state publishes specifically says you should only use the left lane to pass. So when some asshole in a Winnebago camps the passing lane at (speed limit minus 10), he really is breaking the law, or at least driving improperly. Like jaywalking and littering, it's something cops don't really care about, so everyone does it, and most people don't even know it's wrong. And then everyone's surprised when they hear the Germans actually enforce rules like that. Sigh...

Re:Not Research

[hairyfeet]

Actually I think he just proved Professor Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory and thereby proving conclusively that no matter how much education or degrees you have attached to you name, you can still be a giant douche on the Internet.

So congratulations Mr Researcher, on proving what everyone else has known since AOHell let the great unwashed loose on the net. I'm sure his next paper will be on how 4Chan is full of trolls that do everything for something called the "LULZ".

Re:Not Research

[itzdandy]

no, that would be ferric.

Re:Does entering a PvP ring really mean that at al

[Rajani_Isa]

Also, just because it's possible to PvP with anyone there doesn't mean that people have consented to PvP with you.

Actually, if you ask the the CS staff, if you play the game and read the beginner's info - yeah, they have. Entering a PvP Zone means you consent to be engaged by anyone anywhere at any when inside the zone. If you want to only PvP against specific people, that's what "City of" has arenas for.

Well, at least it's a new-ish excuse

[Moraelin]

Well, as someone who's been on MUDs long before MMOs, and briefly even tried his hand at creating content on one, I can at least say this: I had thought I've heard every excuse before. There was always a segment (the ones Bartle called "killers") who'd whine at length that if you don't let them repeatedly gank newbies:

A. you're infringing upon their freedom of speech. (Never mind that that ammendment is about congress, not about their behaviour on someone else's private property.)

B. ... and their dad is a lawyer and will sue you for it. (Never did somehow.)

C. ... and that's the road to fascism and slavery. (Yeah, right.)

D. You're making roleplaying impossible. (Apparently being an out-of-character griefer is the only possible role to play.)

E. You're depriving those newbies of _fun_. They may not know it, but they secretly _want_ to be ganked repeatedly and otherwise harrassed. If you let them opt out of that instead of being thrown to the wolves from the first minute, they'll all get bored and leave! (I think Everquest 1 disproved that one quite nicely.)

F. Somehow a failure of a human being, along with everyone else who even thinks of being, you know, social in a massively multiplayer game.

And, umm, that's about it off the top of my head.

The research one is actually kind of new. Of course, this "researcher" didn't invent it, but still, it's kinda refreshing to see the douchebags have broadened their repertoire a little. They were starting to sound like a broken record.

Re:If it's within the rules, it's within the rules

[zarzu]

fuck it, i have to post again, your post is just ridiculous.

first off, a griever is someone who causes grieve by interrupting gameplay in an unintended way, griever != whiner, please at least get your mmorpg slang right.

i have played eq, and cross teaming has absolutely nothing to do with this, you're not able to team up with anyone of the opposite faction in cox (only in cooperation zones, but we're talking pvp areas here), you can't heal them etc. i am repeating myself, people in those zones are playing as intended, they are pvping, they are fighting each other with some ooc text in between. twixt is essentially doing what fansy did in eq1, are you getting it now?

What he wasn't saying

[T.E.D.]

The entrance to every zone in COH/COV is an area protected by police robots. The robots have rays that instantly kill anything in the game. The purpose of this is to prevent anyone from greifing people who are in the process of entering the area and don't have control of their characters yet.

If it weren't for these robots, then greifers could drag powerful mobs into the entrance area, or in the PvP area just stand in the enemy entrance area with a buddy or two, and prevent anyone from being able to enter without getting killed before having a chance to fight back at all.

There's also a "teleport foe" skill you can take, which is very handy for pulling, or for when an enemy gets stuck in a wall.

What this guy appeared to be doing was going into the PvP area and using teleport foe to teleport players on the other side into his own insta-death protected entrance area.

It is a very clever way to use the dev's griefer protection tools to grief people. What is most certianly is not is "playing the game by the designer's rules".

If you've ever had a conversation with a game griefer where they dumped their rationalizations for their prickish behavior on you, this article will look very familiar to you.