[MUD-Dev] Reach out and bitch at someone

[jolson at micron.net]

----- Original Message -----
From: Brian Green <brian at psychochild.org>
> Here's something I've been wondering for a while.  Why do players feel
> it is acceptable to abuse administrators of MUDs?

The same reason people are often more rude on the telephone than in 
face-to-face conversation.  The less natural feedback (facial 
expressions, voice timbre, body language...) available about a person's 
emotions and attitude, the harder it is to identify with them as a 
fellow human being and perceive an accurate representation of what 
they're communicating and how they're communicating it.

It also has a lot to do with the nature of the service.  Just as some 
RL customer service positions are easier to handle than others,  MUDs 
are a loaded environment.  More below.

> In many player complaints, they always seem to throw out the 
> phrase "I
> pay for this" or "I pay your salary!" when they talk to administrators
> and CS representatives of commercial games.  This perplexes me, 
> becauseyou rarely see this happening with sane people in other 
> situations.

It seems to me that the "I pay your salary" tactic is a desperate 
attempt to make someone care about the situation when they apparently 
do not.  

> If I read a novel that I didn't like, I don't contact the author and
> say, "Look, buddy, I didn't like that book of yours.  I bought it, so
> I'm paying your salary.  Next time, you better darn well write a book
> *I* do like!" 

You might if the jacket promised a rich, engrossing, and rewarding 
interactive story, but upon getting into the book you found it rife 
with grammatical errors, misprinted pages, and the literary equivalent 
of "See spot run."  

> If I were to run up to a McDonald's employee and 
> yell, "I
> ASKED FOR EXTRA PICKLES.  GO BACK THERE AND BRING BACK EXTRA PICKLES,
> BEEYOTCH!!!!1!!" my friends would have a special name for me: 
> "asshole".

You might if you had spent weeks and months of your free time paying 
McDonald's for the privelege of lovingly crafting and building this 
sandwich, and then finally having it mucked up by what appeared to be a 
careless error by a blank-faced employee.  

> Why is this?  Is it because of the relatively easy access to company
> spokespeople/developers?  Is it because of the time and money 
> investmentthat players feel they need to make?  Is it because 
> online anonymity
> provides a buffer to be more rude to others?

A little.  But it's largely because we so often "promise" that which we 
cannot realistically provide.  When someone pays to interact with a 
virtual world, there is an implicit expectation that his progress and 
accomplishments in that world will be preserved.  Whether it is 
explicitly promised or not, players believe that their achievements 
should and will be protected within the scope of the game rules.  But 
very frequently in virtual environments, whether it's due to bugs, 
design flaws, or other players, those expecations are not met.  

Recall the recent uproar in EQ where Verant player wiped their test 
server.  Yes it was a test server, and yes Verant had maintained for 
more than a year that they could wipe it at any time, but players were 
still extremely upset.  It hadn't been wiped in the 15 months of its 
operation, and they had come to expect that it never would be, despite 
evidence to the contrary.  I've heard people pronounce that the players 
should have known it was coming and therefore deserved to lose 15 
months of character building.  My opinion is that no (rules-abiding) 
paying customer deserves that kind of detriment.

-Josh






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