Greetings yet again. This week's readings involve antisocial behavior (once again) and compulsive use. Today's post focuses on the first topic while tomorrows will focus on the second. To lighten the mood and get this blog rolling I thought I would share this video of a South Park episode involving World of Warcraft. The video doesn't play the entire episode, but watch as many clips as you can, it's pretty funny. The Video pretty much covers both topics for this week, including our first reading for Monday, involving Grief Play. (Nice Segue, huh?)
The first reading was a study performed on a style of play in MMORPG's known as Grief Play, where some players intentionally interfere with other players, thus ruining any fun those players might be having. The study broke down Grief Play into several different categories (Harassment, Power imposition, Scamming and Greed play). Each type of play has its own characteristics that are considered Griefing, though Harassment is seen as the worst form because it is intentionally causing distress for another player simply for the Griefer's enjoyment. The overall purpose of the paper was to define Grief play and establish different levels of Grief play.
The Next reading also discusses griefing, though it is a more journalistic piece on griefing and the growth of virtual online communities. It involved questions of ethics in the virtual world as it is becoming more possible to re-create the world in which we live virtually. Second Life and other online games have raised questions of freedom of speech and where the virtual world ends and the real world begins. There have been cases where online disputes have led to real-world murders. Also, as people are able to earn incomes from games like Second Life, griefing becomes more of an issue because it begins to put a financial strain on those actually playing the game. Everything in the article leads back to how to regulate such activity in a free online environment.
Which leads me to...
1) How do you regulate people's actions in online games such as WOW and Second Life? Do you?
2) Why do people grief? Is there a deeper reason other than just for fun?
3) Is it ethical to grief?
4) How does South Park always seem to get it right while being so outrageous?
5) Any other thoughts you may have.
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5 comments:
I'm not familiar with WOW, but as for Second Life I don't think there is much we can do to regulate people's actions. Essentially anyone with an email address can create an account. I know initially to create an account a person had to share credit card/paypal info. I know most of the regulations on Second Life are due to unfortunate circumstances regarding theft, gambling, and unlawful banking activities. The important thing to realize is that Second Life is novel and growing rapidly, where more regulations are likely to be taken as more problems arise.
I believe this is where the role of ethics comes into play. Today in class several people didn't exactly agree that griefing is unethical.
I think griefing is of course unethical. It is morally wrong to cause someone distress intentionally, no matter what the context is. In class someone said that ethics doesn't really have anything to do with following the rules of a game, especially online, but it still should be a concern whatever the context may be.
Why people grief? I imagine people who grief are extremely extroverted individuals who feel the need play the dominant role in all settings and relationships.
1) Just like you can’t really regulate people’s actions in FtF communication, I don’t think it is possible to do so online. I think it’s important to have rules to point out that certain behaviors are wrong, but I don’t think there is a way to really control it. It’s all a matter of respect, politeness and how each person is raised. With rules existing, I think it will allow for people to segregate those who grief or break the rules in other ways. That way, people are discouraged from not complying with the rules.
2) Like we spoke in class, I just think it’s a matter of people seeking attention and wanting something to do. A lot of people don’t view the online realm as a ‘real’ experience, so people are inclined to grief or go against the rules of games. It becomes a challenge to them, gives them something to do and a chance to get noticed. I am sure that there are some people who grief for purely malicious intent, but I believe the majority to do it out of fun.
3) Griefing is decepetion with no positive outcome to the individual deceived, and I don’t find this ethical. The consequences aren’t as grave as they would be in a non-virtual world, but people are still being deceived.
The idea of grief play is a very interesting topic of discussion. Griefing seems almost unavoidable in almost all MMOs (massively multiplayer online games). Griefers tend to do try just about anything to disrupt the general flow of the game or interrupt generally positive channels of social communication. I'd like to comment specifically on the idea of ethics as it applies to grief play. Although annoying and often times downright spiteful, I don't believe ethics apply to griefing.
To begin with, a game, as defined by most scholars of video games, is simply an activity with a set of obstacles defined by a set of rules provided by programmers. It is then up to the player, to operate within the rules as they see fit. This sense of freedom is part of the reason why MMOs are so popular. This idea of a sandlot style game where the user is afforded a sense of freedom to roam and do as they see fit within the rules of the program. Thus griefers are not actually violating any rules. They are simply taking away from the game what is afforded by the original programmers. It is vital to keep in mind the context of grief play as occuring in games.
Society already struggles with ethics when it comes to the prominent issues such as homosexual marriage, prayers in schools, and various corporate practices. To apply ethics to the happenings of social video games seem to trivialize the importance of ethics as a governing concept of right and wrong.
I think people engage in griefing activities simply because they want/ need attention. I think these people are the same people who make a fool out of themselves in public just to get someone to notice them. They don't care whether the attention is good or bad, they just want it.
I agree that it is unethical. I think so because there are people who take these games very seriously and they devote a lot of time and effort to them. To destroy that experience (for fun) is unethical in my opinion. In any other setting people have the ability to disassociate themselves from people who disrupt what they are doing. Just because the online environment is available to everyone doesn't mean you have to ruin it for everyone else.
I guess I just wish there was some way to hold people accountable for their online actions as there is for their real-life actions. (If you were to throw a bunch of fake penises at somebody at a press-conference you would promptly be removed and possibly arrested for disturbing the peace).
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