[MUD-Dev] Interesting EQ rant (very long quote)

[Ananda Dawnsinger]

> From: "John Buehler" <johnbue at msn.com>
> 
> J C Lawrence writes:
> 
>>> I may be slanting the systems towards exploration, but I'm
>>> assuredly getting my teeth kicked in here by those who both dislike
>>> my approach and wouldn't want to play my game anyway.
> 
>> Not really.  There are a few hard won lessons in MUDs surrounding
>> the grief player phenomena which many of us have battered our heads
>> against for long enough ,and in enough forms and forums (Usenet,
>> mailing lists, MUDs, bars, work, etc), that we've come to a pretty
>> basic set of assumptions:
> 
> Yup, and I'm pretty clear on those assumptions, although the list is
> appreciated for its clarity.  My concern with having those assumptions
> is that it means that designers aren't considering ways of changing
> the equation.
> 
>> These things are pretty close to being considered incontrovertable
>> and absolute laws.  There certainly is a lot of history, encluding
>> this list, to support them.
> 
> Do you believe that the activities that the game environments
> encourage could be contributing to the tendency of players to consider
> grief actions when they're bored or done with the game?

The thing is, the "grief player" phenomenon is by no means unique to
GoP MUDs.  You find 'em in MUSHes and MOOs.  You find 'em in talkers.
You find 'em in graphical chat services like the Palace.  You find 'em
in IRC.  You find 'em on Usenet and message boards.  Long before the
'Net was opened up to commercial traffic, you could find 'em in places
like CompuServe, GEnie, and QuantumLink.

A fresh example: A participant in an online community is banned, and
in less than a week over 1200 posts -- bitterly divided between pro
and con, with a few oddballs in the middle -- have sprung up in one
message board topic alone.  Sure sounds like grief playing to me.  The
community?  Salon.com's TableTalk message boards, "Mothers Who Think"
division.

Hell, even MUD-Dev has seen a couple of people join and post pot-shots
at members they didn't like.

<EdNote: Yeah, sorry about that.  There's a line between "enough rope
to do something useful" and "enough rope to try and hang someone else"
that I'm still figuring out.>

If grief playing were a MUD phenomenon, or even a gaming phenomenon,
there might well be compelling reason to believe that there's a
solution that nobody's found yet.  It's not.  "Grief players" are a
feature of online communities and groups in general.  Actually,
they're a component of all communities and groups -- it's just that
restraining orders don't work too well online.

--
Sharon Mock (Ananda Dawnsinger)
Worldbuilding Lead and Loremistress General,
(project to be named later)


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