[MUD-Dev] Reach out and bitch at someone

[Chris Jacobson]

On 6/29/00 3:16 AM, David Bennett (ddt at discworld.atuin.net) stated:

>So I think the big reasons are access, immediacy and the relative
>anonimity...

So true, as well.  I've found that as soon as we strip away annonymity, 
the players immediately cower in fear or respect.  (many of our people 
play with their friends, and since most of them are young teenagers, 
loyalty is at an all time low between them.  Any of them will give away 
personal info on any of the others for a tiny reward).

For example, I recently had a player who was banned from our game for 
serious rules violations, including excessive swearing, harassment, 
spamming, multiplaying, and attempting to hack staff and other player 
characters.  After a month this players came back and decided to try to 
raise hell in revenge.  He was caught short, and then started attacking 
our "sister-mud" - which while I am not affiliated with directly, I have 
administrator privileges on due to inter-mud warfare that had taken place 
among our playerbases.  I quickly dealt with this player...

2 days later, I log on to my administrative character, "FearItself", to 
find a character, "FearTheQueer"... it was late in the night (~3 am), so 
no other staff member was on, and very few players.  I quickly 
disconnected and erased the character (there ARE proper ways to complain 
that I will listen), and soon received an email from 
"FearIsGay at Hotmail.com", telling me about 
"http://www.geocities.com/fearitself2000/FearIsGay.html"... a website 
that was a parody of my small homepage, claiming I was gay and - this is 
what REALLY upset me - that I was looking for young teenage boys to live 
with me.  (Well, the remark about finding Ricky Martin a turn-on was a 
bit insulting too).

I responded to the email quite calmly, stating, "Have fun all you want, I 
really don't give a shit about little kids like you :-)."  (which 
generated a response that seemed to be upset, asking why I wasn't whining 
and throwing a fit, etc).  I also contacted geocities and had the website 
shut down.

I also put out a (quite large) reward for any true personal information 
on this user.

The user continued to correspond with me for a few emails from that 
address, including mocking my reward - until I finally called him by his 
real name, and told him I'd be in touch with his parents in the next week.

That's the last I heard from the kid.  I do still intend to contact his 
parents, however.


Anyways, after this long story about one little instance with a player, 
what are the points?
1. Rewards work wonders.  The majority of the MUDding community seems to 
be teenage males... and as anyone who once was a teenage male can tell 
you, friends will turn on each other for even a small prize.
2. When dealing with kids, strip away the anonymity, and you can turn the 
tables on even the most outspoken individual
3. They ARE mostly just kids...

- Chris Jacobson



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