[MUD-Dev] PVP and perma-death

[Michael Sellers]

HRose wrote:
> Derek Licciardi:

>> I think that is a pretty narrow view of griefing.  As JC alluded
>> to, griefing can happen in many ways that are completely
>> unrelated to the game play mechanics of the game.  I can chase
>> you around and say things about your family for hours on end and
>> that is considered griefing.  I didn't attack you; I didn't harm
>> your character; I violated no game mechanic; what I did do was
>> destroy your session by being a constant nag.  I griefed you.
>> Perhaps next time someone will virtually rape someone or be
>> racist towards someone else.  All of that is griefing and game
>> design alone is not going to get rid of it.

> Yes, I see your point and the key issue is that all you write here
> happens beside the gameplay. It's obvious that this form of
> griefing cannot be stopped in any way. This is why there are
> systems that allow you to report this and get the player
> banned. It's something "out of game" and must be solved "out of
> game". Obviously I simply considered griefing that is based on the
> gameplay because I think this other case shouldn't even be
> discussed here.

You have a curious division for "in game" and "out of game"
griefing.  It occurs to me that you're focusing on the game
mechanics, saying that they shouldn't allow griefing.  I'm speaking
here of "mechanics" in the sense used by Mark LeBlanc (if you
haven't already, read the terrific paper by Hunicke, LeBlanc, and
Zubek at
http://www.cs.northwestern.edu/~hunicke/blog/content/MDA.pdf).
Essentially, the mechanics are what the objects in the game can do:
a sword does 1-8 points of damage, for example.  If you want to say
that no sword (or spell, etc.) can harm a player character, you
might well do away with all mechanic-related griefing ("in game" in
your terms, I think).  But players will still use the game's
dynamics to grief each other -- as with UO's old dynamic where you
could under some circumstances lower someone else's skill by cooking
near them.  This was the result of the interplay of various
mechanics, which create the dynamics of the game.  I'm not sure if
you'd consider that "in-game" or not.  (For a more recent example of
griefing-with-dynamics, the mass bannings of those with duped
credits in SWG might apply: consider the griefing potential of
duping a bunch of credits and then tipping people -- something that
can't be refused -- with those credits.  Sure that mule account of
yours gets banned, but you manage to take out a bunch of your
otherwise innocent enemies too.)

But both of these are sort of beside the point.  As LeBlanc points
out, what players experience are the aesthetics of a game (designers
and developers experience the mechanics and dynamics, which is why
we get confused when some cool system isn't fun).  How the player
experiences the game *IS* the game.  So if I'm afraid that someone's
going to follow me around and spew epithets or otherwise make my
life difficult -- even though they haven't done a thing with the
game mechanics or dynamics -- my experience of the game is ruined.
Distinctions about "in game" or "out of game" are meaningless to the
person who's had their experience of the game ruined.

Now, all that said, I suspect strongly that there are ways with
mechanics and dynamics to help maintain a positive aesthetic
experience for players.  I'd never say that a game was
"grief-proof", but perhaps we make some that are "grief-resistant."
Social griefing is a social pathology that exists because of (and on
top of) the mechanics and dynamics and the social aesthetics they
set up.  So, as we evolve better socially related mechanics and
dynamics, we should be able to mitigate social griefing.

>> ... If game-play can be built to properly motivate players to
>> form these controls on their environments then how come we can't
>> use game-play to elicit behaviors aimed at setting anti-griefing
>> societal norms/patterns?

> Okay, but how all this is pertinent to perma-death? Perma-death
> isn't a tool in the hand of the players, it's a structure of the
> design.

Exactly.  It's a mechanic that will set up different dynamics and
aesthetics than are typically seen.  Whether this mechanic will have
the desired effect on the players' aesthetic remains to be seen.

Mike Sellers
Online Alchemy
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