
Professor griefs gamers, feigns surprise at reaction - abennett
http://www.itworld.com/offbeat/70376/professor-griefs-gamers-feigns-surprise-reaction
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madair
I'm with the professor on this one. If you can't play-act like a villain, or a
villainous hero, in a game about heroes and villains, then what the hell is
the fantasy world of gaming giving other than all the worst weaknesses and
faults of the real world?

Have any of the detractors stopped to think that perhaps their sense of
community and socializing isn't what all gamers want? Societies values are not
always intrinsically good. The fantasy world of gaming gives a person the
chance to transcend normal forces and values, within the rules of the given
fantasy world.

It is entirely fitting that this experiment was done in a world of heroes and
villains. The majority want to claim a moral prerogative to insist on status
quo, just like in the real world, when far fewer of the foundational reasons
for the status quo exist. Your real world nor fantasy world freedoms, life,
limb, rights are not affected by a rule-abiding player who entered a fantasy
world to play out their fantasy of heroes and villains. The genuine and rule-
abiding fantasy players rights are impinged by the majority rule.

A summary of wrongs here, (1) death threats conducted in the real world
against a player who played the intended fantasy in the fantasy world (2)
support by the majority of enforcing real world rules as if they had the same
weight and imperative in the game world which was being used by design (3)
Editorializing in the title of this post, and not least (4) a direct
accusation of dishonesty which constitutes a personal attack in the title of
this post.

If we transcend mob rule and the establishment for a moment, step into the
realm of ethics and what is truth, necessary and unnecessary social norms and
rules versus individual rights, we find a sad sad tale of the majority wanting
to forcing their way on every individual in an mis-balanced sense of societies
rights and needs.

Kill my karma, if you must, establishment supporters, but it's the professor,
not the establishment, who has my support.

~~~
gchpaco
Having played City of Heroes and knowing what's going on here, you're
completely off base. The CoH PvP zones have special drones protecting the
base, to give people breathing room. This professor was repeatedly teleporting
people into them, an act which gave him _no reward whatsoever_ and which (at
least for a while) penalized the person involved (drone kills would give you
XP debt). Neither of these properties hold during normal, legitimate, PvP
play.

RPing a villain is fine. Acting like an asshole makes you a pariah. Surprised?

~~~
timwiseman
I do not play City of Heroes, however if you read his research paper and his
comments, he did those things to remove those players as obstacles in order to
complete the objective of the zone (capturing 6 towers as I understand).

Since I do not play please let me know if I misunderstand, but it sounds like
he was taking a perfectly legitimate avenue to his ultimate goal of capturing
those 6 towers and winning the zone.

~~~
gchpaco
The towers are, by design, nowhere close to any of the key positions. No one
close enough to be teleported into the towers (the power has a range limit) is
in any way threatening the nominal goals of the zone.

I'm not sure why they didn't ban him, honestly. I had gathered that this type
of sociopathy was considered griefing by the developers and grounds for
temporary or permanent bans.

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jswinghammer
I think you could summarize this article as "Gamer dislikes griefers, thinks
gaming is serious business". It sounds like it was partially on the game
designers to limit this griefing activity and make this character able to be
killed. The professor's purpose was to study this community and in doing so he
put it under stress and watched it react. I think this is valid research given
that no one was actually hurt-just annoyed.

It seems like this guy should be more upset with the developers who did
nothing (that's cited in the article) to stop this.

~~~
jcl
It may be a valid and interesting result, but I don't think it was ethically
collected. I'd love to hear how these human subjects were briefed or
compensated for this study. It's pretty clear the professor was subjecting
them to unexpected emotional stress without their consent.

It may also be valid and interesting to find out what happens if you flip
people off in traffic, or pay for your restaurant bill in pennies, or taunt
preschoolers when you beat them in a game, but it doesn't mean it's ethical to
just go out and do it, even if there's nothing explicitly saying it's illegal.

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lutorm
At least at the UC, I suspect this sort of research would require human
subjects approval, just like if you want to interview random people or put
them through some form of test. You can't just harass people who have not
agreed to it in the name of "research" anymore in a MMORP than you can on the
street.

I think someone at Loyola needs to think about ethical guidelines for research
here.

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pyropenguin
This summed up exactly what _I_ thought of the original article. I have to
wonder what the result of this will be on his credibility as a professor and
how it will reflect on Loyola University in the long run.

Reporting on common sense that is akin to running into a lion den and hitting
one with a stick only to result in a mauling should not be newsworthy, let
alone require the writing of a book.

Edit -> Link to the original article in case you missed it.
[http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2009/07/loyola_university...](http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2009/07/loyola_university_professor_be.html)

~~~
marcusbooster
Reiterating common sense is not scholarship, systematically measuring it is.

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zacechola
The original study is entirely valid research and fascinating to boot.

I'm looking forward to reading the book.

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petercooper
I had the same problem on GTA4. In multiplayer there's a "GTA Race" mode which
is racing but with freedom to walk around, use weapons on other racers, etc.
There's also a vanilla "race" mode with no weapons that's just about racing.

So I enjoyed playing GTA Race, blocking up the track and mass killing the
other racers - you get points and it's the point of that mode - to either
dodge violence or to cause it. Instead people whined about how they "just
wanted to race" yet for some reason they wouldn't bother to use the proper
Race mode.

Basically, people are idiots.

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Tichy
What I don't get is why the game developers did not fix the loopholes in the
system.

I am also skeptic of the research motives. "People get angry if you annoy
them" - hope it wasn't funded with tax payer money...

~~~
xenophanes
Fixing all the loopholes is hard. Blizzard didn't want to mess up the game
when they made the telekinesis skill in diablo 2, but it turned out to be a
big problem. Similarly they didn't want you to be able to PK people with no
warning, but various methods of doing that emerged. Now for Diablo 3 they're
so worried about people screwing with each other that the game gives everyone
separate item drops, but something like that is too big a change to just go
back and "fix the loopholes" in diablo 2.

~~~
Tichy
I believe that. Not even sure how long that professors griefing was allowed to
continue. It sounds as if he primarily had one trick he used, which should
have been fixed after a while.

Or if it can't be fixed "physically", then maybe there should be rules and
misbehaving players should be evicted.

I hope they won't fix Diablo 3 so much that it becomes boring.

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smelendez
The irony here comes from the professor simultaneously trying to impose his
own social norms on the players he's antagonizing. When someone says something
like "if you do that again, I'll kill you" in the context of playing a game,
it's ridiculous to interpret it as a bona fide death threat.

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marze
Whatever your opinion on griefing is, it can sure be humorous.

This link was in the comments from on NOLA article, "FANSY THE FAMOUS BARD":

<http://www.notacult.com/fansythefamous.htm>

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scotty79
Professor was suprised that there are two distinct set of rules, game rules
and social rules, and that by breaking social rules you can anger people?

Somebody should go to his office and pee on his desk explaining to the
professor that he is not breaking any game rules (in that case called
'physics'). Professor could be also suprised by revelation that in real world
also two distinct set of rules exist. Maybe he could write about this
afterwards.

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jemmons
Thank you! This saves me from commenting on the original now.

